Hier on 29/10/2008 at 17:26
Good grief. The coloured road signs were added specifically as a non-intrusive way to guide the player to his objective without constantly relying on map-checking. We're not talking about a big cartoon arrow on the screen, or a compass marker or some other HUD element. They made a subtle change to the in-world items to keep you on track. It's the most innocuous thing in the world, and easily ignored if you don't like it. I hope every open-world game copies this idea. I find it amazing anyone would complain about it.
Mind you, people complained about loot glint, so clearly they derive enjoyment from finding fault in very good design decisions.
The_Raven on 29/10/2008 at 18:11
I've never played Thief: DS, so I can't really offer my own opinion on the matter, but loot glint sounds like a pretty poor design decision. I'm sorta surprised that someone here sorta likes it since it is usually universally panned.
Hier on 29/10/2008 at 18:46
Well if you thought the best part of Thief was picking up random household objects to see which the game considered valuable and which didn't, then loot glint would probably annoy you. If you thought that activity was stupid, the loot glint was quite nice.
It's just a minor touch to reduce the aggravation while preserving the overall atmosphere. I guess there are people that like annoyances and those that don't. If you enjoyed trying to guess which wineglasses were "loot" and which weren't, or if you enjoy having to look at a map every five seconds while driving, fine. I don't, and I'm quite glad the developers of those games added very minor features, within the game world, to alleviate those annoyances.
As I said, both games have valid negatives, but complaining about something so minor, which was added to reduce frustration and is very successful at that without being too intrusive, is being silly. There's being a purist, and then there's wanting to do things the hard way just because that's the way we used to do it.
Renault on 29/10/2008 at 19:00
Quote Posted by Hier
Mind you, people complained about loot glint, so clearly they derive enjoyment from finding fault in very
good design decisions.
Trust me, after TDS, you won't get much support around here for loot glint.
Criticisms aside, I'm enjoying this game more and more. At first, I leaned towards just driving around and freelancing, but if you mix that up with some of the actual missions, it makes for some serious fun. And the landscape and environment is just outstanding, it's almost enough to just drive around and check it out.
Edit: I really don't want to get into a big discussion about loot glint, but suffice it to say, there are better ways to point out what is loot and what isn't than big, sparkling, shiny graphics effects. The original Thief games did just fine by simply using a gold colored bottle.
The_Raven on 29/10/2008 at 19:37
Quote Posted by Hier
If you enjoyed trying to guess which wineglasses were "loot" and which weren't, or if you enjoy having to look at a map every five seconds while driving, fine. I don't, and I'm quite glad the developers of those games added very minor features, within the game world, to alleviate those annoyances.
Actually, I never found determining what was loot and what wasn't to be that difficult in Thief. Anything with jewels, coin purses, gold wine bottles, gold glasses, and coins were loot. Stuff like bread, green wine bottles, clay/metal glasses, etc.. weren't. Sure, when you start off you don't really know the difference; but that's what being a beginner is all about. The fact that they colored the valuable stuff gold, silver, or bronze should have probably been an indicator to most people. I can see this being a problem for the color blind, but most designs are pretty bad for that. What I do remember hearing is that when the minimalist project removed loot glint in Thief: DS, it became damn near impossible to tell the difference between valuables and junk because they were colored the same.
nicked on 29/10/2008 at 21:01
that was a problem with TDS though - the T1 and T2 loot actually looked like loot. Plus the virtually opaque blue overlay when highlighting TDS objects didn't help in the identification process. I liked the loot glint in TDS as it was helpful, but it would have been much better if they'd just made the loot look like loot.
potterr on 29/10/2008 at 23:00
I've had Far cry 2 for a few days now and am suffering the same PC issues as most (BSOD, CTD). I'm on Windows XP SP2, 3GB Ram, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, and loads of hard drive space, admittedly my Sapphire ATI X1600 Pro is below spec but I'm not convinced its the cause of the problems.
Anyway it ran choppy to begin with so I lowered the fire and physics down to low (everything else was High or very high graphics wise). This improved it a bit, however there were just random Crashes To Desktop for no reason still (same as a lot of people on XP DX9 or Vista DX10). After several of these I could then no longer get teh saves game screen to continue after a crash as it hung. It then didn't even get past the loading screen.
Lots of swearing (and even a one sided argument with the DVD itself) didn't help. However I remembered Knights Of the Old Republic 2 did the exact same thing to me (started fine, then after a day or so crashed often and finally didn't start). I resolved that one by when it was starting up just changing the exes affinity to run on core 1, so I did the same for Far Cry 2 and low and behold it runs again (albeit still crashing to desktop), and it runs smoother and faster as well. I'm guessing as it was designed mainly for Intel processors it doesn't work so well on dual core AMD ones. It also seems to have cured the missing sound in conversations as well.
However in saying all that I'm not really convinced by the game yet (the bad experiences with CTD's hasn't helped at all), I'm not that far in and its no where near as enjoyable as Far Cry. Although the physics is nice, I drove into a signpost and pulled the jeeps bumper off while doing so which I thought was a nice touch.
mothra on 30/10/2008 at 11:23
did you install the AMD/ATI hotfix + new drivers ?
I'm running XP-SP3 everything on very high/high and did not have a single crash, and fps stay above 35fps.
Jason Moyer on 30/10/2008 at 13:19
Anyone playing with the map editor? I don't think I've had a serious try at making maps since the original Quake, but this thing's pretty awesome.
mothra on 30/10/2008 at 13:29
since they are only MP maps (and MP is pretty bad) no. I couldn't find proper add-ons to import external stuff either.
this game could be brilliant with proper Mod tools (SDK) so someone can fix what the devs borked. but only doing MP maps won't help the game much.
....running around in your own map is fun but since you can't do much there.....
I can't see FarCry2 having a long "life" without proper tools for modding like STALKER. sometimes devs just don't want their community to show them how it's done better ;)
or don't wanna give away their code. AI would need a SERIOUS overhaul and maps would need some serious tuning (not to speak of checkpoint/road system) and tearing down most of the artifical barriers that prevented that game from being non-linear.
