Dvorak says computer gaming is dead

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Dnia Sun, 01 May 2005 16:03:44 +0200,
Kornel Kisielewicz napisal(a):

> The Sheep wrote:
>> You can have very good graphics without fotorealism.
>> You can have nice graphics without fotorealism.
>> You can have very good graphics without them being nice.

> IMHO the best graphics in a game are in Frontier: First Encounters. Of
> course most modern game-players would disagree with me. But no game
> shocked me so much graphics-wise as Frontier did.

Well, there are several games that have good graphics.

Somebody mentioned Lemmings.

Prince of Persia have nice graphics too.

There was a tennis game on Atari ST, forgot the name, where the character
were just 3d `stick people', but this was very good graphics (especially
because the way it was animated).

Worms series (not counting the 3D ones) have acceptable graphics.

The Day of the Tentacle has pretty good graphics.

Secret of Mana 2 (Seiken Densetsu 3) has awesome graphics.

That's only a few examples of games with good graphics -- in my opinion
offcourse. And, offcourse, the games still _have_ it's graphics, so is
using past tense appropriate? Maybe it would be if it was de[pended on
technology. But graphics can be good or bad no matter what technology it
actually uses. All this IMHO, offcourse.

--
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The Sheep wrote:
>>IMHO the best graphics in a game are in Frontier: First Encounters. Of
>>course most modern game-players would disagree with me. But no game
>>shocked me so much graphics-wise as Frontier did.
>
>
> Well, there are several games that have good graphics.
>
> Somebody mentioned Lemmings.

Yeah, they were so cute! (except the 3D versions -- it destroyed the
feel IMHO).

> Prince of Persia have nice graphics too.

Yes. And the animations were so beautiful -- another comes into mind --
Another World -- the cinematics don't look bad for todays standards! Add
line anti-aliasing, and you would have something that would look like
right out of a Flash game 🙂.

> The Day of the Tentacle has pretty good graphics.

Yeah ;-). I liked the style. But personally I enjoyed Full Throttle
better 🙂.

> That's only a few examples of games with good graphics -- in my opinion
> offcourse.

I agree.
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"Invalid thought detected. Close all mental processes and
restart body."

 

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In article <d52oi0$e95$1@inews.gazeta.pl>, Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl> wrote:
>Another World -- the cinematics don't look bad for todays standards! Add
>line anti-aliasing, and you would have something that would look like
>right out of a Flash game 🙂.

Someone REALLY needs to do this!

Alan

 

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Kornel Kisielewicz wrote::
> Antoine wrote:
>
>> I think he's missing the big development of the last few years, though:
>> massively multiplayer online games [with good graphics]. Very
>> successful, very addictive, and I think they have a great deal of
>> mileage in them. Not that I personally find them interesting, but.
>
> No. MMORPGs may be addictive but they *are* stupid. When I play them I
> feel addicted, but afterwards I've got a terrible hangover, for I feel
> I've wasted a lot of time, and there isn't anything interesting I can
> recall.

Isn't the point of playing games to waste time in a fun way?

The only reward you get from playing is fun. If it's not fun, you either
play the wrong game, or you better should look for another hobby.

I play Diablo II/LOD a lot lately. It's not precisely an MMORPG, but
it's multiplayer and online. I recall a lot of funny occasions, some
tragic moments, alot of nice and helpful coplayers and unfortunately
some people who only seem to live in order to insult others and bring
them down.

You know, I was into programming before, but looking back I think the
time I spend on my programs was even a bigger waste of time - waste
because in large parts it wasn't fun, but just work.

Currently I think online games are a good way to turn time into a fun
experience. (Of course offline games are so, too )

> Nothing changes in MMORPGs -- it's just the experience points
> and level of your character.

I'm not sure. I could swear that I didn't play two identical sessions
yet, each one was different. Not only that D2 includes a lot of
randomized elements, you often play with different groups of players and
even if the games world is mostly static, no two sessions are the same.

> Oh, you mean there are other people there?

Yes, otherwise it wouldn't be a multiplayer game 😉

To a large extend the players determine if a game session will be fun or
not. And I must sy I met quite some players who also want to play in a
sensible fun way, so it's quite possible to have good gaming sessions.

