 New Shadowrun video game from Microsoft?, Anyone have opinions on this? |
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 Jul 18 2006, 11:04 PM
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#76
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Immortal Elf  Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670  |
psh, if someone won, i'd have to find another argument.
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Jul 18 2006, 11:21 PM
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#77
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Prime Runner Group: Retired Admins Posts: 3,929 Joined: 26-February 02 From: .ca Member No.: 51 |
FanPro will actually have a couple of the BattleTech pods at GenCon. MechJock.com is the owner's site -- the software is still being updated, but I'm not sure if they're available for sale at the moment. |
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Jul 18 2006, 11:34 PM
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#78
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
You mean another [sound] design decision I already gave the reasoning behind in my post. Conservation of design resources by eliminating functionality overlap. Firearms handle the direct damage freeing up the limited resources to implement magic features to handle other aspects of the game play. Face it, implementing true canon P&P combat would be an enormous cost and likely not to lead to that great of game. Because combat in a computer game happens in a different way, through a different human interface, and in different a timeframe than when rolling dice.
Now that's the spirit! :D |
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Jul 19 2006, 12:07 AM
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#79
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Target Group: Members Posts: 77 Joined: 30-June 06 Member No.: 8,813 |
Brahm, are you a M$ plant?
Just curious. |
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Jul 19 2006, 12:09 AM
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#80
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Creating a god with his own hands Group: Members Posts: 1,405 Joined: 30-September 02 From: 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 Member No.: 3,364 |
no, but he does have a point. implementing something as complex as shadowrun in real time is gonna have it's drawbacks no matter how you do it.
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Jul 19 2006, 12:13 AM
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#81
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
oh, malarky. like it's that hard to design a fireball spell. sure, it saves time and money--which is only a concern if you're a) over budget, or b) cutting corners. given what i've seen so far, i'm going to have to go with b. |
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Jul 19 2006, 12:20 AM
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#82
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Shadowrun Setting Nerd Group: Banned Posts: 3,632 Joined: 28-June 05 From: Pissing on pedestrians from my electronic ivory tower. Member No.: 7,473 |
Fanpro has been trying like Hell to do the same thing, and you know what? They've managed to systematically suck the cyberpunk right out of a game this is still supposedly cyberpunk meets magic. The '80s references aren't there for a fucking whim. They help define the goddamn genre, and I'm getting sick and tired of people completely missing that point because they're young enough to have missed all of the RL factors that went into the CP genre, they missed it because the CP genre in other countries is significantly different from that in the U.S. (due to those specific, and America-specific, factors), or that they are people like yourself who are either ignorant or don't care about the genre upon which the game was founded (with magic (in all its forms) added on top of it).
While that is a cute nonsequitur, it completely fails to address my question in the slightest.
No. Shit. That is, thank you, the definition of a "Capture the Flag" game. Shadowrun isn't (conventionally speaking) a "Capture the Flag" RPG. Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't exactly scream "Shadowrun" in the conventional sense of the game and the conventional type of gameplay that the RPG is based upon. It's not that there aren't such conflicts - It's just that those don't, by their nature, involve shadowrunners. You know, since runners are third-party deniable assets with no specific allegiance to a particular client and all. Plus, you know, Players usually only play one side in the miserable failures of games which can be summed up as nothing more that CtF. But, like I said, you failed to even tangentially address how a cheap Capture the Flag game incorporates the "spirit of SR."
No, they didn't. Not anywhere on that site. |
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Jul 19 2006, 02:14 AM
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#83
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Target Group: Members Posts: 77 Joined: 30-June 06 Member No.: 8,813 |
Plant!! Plant!!
hehe....jk'ing.. Seriously though.....if they would have made the game from the ground up as a faithful game but still wanted to make it a squad based shooter, why didn't they just base it on Urban Brawl or Combat Biker Leagues. None of those remote aspects of the game have been explored with any kind of depth and could have made a somewhat interesting game if done right. *John Belushi impression* "BUT NOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooo...........!!!!" |
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Jul 19 2006, 02:37 AM
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#84
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
I'll tell you what I know. I know that you are about to go on another one of your dubiously based rants about the good ol' days when FASA could do no wrong, how all the kids and the foriegners just don't know nothing. Of course I was legal to drink in all 50 states by the time SR1 hit stores, and while technically not a US citizen the Jap scare and a lot of stuff was felt in a very similar way north of the 49th. So what to make of that?
How about making of that this. That I realize it for what it was, a moment in time. The books that came out of it are still around, but the moment is gone.
Yes, but it that also happens to be a description of the combat action part of some runs.
I'd say it was you. Because item extraction is indeed something that tends to come up in Shadowrun. Sure the ideal is quiet with not shots fired. But sometimes that just doesn't fit the situation or things go sideways and slugs fly.
