OT: 2005 Games
 

Next year should be definitely named as the Year of Strategies:

GalCiv II: Dread Lords. ETA: end of the year (Christmas. Damn marketers)
http://www.galciv2.com/
Comm.: direct competitor of SE V as you know. Will be interesting to see this battle for title of the best 4x game. Official site is only availiable to GalCiv purchasers, though. Are there some Subscribers here to share info?

[rant]Why the hell a crappy sketches of GC2 ships are in the TotalVideoGames.com preview, but beautiful SE5 intro screens can only be found in the malfador site? I seriously think that shrapnel should consider changing/improving their marketing strategy. Or should we write a preview ourselves as soon as screenshots will be availiable and then use blackmail and grafts to publish it in the Online gaming magazine?[/rant]

Civ IV. ETA: 2005 (no quarter info, but probably end of the year).
No offsite yet. Info here: http://civfanatics.com/
As always Sid promises us a completely new game. Let's wait until demo will come out for a final judgement. I have to notice that it will offer a couple of powerful technologies for modders - Python + XML. Its combined power could make Civ4 the most moddable game ever. But it's not a fact, just probability.

Did I miss some interesting game which will be published next year?

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

"Year of Strategies"? Sounds more like "Year of Two Sid Meier Civilization Sequels" to me, from your list so far. Those games have always seemed more like games offering addictions to new little tech tree toys, rather than real strategic challenges, to me, anyway.

PvK

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

They are available on SpaceEmpires.net in the image gallery. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I didn't see any interesting games posted? Civ 4 will likely be another piece of junk nefariously marketed to steal tons of money for "new features" in "expansions" that were not anything new or special, as with Civ 3... GalCiv 2 will likely be as bland as GalCiv.

What battle? There is no competition there, at all...

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

You guys are too pessimistic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Believe in bright future, it sometimes happens.

But it's not the main question today.
Have you seen this store ?
edit: ok, it's an old news, but I'm curious: do they accept orders from Eastern Europe?

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

There is not much possibility of SE5 being released on that date... all MM games have been delayed for weeks to months from "projected release dates." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

I don't get too excited about new games anymore. Unless I seriously upgrade, I won't be able to play the new games coming out. KOTOR I & II, Half-Life 2, Axis & Allies, etc. are just games I can dream about but won't be able to play. Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to upgrade, or get a new computer, but it won't be anytime soon. But if SEV has the same graphics engine that Star Fury has, then no problem. I like eye candy, don't get me wrong, but if it comes to a choice between graphics or gameplay, I'll settle for gameplay. Also, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can play Civ4 on my computer, but I haven't seen any of the hardware requirements for it yet.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

I'm just hoping civ4 doesn't suck.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Please don't buy any EA Games. Not until they start paying overtime for people who work 80 to 110 hour weeks. For months on end.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

You can gut your old machine, keep the monitor/mouse/keyboard... hell, even the HD... and go to a computer parts place (here we have Fry's Electronic; I dunno about Florida) and get a case/motherboard/processor combo for less than $200. Any idiot can put it together on the kitchen table and Voila! you're playing new video games.

Unless of course $200 is a lot of money in your current economic situation.

Turin

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

But in the end they are much better products. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif:):):):)

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

On a general rule, in the game industry when you 'work on salary' for a gaming company you generally negotiate a 'Yearly' wage. (ie: $25,000/year) and the number of hours is never specified. Also, usually there is specific mention that the hours can become long at different times during the dev cycle. So if you sign for $25,000/year and get paid bi-weekly then you would get $961.54 minus the tax and deductions every two weeks. It should also be noted that there are often long 'down-times' in a dev cycle and the same guy that feels overworked during a 'crunch' feels undervalued during the 'lulls'.

I once worked 6 months straight 16 hours/day (including travel time to and from work [1.5x2=3 hours]) on a reduced salary (something like $12,000/year) and managed to survive.

