Forum posts

The room with all the cancelled projects looks more like Strider's room. I'm pretty sure he lives in a basement, too, so it's perfect!

@Dimbark:

and your shocked, wide eyed face

Context is important when you read English.

They've confirmed that all the content in that video is pretty much final, including the voice acting for the soldiers.

Quote:

Everything is intentional; the soldiers are meant to sound like over-the-top movie bad guys. We're not interested in trying to get you to empathise with the enemies.

Source is here: Link

Initially I was quite shocked that they would do something that dumb, but after thinking about it a bit, the idea is growing on me somewhat. If you listen to the voices of the soldiers in HL1, they're actually pretty damn similar, just that the radio static makes it far less obvious. The radio static makes absolutely no sense when the soldiers are right next to each other, either.

I think they're going to get lots of backlash over that particular decision, because, you know, people on the internet are basically a bunch of entitled pricks. Knowing that, it would probably be better if they just made them sound like boring old soldiers, rather than trying to put a B-movie spin on them. That said, they throw Freeman into a trash compactor instead of shooting him. Tell me that isn't something straight out of a B-movie

ANYWAY....it looks great and I want to play it right now!

I don't know if it's better than Minerva, but it's certainly pretty good. Nice variation of enemies and gameplay, and I liked the ending

I'm reasonably sure that Process Explorer will tell you what parameters were used to launch a running application.

"DO NOT PRESS".

(...too obvious?)

Did you try running it in administrator mode? If that doesn't work, try re-installing a fresh copy of it.

Yeah, we have more Europeans on TWHL than Americans. Also, I'm pretty sure that American Internet speeds are much worse than in Europe.

I think ninja is just a little bit too excited about this...

Let it go, Collapse. I know you love stirring up trouble, but just stop. Seriously.

@Phillip: Sorry, I could have worded that better. I was talking about my own selfish desires (of which I have plenty), not making assumptions about your situation. I already stated my opinion on the matter: I applaud your change of heart to restore access to the site.

You said yourself that the straw that broke the camel's back was an internet argument, so why you are trying to start another one? Personally, I don't like participating in internet arguments, especially public ones. If you want to argue with me, can you do it via email or Steam messaging?

@Blitz: The history of TWHL is pretty interesting. To be honest, when Seventh handed me the keys to TWHL, I was even more of a douchebag than I am now. I try as hard as I can to improve myself, though. Being a leader of a community is a big responsibility.

I'm glad he changed his mind and put it back up. Taking the whole site down like that was definitely not how any community website should be handled, regardless of personal situation. How it is now is much better.

What if something similar happens to TWHL? Well, hopefully, TWHL isn't administered by a single person that can take full responsibility of the site.

Rest assured, I would never allow that to happen. When it comes to TWHL, the community would always get priority over my own selfish desires, if I had to make a choice between the two.

So an entire community has been abandoned and none of the site's content is available anymore? That's a great big dick move. As Grim said, he could recruit volunteer contributers, or at the very least, put up a "I'm going on holiday for a while" post.

It's one thing to take down a site for real reasons (can't afford to pay for hosting anymore, for example), but to take it down simply because you don't feel like updating it anymore, removing access to all the old content and destroying the community is just disgusting.

Just be glad you don't have to pay Australian Internet prices.

@Striker: Twister will convert a VMF with displacements into tetrahedron terrain. The results are extremely untested and you'll have to align the textures manually too.

The source film maker looks incredibly powerful. I expect some TWHL members to start making films right away! Get at it!

I haven't played 65% of the games I own, according to this

There's a whole bunch of them that I've played a non-steam version and bought it on steam afterwards, as well as tons that I played on steam and it decided not to count my playtime (or I played it before Steam counted playtime). So I'd say that my percentage played should be about double what this reports.

Penguinboy | Games Owned: 265 | Percentage Played: 34.72%
Full Steam Analysis Profile: http://lambentstew.com/webblog/miniproject/steamanalysis?steamid=penguinboy

Sandy and Ivy Bridge Intel CPU's have a graphics chip built in, but as far as I'm aware, it's not used if you have a dedicated GPU. I could be wrong, though. I would ignore the fact though, and just go with whatever model gives you the best value for money.

I wonder who took that photo of the universe.

