SR on Xbox 2 Options

[blakkie]

There is manufacturing, and then there is manufacturing at a price that people are willing to pay.

P.S. Some Hertz are more equal than others. It's been a while since i looked at the PowerPC, but wasn't it tilted towards RISC, and even with pipelining generally needed the extra cycles to accomplish the same computations?

[DarusGrey]

[blakkie]

[DarusGrey]

[Kaosaur]

[Blitzen]

The rumor/prospect of a Shadowrun video game over the last year or so has really started picking up some steam. If you do any kind of search you will find forums everywhere discussing the possiblity and people because of it are finding out about the 4th edition. As previously stated by Kagetenshi in the Decking versus Hacking Thread, its terms like Rigger, Decker and drek that seem to be familarities between the fans. Muzer Fuzin Mizo Branzin Hacker term. Anyway, with the heightened awareness of Shadowrun properties, and with any luck, there is a fair chance a video game could be done.

Just a few of the many, many Links

D&D Online Forums
G4 Forums
Petition
RPG Codex
Gamedev.net
MMPlay.de

[Pthgar]

Perhaps there is some coordination in the vid game developement and the pen and paper.

[mmu1]

Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, or if it's just one the aforementioned "minor conspiracy theories", but didn't Microsoft essentially sell X-Boxes at a loss just to successfully grab a large share of the market?

They might very well be doing the same thing again, God knows they can afford to.

[blakkie]

[Rev]

Min-spec limits the technology. Optional hard drive means that the vast majority of the games must support no hard drive. Same thing with the resolution. xbox2 and ps3 games must be playable on a regular tv.


Heh, that xbox spec sheet is funny. Haven't looked at the public spec's before.

"Keep in mind that this number should not be equated to typical PC RAM."
Translation, "please don't pay attention to how much this part of the spec sucks, we have to save a buck someplace".
It isn't embarassing now that it is up to 512 though.

" "
Translation, "ok we really really don't want to talk about video ram, so just move along".
Video ram itself isn't nearly as important as on a pc, but it makes the total ram comparison significantly worse. When I said 'half' before its because the video ram on a pc pretty much wipes out the operating system overhead advantage of the console.

"Optical Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon will not use Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Games will come on dual-layer DVD-9 discs. While the media is the same as that of the current Xbox, the usable space on each disc is up to 7 GB. The drive is slated to run at 12X. "
Twice as much data on one disk and 2-3x faster. That's no quantum leap. Actually it's going to be really irritating with no hard disk, many more pixels to draw, and lots more processors to keep busy with only a little more data. Multi-disk games on the way? PS3 is better here with blue-ray but there are even more processors to feed!

If the Cell is half as good as the hype it will be in gaming pc's in a few years. If it is as good as claimed it will be in every electronic device smarter than a calculator. :)

It isn't suprising that consoles come up with new architectures more often than pc's. They are monolithic. Most PC hardware manufacturers are really component manufacturers. They have to fit into the existing tech or spend a lot of money switching people over. Really I think the xbox is decidedly the oddball in not coming up with its own wierd architecture instead being a stripped down pc with a really nice GPU.

It's going to be an interesting time.

Microsoft will be first to market with a significantly less powerfull unit, but probably better tools. Sony comes out of last gen with a big lead and the heavy hardware some months later but nobody knows how much of a pain it will be to use it. Nintendo lurks in the bushes with some kind of a suprise.

PS Intel & AMD are supposedly starting to sell dual core CPU's for PC's this week.

[Superbum]

[Slacker]

[mfb]

a setup like MxO would work. trying to level by spawn camping in MxO is a waste of time--it's usually too difficult to be worth it, and always gives too little XP to be worth it. the way to grind is to do missions, which you get from contacts that you find.

that said, i don't want an SR MMO.

[Superbum]

I would love a MMO that didn't focus on racking up kills for xp. WoW and MxO both have pretty unique takes on gaining xp to lvl or raise skills. Plus, for being a departure on standard MMO settings, WoW has a pretty big player base.

IMHO, a MMO based on SR that awards karma for run completion would be far more fun than a SR MMO that awards xp for kills. Just like WoW it could be easy for both casual and power gamers to "level" and would cut down on farmers.

[Nikoli]

Well, that's the thing with SR. There should really be little to no farming.
It's not like there are really rare pistols out there.
Instead of picking up a "rare uber gun" your chances of getting can use the already established gear aquisition rules. Etiquette tests, contacts, etc. All available on the street gear is listed (based on what the contact can sell) and then you make a test to see if one is available. They could even code in the paying more to get it rules.

I hated that aspect of SWG. The Heavy Blaster pistol (Like Han used) was one of the most dangerous weapons, both in the movies and in the pen and paper versions of the Starwars universe, yet it was a low end POS in SWG.

[DarusGrey]

A SR MMO would probly work alot better then most would think, the problem is most people tend to take MMO and think about the crap put forth by WoW, EQ etc, and then try to fit SR into *those* mechanics..and surprise..isn't gonna work.

"Farming" your right, wouldn't work, the "reward" for a shadowrun should take the form of contacts mainly, or maybe to get something "rare" you have to actually steal it if you can't buy it.

At least in the version I have in my mind.. SR would fit great into an MMO, or just a good RPG.

The only issue is with the advancement system, the karma system (as stands in SR3) is just not compatible.

Alot of the "balance factor" in it is fact that it can take several years of RL playing to get to the saturation point where you have so much karma it just starts getting silly.

A game on otherhand tends to accelerate that, I imagine if an MMO had current advancement mechanics..the best characters would all be Samurai/adepts who have 0.1 essence millons of cyber..and spent 1000 karma on initation/power points, because the acceleration allows that kinda thing to happen alot faster then it would in tabletop game.

But since this is in SR4 section..maybe alot of these issues are corrected.

[Kaosaur]

Actually, I would think it would work great as an MMO.

You could eliminate farming and use the Availabilty scores as hard and fast rules for item rarity.

As far as scripting goes, all the devs have to do is compile a very vast set of runs. Most runs fit into a set few types anyway...very repetetive stuff. Teams could go on short quests Phantasy Star Online style and it would work extremely well...

And if anyone wants to "borg" they can go Ghoul-hunting in abandoned buildings just like in the Shadowrun game for Genesis....


SR would be EXTREMELY easy to make into an MMO and the best part is that it wouldn't be the same as all the other games and could still retain almost all of Shadowrun's flavor.

People would sit in bars and stuff and wait for runs to drop on them (or they can obtain them in other ways) and there can be scripted random events dropped on the whole bar. Great stuff for everyone...It would take a lot of work on the developers parts BUT...they don't have to keep adding and tweaking content because the system and items are already there. They would only need to do periodic updates to the system as a whole and could focus the rest of their time on adding content (runs, runs and more runs).

The only tricky part really is finding ways to allow players to expand their influence in game and actually apply that in ways that every other player can use.

[Nikoli]

The biggest hurdle I see to it is that the initiative system.