> Well, I far more like to chat face-to-face...

Then just do that, but don't tell the people that like online games that
they are doing something wrong

OTOH the lack of communication is a big drawback in D2, yet in such a
fast paced game, there is just no way to type messages and control the
game - too many players died while trying.

Voice based systems can help.

Sometimes I'd like more character animations, like waving, and emoticons
to show if you you are happy or not.

> Especialy that the amount
> of roleplaying in MMORPGS is almost non-existent (and what kind of
> role-playingg is that, when you know this guy has 20 more levels then
> you and could pulverize you in a second... -- and if it's a nonkiling
> game, then it's even more pointless...)

IMO role-playing is beyond the technical aspects. You can still play
your chosen role regardless of you level. OTOH this means role is
something else than "I'm the demi-god warrior who can kill everything in
one hit". Try to make your role orthogonal to the power of the
character, at lest less dependand, then it's not so much of a problem
anymore.

But I agree, what's currently sold as MMORPGs are IMO bad platforms for
roleplaying.

--
c.u. Hajo

 

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Elethiomel wrote:
> Risto Saarelma wrote:
>
>> On 2005-05-01, ABCGi <abcgi@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> He also uses that stale bug-bear of "when we reach
>>> total realism" which has been used since the 1990s!
>>> Perhaps earlier...
>>
>> Games probably won't reach total photorealism anytime soon. Instead,
>> efforts to make games look even more realistic will face increasingly
>> diminishing returns. The effect of doubling the amount of visual assets
>> in the game will diminish the closer games get to real photorealism, and
>> at some point it will simply be too expensive to improve the visuals.
>>
>> A more tricky problem is that graphics that are almost but not quite
>> photorealistic can actually be worse than clearly stylized graphics. It
>> never bothered me in the original Doom that all the sprites were
>> identical, but when I saw a screenshot of Doom 3 with two fat zombies,
>> it struck me as quite odd that these two creatures had completely
>> identical claw marks on their chests. When the game looks more like the
>> real world, you also start expecting it is more like the real world, and
>> the severe limits every game has become more annoying.
>
> Not to mention the "Uncanny Valley" (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ) that appears when
> photorealism is sufficiently approached. Of course, this effect applies
> mostly to real-world entities such as robots, but game and movie
> graphics are also affected by it to some degree.

Nice article. Of course were the gaming industry to
reach photorealism it would then move on to target
the next level of realism. The whole article was just
a beat up - and wasn't the stuff about Starship Troopers
just out and out wrong? AFAIK It's based on a book
(RH circa 1950s), the computer game came after.

--
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Fun RLs in rgrd that I have tested recently!
DoomRL - DwellerMobile - HWorld - AburaTan - DiabloBand
Heroic Adventure - Tower of Doom - Tendrils - TheTombs

 

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Raymond Martineau wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 17:14:31 +0300, Aki Rossi <aki.rossi@iki.fi> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>Not that you couldn't munchkinise any given CRPG, and people do, but the
>>trend seems to be to discourage role playing almost completely.
>
> This is most likely because CRPGs focus on combat/tactical aspects rather
> than roleplay aspects. I've noticed something very similar in the very
> early Gold box games (Forgotten Realms series), where there was very little
> roleplaying going on buy plenty of plotline elements.

Yeah, at worst the combat can feel like an annoying series of blockades
in the way of the plot - this is a feeling I most often seem to get with
the Japanese console CRPG genre of games, where the game part is pretty
much just optimising firepower and hitting the right attack button
repeatedly.

>>Why does
>>there have to be visible, numeric stats for everything in the first place?
>
> Most likely, it is out of tradition. In any case, it's not too much of a
> problem unless you want to throw away stats entirely.

What I meant is that you could at least put most of that stuff behind
the scenes and turn the numbers into more vague descriptions, or just
indirect influences. Most computer games have no trouble with this at
all, but do it to a CRPG and the pocket calculator munchkins start to
complain.

