when and where for consistent ToB

[Cassiel]

It's not outside the realm of possibility, but it would take an absurdly long time. If we use UE3 for anything it's most likely to be an FPS that does stuff you haven't really seen from an FPS before.

[o]

I'm really eager to get into Unrealscript but school just doesn't allow time for it. Thankfully the GUI scripting editor is enough for most basic prototyping.

[Cassiel]

Matinee?

[nooK]

UnrealScript is very easy to learn imo.
However with the UDK the developement time will be way longer than modding a game and you won't have such a big audience to play your game.

[o]

Matinee?

Kismet, which yeah, includes Matinee.

[Boolerian]

Spoilers? Yes? Now?

[Cassiel]

Kismet, which yeah, includes Matinee.

Oh right, Matinee is the cinematic GUI. Is Kismet really powerful enough for driving new kinds of gameplay? I thought it was only used for basic logic stuff like light switches and doors, and maybe some AI.

[o]

I know that Epic's designers use it to prototype boss encounters for Gears. It is primarily used for the basic uses you listed.

You also have some pretty decent control over camera and the player character. I'm pretty sure you can achieve a top down point and click experience with Kismet; but it wouldn't be ideal.

Ideally anything that radically changes the Unreal gameplay would utilize Unrealscript. You could easily create a spell system in kismet, spawning particle actors in certain positions, dealing damage to certain actors or in a radius etc.

The other positive of UDK is having much higher fidelity visuals.

[Cassiel]

I'd really like to see NS2's engine released UDK style.

[o]

NS2 as in Natural Selection 2?

Looks like you get immediate access to the Spark SDK if you preorder. But that's free like UDK.

[Cassiel]

I haven't seen anything indicating you can release a standalone game that people can play without having NS2 though.

[o]

Ahhh yeah I didn't realize that's what you were referring to. Yeah that is an amazing thing about UDK.

Haven't seen much that has interested me yet besides Airborn.

For those who haven't seen: http://www.moddb.com/mods/airborn/

Look through the images, really beautiful stuff. Not much on gameplay but it's the best looking thing I've seen from the UE3 editor (they havent ported to UDK yet)

[Cassiel]

It's got a distinctive style, which is always nice. You need some really prolific art people to pull that kind of thing off.

[o]

Yeah, the guys making it are all extremely talented industry professionals doing it in their free time. It's inspired me a lot through college.

It's a shame in some ways that games have progressed so fast technologically. Raises a lot of visual expectations from the audience and constantly increases development time and costs for studios. For an indie developer or mod group to make games that draws enough attention to become commercially successful must not be an easy feat nowadays.

[RageAgainstVoid]

It depends on what grounds you want to compete. The gaming world is actually many parallel worlds. The platform and price of the product defines people's expectations, and people judge differently when faced with a different world. A commercial game they'd boo, they'd woo as mod, same for an Xbox360 game and a Nintendo DS game. Even today, many of the most popular mods and indie projects have very simple graphics. That does not mean they are ugly, though some of them are, and still exceedingly popular. Using UDK does not mean you have to use it to its full extend to become popular. People may not even know how the game was created. Most really don't care to know.

Curiously, in practice it mostly goes the other way around, most of the more ambitious mod/indie projects are unsuccessful. Part of the reason is that too much dev time was spent on things least significant to success in this territory, like complex visuals. Of course such thing can be a bonus point, but not when it comes at penalty to other things, and if you are not heavily funded, most likely does.

Furthermore, the platforms with the greatest growth for gaming are handy/handhelds sections, which of course are far more limited by default, doesn't impact popularity though, as it makes up with other platform qualities, and as long as prices are right.

And then flash games. Yes i know. But it's there and it's big. Quick, dirty, convenient, omnipresent.
A feasible and very successful approach might be doing mods "multi-platform". Imagine doing a simple flash game that shares the most basic idea and style of the actual and much more involved mod, and easily circulating that flash game for good promotion. Probably dev time much better spent than killer graphics.

On another note, this is the real but mostly unknown reason why Apple's new iPad does not support Flash, rather html5. Publicly they argue about watching movies and it being too old/buggy/security risky/performance hog for that. But the real reason is outside of movies. While html5 on paper is better for movies, it is comparatively limited for complex interactive programs and games. See now what Flash would undermine and even threaten? Bingo, their App Store, their absolute, and absolutely profitable, distribution portal control. So they rather talk some bullshit points and pressure the rest of the world into adapting to their needs. Because they can.

[o]

All very good points that I agree with. Braid for example didn't even tread into the 3d realm and was very widely successful and very appealing. On the other hand Zeno Clash looked awful even though it was made from the ground up in the Source engine.

I think the best point you brought up was that you don't have to use UDK to its full potential as far as what its capable of visually. It could very well be used as a convenient engine and means of distribution and you could keep your visuals to something close to say Fat Princess. The bonus being, as you said, if you have the means of pushing the visuals it is always an option.

[RageAgainstVoid]

Fat Princess looks fucking hilarious!

[Bartoneus]

Sheeit, I can't even run SC2. UT3 has lower requirements and I can only run that at 5-8 fps.

Sorry for referencing something from back in February, but Cass I just wanted to you let you know that my 6 year old computer runs the SC2 beta extremely well (on the lowest graphics settings, which still look pretty decent) so I don't think UT3 is a good comparison at all. My computer can just barely handle UT3.

On a different note, I'm also looking to get into some full games of ToB, are people still hosting games in the evenings EST? I'll probably be hosting some of my own so if you see it please jump in!

[Cassiel]

Ordered my new computer last night anyway. I can't even run WC3 well enough to work on O at this point. Takes several minutes to save the map and several more to load it. We're at something like 40,000 LOC, and I guess JassHelper doesn't like processing it all.

[Bobwich III]

Nice! Specs?

[Cassiel]

Nothing crazy. Phenom II X4 955, 4GB DDR3 1600, Radeon HD 5770, mobo with a second PCIe 2.0 slot so I can add another 5770 in CFX down the road instead of starting from scratch. I shouldn't need another GPU unless I get a new monitor at some point though, which I currently have no plans to do. The one I'm using now is I think 16'', so I only run at 1024x768.

[Bobwich III]

Pretty damn solid to me. Why didn't you want a new monitor? They're so cheap now.

[Myth]

Yay! I am excited.

[Cassiel]

Pretty damn solid to me. Why didn't you want a new monitor? They're so cheap now.

If monitors were < $50 I'd get a new one. More than that aint cheap for me.

Anyway, posting from the new computer. And let me just say, it was a joy to learn that Linksys WUSB54G has no support for a 64-bit OS. This dude right here is a fucking life saver. Now I need to see about transferring my scant Steam stuff over, just so I can see what UT3 is supposed to look like (you know, when everything isn't on the absolute lowest settings, including resolution, and the frame rate > 10).

Oh, and Cooler Master's Storm Sniper Black Ed case is beastly. Amazing cable management, huge (they call it a "mid" tower, but it's bigger than a full tower), and I'm actually getting cold sitting next to it with only 2 of the 200mm fans running. This is the best case I've ever seen.

Also props to MozBackup for porting all of my Firefox data over, all the way down to my 50+ active tabs.

[Bobwich III]

Yeah, I have a CM Storm Scout and I love it. Was the case that important to you? There's nice CM cases for 40 bucks and you coulda bought a screen with that saved cash.