there goes another hundred hours or so :) 

That should of course be 'no shit', not 'no, shit' 

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. :)

Especially, if those methods involve mercenaries and Pirate Bay owner's heads on stakes as a warning to other pirates, mums the word on my end ;) Anything to get a vibrant PC game market back! 

just to address your earlier post,

i'm of the firm belief that if someone wants to crack a game, it *will* be cracked.

i look at games like the HL2 series or Bioshock. HL2 games all have the online authentication stuff with the steam integration, but there are copies of all 3 (HL2, Ep1 and Orange Box) with the steam portion removed.

and bioshock. remember all the stink that was raised about it's copy protection? there was a cracked version like a week after it was released.

the way i look at it, you waste your time putting fancy piracy protection. what should be aimed for is stopping casual piracy-- lending the game to a friend so he can copy the DVD or whatever. no one ever liked having to have a cd/dvd in the drive to play, and bringing it back is not going to win any points with your consumers.

i also don't think pure online distribution is the ticket either.
in canada at least, almost all ISPs here have download caps, and that puts a real damper on how much stuff i'd want to download esp. since i'm paying for the product essentially twice. 

thought this may be of general light interest/amusement. i just sent a mate completely batshit insane by showing him the following screenshot:

http://isoterra.co.uk/images/quake00.jpg

alcohol may have have had a part to play in things but alas. i've uploaded the messenger log.. i tried to offer some serious insight later on but in reality i was pissing myself laughing most of the way through:

http://isoterra.co.uk/stuff/sandman.txt 

He doesn't play modern Q1 then?

Insomnia is sort of mild by now - some of the areas in Travail.

Poor sod probably woke up a few times in the night - judging from that transcript.

Reckon everyone who still plays / makes this game has their head a bit twisted. 

i don't think he's ever even played quake

travail did have some pretty twisted bits but i don't think anything will ever top the final level of zerstorer for pure evilness 

I reckon everyone remembers the bit where you enter the small shrine and hear the warbling idle sound of the troglodyte.

"You have a sense of pure evil" 

there's plenty, czg being responsible for quite a few and nehahra a lot of the others.

I'd have to go through my maps cd to list teh rest but there is plenty, which is why I'm still playing it :) 

 

diablo3 i already love you 

I somewhat agree with this image.

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/5916/1214677659185lz0.jpg

I wouldn't go AS far, but it does look a bit too colorful WoW compared with the dark ugliness of the old Diablos. 

I have to admit something...

I don't understand the point of Diablo. Isn't it just left click spam (I've tried playing it, I just... don't get it)

(And bear in mind I played WoW for 2 years) 

Blizzard is one of the last companies I would ever question on art direction. They have some of the most consistent and high quality artwork among game companies. Watching those D3 videos is proof of that again. Nothing looks out of place, everything looks like it fits together and you totally believe the world.

Fantastic work. 

I would have prefered a darker tone, it boils down to a matter of taste though, not poor art direction.
It'll probably change as they work on it anyways, they recently added quite a bit of grit to the Starcraft2 stuff, which makes it look alot better in my opinion. 

would be to include some sort of different post processing options like gears/ut3 so you change the overall look for default to "gritty" and so on.

Would please both crowds :) 

I'd have preferred a bit less WoW too. Hopefully the gore will make up for it. 

Does have a good bit of WoW-ness to it, which kinda sucks. Honestly I was hoping for something dingy and more detailed like Hellgate -- but that's another camp, I guess. 

Looking at the image again and thinking more on the subject, I'm starting to come around to blizzard's direction. Each area on the left side looks completely unique and memorable. On the right, the dungeon and the exterior world may as well be the same place, the effects are the only thing to draw your eyes. The left feels like a world, the right looks like a backdrop. 

I think it's because that 30 second "noise overlay" example is bad. When done by a good artist, "Gritty" can look just as unique and memorable as "Clownboots Rainbow Lollipop Land". 

I don't know why people are so against color these days. I think Diablo 3 looks fantastic. Lush, vibrant colors FTW. 

lush vibrant quake?
http://shub-hub.com/files/images/qrp000001.jpg 

Hmmm. Doesn't look as vomituously bad as most Quake visual tweaks to be honest. 

 

It's cheap and nasty.

It makes games look like those soft-focus airbrushed glamour portraits that fat insecure single women get done to post on internet matchmaking sites.

It basically says "This game has serious self-esteem issues and will eat all your chocolate biscuits when it thinks you're not looking".