Closing thread before it gets out of hand. There's a reason why we discourage discussion of religion and politics - it's almost impossible for those topics to be the subject of a civilised discussion on the internet.

I have no idea what average compile times are these days, so I'm going to guess something stupid just in case it's one of those stupid answers!

VIS: 2s
RAD: 14h 34m 12s 821ms

Where's my beta access????

What are you on about Urby, Pikmin looked fantastic. Unfortunately it was pretty much all downhill from there. It wasn't BAD, but it was pretty uneventful. Notes are as follows:

• Pikmin 3, uses the WiiU screen for tactics and gameplay. Looks nice and is an example of how the controller can be used for new gameplay ideas.
• Reggie shows off the controller for a while, nothing amazing
• New Super Mario Bros. U, more of the same
• Arkham City is being ported to WiiU, as well as Scribbnauts, Darksiders II, Mass Effect 3, and a few more.
• Fitness games, meh
• Singing games, meh
• Some 3DS news: New Super Mario Bros. 2 (they're really flogging that series recently), Paper Mario, Luigi's Mansion, all available this year.
• Third party 3DS games: Castlevania, Epic Mickey, Scribblenauts, Kingdom Hearts.
• Some lego game that looked really silly.
• DANCING!!! Ubisoft is at it again with Just Dance 4. More like JUST STOP, PLEASE 4 THE LOVE OF GOD, am I right??
• ZombiU is back again with some pre-rendered "gameplay". It looks actually kinda okay, as long as the actual game plays that way as well. The video gave the impression of being more of a survival game than an action game.
• Something called "Nintendo Land", a series of minigames for the WiiU, basically similar to how Wii Sports did it. Nothing too exciting.

Overall a pretty boring keynote. Aside from Pikmin, no big new announcements. On the other hand, there wasn't anything very bad, either, so they certainly beat out Microsoft and Ubisoft.

Right, well Sony's keynote is done, and it had its ups and downs as mentioned above. Full notes:

• First game to show is Quantic Dream's "Beyond". The cutscene that was shown was very simple, with little in the way of action. It was quite heavy on the cinematic elements, though. Anyway, it's Quantic Dream and you know that it's going to be good when it comes from those guys.
• They continued with their Smash Bros. clone, PlayStation AllStars. It's Smash Bros., minus the awesome characters. Pass on this one.
• New Vita games: Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed.
• More on Far Cry 3, it will have 4 player co-op. Still looks lame.
• A really long demo on a ARG book thing and a Harry Potter thing. It's for kids, and it shows. Nothing to be interested in.
• A loooooooong gameplay demo on the new God of War game. It's more of the same GOW, so that's great if you like that kind of thing.
• A demo for The Last of Us, it looks really cool. It's a shower-paced game with limited resources and item management. I know I'll be buying this right away, Naughty Dog have always done a great job.

And we're done for today! Nintendo is about 13 hours away, when they'll announce a whole bunch of Wii U games. This is the one I'm waiting for! Until then, I'm going to get some sleep.

Also, Collapse, stop being such a dick. Thanks.

Watch Dogs looked really cool, I encourage everybody to check out the gameplay demonstration as it's something completely unexpected coming out of Ubisoft. The combat didn't look too bad to me, just your standard third person shooter fare. I'd imagine there wouldn't be a focus on combat, anyway.

The rest of the Ubisoft keynote is as follows:

• DANCING!!! Ubisoft open poorly with a rapper called "Flo Rida" and dancing people. Just really, really bad.
• Far Cry 3. Looked like the most tastless pile of shit I've ever seen. 12 year olds will love this, everyone else will think it's just immature.
• More Splinter Cell: Blacklist gameplay demos.
• A movie game for the Avengers (sigh, movie games)
• A Wii U zombie game called.... wait for it.... ZOMBI U. Yes, they're serious. The trailer was essentially a clone of Dead Island's trailer in terms of style, and we all know how that turned out...
• A gameplay demo of Rayman Legends. 5-player co-op, and finished with a rhythm style game that actually looked really damn cool.
• Assassin's Creed 3 gameplay demo, looked pretty neat.
• Stuff on "shootmania", a shooter with a focus on e-sports. Looks like it'll flop massively.
• And finally, Watch Dogs, see above. This looks to be a pretty interesting unique new IP from Ubisoft, didn't see it coming at all.

