Monday, October 3, 2011

Battlefield 3(BETA) - Headshot Bug/Glitch

NOTE: PLEASE KEEP IM MIND THAT THIS VIDEO IS TAKEN FROM BATTLEFIELD 3 BETA TESTING. EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT LAUNCH.

Short video of the know headshot bug/glitch in battlefield 3 beta.



I would suggest watching the video in 720p to better see the frames.

HD Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo9hIVmIc7o

Finished my intro video


Here is the Link for the higher quality version :)

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Why The Giants Are NOT Needed

This is taken from a post Erathor made on September 26th over at VTW Productions forums. 


"I've watched and listened to several opinions over the last year dealing with Indie vs. Big Guy in a battle for the hobby. Having worked in both environments I have thought quite a bit about the claims that going Big destroys innovation. So I thought I'd break down the key points in a rather large post:

Process: --Bigs / ++Indie
Process gets in the way of so much innovation in a Big environment. The business as a whole is so afraid to lose anything, they aren't willing to risk new ideas. The rewards for doing so are usually at a minimum as well and the establishment tends to tout their credentials all day and ignore any Big ideas.

Investment: +++Bigs, --Indie
When it comes to new game engines, IDEs, pushing other industries and cross-business relationships the Bigs do so much that some of their tools seep into Indie developer toolkits. Without this investment, 3rd party tools would be crap, free evaluation supplies would dry up, and cross business skill sets would cost a premium. All of the innovation from the Bigs comes from these skills/tools overflowing into the masses.

Quality Assurance: +Bigs, --Indie
Because of the process you have that limits innovation above, the Bigs have a known quantity at launch. Whatever their process is, it puts plenty of hands/eyes on product before it goes public. It also spawns 3rd party QA methods that are purchasable by smaller houses for cheaper.

Exposure/Influence: ++Bigs, +Indie
Sure popular != good, but popular good or bad creates influence. The Bigs can market, implement and succeed/fail on a large scale. This influence allows features to be cherry picked to the niche's liking later. "You know I really liked X, but hated Y". Thus the Indie title is born. It goes both ways of course, the Indie products influence the Bigs as well and may get swallowed up at some point.



Maybe you hate the Big development houses and you'll never buy from them again. Maybe you feel like nothing new is coming out of these houses. At this point in my career, I'm not sure I'd pick one over the other at all. There is quite a bit of innovation coming from both though. If you have the chance, I'd try working in both environments as well."


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My replay was as follows:


I dont hate "big" gaming companies. I hate some of the devs and people who run them. Activision is only as good or bad as the CEO wants it to be. The only person or persons we should blame is the ones OKing all the games being created. 

Which is why Bioware is looked at as one of the few "good" game developers still out there. Now you might not like big story driven games but that does not change the fact that they make damn good games. 

Same can be said for COD or WoW. I personally find no enjoyment out of games that continue to bring you the same content over and over, like Nintendo's mario party, but whos to say there are not people who think COD is the best thing ever. Its not but I know people who think so. 


We do not NEED big company's to keep the gaming industry alive. Does it help to have them? Yes. Do they make good games...from my point of view not so much. They seem to think that making the same game with cooler titles works. Granted I have not bought a new game sense portal 2. Why? Simple none of the games have made me go "holy crap I MUST HAVE THAT!". I find my self enjoying my N64 and Atari more then all the new released games. The reason, a lot of the older games are more inventive and challenging then a lot of the new titles out right now.


I think this is mainly due to gaming heading toward a more "casual" style of play. Ten years ago you would never have found a 70 year old grandma playing bowling with her grand kids. Thanks to Nintendo's Wii that is now possible. Sure the system is not "hardcore" but it allows a more larger audience of people to become gamers. 




There are three main types of gamers:
Social
Casual
Competitive


The "social" gamer is someone who plays only when they have company over or are at someone house/event and they are asked to join in a game. Their hope in joining is to just have a fun with the group and nothing more. They are being social and making friends though a social experience. 

The "casual" gamer are the people who play facebook games, Mario Kart with their kids, and buy the single player games to escape work. Maybe they even buy some of the multi-player games to only play when they are with friends.

The "competitive" gamer are the ones who play the game to get better, talk about it with friends, share better ways to beat a level, even compete to make money or just brag to their friends that they were in one.


Now there are so many different types of gamers out there but this is how i look at the gaming community. All of us have different ideas as to games. It is not the "big companies" who are needed. It is the gamer them'selves that drive the industry to what it is, what it is not, and what it will become.


Saturday, September 24, 2011

Star Wars: The Old Republic Release date!!!!


BioWare and LucasArts are pleased to announce that Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will launch on December 20, 2011 in North America and on December 22, 2011 in the European Launch Territories! The announcement was first made by BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk during their keynote address at the 2011 Eurogamer Expo in London, England. Speaking to a packed room of press and fans alike, Dr. Muzyka acknowledged the weight of the moment and the patience of the fans.
“This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release.”
Each copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic will come with 30 days of subscription time, after which you have the option to continue playing with one of the following monthly subscription fees:
  • 1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
  • 3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
  • 6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)

Thursday, September 22, 2011

SWTOR vs MMO's

With this being my first post I am going to say hi explain the blog then get into the "meat" of this topic. This blog is a gaming blog, I know another one. The blog will cover gaming news, my thoughts on said news, my weekly videos posted to youtube, and anything else I feel is relevant to talk about.


