Shattered Horizon - Zero gravity multiplayer FPS (from the makers of 3Dmark) - by EvaUnit02
henke on 30/10/2009 at 07:25
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
Horribly cliche, meaningless title.
Well it's hardly meaningless. They're taking firstpersonshooting from it's traditional gravity-based setting where you move primarily along the X and Z axis and moving it to a setting where the concept of up and down is meaningless, hence: there is no horizon. ITS BEEN SHATTERED OK
I'll agree that you won't be able to figure out what the title means if you haven't seen the game, but after I'd seen the video it immediately clicked for me.
Fafhrd on 30/10/2009 at 07:40
The moon has also been shattered in the game fiction. So, you know, the 'Shattered' part actually does have a literal application from title to game.
I also think your Test 1 is completely wrong, Aerothorn. To use your example of something that passes: if you were to go up to someone on the street and ask them what they think a game titled 'Psychonauts' is about, I'm pretty sure 'telepathy themed' anything would be in the minority of answers. It makes perfect sense once you have a little bit of information about the game (as does Grim Fandango, really), but it doesn't actually tell you what the game is. The best titles for anything (movies, books, games, TV) generally don't make sense until you have the thing itself to give the title context. 'No Country for Old Men' for example.
henke on 30/10/2009 at 08:24
Yeah, if I just heard the title Psychonauts I'd say it's probably a game where you play some kind of underwater psychopath.
I guess (
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Mazapan/you-have-to-burn-the-rope) You Have To Burn The Rope would score pretty highly on Aero's test though. At least 2 points out of 3.
Aerothorn on 30/10/2009 at 20:27
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
The moon has also been shattered in the game fiction. So, you know, the 'Shattered' part actually does have a literal application from title to game.
I also think your Test 1 is completely wrong, Aerothorn. To use your example of something that passes: if you were to go up to someone on the street and ask them what they think a game titled 'Psychonauts' is about, I'm pretty sure 'telepathy themed' anything would be in the minority of answers. It makes perfect sense once you have a little bit of information about the game (as does Grim Fandango, really), but it doesn't actually
tell you what the game is. The best titles for anything (movies, books, games, TV) generally don't make sense until you have the thing itself to give the title context. 'No Country for Old Men' for example.
I'll agree that I could have given a better example, but that doesn't invalidate the test.
And I also agree that most of the best titles, artistically, are as you described - but I was speaking from a marketing standpoint. There's a reason we don't tend to have games with titles like No Country For Old Men.
Stitch on 31/10/2009 at 03:09
Sins of a Solar Empire :cool:
june gloom on 31/10/2009 at 03:10
That does read like a classy sci-fi novel, true.
Aerothorn on 31/10/2009 at 09:55
Fair Enough.
EvaUnit02 on 3/11/2009 at 12:24
(
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/escalation-gameplay-shattered-horizon/58508) New gameplay trailer, looks epic.
People do need to keep in mind that the game was built on a DX10 codebase (not DX9 with added DX10 effects/optimisations like most games over the last few years), so you will need Vista or W7 and a newer gen video card.
The developers give their reasons for this decision over (
http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1240485&postcount=6) here. No, they aren't taking bribes from Microsoft, you'd have to be really unobservant to think that. MS haven't given two shits about PC gaming for at least two years now.
Quote Posted by "FM_kingkatt of Futuremark"
Quote:
I know everyone wants to force us XP users to upgrade now to Vista and Win 7
I don't know who this "everyone" is? Whether you upgrade or not is your choice.
Shattered Horizon is our first game. We are publishing it ourselves. We chose to make Shattered Horizon independently so that we could make it the way we wanted without compromise.
As we are self-publishing Shattered Horizon on Steam we don't have the same restrictions and pressures facing the big publishers. We don't have to make compromises to chase the largest possible market and because Shattered Horizon is a PC exclusive we're not limited by a common technology platform that has to accommodate the consoles. We don't need to sell a gazillion copies to be successful - though that would be nice.
We've always been forward looking when to comes to graphics. And we strongly believe that PC gamers deserve games designed for modern PCs, rather than lazy console ports. Shattered Horizon uses a game engine that was developed from the renderer built in-house for 3DMark Vantage. This engine was built from the ground up as a pure, native DirectX 10 engine. Shattered Horizon doesn't run on Windows XP because the engine doesn't run on Windows XP. It really is as simple as that.
With Windows 7 just launched and some very affordable DirectX 10 and 11 cards entering the market there are very few reasons to stick with XP. Technology only moves in one direction and we would much rather embrace the present state of the art than make compromises for the past.
True, there are lots of people who won't be able to play Shattered Horizon but that number is only going to get smaller, while the number of people who can play is going to grow everyday and quickly. Read any review of Windows 7 and you'll see why.
Ostriig on 3/11/2009 at 12:49
I like these guys. I mean, yeah, it is unfortunate that XP isn't an option, but it's been a while since I've gotten my fix of honeyed dev words towards the PC platform.
Koki on 3/11/2009 at 14:20
Quote:
We’ve always been forward looking when to comes to graphics. And we strongly believe that PC gamers deserve games designed for modern PCs, rather than lazy console ports.
Oh, they do know how to sweet-talk me.
