God of War, Counter-Strike, 360 Design at GDC 47
Some more great writeups of GDC events are now available. Gamasutra's coverage continues to be comprehensive, with articles on the localization of Counter-Strike, the development of God of War, and the a design postmortem on the Xbox 360. God of War: How the Left and Right Brain Learned to Love One Another discusses the ways the dev team balanced the needs of the artists, designers, and programmers to create a cohesive title. The Localization of Counter-Strike in Japan gives the reader some object lessons in what it's like to take western ideas and translate them to an eastern culture. Finally, Ophelea wrote to mention a GamersInfo.net story on the design of the Xbox 360. From this last article: "The user interface was one of the more difficult designs to accomplish. While the original Xbox had 250MB of space to utilize, the Xbox360 had only 4.5MB uncompressed or 1.5MB in total! Not only this, they expanded on the original Xbox's 45 screens and grew it ten fold to 450 screens! Several iterations were gone through with the end result being a combination of several of these schemes."
No sniping? (Score:1)
Hiding and sniping are no-nos
I'm confused as to why they would include the sniper rifles (as seen in the original picture) if they didn't want you to use them as originally intended.
Re:No sniping? (Score:1)
Re:No sniping? (Score:2)
It's no secret that Japanese gamers are not US gamers.
Re:No sniping? (Score:1)
Were you aiming for a different post to reply to, and somehow hit mine?
Re:No sniping? (Score:2)
Re:No sniping? (Score:2)
They provide unsatisfying deaths often on both ends and are the primary tool of choice for campers. Ive left more than a handful of games because of sitting there waiting for a couple of clowns to stop sitting in a shady corner and actually go and shoot something.
I dont understand the weapon, I dont understand people who use them. Well unless they use it in my half arsed manner where Ill run around and occaisiona
Re:No sniping? (Score:2)
I actually always liked campers/snipers... once they shoot you know where they are, once you get up close they are defenseless and they usually camp the same spot (or the usual "camper" spots) so regularly firing a few rockets or tossin
Re:No sniping? (Score:2)
If you don't want sniping and camping, why play CS at all?
CS Neo - Where is Ledzone? (Score:2)
From the Counter-Strike article: (Score:3, Funny)
This isn't looking too good...
and hairy guys in fatigues and ski masks with antigravity-busted women in three square inches of purple nylon.
Re:From the Counter-Strike article: (Score:1)
Re:From the Counter-Strike article: (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate overly realistic "Gung-Ho" militant shit in games.
I couldn't give 2 rat's asses about racing games that look like my TV is tuned to some motosporting event. And as much as I like some racing games, I'd rather see more Carmageddons than Grand Turismos.
I'll puke if I see one more historical war rehash as a 3rd person shooter. I'll take Shogo's Comic Influence over any of the newest first person shooters any day.
I think the reason a lot of gamers feel t
CS Neo (Score:1)
More information on their offical website [csneo.com].
Seems to be built on the Source Engine rather than the original. Models look interesting though, along with the levels.
250mb of space for an interface.. (Score:2)
Why design a 5.1 hifi Dolby Digital Surround capable box if all you're going to do is rip audio at the equivalent of 128kbits?
Re:250mb of space for an interface.. (Score:2, Troll)
The good: 128kbits is the "standard" for MP3s nowadays, and by not including a lot of settings in ripping, they simplified the interface. 128kbit is a good bitrate. It is pretty small, but sounds OK. Also, higher bitrate may take too much resources if you are playing an mp3 while playing a game. Because this is a game console, and not a PC, I think it is a reasonable decision.
The Bad: Anything more could have DRM implications? Perhaps making crystal clear cop
128kbits is terrible. (Score:3, Insightful)
What's bad about a higher bitrate? Nothing. It chews less CPU time to encode and decode (after all, the trade off is compressed representation vs. CPU power), and results in a better representation of the music file. The Xbox HD is fast enough loading that you can have your 64mb of ram section up such that you have
Re:128kbits is terrible. (Score:2)
Re:128kbits is terrible. (Score:2)
You can rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive, yes. It would be incredibly dumb given the limited space, and that's why you find that option near the bottom of the list.
Near the top of the list are options far more palatable. You can connect an iPod (or another MP3 player, or a PSP, or just a regular USB drive with music) right to the front of the Xbox. It'll play MP3, unprotected AACs, etc., whatever bitrate you
Re:128kbits is terrible. (Score:2)
You can rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive, yes. "
You don't. I'm talking about the Xbox. It's half-baked. I'm sure the same half-baked folks who made the Xbox rip at 128kbps have equalled crippled the Xbox 360 (from my limited time playing with it at a friend's place, pointless FWOOSHING menus comes to mind).
They have improved the MP3 usage if what you say is true, but they should've had enough brains to get i
Re:128kbits is terrible. (Score:2)
Kind of boneheaded, in my opin
Don't shoot them in the back? (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, killing him wouldn't be fair unless he knows you're about to do it and has a chance to kill you first.
If they'd fought WW2 by those principles, it would have been a SHORT war.
Re:Don't shoot them in the back? (Score:1)
Re:Don't shoot them in the back? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Award more points for killing someone with a glock than an M4, and more for an M4 than an AWP.
2) Conversely, award more points for the dollar amount of your slain opponent's equipment; a guy with a glock shouldn't be worth the same as a guy with an M4.
3) Give "assists", points for doing damage to a player if someone else kills them in the same round.
4) Finishing with 1 hp and 100 hp shouldn'
Re:Don't shoot them in the back? (Score:2)
All of the points you listed can be assigned point values that determine the players overall score in a leaderboard as well as distinctive ranks for each type of action (last man standing, most knife kills, most damage done, etc.)
Overall this (your) suggestion seems more ap
Re:Don't shoot them in the back? (Score:2)
Japanese can't handle terrorism? (Score:2)
Re:Japanese can't handle terrorism? (Score:2)
Re:Japanese can't handle terrorism? (Score:1)
Re:Japanese can't handle terrorism? (Score:1)
Worst. Mod. EVAR. (Score:1)
This is what happens when you hand game des
Re:Worst. Mod. EVAR. (Score:2, Interesting)
~nate
Re:Worst. Mod. EVAR. (Score:2)
I mean really, there are plenty of games that focus on offense, action, sexy anime-style characters with big boobs and violent fun. Counterstrike isn't one of them. UT would probably be ideal if it wasn't so old (UT2k4 is very FPS-noob-unfriendly though).
didn't change it (Score:2, Interesting)
"we didn't want to change it; we didn't want to ruin it."
uh... yeah. The core mechanic, maybe, but I'd say you can only loosely call the game counter-strike now. I find it funny that (I have been lead to believe) the japanese are pretty xenophobic when it comes to western games but a lot of the character designs are not only western but overtly caucasian. What's up with that?