Defcon

Defcon was the best game I played last year, hands down. So I'm pleased to see their going to try their hand at putting it out on the retail shelves though the $30 price tag might work against it. Why not go the Serious Sam route and make it $20 to make it a good price but not stuck in the bargain bin.

Also, calling the game"the world's first genocide-'em-up," is pure gold. When I want some killing, I want it in bulk!

A Case of the Blahs

What's a fella gotta do to get an interview with Splash Damage, the maker of QuakeWars. I've sent two or three emails to their press relations group and all I score is a big goose egg. Gamespot and Gamespy are of course running huge articles today at the same time meaning I must've missed whatever press cycle for Splash is occurring right now.

Perhaps I'm not asking the right questions? Here, you be the judge:

In regards to an interview posted on http://www.quake-wars.nl/content/view/132/171/ I was hoping to do a follow up to some of his questions then ask a few of my own.

1. In the interview there is a question about the global ranking system. The question states:

"Can you tell us more about the announced persistent global ranking system? BF2 has such a system and I liked it a lot...."

Now at Quakecon '06 I thought it was stated that while there would be a ranking system similar to how it was done in ET with status resetting after a few rounds, your answer to this questions suggests there is a global ranking system of some sort. Are there two methods of scoring in the game (match play rank and global)? Also, do these global rankings just give bragging rights or do they indeed help your game ability across servers now?

2. You have stated that you are not using per-poly hit detection except on vehicles? Why have you gone back to hit boxes on the characters? Were there performance issues, development issues, or something else preventing the use of per poly hit detection on the soldiers?

3. In question seven of the same interview it is asked about tweaking the game for performance. Will there be hard limits on just how far the game can be tweaked like there was in ET or will the ability to scale down graphics, manipulate gamma, brightness, and other aspects of the map be more liberal as was offered in RtCW where people were often washing out the surrounding landscape to high extremes in order to see their targets better.

4. In regards to the in-game setup, with ET you all incorporated many of the features of the excellent third party mod for RtCW called Orange Smoothie Productions (OSP). Have you all brought OSP to Quake Wars?

I'd like to ask some questions about server side administration as well.

1. Have some baseline specs been determined for running a dedicated server? I believe the ideal "sweet spot" you all have said for server population would be 24 people? Given that, what type of hardware would you all suggest a server admin have to run a 24 player server in terms of processor, RAM, and bandwidth? Can you tell us what type of bandwidth usage you all are seeing for a 24 player server both upstream and downstream?

One assumption I'm making is that a 3D card would not be necessary for running a dedicated server, is that correct?

2. Will a separate download be necessary for installing and running the dedicated server or will those files be on the game media?

3. I personally felt that the documentation for setting up a server in ET was a little bit sparse. Has work begun on documentation for the dedicated server piece? As a personal plea, please make some good ones.

Misc. questions
1. Quakecon's date has been set for August 2nd - 5th. First, will you all be there? Second, will we all have QW burning a hole in our hard drive by then? Third, if you all are there and we do have the game, where do I sign up to kill you!? Yes, some schmuck on the Internet just called you out!

2. What about Voice-over IP? I heard rumblings at one point that it might in the game? If so, will the VoIP be server wide, team wide, squad based, or what? Finally, what sort of bandwidth utilization will it use?

3. In RTCW and ET there was a very handy shortcut system for quick chat messages using the keyboard? Can RtCW and ET vets use the same keys for similar commands to make the transition painless or will they have to learn a new system of quick chat keys?

4. It has been stated that the game will be ported to other systems which is pretty common. But, what about having cross platform multiplayer? For example could I -- on my shiny PC -- frag a limp wristed Xbox360 player?

5. It was accidentally slipped out at Quakecon 2006 that bots were being developed for Quakecon, how's that coming along?

6. I personally am very "pro-teabagging" as I consider it a fantastic insult (mostly because I'm immature). But then I am thinking, "Do Strogg even have teabags?" Your thoughts?

7. Aren't you impressed, nearly 15 questions and not one about MegaTexturing or when the demo is coming out?

Lethargy in gaming

How was your weekend? Yeah I know, not too great here either.

Medieval 2: Total War will soon have an expansion and I definitely won't be one to buy it unless I can find it on the super cheap. I don't have anything really against MII:TW at all. Visually it is a great looking game of course and the strategy aspect is top notch. But after a while it just becomes information overload and I have enough of that at work.

Even the mention of more focused campaigns in smaller areas doesn't really appeal to me unless there's a way to compeltely eliminate the some of the more frivolous aspects of the game from the discussion. If you can play a campaign without the Pope, merchants, or princesses crowding up the map and trying to interfere then I might be more open to this game but otherwise I think I'll have to pass on this one.

Also, they mention hotseat multiplayer but what about full multiplayer over the Internet? How, for example, are you supposed to play at the tactical level with your friend in a hotseat multiplayer setup? Each of you get one side of the keyboard? I don't think so. Come on CA and Sega, drop all these extraneous crap and give us fully realized campaign multiplayer.