Overall, a very tasteless presentation. The hosts were tools, there were loads of stupid and awkward sex jokes, lots of discrimination, stereotypes, pointless blood, nudity, sex, language, and violence that don't agree with my outlook on the future of games. Nevertheless, Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed are two games to look out for. Far Cry 3 looks to be one to be avoided at all costs.

Sony is in 1.5 hours. This one will be REALLY interesting. Stay tuned!

EA just finished their keynote, they showed ten games. No new game announcements, but plenty of new footage and a billion DLC's and sports game partnerships!

• Dead Space 3. Very action-y, doesn't look like a classic Dead Space game at all. Will have co-op and cover shooting.
• Madden (sports...sigh)
• Sim City for Facebook (sigh) and a real version for the PC
• Battlefield 3 and 5x$10 DLC's
• The Old Republic updates (MMOs...sigh)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Looks like a less scripted version of BF3's campaign.
• EA Sports crap (SIGH)
• UFC (seriously??)
• Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Looked pretty cool.
• Crysis 3. I'm so very much over that series.

Ubisoft is 45 minutes away!

Well, we just had Microsoft's E3 keynote. My notes are below.

• There was a lengthy Halo 4 trailer which looked pretty good
• A new splinter cell game called "Blacklist". Fans of older splinter cell games will probably hate it, fans of conviction will probably love it.
• Some crap about sports that nobody cares about.
• A Fable: The Journey trailer, this one is an on-rails kinect shooter that was announced last year. Nothing very exciting.
• A new Gears of War game, "Judgement". This is a prequel, set 14 years before the first game.
• A new Forza game, looks to be set to compete with Need For Speed and other less hardcore racing games.
• A whole bunch of crap about Bing and Kinect menu voice control.
• Xbox music, nothing very exciting.
• Kinect FITNESS GAMES!!!!
• A new tech called "SmartGlass", meant to get devices to interact with each other. Target platforms are WinPhone8, Xbox, iOS, and Android devices.
• A really cool-looking demo of the Tomb Raider reboot. Looks like uncharted, basically.
• Three new titles: "Ascend: New Gods", looked crap. "LocoCycle", zero details provided. "Matter", no details and was a Kinect-only game.
• Capcom showed a Resident Evil 6 gameplay demo. Looked okay, but even more action-oriented than previous games.
• A Kinect-based Angry Birds clone called wreckateer.
• A South Park game that looked like South Park (I really hate South Park)
• DANCE CENTRAL THREE!!!!!! This was by far the worst part: USHER performed live on stage. It was completely unrelated to games and it sucked. Usher sucks, Microsoft sucks, Kinect sucks, Dancing games suck. Everything sucks!
• Finally CODBLOPS2 got a really long gameplay demo. The last bit showed the player flying a fighter jet. Are they trying to compete with Battlefield?

Anyway, that's everything from Microsoft. All in all, a pretty bad keynote, but better than last year. That's not saying much, though.

EA is next up in 1.5 hours, stay tuned!

BONUS NEWS: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive got a release date of August 21, and will cost $15.

That's right, I'm back and I'm posting about this crap again!The Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, is an event that happens every year in Los Angeles. It's usually where the big three (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) announce new games, hardware, consoles, and really pretty much everything to do with games. Ubisoft and EA also make appearances, but interestingly enough, Activision do not (though they usually manage to get a Call of Duty trailer in there anyway).

The big news is always announced at the keynotes held by the big 3 before the conference. The first of these happens in 22 hours from the time of posting, which is Microsoft's keynote. From there we see EA, Ubisoft, and Sony in quick succession, and Nintendo closes the keynotes the next day.

Most people are expecting the most exciting news to come from Nintendo this year, because they have their Wii U console coming out at the end of the year, but we still don't have release dates, retail prices, or a launch lineup of games. I'd expect all of these to be announced.

I don't really see Microsoft or Sony announcing their next-gen consoles this year, I think they'll just push software for their Kinect and Move hardware and leave the big stuff until next year.

As always, I'll write up a post after each one of the keynotes, so you don't even have to leave the comfort of TWHL to get your news! Of course, it's much more fun to watch them live, as I will be doing! (I'm not actually there, I'm going to be watching it streamed online. Check out your favourite gaming website to see if you can get streams too!)

