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Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

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Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#41
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because obviously someone's title declares what he is capable of or likes doing. Because someone with a title that isn't 'hacker' instantly discredits his ability to hack. Obviously. Because people who didn't study CS can't be hackers, obviously. Because someone who does UI or UX can't hack backend things, obviously.

Yes, and because we all know that no computer scientist has ever done anything unethical, obviously.

I understand where you are coming from, or at least I think I do. You feel that has comments relegate UX designers to some time type of "second seat" in the software development food chain. And, perhaps as a designer yourself, that to be rather insulting.

But I'm going to put this out there and say your are misinterpreting his comment.

There is a whole lot of "rockstar" talk when it comes to software now; "amazing" engineers or designers that will change your world(TM). It would seem that revolutionaries and visionaries are a dime a dozen now. However, more often then _I_(and I'd argue the parent as well) would like, the whole thing turns out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. That type of behaviour bring the whole community down. Its not that UX designers or agile engineers or whatever are bad, they are clearly some of the most valuable and hardest working members of the technical community. Its just that when I see a piece on the next great mind in software, I get this knee-jerk reaction to think "hypppppppe."

Which is what I thought when I clicked the link. But this article plays counterpoint to that world. Here you got a guy, unkept, on his way to being a computer scientist, probably never meet a VC in his life, who is also a hacker. And instead of talk, he is putting forward some rather boring, technically difficult to implement, but useful, stuff. What's more, he is not trying to be like, "I'm better than this company," instead he's got a real grasp on the scale, penetration, and limitations of his work. Its just refreshing.

Perhaps the parent could have worded things better, but I'm not sure he intended to be insulting.

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#42
post #33
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite reason is that games from 10 years ago still run, and as a last resort I can fire up a VM, on a modern computer. My N64 cartridges, meanwhile, stopped working in new machines as soon as the Gamecube came out. And if the console ever dies, they get harder and harder to find.

Wat? One of the things I like about consoles is that they are plug 'n play. No fiddling with trying to get emulation settings just right.

Yes, consoles are plug and play, but they're not backwards compatible. There are several PS2 games I love, that will never be remade for PS3 or PS4.

Meanwhile, I can still play "Crusader: No Remorse" or "The Longest Journey" on my PC.

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#43
post #8
post #6

I bet even he would be unable to get GTAIV to run smoothly on a computer built today

Not only does GTA IV run perfectly smoothly, but there are community patches to make it look jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Very similar story there to this one, actually.

bs. in case anyone wondered, GTA4 is the prime example of a shitty console port.

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#44
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the Mario clones? I'd love some good Mario clones. Instead they all seem to be Double Dragon/Castlevania/Metroid clones

If by Mario clone you mean side-scolling linear platformer, Rayman might fit the bill.

Rayman is close, and I enjoyed that, but there are still some attack mechanics there.

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#45
post #37

I am routinely amazed at the improvements the modding community makes even for games that are designed to be unfriendly to mods. Take Mass Effect 3 for example. The game ships with Origin, which is EA's wannabe Steam online-store/community/DRM. The me3 executable is validated when origin starts up in an attempt to ensure that there's no way to play a modified version of the executable. Modders found a way around this…

> Every once in a while, a botched and buggy game with tremendous potential will be buffed and polished by an obsessed modding community, revealing a classic that the developers were never given time to realize. Games like Troika's Vampire: Bloodlines or Obsidian Entertainment's KOTOR2 are still evolving online. I've been holding off replaying KOTOR2 for years because I know it just keeps getting closer to the game it was meant to be every year.

A game that is worth mentioning here is Falcon 4. More than 10 years after its initial release people have (and are still ?) modding it. More info at https://sites.google.com/site/falcon4history/

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#46
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wat? One of the things I like about consoles is that they are plug 'n play. No fiddling with trying to get emulation settings just right.

Yes, consoles are plug and play, but they're not backwards compatible. There are several PS2 games I love, that will never be remade for PS3 or PS4. Meanwhile, I can still play "Crusader: No Remorse" or "The Longest Journey" on my PC.

Or even Zork.

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#47
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fixing broken game ideas is easy. Tell that to anyone who has actually tried to implement a fix for a broken game design. I'm not even talking about programmers. Game design is not trivial. That's why so many games these days are either Mario clones or Doom clones. We know those are a safe bet.

Where are the Mario clones? I'd love some good Mario clones. Instead they all seem to be Double Dragon/Castlevania/Metroid clones

Super Meat Boy?

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they knew exactly what they were doing then it seems very unlikely that they would decide against doing it, because Peter Thoman's method only took about 2 weeks of his own time. The method the developers were considering may have been an internal one that required some kind of refactoring, and they were either unaware of any other way to do it, or they were aware but didn't know how long it would take because the…

But Peter's method, as he himself said, isn't good enough for software that would be released by a company for people to use: > Thoman says the difference between his fixes and official patches are primarily an issue of quality assurance. “When I write and program something, I make sure I didn’t make any obvious errors, and then I just release it,” Thoman told WIRED. “If it works for 90 percent of people, I already c…

What's wrong with having having a checkbox to "Enable experimental renderer" and let people tweak the settings there? Certainly that's better than restricting your entire customer base because some of them don't have the right setup.

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#49
There are mods that fix some broken things, like all those mods that add widescreen support to older games, and it was skyUI that fixed the broken HUD of the shitty skyrim console-port.

Anyhow it is frustrating to see what the PC as a gaming platform has become, you have unoptimized, un-customizable, just awful console ports. Where the industry constantly rambles about the pirates, but at the same time are unwilling to invest in more quality assurance, that you need because of the wide variety of hardware configurations, instead they _just complain_ about the variety of pc hardware configurations (even carmack did it!), do nothing, ship broken buggy console ports that, on top of that, also include their borderline-rootkit DRM crap. Gee I wonder why people pirate their games?

Not that I particulary miss anything the big companies produce, stuff like So yes there mods that add higher resolutions to crappy console ports, whoop-dee-fucking-doo!

Re: Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

#50
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fixing broken game ideas is easy. Tell that to anyone who has actually tried to implement a fix for a broken game design. I'm not even talking about programmers. Game design is not trivial. That's why so many games these days are either Mario clones or Doom clones. We know those are a safe bet.

Where are the Mario clones? I'd love some good Mario clones. Instead they all seem to be Double Dragon/Castlevania/Metroid clones

I favor Braid, a Mario clone with a time-travel button. :P
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