Yeraze's Domain 3.0

(Updated 8/15/06, at the end)
This weekend I got my first taste of “Prey“, the new game from 3D Realms. (Yes, the same company behind Duke Nukem Never.. I mean Forever). It’s a first-person shooter that tells the story of “Tommy”, a Cherokee Indian, who finds himself as the unwilling savior of humanity when “The Dark Ones” return to cleanse the earth.

The game is very rooted in Cherokee Mythology (so it claims) and borrows from it extensively (so it claims). As an auto mechanic, you’ve essentially shrugged off everything to do with the Cherokee nation except the dark skin, and any attempt to get you to believe in it results in profanity. Of course, when the aliens come and kidnap you and your girlfriend, you start to think maybe it’s not so wacky afterall when you can walk through walls and find yourself invincible.

The gameplay is pretty good and the AI is respectable (easy to make AI for an alien race you know nothing about, I guess). There are no cut-scenes, everything is rendered ingame with their engine. The game is rather dark but they give you a lighter to help you through (Similar to a flashlight, but with a short-range ambient effect, instead of a directed effect). Starting off with nothing but a pipe wrench you beat your way through the alien hordes finding more and more unusual alien weapons. Of course, you can think of them as “the rifle”, “the snipergun”, “the machinegun”, “the grenade”, etc. It’s pretty standard FPS fare.

There are, however, a few things that make this game unique (The fact that there is more than 1 thing in this list is impressive enough):

1. Portals While not quite as slick as Narbacular Drop or the Portal preview, it’s pretty impressive. The portals are static (you don’t control them) but show all the same features. It’s a bit unnerving to walk past a small box on the floor only to find that there’s a portal inside to another room. Also, portals are only visible from 1 side, and have 0 thickness. This leads to alot of puzzles which are simply “find the portal”. The transitions are perfect, completely seamless, and offer an interesting gameplay mechanic.
2. Spirit Form You have the ability to separate your spirit from your body. While this sounds cheesy, it’s a requirement for several situations. The spirit form leaves your body unprotected (in a levitating trance-state), but the form itself is invisible to electronics and capable of passing through some forcefields. This creates several scenes of “open the door, see the 10 automated turrets, switch to spirit mode, turn them off”, as well as “see forcefield, spirit form through forcefield, deactivate”. Also, some areas are only reachable through spirit form as certain bridges and things can only be seen then.
3. Gravity Puzzles In several rooms there are buttons on the walls (and ceiling and floor) that change the direction of gravity. This is used to reach alot of impossible areas, like hallways at the top of very tall rooms.
4. Electric Walkways Small sidewalks that snake along the walls and ceilings. You hear the sound of metal clanking (Magnetic Boots?) as you walk on them and you can follow them all around. But if you jump or get knocked off prepare for a confusing ride as gravity remains normal and you fall back to the “ground”.
5. Invincibility You basically can’t die. Any time you die (health hits 0, fall off a cliff, etc) you find yourself in the “spirit realm”. About 15 seconds of target practice later you’re back in the action right where you left off.

All of these together make for one really wierd game. They also make for a very nauseating experience at times as you walk through a door and find gravity in that room reversed, or 90-degrees offset. Same thing for portals. I’ve already had to take several breaks to settle my stomach, so if you’re DIMS prone beware. The story is a bit lightweight, most of the time I don’t really know why I’m running down a hallway killing aliens other than “because it’s there”. All that said, the new gameplay mechanics (gravity, portals, etc) make it worth checking out.

It’s no Half-Life 2, but it’s worth the $50 if you enjoy first-person singleplayer shooters.
[tag:game][tag:pc][tag:fps][tag:prey]

Update 12:13am:
If you have any experience with Flight Simulators, be prepared to be extremely frustrated with the vehicular controls (spaceships). When you transition from FPS to Flight-sim, the same navigational controls apply. Unfortunately, so do the same constraints (90 degrees up and down viewing) leading to some nasty gimbal lock problems.

Update 8/15/06 9:00pm
3 Days… I started on Sunday Afternoon, finished it Tuesday night.  I think we’re talking somewhere in the 6-8 hour range.  Short, but fun.  The story does get much better toward the end, although I don’t really understand the ending.

As I alluded to earlier, there has been a video of the “Portal Weapon” from valve software floating around the net. A truly revolutionary idea with some amazing potential, I was impressed but tried to reserve final judgement for an actual playtest. Well, that day has arrived.

