John Frank Rosenblum - Co Executive producer
Karl Preusser - Composer
George Strayton - Script Writer
TRANSCRIPTION BEHIND THE CUT!
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Transcription coming soon!
Regardless of how many games I have that are begging to be played, there always winds up being one game that steals most all of the attention when I’m
Right now those would be The Witcher, Fire Emblem, and probably Advance Wars 2 again. This post is really going to be just about the first one however. The Witcher is really well done though the beginning has been a little more linear than I’d like. It is quite possibly the first game I’ve purchased that has really really taxed my machine (I’ve got a decent setup for a year ago: dual 7950s). The game is unplayable on the highest settings, but on around medium I have no problems - for the most part. The problem is that the game has a very high dynamic range of graphical effects. Most active playing maybe sits at around 5% of how heavy it gets during certain cut-scenes (which are in-engine). The problem with this is you can be playing along just fine, and then a scene happens where you suddenly are left tightly grasping on to the last few as you watch your FPS fall through the cracks in your incapable fingers. … I couldn’t save them… Quite often there is a sort of critical mass (Let’s call it: “2 fans 1 shit“) and the game just freezes - this is always when you need it most in a large fracas. So I have started learning to be psychic: I reduce the settings when I think there will be a heavy fight or cut-scene soon and then raise them again when I know it’ll be just wandering for a while because I’ve tasted the nicer lighting settings and it doesn’t feel right without.
That and the load times - which are pretty bad. Plain file access as well - saving and loading becomes a bit of a chore (and the saves are easily 11mb to start). I have a theory, that as long as we’re willing to put up with load times, technology won’t erase them. This is because if there is more available memory and processing power we will devise things that push the limits. Disk access has always been a soft spot of games, but most disk access problems are solved by using more memory in some way. I actually reboot the computer and play The Witcher on a clean conscience because it will use almost the entire 2 gigs and my load times will be somewhat alleviated - at least when my character ducks into a port-o-let and out again it’s not like I’ve never seen the outside of it before in my life. However, even when resources are in memory there is only so much memory on the graphic card(s) - and for a new scene, you must transfer all these resources on and off the card to set up the new scene. Since our idea of what we can do is limited by these factors we naturally will devise the most complex thing possible within the ‘recommended’ requirements.
This extends beyond just games - internet sites, operating systems all expand to fill the available processor, memory and network resources - resulting in a net stasis over time for someone on the same part of the technological curve. Systems do not become more responsive (I’d venture to say they have become steadily less so) over the advance of progress. It’s not something I’m at all happy with either.
At times when it becomes frustrating however, I can always lie down and play some Wii or play an older computer game - the passage of time finally delivering unto me the experience that I wanted when I purchased the game.
Xenon sent me this review about the new Halo 3: “I like it”
…but I’m not quite sure WHAT game he actually reviewed as he sent me these screenshots along with his review:
This weekend it was time for our bi-yearly pilgrimage to Claremont to dig up and dust off our gaming roots. The Southern California Classic Collectors got together once again to bring out the best of the best from classic gaming history.
This visit offered a few more cabinets, in addition to an xbox with emulators being hooked up and projected onto a big screen.
The usual fare of games was there, with a few more additions in terms of gaming cabinets and a computer projected on a screen in the back. There was much more Wii-playing, as people enjoyed Wii sports and other games. We also caught a glimpses of a Japanese jun-ken-pow/ro-sham-bo hentai game, where winning a round of rock paper scissors meant your attractive host takes off another article of her clothing… wooo hoo.
The big projector in the back was playing a showing of “SC3 TV,” which was a montage of retro-gaming themed shows, specials, and commercials from back in the day.
While we were there, we got a chance to interview some of the founders and collaborators of the event, We also chatted with as Rob from Coin-op.tv, who coincidentally interviewed our friend Rog over at i-mockery.com. It’s a small world!. These events are set to happen at least twice a year, and don’t worry; we’ll sound the alarms when it happens again so we can hook up for more old school gaming.