>>Why do the games so often progress so that the only way to keep up is to
>>keep optimising and re-optimising your equipment?
>
>
> This is a problem with some roguelikes as well. In any case, the
> optimization of equipment is based around the fact that there are only a
> limited number of party memebers in the group. Either that, or there's an
> Angband style of magical item generation (quantity).

I think it's one of the bigger annoyances with party-driven adventures.
With each party member there's new equipment limitations and optimums
and the time you spend out of the adventure and in the backpack
increases continuously.

> But in any case, sticking with the ultra-best weaponry can easily have
> disadvanages in a properly designed CRPG. For example, Arcanum chooses the
> reputation route - if you max out your technological abilities, you will
> have trouble buying magical items (as necessairy). There might also be a
> problem with a primary objective in the late-game (having to do a side
> quest or something special), but I'm not sure on that.

I haven't played Arcanum, but that sounds like a bit of a two-edged
sword - it could either bring variety or just divide the optimisation
into three routes (tech, magic, balanced). You could say that in D&D
there's also a division into physical and magical traits, only the
choice making process is different.

>>Why impersonal, generic dialogue?
>
> I suspect that it may take an excessive amount of writing to create
> anything more. For something on the scale of Arcanum, the best you can get
> is personalized generic messages that are used all over the place.

I don't mean that you should be able to tell your life story to each and
every random bypasser (unless perhaps the game's premise includes a
simple solution for that, á la Torment or Fallouts). The traditional
three-state good/neutral/evil dialogue, where the outcomes are
predictable several miles away, is just getting a wee bit old.

--
"For a mechanic you seem to do an excessive amount of thinking."
-- C-3P0

 

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Hansjoerg Malthaner wrote:
> Kornel Kisielewicz wrote::
>
>> Antoine wrote:
>>
>>> I think he's missing the big development of the last few years, though:
>>> massively multiplayer online games [with good graphics]. Very
>>> successful, very addictive, and I think they have a great deal of
>>> mileage in them. Not that I personally find them interesting, but.
>>
>>
>> No. MMORPGs may be addictive but they *are* stupid. When I play them I
>> feel addicted, but afterwards I've got a terrible hangover, for I feel
>> I've wasted a lot of time, and there isn't anything interesting I can
>> recall.
>
> Isn't the point of playing games to waste time in a fun way?

I don't know how to put that in words. But one waste of time isn't equal
another. One leaves good memories, the other just eats your time. One
provokes creativeness, the other one makes you feel completely lazy
afterwards. I don't know -- maybe it's just me -- but I feel completely
differently after playing for example Frontier, Tie Fighter, ADOM,
DeusEx, Might and Magic, then I feel after playing Diablo II, an online
mmorpg, or KOTOR...

> The only reward you get from playing is fun. If it's not fun, you either
> play the wrong game, or you better should look for another hobby.

It is fun and addicting while I play it -- but I feel completely lazy,
and not entertained afterwards. There's nothing deep that keeps me
remembering the experience.

> You know, I was into programming before, but looking back I think the
> time I spend on my programs was even a bigger waste of time - waste
> because in large parts it wasn't fun, but just work.

Oh, come on Hajo!

> I'm not sure. I could swear that I didn't play two identical sessions
> yet, each one was different. Not only that D2 includes a lot of
> randomized elements, you often play with different groups of players and
> even if the games world is mostly static, no two sessions are the same.

I played MUD's for four years. I couldn't find anything new in Diablo
II. On the other hand, I played something called AmberMUSH for a short
while... it then was closed... but... I still have very fond memories of
it.... I still wish I could be part of that again...

OTOH tough, all my RLDev work would probably be closed then ;-).

AmberMUSH was addicting, brilliant and made me feel like a part
something great... And it required from me using other parts of the
brain then the brain-hand connection.

>> Oh, you mean there are other people there?
>
> Yes, otherwise it wouldn't be a multiplayer game 😉

It was ironical ;-). Most of the chatting on MMORPG is "Wanna group?",
"Help u?", "1000 exp!", etc... Makes me wanna kill them for using the
term RPG...

>> Well, I far more like to chat face-to-face...
>
> Then just do that, but don't tell the people that like online games that
> they are doing something wrong

I just wanted to state that for me there's no point -- There's no
difference for me between chatting in a MMORPG then a Chatroom.