Some runners are ecoterrorists and the like, or have a background of belonging to such groups or organizations. Some teams are tightly aligned with particular organizations. It doesn't always happen, but it isn't at all rare. Much more common is runners being closely tied in with a group for an arc. To give a sense of story over a series of runs. Like in this game, where an organization is out to grab ancient magical artifacts. Which is why the Atlantean Foundation isn't a non sequitur. Just because you are too dense to grasp it, or want to play dumb doesn't make it so. Of course you do need to provide some identification to the the groups since that's kind of a requirement for playing a team FPS game. Even if you called them Terrorists and Counter-Terrorist. But of course you wouldn't do that or you'd have people pouncing on such superfical simularities and crying 'knockoff' without actually looking further. *cough*
Actually the GM would be a person playing the other 'side'. Occationally the players are on defense, although that is usually a little tougher to set up because of the open-ended nature of the world tends to favour people that are on the offensive. Welcome to a different medium! So what's next, you're going to start complaining about the crappy sound quality of the newspaper you bought this morning? :talker: :wobble: |
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Jul 19 2006, 02:56 AM
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#85
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
Or c) are realistic about what can be done with quality with the expected sales and still be able to keep the lights turned on, maybe even make a decent return on investment. Frankly you are in a pretty damn poor position to judge how hard a fireball spell is to implement. I doubt it even dawns on you all the considerations involved with piling on features.
They might please more existing feverant SR fans by trying to use the existing storyline, but in the end I doubt they'd get close enough to please you. It is pretty much a lock they wouldn't please James. I suspect they couldn't please him if the brought Nigel Findly back from the dead to write the story AND sent a hooker over to James' house to give him a handjob. :P But the real question is would they end up with more people overall, and not just existing fans, happy enough to slap down cash for the game? Meh, maybe, maybe not. But I doubt you are, and I'm pretty sure I am not, in a position to offer better than an armchair quarterback opinion on that. You haven't actually done professional market research on this, have you? In the end though, faithful to canon or not, they are still selling a computer game and that's got to be first and foremost concern of how playable it is. Because totally faithful to the canon of a game that thousands or maybe low 10's of thousands play is pretty insignificant to the 100's of thousands they need to enjoy it as a computer game. More so when a large percentage of those 10's of thousands are just casual or occational players that have a limited knowledge of canon. |
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Jul 19 2006, 02:58 AM
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#86
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
I see those as possibilities they could have done, although I'd tend to see that as far more of a slap-a-name-on than what they seem to be trying to do. But given that you seem convinced that it is slap-a-name-on anyway I guess that doesn't matter much to you. |
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Jul 19 2006, 03:43 AM
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#87
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Rocket launchers are not new to games, and variants on it are within the reach of any two-bit modder. A fancy rocket launcher is "piling on features"? At least with Powerball you'd have LOS issues to make an argument for difficulty. ~J |
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Jul 19 2006, 04:03 AM
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#88
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
and you are in such a position? because from my position, i can see a hell of a lot of games out there with a variety of fireball-style effects. if the SR dev team finds that something like that is beyond their abilities, they should probably look into taking some classes at CMU, or any other school that offers advanced programming classes. if your position shows you something different you ought to move, because you're position is wrong. but i don't think it is. area attacks with flame effects are child's play for any dev who's in a position to work on a game like this. what i believe is that the dev teams are too selfish to use the canon world. they want to tell their stories and produce their game effects without having to do the work of checking their material against a known quantity. |
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Jul 19 2006, 04:53 AM
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#89
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
Actually, yes.
Precisely. You see the visual effect and you stop thinking about it. You miss the tweaking upon tweaking of the graphics, and the sounds. You miss out fitting it into a UI. You miss out trying to line it up with all the other game options. You miss testing it. You miss trying to fit it all into a footprint. You miss keeping the feature list from building up to high and overwhelming the player so the game actually becomes less enjoyable to the overall player base. You miss trying to figure out how area effects interact with other things. You miss the exponential increase of complexity when adding features. In short you are armchairing a job you have effectively no experience with.
Sure, if you want a two-bit job of it. :please: But even then yes, it is feature creep and it'll bit your ass just like that.
Ick. That can of worms is well past it's Best Before date, so I think we should leave it closed. ;) |
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Jul 19 2006, 05:37 AM
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#90
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
and you miss the fact that there are ten million games out there that already have this effect--from the visuals to the UI integration to the damage and resistance by equipment and race to the sounds to everything. having tinkered with modding, i'm aware that it can be a daunting task. i'm also aware that it's their job. if the SR dev team is so incompetent that they can't manage it, then what the hell are they doing with that job in the first place? |
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Jul 19 2006, 05:42 AM
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#91
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 135 Joined: 8-November 05 From: Toronto, Ontario - Canada Member No.: 7,934 |
I said it earlier, and I'll say it again: nobody would care if the game grossly violates from canon if the game didn't look so fucking stupid. Seriously, the game is about grabbing mystical magic urns and shit while gunning down magic-immune dwarves and other fantasy cliches. Whatever. Even this wouldn't be so unbearable if the game didn't look like something you would find in a budget PS2 game. However, there is no fucking way to whitewash the summoning of magical, healing, trees. You summon goddamn trees. That shit is just too fucking wierd for words. Seriously, whomever gets paid for thinking up this crap needs to be fired, shot, and hung on the wall to warn future game designers.
