Oh the drama! The long-awaited OpenGL 3.0 spec has been released today after years of fruitless discussions in the ARB and Khronos Group, and - surprise - it is NOT the fresh and clean re-write that was promised, but instead only a minor release with a few extensions moved into the core feature set, and a few old features marked as depreciated. Nobody but the design commitee exactly knows what justifies the version number jump other then pretending progress.
In the old days of DX3 and DX5 I was a big fan of OpenGL, which was so much cleaner and easier to use compared to D3D. I still remember the horror of porting Urban Assault to DX5 in '97). I despised how Microsoft was completely rewriting the DirectX API every year. In hindsight that was their best decision, DX didn't have to care about old baggage and slowly got better until the excellent DX9, while the once elegant OpenGL was buried under a heap of vendor-specific extensions over the years, resulting in the mess it is today.
Somewhere inside I'm a bit sad to see OpenGL slowly dwindle into oblivion, on the other hand I didn't really care about it for the last 4 or 5 years (I think I stopped caring when I attempted to write an OpenGL renderer for Nebula2 and realized that I had to use a dozen-or-so extensions just to get DX9's core features).
12 Aug 2008
2 Aug 2008
MGS4
*** WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD ***
Alright, first play-through done. Debriefing showed 20 hours playtime. Overall an amazing experience, even if it felt like only one third of it was actual game-play and the rest was watching cutscenes. The game starts really slow and in the first and second chapter I actually had to motivate myself to continue playing. Then with the ending cutscene of chapter 3, the story suddenly becomes interesting and the rest of the game is an amazing ride, only problem is, there are only 2 chapters left at this point.
The presentation of the game during cut-scenes is jaw-dropping. The quality of the characters models, facial animation, motion capture performances is almost unbelievable. The direction and story-telling of the cut-scenes provides better entertainment then most good action movies. Unfortunately, for every one scene of pure awesomeness (basically every scene with Old Snake AND Liquid Ocelot) there two scenes which are outright cheesy and a real pain to endure.
The story wraps up all the events of the previous MGS games and can be a bit hard to follow since from time to time, the story-telling switches into some sort of white-board-mode and floods the player with details (which provide interesting background information but would IMHO be better if told through codec conversations). The other problem is, that the back-story of EVERY F*CKING PERSON which EVER showed up in ANY MGS game is brought to its end, turning parts of the story into a gigantic soap-opera. I think 4 or 5 hours of the cutscenes could have been removed and I wouldn't have missed a thing.
In its core, MGS4 tells the story of 2 old men, Solid Snake (the hero from MGS1, and clone of Naked Snake from MGS3), who's suffering from accelerated aging programmed into his genes (as far as I understood that part of the story), and Liquid Ocelot, a chimera of Liquid Snake and Revolver Ocelot. Snake is portraied as a cynical, pragmatic asshole, which really makes him a likeable protagonist. But the real hero of the game (to me) is Ocelot, he's an old man, just as Snake, but has aged naturally, and he (or better his Liquid Snake part) has all the energy and vision left which Snake seems to have lost long ago. In the end it's all about handing the world over to the next generation (shame that thist next generation mainly consists of whiners and wimps).
On to game-play: This is the disappointing part IMHO, which is a real shame since MGS4 is still considered a game, not a movie. The core sneaking elements are the same as in MGS2 and MGS3, which is of course a good thing. You can still hide in lockers or under cardboard boxes, shake knocked-out or dead enemies to loot them, and the camouflage element from MGS3 is also there, but now in its science-fiction version as the octocamo suit (basically, adaptive optical and infrared camouflage).
The survival elements from MGS3 have been removed, and replaced with shooter gameplay, and that's where I still have my biggest problem with because a sneaking element has been removed in favour of an action-oriented gameplay element. I'm a big shooter fan so that wouldn't be much of a problem for me IF PROPERLY IMPLEMENTED. Problem is, the shooting stuff is only very basic and for a shooter, the controls feel extremely awkward. If gun handling would only be half as good as in good tactical shooters like Rainbow Six Vegas I would be sold, but unfortunetaly it's far from it. Especially cover and firing from cover have been evolved dramatically since the times of MGS2 and MGS3, but in MGS4, firing from cover is still as awkward as in these old games. Also, the big number of guns offered to the player is kinda useless. There's no real reason to choose a submachine gun over an assault rifle. A sniper rifle is just as easy to use close-range as any other gun. An assault rifle with an optical sight is just as good as a sniper rifle over long range, because the levels are relatively small anyway.
