Spielberg and EA

The following is my working theory as to how Spielberg and EA are teaming up to make a game or two.

Spielberg and EA CEO John Riccitiello are sitting by the pool of Spielberg's place being fanned with one thousand dollar bills by Jamaican helper girls. They're both having a good laugh about how well each of them is doing. EA has been taking larger and larger chunks of the game market and Spielberg of course just had a hand in the making of Transformers.

"I tell ya Stephen, your Transformers movie was spectacular, the kids are eating it up."

"Thanks we really tried to make a good movie even if the cameraman appears to be having epileptic seizures. Ah well that's Michael Bay for you sometimes. I'm really trying to find a new thing to do though."

"I hear ya Stephen. Sometimes games are just so boring anymore. Sure our ads make them SEEM like it's something new and exciting but really they aren't."

"Funny you should say that, I told Lucas the same thing about the dialog in the most recent Star Wars movies."

Both men laugh and take another sip of their Mai Tais.

"You know Stephen, you and I could help each other. Why not come over and create a game. We'll feed some crap to the press." The EA CEO pulls out his random word generator, a necessary tool anymore to create new ad blitz campaigns for the most recent Madden which hasn't changed much since 1990.

"Ah here's how we can describe it. '[name to be determined] is a contemporary action-packed adventure that puts you in the leading role of an emotional journey where your actions tell the tale. Set against the backdrop of an epic story, the game focuses on a touching and ever-changing relationship between you and a mysterious female character who holds the key to many futures.'"

"I like it," Spielberg says as he throws up a little in his own mouth realizing what a waste of carbon the EA CEO really is. But, at the very least he can make a few more million dollars and get the kids that 20 lane bowling alley they keep bitching about.

An unnoticed Windows patch for X2 CPU users

Techspot gives a heads up about a little known patch Microsoft put out for their operating system if you are a user of a dual core Intel processor. I would suggest setting up a system save point on your machine or doing a full backup before running this since this type of patch is getting into some deep stuff with where Windows and the hardware interact. Microsoft site has the patch here

Tweaking Quake Wars

This site is a must read for everyone if you want to tweak the game.

Hey everbody, let's bitch about a BETA TEST!

It's all the rage right now so let's gripe about Quake Wars. Actually I'm not going to get all angsty so if you're looking for someone to bleed their spleen you might want to hit the Quake Wars community site. Some people there really should get a gold star for their levels of yelling.

I was able to acquire a license key to the beta test and so far it's living up to a lot of the expectations I had, provided of course some of the odd bugs that are in this beta get corrected before final release. If you google for Quake Wars bittorrent you can actually find the file out there so if a friend got a key and doesn't want it you can still get the game and use their key I suppose.

A big problem right now is that people are jumping to a lot of conclusions about the final game based on the beta but I guess that should be expected to some degree. Some of it is silly stuff (OMG so many n00bs!) but some are legitimate gripes that will hopefully be addressed in the final product. I'm completely confused why people are filing complaints against getting teamkilled though (sorry about that errant artillery strike, honest!) I think they might be taking a BETA TEST a little too seriously.

If you played Enemy Territory, Tribes, or any of the Battlefield series then the basic premise is familiar: two teams square off against each other and in those teams are different class types with specialties that are supposed to complement one another to accomplish the team goal.

Graphics
The graphics are top notch with the screenshots provided on the Internet being very accurate as to what I'm seeing on my 7950GT. Undoubtedly they might tweak them here and there for the final product but I wouldn't see why. I've had buddies tell me that on their lower end systems it runs fine too they just have to turn down the details.

The map currently being shown very bright on the outdoor parts and well lit in the indoor parts (surprise surprise it's an interior sewer system, shocking for a id-engined game I know).

Sounds
From what I have read the sounds released with the beta are some low resolution sounds that are just fillers for the final product since they were trying to manage the beta file size in some manner. Of course since the beta file pushed 600-700Megs I don't see why a few more high definition sound files would hurt but whatever. Right now it's a lot of Quake 3 sounds with the familiar sounds of railguns, chainguns, and plasma rifles coming through the speakers.

Game speed
In a word: fast. After playing Bf2 and BF2142 I completely forgot exactly how fast a Quake type game could be (and exactly how bad my shooting is compared to a lot of people, holy crap I do so suck). Going on foot is actually a viable option at least on this smaller beta map. There is no sprint bar like in BF2 or BF2142 so you can just move pretty quick all the time but hopping in a vehicle at the start is a big help. You can still sprint as well to go even faster but then your gun rests against your chest so you can't fire.

The maps are broken up into sections. When the attacking team completes an objective they get that section of the map and the spawn points change. So despite the test servers having relatively low overall density (maximum players 24 right now) the fighting is confined to a smaller area making it pretty fluid in those sections of the map. Sure you can wander off but then you miss a lot of the action.

