Gestalt on 20/4/2006 at 23:26
I played all the way through, and it's mostly the later stuff that I remember. After all that talk about blasting out walls rather than searching for keys, it was pretty disappointing when they chose to make so many walls indestructable. I still think it's pretty ridiculous that explosives that could blow chunks out of solid rock would just sort of leave stains on bullet-proof glass.
I don't remember any consolization-related problems, but it's been a few years. Most of the things that bugged me seemed more like regular poor design decisions than things directly attributable to multiplatform development.
AxTng1 on 20/4/2006 at 23:27
That GeoMod test room was hours of fun though. With enough creative explosions, you could mine upwards through the walls, carving out chunks of ceiling or dropping down onto the glasshouse.
This one time, at GeoMod training, I used all my explosives getting to the top and my last bullet to break a window at the top of the house. Then I fell in. :D
S_Hole on 20/4/2006 at 23:50
yea, that game was truckloads of wasted potential
i don't get why they won't make one
oh, right, it would allow the players some actual freedom within the game
silly me, wanting freedoms..
dynamic breaking of buildings is in flashpoint 2 though
only one i know of that does
but it's an outdoors game so there's not much use of it
and then there's the silent storm games and their crappy followers
another few trucks of wasted potential, while partly realised (the chain reactions were awesome.. sending half a level to bit-heaven by one bullet to a fuel dump)
but yea, good luck
and show some screenies once there are any
Fig455 on 21/4/2006 at 00:37
Red Faction is great fun. It was a blatant rip-off of Half-Life, though, A good one, though. I have it on PC and beat it on PS2, so I have seen it on console and off. The sequel was horrid. Felt soulless.
tiger@sound.net on 21/4/2006 at 00:55
(I promised you that I and many of the un-knowing masses would be here.)
:angel:
So, here is a small Cheer from a lot of us, non-techs, mate!
:thumb: Go HEXarith! :thumb:
ZylonBane on 21/4/2006 at 00:59
Quote Posted by Gestalt
I still think it's pretty ridiculous that explosives that could blow chunks out of solid rock would just sort of leave stains on bullet-proof glass.
My favorite bit of confused design vision is that in Red Faction, rockets have more of an effect on solid rock than they do on a human body (bodies in RF are ungibbable).
Quote:
I don't remember any consolization-related problems, but it's been a few years.
RF didn't suffer from it too badly, but we do have this quote from one of RF's developers: "RF was designed primarily for an action-oriented PS2 audience".
In the end, it was just a lame Half-Life ripoff with tacked-on stealth sequences (which I always just shot my way through). The "scripted sequences" were especially hilarious. Seemed like 90% of them were, "Follow me! I'm with the Red Fac-ARRGHH!".
Domarius on 21/4/2006 at 03:06
Quote Posted by sparhawk
It seems you don't get it that you are not a kind of internet moderator. So who are you to tell other posters to shut up?
And it seems you don't get that all people are created equal. People were being rude unjustly, so I was being rude right back to them. Savvy?
Quote Posted by S_Hole
yea, that game was truckloads of wasted potential
i don't get why they won't make one
oh, right, it would allow the players some actual freedom within the game
silly me, wanting freedoms..
I think the design problem is that a video game level is essentially a "movie set" for the player, and so you have to constrain them within it to retain immersion, this includes not letting them simply blast through any place - imagine being able to blast through and kill Karras from the start. Wouldn't be much of a game.
The other reason might be processing considerations. I guess the more complex the level is, the slower it would run once you start blowing holes in things. And I'm assuming the levels got more complex further into the game, as most games do.
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
In the end, it was just a lame Half-Life ripoff with tacked-on stealth sequences (which I always just shot my way through). The "scripted sequences" were especially hilarious. Seemed like 90% of them were, "Follow me! I'm with the Red Fac-ARRGHH!".
:laff:
@Hexarith - That all sounds really cool. I enjoyed reading that and will have to read it in more detail when I have more time. I hope other people ask questions, I'll read your responses to those too.
It will be interesting to see if CSG is possible or not.
Hex is trying something pretty different - no one did anything new by not trying something different.
Gestalt on 21/4/2006 at 05:27
Quote Posted by Domarius
I think the design problem is that a video game level is essentially a "movie set" for the player, and so you have to constrain them within it to retain immersion, this includes not letting them simply blast through any place - imagine being able to blast through and kill Karras from the start. Wouldn't be much of a game.
The other reason might be processing considerations. I guess the more complex the level is, the slower it would run once you start blowing holes in things. And I'm assuming the levels got more complex further into the game, as most games do.
I think the games that could benefit most from destructable environments are the open-ended ones that don't rely on the player following a linear path through areas, like Morrowind or the GTA games. Due to the size and complexity of the worlds in those games, they're also probably the least likely to be able to afford it, performance-wise. The Geomod thing was wasted in Red Faction because they just made the levels standard linear FPS stuff when the real benefit of destructable environments is that they make things less linear. If the levels are designed to be progressed through in a linear fashion, adding something like destructable terrain is just going to result in a bunch of scripted sequences getting broken.
Jarkko Ranta on 21/4/2006 at 06:02
Agrees to the latter.
One of my favourite games ever, Half-Life (and waiting to get proper PC for H2), had no proper destructable terrain, but that didn't mind much 'cause the scripted happenings worked well and when something was blasted away I never thought "how can this wall be indestructable, when that ceiling just collapsed....?". How many would have tried to drill their way forward to skip the tentacles in the blast pit? Or blow up the floor to reach the portal in Gonarch's lair instead of blasting the bastard to pieces? Or blowded up the air vent instead of fighting commandos in We Got Hostiles? Same goes for Thief:
Use fire arrows to blast the rocks sealing to quickest way to Hall of Echos....
OrbWeaver on 21/4/2006 at 09:00
Quote Posted by Domarius
Hex is trying something pretty different - no one did anything new by not trying something different.
Not really that new - what he is doing is applying standard techniques that are used in static 3D rendering and modelling, to a real-time game engine. This will need some fantastic optimisations in order to be a success.