Thanks to an article on IGN (via Slashdot, via joystiq.. Don’t ya love how this stuff gets around?), I discovered that the Portal idea is actually the continuation of a project called Narbacular Drop by a group of students at DigiPen University. The game was developed as their final project and demo’ed so well that an engineer from Valve got them a personal demo to Gabe Newell, managing director at Valve. They were basically hired right on the spot, and reinvented the project with the Source Engine as “Portal”.

So, hoping for a “taste test” of Portal, I downloaded Narbacular Drop last night and checked it out. It’s a very simple puzzle game, completely combat-free. The controls are simple enough: arrows or WASD to walk, left click for one portal, right click for the other. The first level or two are simply tutorials, but from there it gets creative. Through careful placement of portals you can redirect rolling boulders, create doorways through fences, and even drop in from ceilings. It’s a great concept, and it’s tough to appreciate just how smooth the transition is until you experience it. I really expected a harsh snap or jerk as you were transported from one portal to the other but it’s fluid and completely natural.

Unfortunately, the game does suffer from some pretty disturbing problems as well. They make good use of occlusion culling and view frustrum culling algorithms to improve the framerate. Unfortunately, these algorithms were not properly upgraded to include the effects of the portals. As a result, looking through a portal is frequently confusing as you see through walls and see portions of the floor behind you disappear. It’s distracting and makes them difficult to work with at times, but the concept of what’s possible with portals is obvious.

So, if you’re curious about Portal then give Narbacular Drop a try. It’s only for Windows so you Mac & Linux users will need to update your Wine Installs (or other similar products). I’m confident that Valve will iron out the few kinks for the real Portal game, but this gives you a great idea of the things in store.

Update: 11:40pm
I just found, on their forums, that the cause of all the rendering problems I mentioned is the “Antialiasing” option.  I had enabled it, and they admit that it can cause alot of rendering artifacts.  Simply disabling it (which is the default) had the portals working 100% perfectly.  Getting used to the ability to place a portal while looking through said portal is something that takes some practice.  Man this stuff is so kewl.
[tag:portal][tag:valve][tag:narbacular][tag:game][tag:digipen]

Seems it’s all the rage to go “episodic” nowadays, and Half Life 2 is no exception.  In fact, they may just prove the point, as Half Life 2: Episode 1 was released on June 1st.  I just got it earlier this week and played through it, and I must admit I was impressed.

I played through Half-Life 2 shortly after it came out, and I still think it’s probably the best story-driven FPS in existence.  From the Graphics, to the Story, to the enemy AI, to the friendly AI, there’s nothing to complain about (Except the annoying Steam issues).  Episode 1 is more of the same.

You start off having, somehow, survived the explosion atop the citadel and are rescued by Alyx and Dog.  They return the fabulous Zero Gravity gun to you, and the adventures resume.  First off you have to stop, or at least delay, the core explosion inside the Citadel.  From there, it’s a simple matter of leaving the city.  The first third of the game is a large collection of puzzles, as you don’t have any weaponry.  The flashlight becomes your best friend as Alyx has a seemingly infinite supply of ammunition, but can’t see in the dark.  So it’s a collection of “Illuminate the Bad Guys” and watch the carnage ensue.  Of course, there’s plenty of debris for you to pick up and hurl at them too, but Alyx’s weapons are far more effective.  You do eventually get some weaponry, and towards the end you get to relive the excitement of taking down hordes of soldiers, blowing helicopters out of the sky, and running from Striders.  As soon as it was over, tho, I did have to revisit the Half Life Saga Guide to figure out what’s going on.

It’s action packed, and every bit as good as Half Life 2.  It is, however, episodic.  So expect about 4 to 5 hours of gameplay, with a nice cliffhanger of an ending.  With my new 6800GS video card, I was able to turn on all the bells and whistles at 1280×1024, including HDR which was a big surprise to me.  The game itself is beautiful, and the HDR effect is simply amazing.  It’s done so well that you may not even notice it, but it adds a huge amount of realism to the game when you’re clambering through the undergroud (and dark) remains of the city streets.  The enemy AI is impressive, for the soldiers anyway. Of course, the zombies are dumb as bricks and rightfully so.  The soldiers have learned a few new tricks, tho, and work together in a truly frightening fashion.  Even Alyx has gotten a few “upgrades” and does a great job of pitching in.  Unlike Half-life 2, you actually spend pretty much the entire game side-by-side, none of the “passing in the night” stuff that gets so frustrating.  Much to my surprise, while traveling underground in pitch blackness, when my flashlight went out she actually proceeded to sneak up behind me making Zombie noises.  When I turned it back on she proceeded to laugh and go “Gotcha!”.  If I shined it in her face she would wince and cover her eyes.  They’re all novelties, but add alot to making her a believable character.