> Sometimes I'd like more character animations, like waving, and emoticons
> to show if you you are happy or not.

StarWars Galaxies. But such systems are useless anyway.

> IMO role-playing is beyond the technical aspects. You can still play
> your chosen role regardless of you level. OTOH this means role is
> something else than "I'm the demi-god warrior who can kill everything in
> one hit". Try to make your role orthogonal to the power of the
> character, at lest less dependand, then it's not so much of a problem
> anymore.
>
> But I agree, what's currently sold as MMORPGs are IMO bad platforms for
> roleplaying.

This is my dream actually -- GenRogue MMORPG, where Roleplaying would be
enforced. And joining would be by application (like AmberMUSH).

AmberMUSH was solely about roleplaying - there were stats, but actually
nobody cared about them...
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"It's much easier to make an army of dumb good people than to
make one single smart good guy..." -- DarkGod

 

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On 2005-05-02, Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl> wrote:
> afterwards. I don't know -- maybe it's just me -- but I feel completely
> differently after playing for example Frontier, Tie Fighter, ADOM,
> DeusEx, Might and Magic, then I feel after playing Diablo II, an online
> mmorpg, or KOTOR...

I think you're on to something here. For example, just about everyone
who picks up World of Warcraft seems to become addicted to it. I haven't
played it myself, but I've gotten the feeling that WoW is a game that
gets people addicted, and not a good game in the sense that you don't
feel you've wasted time after playing.

I've got two ideas about what the qualities of the better games might
be. One is that the game makes you actually accomplish something. Diablo
and most MMORPGs are just grind games where you don't really need to
think up a good strategy, you just hit things till they die and get
resurrected if you die yourself. In Diablo, you can end up with a
suboptimal character, but you can always kill Diablo just by grinding
away long enough. Needing to make irreversible choices that can mean
success or failure in the game makes things more interesting than a
flashy clickfest.

The other idea is that a good game's world doesn't feel like it exists
only for the player's entertainment. If the world and plot are
interesting enough, I won't feel that at least the first play-through
was a waste of time (I think this is the case with KOTOR). Of course
for a more lasting appeal, the interesting and challenging gameplay is
still needed, as once the world and plot are known, there's no longer a
reason to play the game just for their sake.

--
Risto Saarelma

 

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"ABCGi" <abcgi@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4275d057$0$79456$14726298@news.sunsite.dk...
> Elethiomel wrote:
>> Risto Saarelma wrote:
>>
>>> On 2005-05-01, ABCGi <abcgi@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> He also uses that stale bug-bear of "when we reach
>>>> total realism" which has been used since the 1990s!
>>>> Perhaps earlier...
>>>
>>> Games probably won't reach total photorealism anytime soon. Instead,
>>> efforts to make games look even more realistic will face increasingly
>>> diminishing returns. The effect of doubling the amount of visual assets
>>> in the game will diminish the closer games get to real photorealism, and
>>> at some point it will simply be too expensive to improve the visuals.
>>>
>>> A more tricky problem is that graphics that are almost but not quite
>>> photorealistic can actually be worse than clearly stylized graphics. It
>>> never bothered me in the original Doom that all the sprites were
>>> identical, but when I saw a screenshot of Doom 3 with two fat zombies,
>>> it struck me as quite odd that these two creatures had completely
>>> identical claw marks on their chests. When the game looks more like the
>>> real world, you also start expecting it is more like the real world, and
>>> the severe limits every game has become more annoying.
>>
>> Not to mention the "Uncanny Valley" (
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ) that appears when
>> photorealism is sufficiently approached. Of course, this effect applies
>> mostly to real-world entities such as robots, but game and movie graphics
>> are also affected by it to some degree.
>
> Nice article. Of course were the gaming industry to
> reach photorealism it would then move on to target
> the next level of realism. The whole article was just
> a beat up - and wasn't the stuff about Starship Troopers
> just out and out wrong? AFAIK It's based on a book
> (RH circa 1950s), the computer game came after.
>

Call me naive, but Starship Troopers always seemed very much like
StarCraft. Of course they may both be based on the same thing, I don't
know...