Character classes
I haven't had a chance to play all of the character classes but have dabbled a little here and there so will do my best.

The earth forces (GDF) has several classes which are familiar to anyone who played the first Enemy Territory:

FieldOps
They dish out the ammo and can deploy artillery. The artillery comes in several varieties. The Hammer (one shot HUGE rocket), single tube artillery piece, and a rocket system that fires multiple rockets like an MLRS. With these you can either just hit a piece of ground or you can target a vehicle directly to attack it. There is also the familiar smoke cannister to toss for a quick airstrike that can not be defeated by anti-artillery vehicles.

Medics
Revive your teammates, shock paddle bad guys to kill them (or shoot them with guns), or request supply drops. Nothing really new there.

Soldiers
Carry the heavy weapons for shooting and explosives to destroy objectives that need destroying. The rocket launcher can be either dumb fired or you can lock onto a target with it via a sight.

CovertOps
Haven't really played them but you can do as in ET and steal the uniforms of the other team to infiltrate. These are also the sniper classes for both sides.

Engineers
Can build various defense weapons (anti-personnel guns, anti-artillery weapons, anti-vehicle weapons), build objectives that need building, and lay mines.

On the Strogg side I haven't played much except the "Technician" which is basically their medic. The interesting feature of them is that if they find a dead GDF soldier they can ensnare that soldier in some sort of device which then makes the corpse a one time spawn point for themselves or a teammate. Very handy for getting back to a fight quick. One thing I didn't like though is that a technician takes at least 2-3 seconds to revive a teammate leaving them very open to fire. But, I suppose the trick there is to have the Strogg Field Ops throw up a protective shield around him.

Vehicles for Earth are tanks, Humvees, ATVs, and personnel carriers. I saw an example of the game physics with a tank and APC and was pretty impressed. I shot at an APC that was going from right to left in front of me very close and very fast. So I took a potshot for no reason with the tank and the APC tipped off it's wheels and nearly slammed onto its side. You could see the wheels fall towards the earth as the vehicle tried to right itself back onto all six wheels.

Vehicles for the Strogg are a large mech like walker, a hover tank, one man hover packs (think jump jets), and some sort of three wheel jeep thing. Given the small size of the map you don't get to play with them much but they can be fun during the short time they are valid tools.

Most of the fighting takes place indoors and right now it is a bit of a mess since a lot of people are still coming to grips with the fact that "Oh I'm a medic I should heal that guy." It devolves more into a team deathmatch sometimes rather than a team objective.

There is no voice over IP and I don't think there will be in the final product either. I'm not sure why but it would be nice to have on those rare occasions where a group on a pub server actually thing working together is a good idea. Undoubtedly though many servers will get their own Ventrilo or TeamSpeak servers to bridge that gap so not a HUGE loss, just disappointing.

You can lean to the left or right and shoot, something that was sorely lacking in RtCW and ET:W.
The communication hotkeys are a little jacked up and feel unfamiliar. I suppose I'm still hardwired for what I remember in RtCW and ET. You can create fireteams (like a squad in BF2/2142) but it's not nearly as useful I think (unless I'm doing something wrong). You can't spot units easily but I must not be reading the map right since I couldn't easily tell who was on my fireteam from the map. I think this was how it was in ET but considering how useful squads were in BF2 I wouldn't mind some of those ideas being "borrowed" for this game particularly with spotting enemies very quickly by placing them in your site and hitting a button on the quick chat. Again though I might have missed it so far.

If you played BF2142 the server list mechanics are similar. You can add friends, send them messages, and join them on the server they are playing. Nothing really new there but really what else do you need on a the multiplayer menu?

I know the campaign mode will be the big draw for most people (get XP which gives you unlocks for your class since the desire to XP whore is universal) but I hope Stopwatch catches on like it did in RtCW. One team finishes the objective, teams switch sides and the new attacking team gets the exact time it took the other team to complete the objective. That will probably be more for clan matches though.

I'm hoping to test more so stay tuned or bring your rage/love of the game to comment section here and go nuts.

Friend name: Sphinx_175

Well okay

This makes me feel a little better about Quake Wars. Carry on.

Oh come on SplashDamage!

So I get another email from Gamestop about yet another release delay for Quake Wars. Now, instead of July they are putting an ETA for the game on the first of August. Quakecon starts the first weekend of August suggesting that we won't even see this game in time for Quakecon.

I can appreciate wanting to have the game just right but this is the third push back in time as well. I know, I know "When it's done" and all that rot but I'd still like to play it before the machine I upgraded is obsolete once again.

I was so despondent by this news that I went out and bought BF2142 to at least have SOME type of game to play with my friends online. EQ2 is losing it's luster for me so I had to do something.