I've been there, done that. I wouldn't put the full blame on EA, the 'workers' knew what they were getting into. They just probably thought it was 'glamorous work' and accepted the deal. Little did they know, but they did (like me) accept the deal. They'll know better the next time around.

Nuf said, Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Just out of curiosity, is that a fairly typical wage for an American working in the gaming industry?

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

There are a number of games mentioned on the ShrapnelGames.com web page which I am eagerly waiting for (and one new one which is not mentioned there)

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Deccan.. you said.. "Just out of curiosity, is that a fairly typical wage for an American working in the gaming industry?"

The nunber was plucked out of the air, it in no way reflects 'actual' wages. However, I was making 25k (cdn) back during that scenario I mentionned. Today I know of several people working at gamming companies that are 'on salary' and the wages range from 24 to 38k/year (for my artist friends) I don't know about programmers, but I figure they probably get more just because 'programming' is percieved as 'harder' work. (I'm still not convinced of that.) Many companies work at just slightly above minimum wage for 'salaried' employees. I heard that many artists and programmers nowadays are only getting between 16 and 20k /year. Much of the industry has gone through many 'restructuring' and have been forced to downscale development costs. This in turn has lowered the agerage salary of the grunts in the industry.

Think of it, if a project has an in-house (salaried) dev-team of say 20 people, at 25k/year and it takes a year and a half to produce the product, that means that the dev cost for the project is $750,000 and this does not take into account management, marketing, or any other 'misc' people that are not part of the actual 'product dev-team'

When you take a company with larger salaries and larger dev-teams you can easilly see how games have gotten very expensive to produce nowadays. That is a big reason that many development houses are going belly up. In 10 or so years, the only developers that will be left will be indipendant (small) Groups of programmers and artists. Working under 'contracts' rather than being salaried.

anyway, I'm babbling, nuf said. Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

What we need is a concept-based program builder, like the enterprise holodecks, only much more primitive.

Serious, here. Something where you type say, "A ten-foot by ten foot room, six feet high", tell it to compute that text file, it makes a 3d box to the specifications you typed. Then, you change it too "A ten-foot by ten foot room, six feet high, stone walls, floor and ceiling, dark gray" Once that is tested, "A ten-foot by ten foot room, six feet high, stone walls, floor and ceiling, dark gray, treasure chest in northwest corner, goblin in front of the treasure chest. Player is human barbarian, near the middle of the south wall, in furs, carrying an axe"

And then you would get more and more specifc and instruct it to save details and such. It would end up being somewhat like writing a book.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Is anyone seriously working on such a thing?

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

*coughelderscrolls3morrowindconstructionsetcough*

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Uh, that was a drag-and-drop map editor/height editor/data spreadsheet. We already had those, if not in that combination.

It is not what I am talking about.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

It seems to me that putting things together isn't difficult given the tools that we already have. The problem is getting together a big dataase of the objects required. What's a "stone wall", a "treasure chest", a "goblin", a "human barbarian", an "axe" etc.?

You'd need a big database of 3D models of all of these things, together with properties of the objects useful in the context of a computer game, i.e. a stone wall is harder than a wooden wall, a treasure chest is hinged and can be opened and closed, can hold things and can optionally be locked or unlocked etc.

After all, any computer program can't be expected to understand every word in an English dictionary off the bat, it must have access to a detailed database containing models and properties of all the objects Users might conceivably ask it to create, which is the real hard work part.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

I could see some system working with drag down boxes.

Maybe player-added content keeping it alive, or professional modellers and a MMORPG style game (hey, you have to pay for quality).

I'm not sure that it could be a game though. More like a huge chat room where people waste their time and spend time designing their buildings/rooms. Maybe some game concept of "credits" could be built into the system. The more you interact with other people, the more credits you get, and you can buy better 3d models and build a better place to show off.