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Jul 19 2006, 06:18 AM
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#92
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Shadowrun Setting Nerd Group: Banned Posts: 3,632 Joined: 28-June 05 From: Pissing on pedestrians from my electronic ivory tower. Member No.: 7,473 |
Shows how much you know. It's a mystical magic stick. I got the magic stick/I know if I can hit once, I can hit twice |
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Jul 19 2006, 06:27 AM
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#93
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 135 Joined: 8-November 05 From: Toronto, Ontario - Canada Member No.: 7,934 |
Oh God, sweet, merciful God… Why? Oh God! Why? Can we use this 'stick' to beat the story developers to death? It seems fitting. |
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Jul 19 2006, 01:23 PM
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#94
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
Hit the deck! He's ranting again! :eek: Some of us are old enough to remember it, and are glad it's gone. 80's references are easy to inject into your game if you want them. The reason they're gone is that most people don't want them. You can't win over a new fan base by including lots of inside jokes from a decade before they were born. And you can't please the crotchety old players with a new edition no matter how you make it. I bet there's a lot more people tired of two old farts whining that the game isn't like it was in the good old days. :please: Luckily for most of us, and the game itself, you aren't the one that designs the fluff. The game, in order to continue to attract new customers, needs a different image than "That 80's Show... Now with Cyberware and Magic!" There's a reason that show failed miserably: most consumers don't look back at the 80s with enough fond memories to sell a major product. Obviously you're free to dislike the change, but ranting on about it just makes you one of the old dogs that can't learn new tricks. |
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Jul 19 2006, 01:45 PM
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#95
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 174 Joined: 21-May 06 Member No.: 8,583 |
The Eighties references... I can take them or leave them. Those aren't what makes the game Shadowrun or Cyberpunk (And yes, I did live through them).
What makes it cyberpunk are the autonomous corportations owning everything, the crime, and the jusxaposition of extreme poverty and riches with neat tech gadgets thrown in too. Gee, looking at how much pop culture the Japanese have perpretrated in the last 20 years, charts of ownership trends by the wealthiest 1% and the rest of us, and the fact that when the NYPD Police Academy class of '94 retires with no replacements Hell's Kitchen and Skid Row will once again live up to their names,(because the cupblard will be bare) we will need only an Awakening to have a Shadowrun-like future. (Even if the exact details will probably be different.) |
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Jul 19 2006, 02:04 PM
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#96
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 174 Joined: 21-May 06 Member No.: 8,583 |
If I were going to do a Shadowrun videogame, it would combine the wide-open expances of area of the Playstation 2 Grand Theft Auto games, the mission system and AI of the Hitman series, netrunning that resembles the Darwinia landscape, and an astral space that resembles the one from the otherwise uninspired Werewolf FPS.
Oh yeah, and lots of things to spend your nuyen and karma on. |
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Jul 19 2006, 03:15 PM
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#97
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Target Group: Members Posts: 37 Joined: 5-June 06 From: Phx AZ Member No.: 8,647 |
O.K. guys , I know I'm asking to get roasted, but it's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. The best way to do a SR game and stick to the, RPG system, that I can figure is to turn base the combat built like an UPDATED Fallout game. Just my 2cents.
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Jul 19 2006, 03:39 PM
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#98
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,635 Joined: 27-November 05 Member No.: 8,006 |
Great idea! Make it like all the rest! Whooo hoooo! Only, you know, you have to redo it all. So expending lots of effort to make a "knockoff". :?
Apparently you've forgotten however that it isn't your job to create commercial grade software, never has been your job, or that don't you even have a sniff. |
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Jul 19 2006, 03:52 PM
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#99
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
Does the game have grenades? If so, adding fireballs is as easy as tying a call to the grenade functions to another key combination in the spellcasting module, hopefully with a different graphic tied in. If it doesn't have grenades, then adding in an area of effect attack could be a huge amount of effort.
Exactly how much effort depends on your engine. If you bought and engine with area attack support built in it is simple. If you designed your own engine from the ground up it's a nightmare. If the game is such that missed shots put bullet holes in walls (even temporary ones) then adding an area attack is even worse as you now need to be able to scorch the blast radius. And in the end you have to ask how much you really added to the game. Are fireballs cool? Heck yeah. Have they been done so many times that they're closer to cloning than innovation? Definitely. Assuming your setup is such that it takes time to add something like that in, do they add enough to the game to warrant the extra effort? Not in my opinion. |
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Jul 19 2006, 03:59 PM
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#100
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Ladies and gentlemen, final conclusive proof that Brahm does not have the slightest fucking clue what he is talking about. Dealing with LOS issues is solved. You add two simple checks to the exact same method used to determine the secondary damage code for the BFG in DOOM. Just for reference, that came out in 1993. ~J |
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