--
Glen
L😛yt E+++ T-- R+ P+++ D+ G+ F:*band !RL RLA-
W:AF Q+++ AI++ GFX++ SFX-- RN++++ PO--- !Hp Re-- S+

 

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strathWHATEVERIGETENOUGHSPAMANYWAYS@ipass.net (Jim Strathmeyer)
wrote in news:8eadncA41ctuo-_fRVn-qw@adelphia.com:

> There's an article by John Dvorak about how computer gaming is
> dead:
>
> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1784975,00.asp


He is ba ka.

 

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Raghar wrote:
> strathWHATEVERIGETENOUGHSPAMANYWAYS@ipass.net (Jim Strathmeyer)
> wrote in news:8eadncA41ctuo-_fRVn-qw@adelphia.com:
>
>>There's an article by John Dvorak about how computer gaming is
>>dead:
>>
>>http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1784975,00.asp
>
> He is ba ka.

He is what? I'm sorry, your message got mangled in transmission. What
arrived at my news server is as quoted above: monosyllabic babble that
bears no resemblance whatsoever to written English.

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

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Dnia Mon, 2 May 2005 21:39:35 +0000 (UTC),
Raghar napisal(a):

> strathWHATEVERIGETENOUGHSPAMANYWAYS@ipass.net (Jim Strathmeyer)
> wrote in news:8eadncA41ctuo-_fRVn-qw@adelphia.com:

>> There's an article by John Dvorak about how computer gaming is
>> dead:
>>
>> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1784975,00.asp
> He is ba ka.

That's rude.
He's very intelligent man, he just happens to be mistaken (and even that's
still to be seen).

--
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`The Sheep' ('') 3 (..) 3 (..) 3 (..) 3 (--) 3
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On Sun, 01 May 2005 08:07:39 -0400, Twisted One <twisted0n3@gmail.invalid>
wrote:

>Kornel Kisielewicz wrote:
>>
>> Each chess piece type is represented by a different 40ml glass. The
>> black pieces are filled with vodka and a drop of strong
>> cranberry-essence juice, the white ones are plain vodka. Each time a
>> player takes the piece of the opponent, he must drink it.
>>
>> The master rule is also that if you spill any piece (the moved one or
>> one on the board -- you loose).
>>
>> The funny thing is that master's of student's chess have sometimes
>> severe differently tactics then chess masters -- sometimes it's a good
>> tactical decision to let the opposing player take a couple of your pawns
>> right at the beginning.
>
>Why not have different size glasses -- 5ml for a pawn, 60 for a queen,
>and in between for the others.

That would lead to ramming the queen right against the enemy king for the
sole purpose to get an opponent to drink the 60Ml. (e.g. ramming the queen
down to the frontline at d2, e2, f2, d7, e7, or f7.)

Also, it becomes a problem when pawns get promoted.

 

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Dnia Mon, 02 May 2005 17:50:20 -0400,
Twisted One napisal(a):

> Raghar wrote:
>> strathWHATEVERIGETENOUGHSPAMANYWAYS@ipass.net (Jim Strathmeyer)
>> wrote in news:8eadncA41ctuo-_fRVn-qw@adelphia.com:

> He is what? I'm sorry, your message got mangled in transmission. What
> arrived at my news server is as quoted above: monosyllabic babble that
> bears no resemblance whatsoever to written English.

Oh, that's because it's Japanese, baka! ^___^

--
Radomir @**@_ Bee! .**._ .**._ .**._ .**._ zZ
`The Sheep' ('') 3 (..) 3 (..) 3 (..) 3 (--) 3
Dopieralski .vvVvVVVVVvVVVvVVVvVvVVvVvvVvVVVVVVvvVVvvVvvvvVVvVVvv.v.

 

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The Sheep wrote:
> Dnia Mon, 02 May 2005 17:50:20 -0400,
> Twisted One napisal(a):
>
>>Raghar wrote:
>>
>>>strathWHATEVERIGETENOUGHSPAMANYWAYS@ipass.net (Jim Strathmeyer)
>>>wrote in news:8eadncA41ctuo-_fRVn-qw@adelphia.com:
>
>>He is what? I'm sorry, your message got mangled in transmission. What
>>arrived at my news server is as quoted above: monosyllabic babble that
>>bears no resemblance whatsoever to written English.
>
> Oh, that's because it's Japanese, baka! ^___^

What? It was clearly an English sentence, since it started with the
words "He is", which are English. Besides, English is the de facto
lingua franca of this newsgroup.