So, I open the floor to the good folks of TWHL to discuss E3 and all that comes with it. Make predictions, discuss trailers, talk about upcoming games, and so on and so forth.

Myself and our good friend Ant have posted our predictions for this year on our website, invert-x. Check it out!

And, as always, the final word that will be ignored anyway: Valve have already announced that they're not showing anything new at E3 this year, but instead focusing on (I assume) CS:GO and DOTA2. But don't let that stop you from predicting that they'll announce Ricochet 2!

Well, it seems I don't spend much time gaming compared to all of you guys

Not multiplayer games, anyway. I find them too repetitive, I'd rather play a good single player campaign. I have loads of games, but most of them are "play once and shelve for a few years until you want to play it again"-type games

Yeah, all of the above, basically. I don't like the idea of forcing people to contribute to the community if they don't want to, and hell, uploading maps IS contributing to the community anyway! It's the same reason I'll never force people to log in to download stuff...don't you just hate websites that do that?

Man, Advance Wars is pretty much the best thing ever. Recently I've been working on an Advance Wars clone game for the PC (using graphics ripped from AW4):Obviously you can't see it on the screenshot, but all the animations are running in that as well

@Blitz: Just in your reply you were talking about dismissing the gameplay, story, graphics, and so on because of the online thing, but I never said anything about the game itself. Sorry if you were talking to somebody else and I didn't realise.

But yeah, my comments are not about the game (it looks very nice, but the gameplay doesn't appeal to me), but rather the precedent it sets with always-online, as I explained before. If Valve did the same thing with Half-Life 3 (co-op only, no offline mode, and no way to host your own server) I would be saying the exact same thing. One could argue that Steam does a similar thing, and that's valid. Steam is also a form of (sorry, I have to say it) DRM after all.

I'm sure the game is great and, like Huntey, if I wanted to play any game bad enough, I would. That doesn't mean that we can't do it begrudgingly, wishing that it didn't force you to be online, or didn't require Origin, Steam, GFWL, some other DRM, or whatever, really. I hate GFWL and bitch about it often, but that didn't stop me playing and loving Arkham City.

People aren't complaining because the game sucks, they're complaining because the always-online requirement (whatever you want to call it) is getting in the way and stopping them from playing the game the way they want to and enjoying it.

Ok, the game might not have singleplayer mode, but D1 and D2 did have one, and they did work offline. You can still play them now. If the D3 servers are turned off in 15 years, then nobody would be able to play the game, and that sucks. Blizzard would probably be nice enough to allow offline mode somehow by then, but think about how many publishers wouldn't do that if they had a similar game. That's my issue with this. Steam games could be cracked to work without Steam if Valve exploded tomorrow, but Diablo 3 would forever be lost if Blizzard suffered the same fate.

But I also agree with CapT and Daub in that this is stupid and we should all probably shut up

Ok. There's no single player mode. Maybe there should be one?

Why is "I'm not buying D3 because it forces me to always be online" any different to "I'm not buying D3 because it has no single player mode"? I'm reasonably sure that 'offline mode' and 'singleplayer mode' can be considered equal when talking about this game.

I mean it's just semantics really, but there's absolutely no reason why the game couldn't feature a single-player, offline mode that isn't multiplayer. Except: DRM.

I'm sorry that you have to react so aggressively to people not wanting to play Diablo because they don't like the way the game works. People are stating their opinions, and you're trying to tell them that their opinion is wrong and they should think the same way that you do. People enjoy games in different ways.

Don't like you making assumptions about what I think, Blitz. At no time did I say anything about the gameplay of the game itself. The issue here is with the precedent that is set by the always-online DRM for singleplayer. People have had the same issues with Ubisoft's always-online crap, and look at how quickly they backed down from that. It's not a good thing for the players, and it's not a good thing for the industry.

There are ways to prevent cheaters in MP games that are better than stopping modding for EVERYBODY and forcing always-online. Besides, now the advantage goes towards the people with the disposable income to spend on virtual crap and it's not even considered "cheating" anymore.

As much as you disagree with the idea, there are plenty of people who want to play the game in "singleplayer mode", just like they played the first two. I don't think those people shouldn't be able to play the game just because the multiplayer servers are down for maintenance.

