LoTekK

It doesn't take millions to make a game (just look at the thriving indie game development scene). It takes millions to make a game that the big publishers won't shove out the door with a 10-foot pole. The big boys like EA, Ubisoft, etc, are all looking for the surefire hits. To them, that means sequels to successful games, milking of successful franchises, movie tie-ins, all of that crap. It also means games with qualities they feel will appeal to the masses. To the big boys, that means tons of gee-whiz graphical doodads, lots and lots of stupid bullet points, and dumbed-down gameplay. The art assets and graphics code alone have ensured skyrocketing schedule requirements and budgets. And then of course there's the advertising costs. Game trailers at the cinema, TV spots, 6-page magazine ads, celebrity endorsements, and all manner ofother expensive and ultimately stupid bullshit. Of course, the truly stupid thing to me, is that with all the money they pour into the development of their surefire hits, how many of them do you think actually break even? How many copies do you need to sell to break even on a game that cost US$20 million to develop? How many to break even on an indie title that cost US$20 thousand? But the real kicker: how much of the money do you think the developers actually see?

Illusion Softworks developed Hidden & Dangerous as well as its sequel and associated expansion packs for both. They also developed Mafia, in addition to working closely with Pterodon on Vietcong and its sequel.

Haven't seen much on this one in some time. Looks like it's coming along nicely. I've been fairly happy with IS' stuff (barring the utter mod-unfriendliness), and really, even if it is a "copy", so to speak, is that necessarily a bad thing? I'd like to see what IS does with this. Higher rez pics on tiscali: http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img1.jpg http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img2.jpg http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img3.jpg http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img4.jpg http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img5.jpg http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img6.jpg http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img7.jpg http://www.games.tiscali.cz/images/enemyinsight/img8.jpg

That sounds odd, to say the least. Your display driver/hardware will still have to convert a 4-vert plane into two tris to display. Which is basically why I was asking if the 5000 count was tris or quads.

Well sure, there's lodding and whatnot, and then there's excessive. For comparison, the troopers in HL2 averaged around 2-3k tris (the main character models were a fair bit higher at 5-7k, iirc, but there was exactly one of each, and a lot of that went into the facial mesh to account for the blendshapes). 5k polies (once again, is that the tri-count, or quad count?) just seems pretty excessive to me. Looking at the helmet pics up on ofp.info, it just seems to me like you could cut the tri-count by a significant bit without losing any perceived detail, even from relatively close up. But, that's just my two cents.

Um. Shouldn't this go in the main sticky thread? Oh, and while the tank texture (which is, I would assume, quite preliminary) isn't ultra-detailed, I would bow to you if you could get the details that are there into a 128^2 texture.

I would think (and of course could be wrong) that CM owns the trademark "Operation Flashpoint", but BI owns the associated IP.

Uh. Have you maybe not noticed the difference in draw distance?

Uh, 5000 polys (is that tris or quads?) is a bit excessive for a footsoldier, no? Especially in this engine? Unless you plan on having only a couple onscreen at a time?

AAAAARGH! I can't make heads or tails of these. I feels stupid.

Nice press release. The first shot in particular made my jaw drop. The new terrain looks ace. Llauma: Everyone compares it to DNF because it seems to have become the in vogue thing to do over recent years. People forget that software (of any sort) takes time to develop, test, develop, test, optimize, test, develop, test, optimize... etc. It's the whole "me" syndrome. "OMFG delay! WTFBBQ! Me! Me! Me!!1one!" And then, as you pointed out in a prior post, they complain when the laundry list of features they're asking to be implemented is either missing or broken. Human nature, I guess. Or bandwagon syndrome.

List of mirrors on Blues News Got a good hour or so of play so far. Pretty good stuff all in, especially if you enjoyed Silent Storm and Sentinels. Some of the issues from its predecessors remain, but a lot seems to have improved. I think the biggest change is with the AI. They're a little better at flushing you out of cover, flanking you, and just plain being a pain. They also no longer fall for the old trick of funneling them one by one through a chokepoint. Now they regroup, and wait for you if there's only one way in or out. Some pretty decently fleshed out dialogue and backstory, too. And it's still as much fun as ever to blow shit up.

Somehow I don't think posting in french is going to make release day come any sooner. And I certainly doubt it'll be within the next couple days, if I'm reading correctly (my french is a little rusty).

Isn't this exactly why CAVS was started?

Yeah, I've seen a couple things on recognizing the state of custom anims, but nothing on hard-coded anims. I'll try and get in touch with the I44 guys and see how that pans out. Thanks for the heads up.

Does anyone know if it's possible to poll the current animation being played on a unit? Kind of like how with some custom units like BAS or LSR Delta/Rangers you can check if the goggles are up, down, or currently animating. Is it possible in some similar manner to find out if the unit is currently playing the running animation, for example?

But just noticed for the first time that this results in an empty vehicle that no one can get into. Why not just kill them, then? That way if the player happens to come across one of the downed birds, they won't encounter a ghost plane. <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">"_x setdammage 1" forEach (crew ThePlane)

Psst. Try playing the game with terrain detail on at least "Normal". Compare the following: Very low (50m per terrain square): Normal (12.5m per square): Even more cover at High (6.25m) and Very High (3.125m), but memory and overall performance requirements can also be prohibitive for gameplay. Well, so are the maps.

FEAR is definitely a fun one. Haven't had this much fun in CQB firefights in a long while. The melee moves that you can execute add a good bit of excitement to the combat as well. While there are only effectively three different melee moves, it's just cool when you find yourself with an empty magazine and there's a guy right in front of you. Slowmo, jump, scissor kick! The pacing is really well done, as well. The game managed to surprise me a lot simply because with all the combat, you almost forget it's also part horror. Then they throw some shit at you. It's nicely paced, and yes, as Shadow mentioned, the overuse of particle effects is fantastic. If you've watched "Equilibrium", you'll have an idea of what to expect from the bullet hits. Word of warning to those with integrated Intel GPUs, though. It's playable if you get your settings right, but there are spots where it will unavoidably CTD (probably some DX call incompatibility or something).

Hey, this looks familiar. <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">if ({alive _x} count units reinf7 > 0) then {goto "reinf"} else {goto "done"} Should work

Yeah, it's pretty much the same as the bottom-right pic. There's also some "militarized" versions in the pbo. Those are fun.

Ah, the ultralite trike. Good stuff. PSC made some really fun addons.

Actually I forgot to mention the fact that my observations included nighttime live firing. But yes, part of why we typically don't see much muzzle flash compared to photos is similar to what Bal said. What flash there is lasts for such a short time, it's difficult for our brains to perceive, compared to cameras with high-speed film, where you can extract the appropriate frame(s) later.

Okay, I just found Pandora thanks to this thread, and it's frigging amazing. Listening to some Placebo now. For music choice, it all depends on my mood, but I'll name a few. In Flames (their earlier stuff, up to around Whoracle) Theatre of Tragedy Lacuna Coil Crematory Within Temptation Nightwish ...basically a lot of melodic death Franz Ferdinand Greenday Chris Cornell Audioslave Soundgarden Cardigans Liquid Tension Experiment (1 & 2) Apocalyptica Thanks again for the Pandora point out.

The weapons that I've fired or seen fired in the army had very little flash, though I've admittedly never fired any short-barreled longarms. I've also never had a weapon fired in my general direction, thankfully. Heck, even the FN MAG barely caused a flash. At best we'd see some hanging dust and dirt particles get lit up a little, but that was about it. No big blast of flame or anything. Blanks, on the other hand. Now those give off a very noticeable muzzle blast visible even in direct overhead sunlight, and very much lights up a room when firing indoors.