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

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On Mon, 2 May 2005, Glen Wheeler wrote:
> "ABCGi" <abcgi@yahoo.com> wrote...
>> Elethiomel wrote:
>>> Not to mention the "Uncanny Valley" (
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley )

Very interesting; I hadn't heard that term before. IMHO it applies
not only to graphics (of humans or otherwise), but also to just about
every kind of creative endeavor that tries to mimic everyday things.
Including monster AI and user-interface design (on topic! 😉 The
better your technique gets, the more the little bugs stand out and
make the (user/player/viewer) uncomfortable.

>> Nice article. Of course were the gaming industry to
>> reach photorealism it would then move on to target
>> the next level of realism. The whole article was just
>> a beat up - and wasn't the stuff about Starship Troopers
>> just out and out wrong? AFAIK It's based on a book
>> (RH circa 1950s), the computer game came after.

The article was talking about the 1997 movie, not the 1959 book.
The two have very different plots and themes, from what I remember of
each of them (I'm pretty sure I turned off the movie in the middle,
and the last time I read the book was a couple of years ago).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(movie)
has a really good description of the controversies over the movie.
I didn't think there was a "Starship Troopers" video game. Dvorak
just says that the movie plays as if they took a video game and made
a movie out of it (episodic, ultraviolent, boss monsters).

> Call me naive, but Starship Troopers always seemed very much like
> StarCraft. Of course they may both be based on the same thing, I don't
> know...

According to Wikipedia, StarCraft came out in 1998, the year /after/
"Starship Troopers" the movie. So besides the humans-fighting-bugs plot
that they both took from the book, I dunno. And the bugs part isn't
unique to "Starship Troopers" the book, either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aliens_in_fiction_by_type#Insectoid_and_Arachnid_Aliens

-Arthur,
Wikipedia has lists of everything!

 

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Risto Saarelma wrote::

> I've got two ideas about what the qualities of the better games might
> be. One is that the game makes you actually accomplish something. Diablo
> and most MMORPGs are just grind games where you don't really need to
> think up a good strategy, you just hit things till they die and get
> resurrected if you die yourself. In Diablo, you can end up with a
> suboptimal character, but you can always kill Diablo just by grinding
> away long enough. Needing to make irreversible choices that can mean
> success or failure in the game makes things more interesting than a
> flashy clickfest.

In Diablo II/LOD there are three difficulty levels, normal, nightmare
and hell. While I agree with you for normal and nightmare, I think hell
needs a very well planned character to survive. Just Hack&Slash will
kill you in seconds there. It's really a big step from each difficulty
tzo the next, and the problem is you approach with a fairly high level
character in hell, and all basiscs are set - if you did something wrong,
you're stuck.

I say this because I have a few characters in hell difficulty, and only
one seems to have potential to actually win the game (kill hell Baal
solo, that is for me, not partied)

OTOH you can tell about Diablo II what you want. I like the game. I got
it 2003 and I'm still playing. The online variant is addicting, more
than single player, but I see nothing bad in that fact.

Just curious, did you kill hell difficulty Ball once in a solo game? I'm
asking, becuase I seriously doubt that your writing comes from your own
experience, and my experience is definitely different.

--
c.u. Hajo

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Dnia Mon, 02 May 2005 20:29:14 -0400,
Twisted One napisal(a):

> The Sheep wrote:
>> Dnia Mon, 02 May 2005 17:50:20 -0400,
>> Twisted One napisal(a):

>>>He is what? I'm sorry, your message got mangled in transmission. What
>>>arrived at my news server is as quoted above: monosyllabic babble that
>>>bears no resemblance whatsoever to written English.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>> Oh, that's because it's Japanese, baka! ^___^

> What? It was clearly an English sentence, since it started with the
> words "He is", which are English. Besides, English is the de facto
> lingua franca of this newsgroup.