I truly enjoyed it, and I’m considering digging out my HL2 install and trying it again.  I’m also anxiously awaiting Episode 2, and if this trailer and this “Portal Weapon Preview” are true, then I won’t be disappointed. 
[tag:halflife][tag:game][tag:episode1]

I noticed the other day that I hadn’t updated my “Games” category in quite some time. So I’m here to fill you in on what’s been occupying my time as of late: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I’m sure alot of you see that and go “Don’t you mean Oblivion?” No, I mean Morrowind. First off, I’m not sure my rig could handle Oblivion without some (more) upgrades. Second, from the folks I know who have played both, it seems Morrowind is the favored choice between the two. Finally, a quick trip to your local Target and $20 can hook you up with the “Game of the Year” Edition that comes with both the Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions.

So a few weeks ago I rolled up a Redguard Crusader and took about cleansing the surface of Vvardenfell. I played the game briefly in college, but never really got around to figuring out much, so the game has been pretty much brand new to me. I’ve already made it up to level 29, have just over a half-mil in the bank, and have made Guildmaster of the Fighter’s Guild. The game is engrossing with a great storyline, and the world is simply massive. Even with the weeks I’ve spent playing it I’ve only uncovered probably somewhere around 20% of the map, and only about 50% of that is really explored.

My one complaint has been the graphics. For a game that came out in 2002 the graphics were good, but by today’s standards they’re lacking. Even at full-resolution (1152×864) with antialiasing turned on and every other bell and whistle I can find, they’re just not very impressive. Not that they really need to be, but it was one small lacking detail. But, the mod community is still very-much active with Morrowind and they’ve come up with a few solutions:

1. Shadows & Light Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 – complete texture replacements for most of the textures used in the major cities. Adds an insane amount of detail to the buildings.
2. NPC Replace – replaces the face & hair textures for pretty much all the NPC’s, making them look much more lifelike.
3. Better Bodies – what NPC replace does for heads, this does for everything else. Full replacement meshes with improved poly-counts for every race in the game!

Screenshots don’t do the differences justice, but I thought I had to try. Sadly, I installed the mods before I had any screenshots and now I can’t find any good way to roll-back to before (not that I really want to). Thanks to GameSpy I was able to grab a few screenshots and try my best to replicate them with my mod-ed version.

Before	After

The difference is amazing. These three mods really go a long ways toward making Morrowind look like it was released in 2006. So if you still have it laying around, I highly recommend you load it up and then mod it up. It’s still a great game and I’m looking forward to several more weeks of enjoyment from it.
[tag:elderscrolls][tag:game][tag:morrowind][tag:mod]

This week is E3, so of course all the gaming companies are showing off their latest and greatest, and Sony is no exception.  Seems that, on top of the huge $600 PS3 washout, they’re showing off some new stuff with Star Wars Galaxies.  In this video they show a huge Galactic Civil war battle playing out in the streets of Restuss.  A few ATST’s bite the dust, until eventually the massive ATAT strolls into town.  You see huge fireballs raining down from space onto it, until finally there’s a blast that rivals the end of Half-Life 2 that whites out the entire screen for a good 30s.  When things return to normal, there’s nothing left of the city but ruins and one of the SOE reps talking about all the new Quest NPC’s that will inhabit the area.

Combine that with all the changes in Publish 28, I might wind up rejoining the Rebel Alliance. [tag:e3][tag:starwarsgalaxies][tag:mmo][tag:sony]

I was always a fan of the classic SimCity. I spent many hours laboring over my citizens in the original game, many more than I should have. It seemed however hard I tried, tho, I could never get out of debt. I tried and tried but was never successful. When all the later SimCity’s came out, I quickly found them way too complicated for my liking, and somewhat walked away, broken hearted. (Who wants to design sewage systems?) I tested my luck with SimEarth and a few of the other sim games, but none were ever quite as good as the original.  SimEarth was pretty good, mind you, but nothing like SimCity.  I still have fond memories of using Monoliths to make intelligent Venus Flytraps.

When The Sims rolled onto the scene, I was in college. Good thing too, because I almost got sucked in again. Recreating my apartment roommates and watching the same dramas play themselves out in the game and in the hallway at the same time was enduring entertainment. Again, I played hard for a while but when all the expansions and sequels hit I just let it slide.

Well, history is about to repeat itself. Will Wright, maker of all those great games, has a new game in the works named Spore. You start as a single-celled organism eating bacteria and the like, following the world of Sim Earth until you reach sentience. Then you move through the Sim City and Civilization stage of conquering your enemies in economic or militaristic combat. Finally, you advance to a space-faring race and go visit other planets, and finally other solar systems. The scope of the game is amazing, and how it’s laid out (entirely procedural) is simply mind-boggling. Just the editor tool alone would be a PhD worthy effort. I can’t find anything on when the game will be released, but rest assured I’ll be first in line to buy it.