This isn't really an issue with Diablo, but with the idea behind it. After the success of D3, which only got away with it because the name is so huge, many other games will probably soon follow - and they'll get away with it because D3 already soaked up most of the controversy. In 5-10 years there might be a whole generation of SP games that cannot be played any more because the servers are offline.

Sorry Blitz, but as much as you seem to like Diablo, I have to say that the always online thing is definitely a form of DRM, and a very effective one at that. Unfortunately it's also very restrictive for the users, as error 37 has made all too apparent. When Blizzard shuts down their servers (whenever that will be), Diablo 3 will never be playable again unless they patch out the DRM or they release the server code so people can host their own private servers.

The auction site is a disgusting way to implement microtransactions on procedurally-generated in-game items and generally rip people off, and is a pretty weak excuse for always-online. In the past you could just load up a modding tool and add the weapon stats you wanted, and didn't have to pay a cent. Now with this always-online nonsense, absolutely all modding capabilities featured in the previous games are essentially flushed down the gurgle pipe.

And Diablo is a single player game if you classify it as one, just like the first two games were. In contrast, TF2 is considered to be a multiplayer only game but you can still play that offline with bots if you really wanted to, or alternatively over a LAN.

Not trying to start an argument with you because you've obviously already made up your mind, but you give Activision too much credit. They're certainly pleased that Diablo 3 has such effective DRM, the millions of upset players are of little concern for them.

Not really sure why you think you're unwelcome at TWHL. Maybe it's something from before my time. The Internet has a short memory, if you feel like getting active on TWHL again, please do so!

Agree with Daub's answers. I'd replace it with a full HP system as well since that's essentially what you were describing anyway, except with no recovery options like potions and so on. When I was reading your description I had to keep remembering to replace your use of the word "lives" with "HP" because it made much more sense that way

Nah, virtual drives are just that: software that loads a disk image from the file system. You need to have an OS running before you can use a virtual drive at all.

Hopefully your motherboard isn't so old that it doesn't support USB booting. Find a >1GB USB drive and use this tool to create a bootable USB from your ISO image.

Wow, that looks really cool and is much more polished than I thought it would be.

If you watch the trailer on it (search GameTrailers), you will see a bit of how it'll work.

Man, just shut up Collapse. God damn.

Back to music, please.

NP: Xenoblade - Gaur Plains

That comes off as pretty elitist. Loads of people will have really clever puzzle ideas but don't want to learn Hammer, which isn't very user-friendly and is quite buggy. Due to the format of most Portal 2 maps, a simplified editor to reach this audience makes a lot of sense.

I think that this will allow us to see many more interesting maps for Portal 2 from people who wouldn't otherwise have touched a level editor. Hell, if people enjoy doing it they'll probably "upgrade" to Hammer at some point, and that's awesome. If any tool allows the mapping community to evolve and increase in size, we should be embracing it, not rejecting it.

Valve is doing a really cool thing here, which is introducing more people to mapping and modding in general. Whether the quality is good or bad is irrelevent - we were all bad at it once. People who enjoy making maps and keep doing it will get good with practice.

Striker: SVN just plugs into your Windows Explorer. You work with your files as per normal, and when you're done, you right click the folder and click "commit", which uploads all your changes. Then before you start work next, you right click and select "update" to get any changes that people have made.

I'd still suggest SVN as it is a purpose built tool for version control. Bonus points for code files and VMFs which are plain text files and you get line-by-line diffs. I'd be able to offer you guys an SVN repo if you'd like.

Take your trolling elsewhere please.

Just finished reading through this myself. Pretty interesting stuff.

14GB? Just how long is this video
If you're uploading the uncompressed video straight out of fraps, you shouldn't. Run it through a video editor to reencode it and it'll be much much smaller in size but there shouldn't be any noticeable quality difference.

TWHL's crappy programming strips out the slashes, Urby. Whoever made this thing is an idiot.

Heh, okay, I'll get something up tonight after work

Um. What. I just built my brand new HTPC tonight, using XBMCbuntu
I used an Antec ISK case and a Core i3 CPU (which has the Sandy Bridge GPU). All up, cost me $450 including an SSD boot drive. I'm running mine on external hard drives, though, not a NAS. I was thinking about posting a journal about it tomorrow, now you've stolen my thunder

Couldn't recommend XBMCbuntu more, it's a fantastic piece of software.

Don't encourage him CapT