Walkthrough
Interview with the creators of the SC3
Interview with Rob from Coin-op TV
Pictures of the event
Sony and Virgin Comics are teaming up to make an MMO based on Ramayan 3392 AD.
It’s hard to put into words how awesome this is. Sony Online… you may not have delivered on the previous lasting promises - but you currently have so much win lined up I think it’d be impossible not to at least get ONE of them right.
In relatedy news, Sierra is bringing Spiderwick to a gaming form. Also as you probably know, Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) is slated for the same movie/game treatment.
I think at this point it’s quite safe to say that we’ve entered the realm of MULTIMEDIA storytelling. You could argue that I’m about 10 years late to the game in saying that but I will argue back: Movie treatment was reserved for books with very discernable action/visual elements (usually to the extrapolation of only thus a la Starship Troopers), and were required to have the screenplay/pitch before being considered. Now I think we’re at the point where movies are not made without at least shopping around and discussing the game tie-ins, and books are either made with the tie-in rights well establish and on the market or are shopped as soon as they hit the smallest glimpse of fame. This multimedia experience, for the consumer being able to experience the story either on their medium of choice, or on many if they are not satiated by the first - is reliant on the translations producing a good quality product.
I’d say at least two major events can be blamed for this success: the first being probably the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies. The huge commercial and artistic successes brought two things to America: the ‘fantasy adventure blockbuster’ - opening up a huge genre of video game-ready stories and amazing novels (some of which had previously gone straight from novel to game with no movie like Dragonlance for example), and the destruction of the 90-minute movie formula. With movie stories being able to fill the time mold and episodic devision most appropriate for the story that they are telling (much like games easily vary from 2-hour-to-end to 50+ hour epics), the “you can’t fit that/translate that into a movie’ stigma was largely erased.
The second major event I’d have to argue is video games themselves. We’re a far cry from movie tie-ins that do lip service to the characters and plotline involved while being completely auxiliary to the experience. We don’t routinely have to suffer-or-avoid such atrocities as the ‘we-gotta-have-a-tie-in’ game that really can’t succeed to begin with (Home Alone anyone? - LOL at Bethesda). These days, even the most forced tie-ins are of average gaming quality at worst (on average anyhow) or are ground-breakingly good. Now that we can almost rely on a decent product and a return on investment it’s easy for investors to treat video game rights as part of the package.
Better yet we’re now in the era of true cohabitation at times. The BBC finally announced its shrouded MMO project as a co-released game to tie in with a children’s television show that they are working on. This is a bit of an interesting break for virtual worlds in general as the story of this game world itself revolves around the dualism of a real world and an alternate world. The game is tied in by being the real players’ alternate world analogue - bringing the players to the role of main story characters directly as opposed to through a virtual or roleplay abstraction. More about this in another post, as this post is almost big enough to get movie rights and I’m sure the game for this one won’t be the blockbuster it’s expected to be.
For a long time the top spot of our ‘We want to interview’ list has been occupied by Chris Taylor.
His early work on such games as Hardball II, 4D Boxing, Triple Play Baseball. Then moving on to create Total Annihilation and it’s expansion pack, The Core Contingency, and Dungeon Siege. He is now currently the CEO and Creative Director of GasPoweredGames.
Total Annihilation has been acclaimed as a masterpiece and the defining example for the classical period of the RTS genre. Supreme Commander is shaping up for similar praise, as it carries Chris’s trademark technological and gameplay innovations. With it’s up-and-coming release, we were honored to get a live interview with Chris during his busy pre-launch schedule to talk about Supreme Commander, epic ping-pong-table-sized games of Risk, and other bedlam. My favorite quote being:
CT: Well then I would crush and destroy everything, with my new robot body, and I think that’d be pretty fun.
Download the MP3 here. (33 minutes, 11.6megs) The text transcript for the interview follows, as well.