If you don’t believe me, then check out the video here. It’s 30 minutes, but well worth it.
[tag:spore][tag:willwright][tag:game]

Well, DDO has gone live. I did preorder, so I got into the few days of headstart, and am now the proud owner of a second-level Warforged Barbarian and a Human Wizard. So what’s the state of things so far?

Pretty good actually. With the new video card upgrade, the game is simply beautiful and runs smooth as silk. The servers are responsive and not overcrowded from what I can tell. The core systems all seem to be working pretty much bug-free. Compared to the SWG rollout, this has been a dream come true. Developers that actually know enough about Quality Assurance Testing to get a working product out on time. But all is not roses. The game does have some quirks, most notably the unexplainable system crashes that it seems to cause. Of course, this is somewhat to be expected from any new product at release, so people are rather forgiving.

I suppose my biggest “complaint” is in the social aspects of the game. Even though there are about 6 races and 9 classes to choose from, their progression is pretty much identical. No matter your race or class, you go through the exact same quests as everyone else. This means that “creating a new character” doesn’t really open any new areas of the game, just new mechanics for the same old quests. That’s a minor detail compared to my big beef: Mandatory Grouping. Pretty much as soon as you leave the tutorial island, you’ve left all solitude behind as every single quest will require a group of players to complete. This has been a real pain for me so far, since I actually have a life unlike most of their membership. I don’t have a chance to log-in until around 9 or so, and then usually only for 2 or 3 hours. I’m in a guild, but it seems everyone is already grouped up by the time I log-in. Sure, technically I could go join them in a dungeon-in-progress, but there’s 2 main obstacles to that: 1) Maximum group size is 6, and usually they’re already full as the “good” quests take a full group, and 2) Alot of quests throw up barriers to prevent you from backtracking, which double as preventing new players from entering. So I’ve already had a few play sessions go by where I stood in the inn for about 30 minutes, then logged out bored. Ahh, memories of SWG all over again.  Pickup groups have proven an utter disaster, as they’re usually a bunch of guys who have already memorized the quest solutions, so just as I’m starting to get a feel for what’s goin on, ding quest complete.  Most of the “group quests” that I’ve done so far have just involved me following the trail of scorched corpses, trying to figure out where everyone went. 

In short, what I’ve seen of the game so far is amazing. How close it remains to the pen-n-paper source material is amazing, and continues to surprise me with every new spell and die-roll. Unfortunately, D&D is a primary “story-driven” experience and DDO seems to focus too much on groups (which typically emphasize speed over story) instead of individuals. I remember my old D&D sessions, where we rushed through the action & combat in order to return to the intrigue and storyline.  DDO seems to completely reverse that, with most players blowing through the storyline so they can smash more balsa-wood barrels.   I expect I’ll keep playing it for a few more months, but if my enjoyment of the game continues to be not loosely tied to but entirely dependent on other players, then I don’t think I’ll pull another 2 years with it.
[tag:ddo] [tag:mmorpg]

Well, in wandering the net in search of something to do today, I noticed that the system Second Life allows for free basic subscriptions. The only restriction is that people on “Basic” subscription can’t own land. I’ve heard alot about Second Life over the last few years, especially in regards to their innovative grasp of intellectual property issues online.

So, I quickly made an account and downloaded the client (only 21Meg, kinda surprised me). Of course, the first thing you do is go through a small tutorial on how to get around. I also spent some time designing my avatar. I tried my best to get an avatar that looks like me, but after seeing some other users I think I need to do some more work. After figuring out how to walk, interact, and fly (yes, fly) I took off for the mainland.

After spending an hour or so in Second Life, I can understand all the parallels between it and the Metaverse (from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash ) . The “game” (I kinda hate to call it that) is really a “Life Simulator”. If you want to make money, which you’ll use to buy land and other things, you have to earn it. You don’t earn it by rescuing damsels or crushing orcs, but rather through making things & selling them to other players. Making things is a difficult art not for the faint of heart, and there are hundreds of in-game tutorials and classes to help you learn. They have a nice extensive in-game modeling system for objects, and an incredibly robust scripting language for making them interactive. But until you get the hang of it all, you can just convert US Dollars to “Lindens” from the various in-game ATM’s or the website (The exchange rate seems to vary, but right now it’s $L100 for $0.67US, or 67cents). The free basic account starts you off with L$250 (L$ is the currency symbol for Lindens), and you get a L$50 a week stipend. All of that in itself is pretty impressive for an online environment, but it doesn’t stop there.