-Star Wars: The Old Republic vs MMO's-


I have the honor of being in beta for swtor for a while now. I am not allowed to talk about the game content it self due to the NDA but I can tell you that this game has and will change MMO's for ever. Everything from the graphics to the sound track is almost perfect. The voice acting is what makes this game light-years ahead of all others. Lets break the game down...shall we?


-User Interface-
Simple, clean, easy to read. This is the perfect UI for those of you who do not like all the fancy shmacy(if that is a real word) add-ons. My only honest complaint with this game so far is the buff and de-buff timers. They are very small and hard to see. If and once they fix that it will be almost perfect.

Now I know some of you are going, "WTF...were is the cool stuff for us custom UI players!" I would agree with you 100% for I am one of those players. My WoW UI has 80+ add-ons and that is just for one class. I am hoping that bioware adds movable UI frames, or some more options for the UI. For now we do not know if there are any plans but knowing how tight bioware is with their players I am sure that they will add something.

Vs other MMO's
    Sadly they all have the same UI, action bars at the bottom and all the avatars to the left. Why this is I have no idea. I guess they think that it is cool to be like everyone else. Rift was one of the first to add heavy UI customization to its game.


-Game Play-
This is were both swtor and the other MMO's have a common style, which is the hotkey style of combat. In where you click on a target and press a combination of keys to cast spells, set your enemies on fire, and even vanish from sight.

This however is not a bad thing, I like the hotkey style, sure games like guild wars 2 are trying for a more "realistic" style of combat but it is much harder for a dad with 5 kids to sit down and learn the ropes of dodge every 5 seconds, while casting a spell, while remembering you only have so much mana. That just does not work for most people. I will say that swtor game play is simple and still very ground breaking. Again I am not allowed to talk about anything other then how awesome this game is.

I will say this. The game play of swtor is fluid, animations are perfect, and you get the feeling that you are fighting right along side your character.

vs other MMO's
    Guild Wars 2 will blow swtors gameplay and combat style out of the water. I am happy for that, I like seeing games do something different, rather then taking the easy road and just trying to be the next world of warcraft.



-Sound-
This is a bioware game, the sounds are almost to near perfection. For those of you wondering yes I am in love with bioware and the truly amazing games they make. They don't always hit the nail on the head(dragon age 2) but they worked fast to fix the issues and balances that the community wanted.

Getting back on track here. The sounds are what are would expect from the star wars universe. Lots of synthesis sounds, lasers, really weird noise from animals that are not real for a good reason. For a MMO it could be a little more.....big sounding but I think they are trying to go for simple and awesome, rather then lets spend to much time on one area.

vs other MMO's
      The only other mmo that I can really say gives SWTOR a run for its money is WoW. I know, I know go figure but hear me out. Blizzard has had some of the most successful games in history, next to Nintendo. They always seem to take extra time to make sure that every sound is different and not the same sound reused, pitched changes, or it is masked in echos and re-verb.



-Character Customization-
For a bioware game it needs a lot of work. There are very limited hair styles, the body types are a little to silly for some of the classes. This is the only issue I have with swtor so far. Now granted there is a lot of good features you can change for your character. The races you can pick are good, and the amount of detail in each race is outstanding. This is something I see bioware changing either a little after the game goes live or in a content patch.

vs other MMO's
      Lord of the Rings online wins this one. There are 22+ different hair style alone for each race and there are 4 races. I would like to see more games use this level of options for MMO's. Why you might ask? Having your character look just the way you want it is a big part of the MMO experience.



-Player vs Player(PvP)-
This is another area where swtor makes all other pvp mmos look silly. Take huttball for example. It is a capture the flag type of game play. The only difference is that there is a live color commentator during the whole game. There are traps and hazards all over the map and the amount of team work needed is very high. Being a pvp vet my self I loved the ideas and features that bioware has put into this game. What i like about pvp in swtor the most is that tanks.....TANK. They have abilities that soak up damage, and the taunts....can be used on other players.

vs other MMO's
     Lets face it almost every mmo has the same pvp, they try and copy WoW. Most of the balance is terrible and no one plays the healer. I have yet to see any other mmo in where tanks are useful. Honestly after playing swtor pvp...all other mmos pvp seems slow and boring.



-Questing-
This is swtors bread and butter if you will. The reason this game is changing the way all other mmos is this reason. The voice acting, the amount of group quests, random "heroic" quests. Everything is near perfect. Now you can get overwhelmed with side quests but I do not think that is a bad thing. The amount of quests for each class is a perfect balance, you can solo with out ever having to group with anyone(which makes the game less enjoyable I might add). Grouping with people is one of the features that bioware has improved the most out of any mmo.

If you have played Rift then you know what random events are. There are no such events in swtor BUT the "heroic" quests can be repeated daily. This is at level 10 and supply you with a good amount of exp as well as understanding how to work as a group. If you are not using crowd control then you or your group are looking for a butt kicking.

vs other MMO's
      Honestly.....they all just fail. None of them have anything near what swtor is offering. Sure some of them have the dailies, group quests, and maybe a sound bit or two, but none of them can even come close to any part/parts of questing in swtor.


Well that about wraps up my first post. Please comment below and dont forget to check out all my vods over @ RK9Gaming