I wish the developers would have put all the work which has gone into the shooters aspects into new sneaking elements instead. Compared to the last Splinter Cell, the game-play of MGS has been falling behind. Look at all the Bond-gadgets Sam Fisher has at its disposal, or all the ways Fisher can approach a door to investigate what's behind it before sneaking into a room... (man, speaking of Splinter Cell - I think I need to re-play Double Agent soon...).
But even if I don't particularly like the direction MGS has taken, it's still truly exceptional entertainment and one of the best games of the current console generation. And I think it was the right decision to put Snake to rest and with him the MGS series, since at least I am ready for some fresh wind in the sneaking genre (although it seems there will be lots of trial-and-error ahead as the S.C.Conviction and Assassins Creed "debacles" show).
Alright, first play-through done. Debriefing showed 20 hours playtime. Overall an amazing experience, even if it felt like only one third of it was actual game-play and the rest was watching cutscenes. The game starts really slow and in the first and second chapter I actually had to motivate myself to continue playing. Then with the ending cutscene of chapter 3, the story suddenly becomes interesting and the rest of the game is an amazing ride, only problem is, there are only 2 chapters left at this point.
The presentation of the game during cut-scenes is jaw-dropping. The quality of the characters models, facial animation, motion capture performances is almost unbelievable. The direction and story-telling of the cut-scenes provides better entertainment then most good action movies. Unfortunately, for every one scene of pure awesomeness (basically every scene with Old Snake AND Liquid Ocelot) there two scenes which are outright cheesy and a real pain to endure.
The story wraps up all the events of the previous MGS games and can be a bit hard to follow since from time to time, the story-telling switches into some sort of white-board-mode and floods the player with details (which provide interesting background information but would IMHO be better if told through codec conversations). The other problem is, that the back-story of EVERY F*CKING PERSON which EVER showed up in ANY MGS game is brought to its end, turning parts of the story into a gigantic soap-opera. I think 4 or 5 hours of the cutscenes could have been removed and I wouldn't have missed a thing.
In its core, MGS4 tells the story of 2 old men, Solid Snake (the hero from MGS1, and clone of Naked Snake from MGS3), who's suffering from accelerated aging programmed into his genes (as far as I understood that part of the story), and Liquid Ocelot, a chimera of Liquid Snake and Revolver Ocelot. Snake is portraied as a cynical, pragmatic asshole, which really makes him a likeable protagonist. But the real hero of the game (to me) is Ocelot, he's an old man, just as Snake, but has aged naturally, and he (or better his Liquid Snake part) has all the energy and vision left which Snake seems to have lost long ago. In the end it's all about handing the world over to the next generation (shame that thist next generation mainly consists of whiners and wimps).
On to game-play: This is the disappointing part IMHO, which is a real shame since MGS4 is still considered a game, not a movie. The core sneaking elements are the same as in MGS2 and MGS3, which is of course a good thing. You can still hide in lockers or under cardboard boxes, shake knocked-out or dead enemies to loot them, and the camouflage element from MGS3 is also there, but now in its science-fiction version as the octocamo suit (basically, adaptive optical and infrared camouflage).
The survival elements from MGS3 have been removed, and replaced with shooter gameplay, and that's where I still have my biggest problem with because a sneaking element has been removed in favour of an action-oriented gameplay element. I'm a big shooter fan so that wouldn't be much of a problem for me IF PROPERLY IMPLEMENTED. Problem is, the shooting stuff is only very basic and for a shooter, the controls feel extremely awkward. If gun handling would only be half as good as in good tactical shooters like Rainbow Six Vegas I would be sold, but unfortunetaly it's far from it. Especially cover and firing from cover have been evolved dramatically since the times of MGS2 and MGS3, but in MGS4, firing from cover is still as awkward as in these old games. Also, the big number of guns offered to the player is kinda useless. There's no real reason to choose a submachine gun over an assault rifle. A sniper rifle is just as easy to use close-range as any other gun. An assault rifle with an optical sight is just as good as a sniper rifle over long range, because the levels are relatively small anyway.
I wish the developers would have put all the work which has gone into the shooters aspects into new sneaking elements instead. Compared to the last Splinter Cell, the game-play of MGS has been falling behind. Look at all the Bond-gadgets Sam Fisher has at its disposal, or all the ways Fisher can approach a door to investigate what's behind it before sneaking into a room... (man, speaking of Splinter Cell - I think I need to re-play Double Agent soon...).
