Bioshock demo

People are going nuts about Bioshock but I don't think I'll be one of them right now, at least not at full price. Oh it looks great of course and some people put some loving detail into the environment to capture the 50s vibe of overtly happy white people with a hint of drab on the underside, but since you're crawling around in dark corridors using robots to help you fight, how is that different from Doom 3? At least Doom 3 gave you a flashlight. To its credit Bioshock gives you lightning and fire from your hands so there is that. Otherwise though the game, to me at least, seems to be like the movies Sky Captain and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea raped Doom 3 and from that was a baby named Bioshock.

A little bit more info for QuakeWars

This ZIP file provides some game menu screenshots I grabbed with all 12 map names for QuakeWars. While you can't play the maps against the computer right now this at least shows you a little tease of the map names and their overall theme. There appears to be several fights occurring around buildings, one near a slipgate, and one urban fighting map. A pretty good mix of stuff.

Quick config heads up on QuakeWars

Quake Wars went down what I consider a bad path by putting some of the config files for the games in a person's Documents folder in their profile. To me, that's just an extra layer of complexity when previous games simply put the config files with the rest of the game. Perhaps there's a reason but I don't comprehend it.

Regardless, between Beta1 and Beta2 of QuakeWars it appears the config files have been moved from the "Enemy Territory Quake Wars Public Beta" folder to "id software\Enemy Territory - Quake Wars Public Beta." So, if you made an autoexec.cfg of tweaked your configs be sure to move them to \base subfolder.

If you're curious here are the tweaks I have utilized:
seta ui_name "[^4T^7f^4J^7]^4S^7phinx
seta com_showFPS 1
seta net_clientLagOMeter 1
seta g_showFireTeamLocation 0 // Only show the player names and health in the Fire Team HUD
seta r_useSMP 1
seta image_useCache 1
seta image_cacheMegs 512
seta image_cacheMinK 3072
seta com_unlockfps 1
seta com_unlock_timingmethod 2
seta com_unlock_maxfps 30
seta com_showfps 1
seta r_displayRefresh 60
seta com_allowconsole 1
seta r_megadrawmethod 1
seta r_gamma 2.3
seta g_radialMenuMouseInput 0
seta r_detailTexture 1
seta com_allowconsole 1

The lowdown skinny from Quakecon '07

Another good year of Qcon has come and gone and so here comes my little write-up about Quakecon for all of those who don't want to swim through the bigger sites rundowns.

First and foremost, let's talk about Left4Dead. Time did not permit me to stay and try the game (sorry Chet!) but I did watch others play and this game presents some excellent possibilities. In the kiosk setup they let four people get onto some machines where they were put on the four person human team and their task was to survive while two of the developers played as the mutant/zombies to hunt them down. Of course the developers weren't the only thing hunting the humans as there are also plenty of other zombies roaming around look for fresh meat.

The game is at its core a survival game. If you get knocked down or hurt three times by the zombies then you're dead. Teammates working together can heal each other and of course watch each other's back. You can find an excellent rundown of the game's features on wiki that goes into more detail then I can do here. I will say though that as a gaming opportunity for you and a few friends it presents an excellent game with the possibility for lots of yelling, cursing, and cheering as you and your friends fight the rabies infested swarm.

Graphically the game is top notch of course. One thing that caught my eye and a few other people's attention was the doors in the game. Now something as mundane as a door usually doesn't rate special notice but this time it was a little different. Door's appeared to have their own damage model. One shot or punch would knock a little bit of the door out so you could look through. A bigger hit (such as a shotgun) would blow open a bigger hole and multiple blasts splintered the door apart. It didn't appear to be just some texture models changing though but more like how boxes might work in Half-Life 2. The one thing I could see this being useful for in at least a game like this would be to shoot through the door to wipe out any zombies behind it as well as look into the room to size up the situation.

The biggest key though in this game is to stick together. Sure in games like RtCW, Battlefield, and Quake Wars you might be able to go off alone a little and do your own thing but with a city full of zombies hunting you down from all directions you need as many eyes and ears as close to one another as possible.

At the keynote speech some announcements were given.
First, Quake Wars will be out on 10/02/2007 so mark your calendar.

RtCW2 is being developed. Single player is being handled by Raven while the multiplayer is being handled by ThreeWave. For all you old school Quakers, yes THAT Threewave who made the Threewave CTF for Quake. No date set yet.

There will also be a Wolfenstein movie with Roger Avary writing and Samuel Hadida producing. Now, while such big names attached to a movie is pretty good, they damn well better not diverge from the key parts of the Wolfenstein story: lone soldier finding some crazy Nazi occult shit with lots of gunfights and gore. I bet you already they've talked to Rob Zombie about being the end creature.

Also, will the lead actor be asked to eat dog food to survive? It doesn't have to be anything overtly shown like Willis eating a spider in Twelve Monkeys but just a quick throw away to all of us Wolf geeks.


idTech5 was shown and discussed with their next game coming out called Rage whose theme will be a "Mad Max type post-apocalypse survival/racing game which is going for a brighter look than previous games."

The biggest thing that Maulf and I put together during Carmack's speech was the theory that Quake Wars has been delayed mostly because of the Playstation3. How was this conclusion reached? Well, in his keynote Carmack mentioned that the PS3 was definitely the hardest system to develop for but the PC and Xbox360 were of course much easier and shared some similarities. But, the various console groups don't want to be seen as "also-rans" with the port for their system coming out later than everyone else's. Therefore, we the gamers don't get the game now until it's ready for all systems. If the PS3 is indeed the hardest one to get working then it might be the reason it has been pushed back as late as October. While of course we can't dismiss the problems seen in the public beta one is left to wonder if those resources for the PS3 port (man hours, finances, scheduling) had been diverted instead to more quality control and testing of the PC version, might we have seen it in late August or September?

Time constraints did not allow me to stay for all of Carmack's speech but undoubtedly you can find it online somewhere for your own personal enjoyment. Nearly ran into him coming around a corner going to the convention area. He had his kid and wife with him and they appeared to be quite the happy family.