They also allow for streaming video & audio to be piped into the gameworld, along with any other images or sounds that you want (for a meager L$10 each). It’s not unusual to walk into someone’s house and suddenly have a loud advertisement blasting into your ears about all the houses or avatars they have for sale. And these aren’t rinky-dink operations, some of these things are real companies that make several thousand dollars a month just selling these things in-game (For example, Tringo ). In fact, I even found a large video-rental store in-game where for about $L500 ( ~$2.50US) you could rent a movie for 24 hours that you could watch in your Second-Life home, all done via the ingame video streaming options. I also saw the streaming audio in use at a player-event where they had real-time a Streaming Radio station announcing an in-game Slingo tournament.

Given that I’ve already pre-ordered DDO and plan to start on that later this week, I’m not gonna put down any cash on Second Life right now. I do plan to investigate it a bit further, within the constraints of my free basic membership. If the news reports are to be believed, it may be on the cusp of a real digital revolution. I wish I had known about the free membership earlier as Larry Lessig gave a nice presentation on Copyright law in-game just last month.  [tag:Second-life] [tag:Game] [tag:PC]

This week I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Stress Test of the highly-anticipated MMO Dungeons and Dragons Online.

I managed to register in time, and create an account. Downloading the client was a pain, as you had to fight your way through FilePlanet to get it, but I managed. It wasn’t until the next day that I actually had time to play.

I quickly revived an old favorite of mine, an Elven Wizard, and dove in. At first, the typical MMO stuff: You’re fresh off a ship in a strange land, as you walk down the pier you get helpful tooltips on how everything works, and at the end of the pier is your first contact with an NPC. He sends you to the inn, and *yawn*. Ok, where’s the meat? Well, in the bar you get your first quest: Retrieving 5 mystical stones as proof of your adventuring skills. She points you toward the door, and *bam* you zone. That’s when things get really impressive.

Having played Everquest 2 and Star Wars Galaxies, I had expected a drawn out tutorial on “here’s how you walk”, “here’s how you talk”. Instead, I hear the deep booming voice of the “Dungeon Master” describing the room, all those nuances that you can’t get from fancy 3d graphics: Smells, sensations. Then I get instructions to pull the level opening the door in front of me. Pull the lever? That was the first of many surprises. Levers, doors, booby traps, physics, smashing furniture, climbing ladders, all those things we’ve come to love and enjoy in single-player FPS games are here in DDO! It’s amazing! Fully instanced quests with FPS playstyles! In every other MMO, doors magically open for you when you approach, and a small broom on the floor is an impassible obstacle. Not so in DDO.

I was even more impressed later when I ran into my first quest with a Puzzle. I had to arrange a set of floor tiles to light up 4 runes and nullify a shield spell. This really showed off the flexibility of the engine, as these floor tiles (Which I could walk on) were movable and interactive. I haven’t run into many puzzles yet, but I’ve only logged about 3 hours so far. I have seen my share of traps tho, as clever and devious as any I ever threw at my unsuspecting campaigners.

My one concern is that the only way to gain experience (and therefore advance your character) is through completion of quests, and there don’t seem to be any “randomly generated” quests. SWG & EQ2 had the Mission Terminals & Guild Writs, so if you didn’t feel like taking on a real quest you could earn money and experience by just cracking some skulls. In DDO, it’s all quest based. This keeps things very “in character”, but I think it could lead to burnout if Turbine can’t generate content fast enough.

So, in short, I’m buyin it. I am going to have to make a few computer upgrades tho. My PC ran it, but had some difficulty. The instanced quests were fine, but in the “Public Areas” of town my system would bog down pretty hard. So, I think I’m gonna pick up a eVGA GeForce 6800GS from NewEgg to boost my graphics (TomsHardware’s VGA Charts say it’s 3x-5x faster than my 5900), and I’m gonna neat some new headphones with a boom mic (DDO has party voice-chat built-in).

If you grew up playing computer games in the 80′s and early 90′s, then you no doubt have played some of the old Adventure Games. King’s Quest and Zork were some of the most famous, but there were hundreds of them. Sadly, adventure games haven’t held up well against the likes of Doom and Half-life, and have just about faded from gaming store shelves.

Step in the world of the “hobbyist”. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about ScummVM for getting those old games running again on new hardware, but I found another great option: Adventure Game Studio. A free tool to let you recreate those adventure game classics, and even create new ones. As their download section shows, there’s dozens (if not hundreds) of completed free games there to check out, including my personal favorite right now: Stargate Adventure.