But even if I don't particularly like the direction MGS has taken, it's still truly exceptional entertainment and one of the best games of the current console generation. And I think it was the right decision to put Snake to rest and with him the MGS series, since at least I am ready for some fresh wind in the sneaking genre (although it seems there will be lots of trial-and-error ahead as the S.C.Conviction and Assassins Creed "debacles" show).
29 Jul 2008
PSN hmm...
I have removed the PSN "Portable ID" on the left side. Seems like it's just a static display for my user name and avatar picture doh... And I can't believe that Sony doesn't let me download (buy even!) additional gamer pictures from PSN (or I simply didn't find them? even after the re-design it isn't exactly easy to find stuff on the PSN shop, even though there's not THAT much stuff there). I'd really love to have an MGS4 gamer pic. It's all those little "un-important" things which make me appreciate the online-integration of the 360 (on the other hand, if I had gone straight from the PS2 to the PS3 I probably wouldn't even care, but the 360 really has spoiled me). Sony really needs to get all this simple and obvious stuff fixed first instead of wasting their time and resources on Home IMHO.
25 Jul 2008
Kept ya waiting huh?
Sooo I finally bought a PS3 yesterday. MGS4 did it (I basically bought a PS2 just for MGS3, so this was inevitable). My local GameStop was sold out completely (the guy there said he won't get any new PS3's until the new 80GB model comes out end of August). MediaMarkt still had one MGS4 bundle left so I took this one.
First impressions:
First impressions:
- OMG its huge! Ok, power supply is integrated, but the 360 looks tiny compared to this thing.
- I was actually planning to wait for the white PS3 (black entertainment devices are plain ugly IMHO) but it looks like it will never arrive in Europe.
- System and WLAN setup was fast and flawless.
- Surprisingly, picture quality is worse on my TV then my 360. I have an 2 year old 32" LCD Sony Bravia, and have the PS3 connected through HDMI. The 360 is connected through VGA. There's a lot of edge aliasing going on in the PS3 picture. I suspect that's because the VGA connection runs at the native display resolution (1280x768 or so), while the 720p HDMI connection has a non-native display resolution so that the TV's scaler kicks in. Basically looks the same like when I had connected the 360 through component. Still I would think that connecting one Sony device to another Sony device through a digital connection would generate a better picture.
- During a game, the TV signal is lost from time to time (maybe once per hour for about 2 seconds). WTF? I've read about this in forums but thought this would only happen with some obscure TV's. Again this is a Sony TV and a Sony console. This definitely didn't happen when I had my 360 running through HDMI.
- The XMB looks slick and feels much more responsive compared to the 360's dashboard.
- Way too many system settings... half of which don't interest me at all (mouse sensitivity???)
- The system didn't notify me that a software update is available. How is a typical user supposed to notice that he isn't uptodate?
- Not impressed by the web browser, feels terribly slow and unusuable without a mouse...
- Downloading the new firmware took FOREVER (20 minutes or so?), and displayed another progress bar for installation which took another couple of minutes. I don't remember waiting for more then 3 minutes for a system update on the 360...
- MGS4 starts: ugh more installation... this isn't funny.
- Start screen with all those little flowers looks REALLY messy on my TV...
- Ok, WTF is this David Hayter interview shit before starting a new game?
- Hmm, ingame graphics isn't quite as impressive as I remember from the trailers...
- Snake's character model looks really great though.
- Adaptive camo is nice.
- 2 hours later...
- MGS4 doesn't know whether it want's to be a shooter or a sneaker... definitely too much emphasis on guns and shooting, which would be fine with me if shooter controls wouldn't be horribly broken, getting out of that abandoned hotel with the hot chick's team was an extremely frustrating experience
- story didn't exactly grab me so far... cutscenes are cringe-worthy when they try to be funny
22 Jul 2008
Ninja Gaiden DS
Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword for the Nintendo DS is finally available in Germany (Dragon Sword - DS - gettit?). How the game is controlled using the stylus is astonishing, breathtaking, eye-opening, dare I say: revolutionary.
They nailed the controls, plain and simple. Just as the 2 Xbox games, the DS version is all about rythm, but instead of hitting button combos, playing NG DS is more like painting a picture with a brush. A few well-placed "brush strokes" here and there, a few taps over there, and another group of Spider Clan ninjas are history. Something complex like an Izuna Drop is simply done by a down-up-up-stroke over the enemy (the first down-stroke is a more-or-less normal sword attack, the first up-stroke launches the enemy into the air, and the second upstroke has Ryu jump into the air, grab the enemy and whirl it into the ground.
