czg
please dont go, dont gooooooooo

you ass is needed!!! 

 

 

Tronyn conducted an interview with Shambler, its now posted at my site:

http://underworld.planetquake.gamespy.com/index.html 

 

But is it a two question interview? 

Next and final question plz. 

Apology REJECTED. 

I'd like to see a full map-for-map remake of the original Quake, following on from the remix maps released so far.

I have e3m1-e3m3 on final beta, e3m4-m6 on early beta and e3m7 blocked out. 

Far Cry is the game that rocked me the most in recent years too. Many players complain about the setting, but it just makes me want to get back down to the tropics with white sandy beaches and clear water for miles. Oh, St Thomas why did I ever leave (oh yeah, to avoid poverty and starvation since I would have lost my job otherwise). 

2 question interviews are copyright 1997-2008 by Scampco Industries Limited Inc. LLC. Any unauthorized usage, reproduction, or public viewing of these interviews in prohibited. 

Are you sure that's legally binding? 

it's legally banning... 

"public viewing" 

I've been thinking of some of the things you have said about the effect of piracy on the viability of the PC as a commercial game platform. It really sucks that Epic's policy is to consider PCs as a third tier market compared to the PS3 and Xbox for games that are not centered on the multiplayer mod market. Not casting dispersions. It sounds like you are facing market realities over there.

I have a question that I hope can be helpful, though it may just be naive on my part; how much can the size of a product discourage piracy? Would ten trig discourage all but the most valiant fanboi attempts?

Say, if and when Epic decides to sale GOW2 to the PC market, what if, you had a seperate DVD
that must be in the PC in order for the game to function and it was cram full of binary noise, nothing but noise, except for maybe a few thousand bytes scattered about the disk which the executable routinely searches out to insure the viability of the copy.

I recently spent an evening downloading the Knoppix disk, at 700MB I was a bit discouraged, but do you think the method I outlined would discourage the pirates? 

If the rest of it is random noise, then there is a good chacne that it could match substantial chunks of the real code. Which means that it would be possibly impossible to filter out the unnecessary bits. Plus that random noise disk is still copyable... 

have to be random, but as long as the executable knows where to look, what the filler material looks like would be unimportant. It would be futile for a hacker to separate the necessary stuff from this end. They would have to dissassemble the executable, and many barriers could be placed on that end to make that futile as well.

Of course it could still be copied, and made into an .ico file (or the dvd equivalent?), but the idea is to discourage digital distribution through raw size. Another example: Say if the size of the game could be fit on one DVD, but instead, you pad it out on
five separate DVD's with filler material and only the installer can distinguish between necessary and unnecessary data. At 8+ gigs a disk, you have over 40 gigs of data for any potential download. That would bring the bandlength of Pirate Bay to its knees!

Just trying to save the PC gaming market, for my own selfish, I wanna play a dozen Deus Ex, Quake, System Shock clones on it. that's all. 

That would bring the bandlength of Pirate Bay to its knees!

Through turrents Pirate Bay uses dispersed distribution, so that may not be a barrier in its self, though even dispersed, I imagine the size could be inhibiting to piracy. 

I'm all in favour of the opinion that goes around func routinely - that respecting end users is a better strategy than fucking them over on the off chance they want to rip off your game.

I remember a qoute for some reason - it was along the lines of anyone who tries to pirate a game and fails won'y buy it, because they never had any intention of paying for it in the first place.

Interesting idea, but I can imagine the logistical nightmare of installation - remember each game goes through many levels of idiot proof testing, and that's before it leaves the producer's office and goes to QA, legal and distribution. 

I wonder if it would make more sense as a quick and dirty solution for indies to use than the A title producers. 

Don't think so - any backed games company goes through the same process, since the money always comes from the same sorts of companies - the ones who ask;

What is a rar file? Can we put an advert frontend inside the gui? The loading screen is static apart from the moving bar for neary three seconds (we timed this!)

And indy companies aren't consolidated enough to worry about this sort of crap.

tbh I can't think of an application for it, but there almost definately is. But money = time, so to develop it is the real problem. The discs are cheap, so that's not a problem.

I've heard lots of suggestions when porting stuff from PC that we block maybe three or four features, then the "downloadable content" is basically a >128k bat file that unlocks the blocked stuff. In a similar way I think there is a corporate name for what you're suggesting, but without the extra discs.

Personally I get everything for PC from Steam, because it's me that owns the game, not the hardware, which is pretty cool. My wii I'm going to have chipped because I can't play my PAL gamecube games on it. Definately illegal, but as a good customer why should I have to cross the line.

Am I right that the only non-regional recent console is the DS - the one that's got a better turnover than free cake? 

"it was along the lines of anyone who tries to pirate a game and fails won'y buy it, because they never had any intention of paying for it in the first place. "

That's not entirely accurate. Many people will pirate the game if they can and buy it if they must.

As for the size suggestion - I'd say, personally, not really. Pirates don't care about bandwidth or storage. If they have to wait an extra day for the torrent to finish, they will. No skin off their nose. And the more likely outcome is that the crackers will simply spend the time to strip out as much of the noise as possible anyway.

And as far as GoW2 and the PC and Epics future plans - I'm sure you'll understand that I really can't make public comments on that sort of thing. Not my area and not my place. :) 

http://eu.blizzard.com/diablo3/

'nuff said 

Wow... looks impressive ! 

No, shit, damn purple penguin thing.

One of the best pieces of viral hype I've seen in a while tho (the splash screen, the hidden jpegs, etc).

http://kotaku.com/5019490/blizzard-splashwatch-+-day-three in case you live under a rock