DON'T CONTRADICT ME!

Hell.

DON'T CONTRADICT YOURSELF!

--
Radomir @**@_ Bee! .**._ .**._ .**._ .**._ zZ
`The Sheep' ('') 3 (..) 3 (..) 3 (..) 3 (--) 3
Dopieralski .vvVvVVVVVvVVVvVVVvVvVVvVvvVvVVVVVVvvVVvvVvvvvVVvVVvv.v.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

"Twisted One" <twisted0n3@gmail.invalid> wrote in message
news:G8OdnYNHqfBFWOvfRVn-gA@rogers.com...
> The Sheep wrote:
>> Dnia Mon, 02 May 2005 17:50:20 -0400,
>> Twisted One napisal(a):
>>
>>>Raghar wrote:
>>>
>>>>strathWHATEVERIGETENOUGHSPAMANYWAYS@ipass.net (Jim Strathmeyer)
>>>>wrote in news:8eadncA41ctuo-_fRVn-qw@adelphia.com:
>>
>>>He is what? I'm sorry, your message got mangled in transmission. What
>>>arrived at my news server is as quoted above: monosyllabic babble that
>>>bears no resemblance whatsoever to written English.
>>
>> Oh, that's because it's Japanese, baka! ^___^
>
> What? It was clearly an English sentence, since it started with the words
> "He is", which are English. Besides, English is the de facto lingua franca
> of this newsgroup.
>

For all you know, society has adopted the word baka into English. It
wouldn't be the first time a word from another language has become part of
English.

--
Glen
L😛yt E+++ T-- R+ P+++ D+ G+ F:*band !RL RLA-
W:AF Q+++ AI++ GFX++ SFX-- RN++++ PO--- !Hp Re-- S+

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Glen Wheeler wrote:
> For all you know, society has adopted the word baka into English. It
> wouldn't be the first time a word from another language has become part of
> English.

I know that it hasn't, since if it were an English word I wouldn't have
commented on it. It looks like baby talk more than anything else. It's
definitely not a (reasonably common and non-archaic) English word nor a
common net acronym.

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Twisted One <twisted0n3@gmail.invalid> wrote in
news:fZGdnV2cbMJMSevfRVn-hA@rogers.com:

> Glen Wheeler wrote:
>> For all you know, society has adopted the word baka into English.
>> It
>> wouldn't be the first time a word from another language has become
>> part of English.
>
> I know that it hasn't, since if it were an English word I wouldn't
> have commented on it. It looks like baby talk more than anything else.
> It's definitely not a (reasonably common and non-archaic) English word
> nor a common net acronym.
>

It's a common slang term used by American anime fans, okay? Although I
rarely see it spaced out 'ba ka' instead of 'baka' when used by an English
speaker.
The thing about American English is that it's a vibrantly living language,
and is constantly borrowing words from other languages. Often imported by
geeks and fanboys, but that's beside the point.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>David Damerell wrote:
>>Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>>>recall. Nothing changes in MMORPGs -- it's just the experience points
>>>and level of your character.
>>Apart from MMOs like Planetside and Puzzle Pirates that don't have
>>levelling.
>Well, so why didn't I ever hear about them?

Because it's almost universal that MMO*s have these stupid levelling
mechanics grafted on. :-(

I _hear_ that GuildWars, which is new, aims to emphasise tactical skill
over level grinding. Roguelikes already emphasise tactical ability - well,
the good ones do...

>>Don't get me wrong; I like D&D fine as a tabletop game, but only when the
>>type of play is appropriate for those mechanics, not simply when those
>>mechanics are used blindly; and levelling, particularly, is very damaging
>>to an MMO where it ensures that the vast majority of the player base can't
>>actually play together.
>I don't like DnD even as a tabletop game. I hate those leveling
>mechanics that make one 50th level warrior take on hordes of 1st level
>warriors, and be able to take an artillery shot "on the brest".

Let's be clear here; even a 20th level warrior cannot take a catapult shot
to the chest. It's just that, as long as he has hitpoints left, you'll
never hit him with a catapult. The mechanic's a "hit" that does "damage",
but what happens in the game world is that he barely escapes it, gets
scratched up by debris, tires, pulls muscles...

50th level, of course, is well into epic levels; if you do play up to
that level, your characters are demigods, and shouldn't be thought of in
human terms.

As for the hordes of grunts, Miyamoto Musashi tackles a couple of dozen
guys in Yoshikawa's novelisation, and that's not even epic fantasy;
consider the Amber books. No-one would dispute that Benedict could fight a
hundred or a thousand ordinary men and win; it's appropriate to the genre.

[But, generally speaking, your umpteenth level characters shouldn't be
fighting hordes of no-challenge beasties. There needs to be a sense that
your old opponents are still out there and now no match for you, to get a
sense of progression and growth - another mistake that MMO*s are prone to
is that being a 2nd level character fighting 1st level beasties is not
very different to being a 50th level character fighting 49th level
beasties. City of Heroes is especially bad here, because the power system
tends to mean your character will have essentially the same combat
abilities at 10th level as at 21st.]

>I think
>that such mechanics actually destroy roleplaying. I far much prefere
>more balanced systems as GURPS...

But you _can't_ do epic fantasy with GURPS, not without a set of patches
that make it akin to D&D, because it does have a "realistic" treatment of
combat and injury. Sir Lancelot might be killed by Mordred or by a giant,
but he's _never_ going to be brought down by a random arrow. This is the
old "realism" fallacy; the mechanics want to be appropriate to the genre.
If you don't like the genre, that's fine, but don't blame the mechanics
for doing their job.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is First Tuesday, May.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>Of course players will find ways to munchkin, but it's the GM's job to
>keep them in line. And that's every system's rule. No P&P RPG system is
>a self-player. But when the players are mature enough there is such
>problems. And it doesn't pose such stupid powerlevelling rules as DND does.

On the contrary; a level-based system is less prone to this sort of abuse
than a points-picking system. When levels determine a lot of your ability,
and the GM controls access to levels (ie, you can't decide to get
experience points in the way you can decide what spells to use), character
power is effectively constrained.

One of the ways that levelling _does_ serve most MMOs well is that level
is made a much bigger determinant of character ability than any other
factor; this lets the very limited GM oversight available per-player be
used effectively to look for abusive ways of gaining XP.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is First Tuesday, May.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

David Damerell wrote:
> Quoting Kornel Kisielewicz <kisielewicz@gazeta.pl>:
>
>>Of course players will find ways to munchkin, but it's the GM's job to
>>keep them in line. And that's every system's rule. No P&P RPG system is
>>a self-player. But when the players are mature enough there is such
>>problems. And it doesn't pose such stupid powerlevelling rules as DND does.
>
> On the contrary; a level-based system is less prone to this sort of abuse
> than a points-picking system. When levels determine a lot of your ability,
> and the GM controls access to levels (ie, you can't decide to get
> experience points in the way you can decide what spells to use), character
> power is effectively constrained.

What about a point system where you have to earn experience points to
then use to add or enhance skills? I.e., something like Sangband, ToME,
or Crawl in terms of skill development. Then it can be a point system
(if it's like Sangband, up to lacking levelling entirely) and still have
character power constrained to grow via getting experience.

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Quoting Aki Rossi <aki.rossi@iki.fi>:
>On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:19:46 +0100, David Damerell wrote:
>>The term "RPG" is particularly pernicious here. It was bad enough for
>>single-player games that got called RPGs because they had sub-D&D
>>mechanics; but then people decided to make MMO versions of those games,
>>called them MMORPGs, and deduced from that that they must graft sub-D&D
>>mechanics onto them.
>I don't think the problem is in the mechanics themselves,

Well, those mechanics can work fine. NetHack, and some other roguelikes,
have fairly obviously D&D derived mechanics, and they work fine.

My problem is with the unthinking use of them; for example, the emphasis
on character progression is fine for a single-player game where you get
the nice feel of being able to steamroller your old adversaries, but it's
terrible for an MMO where at one fell swoop it ensures that only 1/20 or
so of the playerbase can possibly group together.
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is First Tuesday, May.