The graphics are beautiful for what the DS can do. The backgrounds are 2D bitmaps, but give a good 3D-ish illusion since the 3D characters can move into the screen with the correct perspective projection.
Best DS game in a while, shame that it got so little attention from the DS crowd.
They nailed the controls, plain and simple. Just as the 2 Xbox games, the DS version is all about rythm, but instead of hitting button combos, playing NG DS is more like painting a picture with a brush. A few well-placed "brush strokes" here and there, a few taps over there, and another group of Spider Clan ninjas are history. Something complex like an Izuna Drop is simply done by a down-up-up-stroke over the enemy (the first down-stroke is a more-or-less normal sword attack, the first up-stroke launches the enemy into the air, and the second upstroke has Ryu jump into the air, grab the enemy and whirl it into the ground.
The graphics are beautiful for what the DS can do. The backgrounds are 2D bitmaps, but give a good 3D-ish illusion since the 3D characters can move into the screen with the correct perspective projection.
Best DS game in a while, shame that it got so little attention from the DS crowd.
20 Jul 2008
10 Years After
Andreas, an old friend of mine, noticed that Urban Assault went Gold (or RTM - Release To Manufacture as it was called at Microsoft at that time) on July 13th 1998, almost exactly 10 years before Drakensang went Gold (which was at the 10th of July 2008). He even sent me the original anouncement mail I sent back to Germany. Andreas and I had been "stationed" over at Seattle at that time to apply the final fixes and polish to UA, since flying the programmers over to NA was probably more convenient in 1998 then FTP'ing complete daily game builds over ISDN.
Apart from the usual post-project cleanup stuff I can now start to work on new and exciting technology stuff again, improving our tool-chain, continue working on Nebula3, and dust off those Wii and 360 devkits which probably feel a bit neglected due to our focus on finishing Drakensang.
We're also a licensed PS3-developer now, a N3 port hasn't started yet but from looking through the SDK docs the programming environment doesn't seem to be too bad. The underlying philosophy or "style" is a bit different then the 360 SDK (just like for instance Win32 has a different style then Unix). But all in all the PS3 SDK looks complete and actually quite usable. It's also quite obvious from looking through the release note history that the PS3 SDK has improved a lot since the PS3 launch. I think it will be relatively easy to get "something" up and running on the PS3, squeezing the last bit of performance out of the bitch however will be something completely different I'm sure ;)
The Dead Rising port to the Wii might be the most interesting news I took out of E3. It made me play the 360 version again, and this is one of those game which get better and better over time.
I totally underestimated the importance of the books one can find in the different book stores. In the past I ignored them because they take up valuable inventory slots. But what they actually do is they make every single slot much more valuable. For instance there is a book which triples the time edged weapons can be used until they break, and another which triples the usage time of items from home-improvement-stores. And the effects actually stack. For instance the mini-chainsaws which are unlocked after killing the clown-psycho (pretty much the most powerful melee weapons in the game) fall under both categories!
The Wii port of Dead Rising makes immediate sense with all the special attacks or shaking off zombies for instance. These should translate very well to waggle. I'm concerned though about the number of zombies. It's just not Dead Rising without hundreds of zombies on screen. The first batch of Wii screens have a suspicious lack of zombies in them...
Apart from the usual post-project cleanup stuff I can now start to work on new and exciting technology stuff again, improving our tool-chain, continue working on Nebula3, and dust off those Wii and 360 devkits which probably feel a bit neglected due to our focus on finishing Drakensang.
We're also a licensed PS3-developer now, a N3 port hasn't started yet but from looking through the SDK docs the programming environment doesn't seem to be too bad. The underlying philosophy or "style" is a bit different then the 360 SDK (just like for instance Win32 has a different style then Unix). But all in all the PS3 SDK looks complete and actually quite usable. It's also quite obvious from looking through the release note history that the PS3 SDK has improved a lot since the PS3 launch. I think it will be relatively easy to get "something" up and running on the PS3, squeezing the last bit of performance out of the bitch however will be something completely different I'm sure ;)
The Dead Rising port to the Wii might be the most interesting news I took out of E3. It made me play the 360 version again, and this is one of those game which get better and better over time.
I totally underestimated the importance of the books one can find in the different book stores. In the past I ignored them because they take up valuable inventory slots. But what they actually do is they make every single slot much more valuable. For instance there is a book which triples the time edged weapons can be used until they break, and another which triples the usage time of items from home-improvement-stores. And the effects actually stack. For instance the mini-chainsaws which are unlocked after killing the clown-psycho (pretty much the most powerful melee weapons in the game) fall under both categories!
The Wii port of Dead Rising makes immediate sense with all the special attacks or shaking off zombies for instance. These should translate very well to waggle. I'm concerned though about the number of zombies. It's just not Dead Rising without hundreds of zombies on screen. The first batch of Wii screens have a suspicious lack of zombies in them...
27 Jun 2008
Status Update
We're currently in release candidate mode for Drakensang which basically means we're more or less on standby until QA hits the alarm button because they found a show-stopper bug. The good thing is that I can spend most of my time at work actually playing the game from start to finish. Obviously I'm biased, but a truly wonderful game it has become. Of the games I've been involved with in my life, Drakensang is probably the one I am most proud of.
After Drakensang has gone gold I think I can spend more time with Nebula3 and the blog again.
In stark contrast to Drakensang I've spent the last couple of evenings at home mainly with Ninja Gaiden 2. I did a normal play-through on Path Of The Warrior, one Dragon Sword weapon run on Acolyte (which really was too easy), and am currently half-way through a Lunar Staff weapon run on Warrior with many many play-throughs to follow.
Coming straight from Ninja Gaiden Black I had some trouble to adapt to the new style of the game. In the original, fights are against 3 or 4 enemies at once. In NG2 a typical fight is against 10..15 enemies at once. The combo and hit-recovery timing is a bit different in NG2, which made the control feel sluggish to me at the beginning. Also, the polishing grade couldn't be more different. NGB was probably one of the most polished games in history, while the lack of polish in NG2 is quite apparent unfortunately (yes, the camera does indeed have some issues, I had 2 freezes so far, and the game goes into some sort of slow-motion-mode in heavy fighting situations).
But despite these flaws NG2 still trumps any other fighting game I have played so far because the rest is so f*cking great. The core game mechanics are so extremely carefully tuned (and fine-tuned compared to NGB) that the laughable story and less-then-stellar boss-fights are simply not that important. NG2 shines where the player spends the most time with: fighting hordes of ninjas and monsters. The actual combat is so intense and incredibly satisfying that I want to start a new game immediately after finishing the last. There is one special moment in the game involving a staircase and maybe 100 or 200 ninjas which is simply jaw-dropping (and is probably my most favourite gaming moment of all time).
If there ever was a flawed diamond among games, it is Ninja Gaiden 2. Even with its flaws it is a really exceptional game, but if Itagaki and his team of ronin find a way to improve the game as they did with Ninja Gaiden Black the result would be ultimate perfection.
After Drakensang has gone gold I think I can spend more time with Nebula3 and the blog again.
In stark contrast to Drakensang I've spent the last couple of evenings at home mainly with Ninja Gaiden 2. I did a normal play-through on Path Of The Warrior, one Dragon Sword weapon run on Acolyte (which really was too easy), and am currently half-way through a Lunar Staff weapon run on Warrior with many many play-throughs to follow.
Coming straight from Ninja Gaiden Black I had some trouble to adapt to the new style of the game. In the original, fights are against 3 or 4 enemies at once. In NG2 a typical fight is against 10..15 enemies at once. The combo and hit-recovery timing is a bit different in NG2, which made the control feel sluggish to me at the beginning. Also, the polishing grade couldn't be more different. NGB was probably one of the most polished games in history, while the lack of polish in NG2 is quite apparent unfortunately (yes, the camera does indeed have some issues, I had 2 freezes so far, and the game goes into some sort of slow-motion-mode in heavy fighting situations).
But despite these flaws NG2 still trumps any other fighting game I have played so far because the rest is so f*cking great. The core game mechanics are so extremely carefully tuned (and fine-tuned compared to NGB) that the laughable story and less-then-stellar boss-fights are simply not that important. NG2 shines where the player spends the most time with: fighting hordes of ninjas and monsters. The actual combat is so intense and incredibly satisfying that I want to start a new game immediately after finishing the last. There is one special moment in the game involving a staircase and maybe 100 or 200 ninjas which is simply jaw-dropping (and is probably my most favourite gaming moment of all time).
If there ever was a flawed diamond among games, it is Ninja Gaiden 2. Even with its flaws it is a really exceptional game, but if Itagaki and his team of ronin find a way to improve the game as they did with Ninja Gaiden Black the result would be ultimate perfection.
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