The key would be stunning graphics, and the ability to add EVERYTHING. From picasso pictures, bedsheets, individual books, even cockroaches and rats should be in it. Special items like a computer that you could interact with, etc., could also be incorporated for some interactivity.

Oh, and did I mention avatars? Designing yourself to look the way you want? This kind of game could sell, and could ruin a generation of teenagers/break up marriages.

<edit> Oh and it doesn't have to be limited to a modern setting, what would sell it would be the unique environments you could create for people to explore, like the inside of a spaceship, a dark dank dungeon crawling with scary sounds, etc </edit>

Brian

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Sounds like Sims Online.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Sounds like it, but isn't really it. For one thing the graphics are hardly stunning, its not 3D, you don't seem to have the freedom to create truly huge complexes.

Brian

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

The kind of compiler I'm thinking of would be able to search the internet/HD, find examples of what you're talking about, and extrapolate from what it finds - A VI (Virtual Intelligence), in other words. What you're talking about is one of the things that would come before that.

Right now, what I'm talking about would probably require a team of the best programmers and scientists from all sorts of fields and a supercomputer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It would have to be built up too, over years.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

I don't know Narf, After all what is a search engine? Take Google, but a GUI on it, throw in the IVRs what we navigate every day calling companies (Individual Voice Response), and you pretty much have the basics of what you are talking about. The devil/demon/dark enity is in making it work together, but where I work we already have a system that does a query based on your IVR response. Oh, and yes IVRs can understand speech, it doesn't have to be "press 1 to inhale, press 2 to exhale" type thing. It can take direction based on your vocal inputs. The only additional componet is a render program which others here would know about better then me. I think would might have to set a ratio 50 pixels = 1 foot type thing or work in straight pixels but again nothing new. Just a new way of making it work together... and voice driven!.

Rasorow

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

If you're a fan of the old SPI games, you might want to check this place out:

www.hexwar.com

Has put many of the old SPI games into a PBW format, much like SE4, so you play against other humans. If you liked SPI, it's a real godsend.

Alarik

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Has anybody played Crusaders for XBox? It is RTS, but supposedly quite good.

*** And of course KOTOR II

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

My ISP has a voice-responce system. I don't find it very usefull or intelligent; I generally ask for a human. Again, what you are talking about is one of the steps to what I am talking about. Just think about all the things that would be needed to do what the ST:NG holodeck does, programming-wise. (I don't think we could manage that level of real-3d interactivity any time soon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

A learning neural-net would be essential. Among other things, the compiler would have to learn how to program what you want.

I think, five 'brains'. I got the idea (And mutated it slightly, out of a book called 'saucer'. Light reading, only read the Last half). One Speculator brain. This would be the most sophisticated; it would come up with whole theories out of 'what if?'. One Connecter brain (I had a better word but I have a slight headache and I forgot), this would take two theories and see if it can make a third. One Randomizer (Again, I had a better word) brain, this would simply jump off in some direction and see if whatever it hit tied in somewhere. Essentially like the speculator, but with no logic. The fourth brain...I forgot what it does. The fifth would be the 'Speaker'. It would take what the human typed, check the syntax, context, meaning and how the previous Queries were worded, and look in this huge pile of data for relevant info.

Such a system could be turned to pretty much anything, not just programming.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Oh, man.
Those voice response things are even worse than the dial-#-for-X things.

At least in the dial things I know it will understand which option I want.
And I don't have to repeat out loud whatever silly things they're calling the options that sound like they may be vaguely related to what I want.

Dialling zero into it usually gets an operator thankfully.
Five seconds to state my reason for calling, and getting forwarded right to the extension I need is so much better than doing depth-first searches through an annoying automated system http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I wonder what horrible monstrosity they will come up with next...
"Think 'Happy' for sales. Think 'Sad' for accounts recievable... *beep* I'm sorry but 'murderous rage' is an invalid selection"

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

This might be appropriate, and how provident it is the one I am up to.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php...1-28&res=h http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif