The Gamer's Quarter

[Dracko]

An interview with Andrew Spearin, photojournalist and director of the seminal Half-Life² mod, Insurgency.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Shapermc]

I really didn't like Insurgency
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Cycle]

I think my favourite part of Quake 3 is the sound it makes when you select nightmare difficulty.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

My favourite thing in Quake 3 was the volumetric fogging. It just had that wow, technology thing going on at the time. I like it even more than the extensive use of shaders on, like, everything and it still managed to run on a low spec system.
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[Cycle]

The fogging sure made that one level pretty tense! You know the one... where you can't see more than two feet in front of you because of a nice brown/orange fog. JUST LIKE WALKING AROUND PORT ADELAIDE, LOLOL
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

haw!
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[Cycle]

I recently installed ioQuake and have been going back through my favourite mods, but there is one I can't remember the name of... you were invisible and had to track down the quad damage which was in a random place each time, and its location would be indicated to you by sounds (beeping, like in Enemy Zero). The level was populated by Klesks who could not see you, but coul hear you, so you had to sneak around them and know when to run for it, because if they heard you (and this included accidently falling to another platform) they would all turn around and rip you apart. There was a WALL OF CHINA map included. It was all quite tense! Anyone remember what this is?
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[Harveyjames]

[dessgeega]

i met sandy peterson the other day.
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[Harveyjames]

Is he still designing DooM levels?

[extrabastardformula]

Or Call of Cthulhu books?
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[Harveyjames]

You have to give us more information.

[dessgeega]

someone asked him about call of cthulhu. it was funny.

i asked about the loading screens in sword of the samurai.
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[Harveyjames]

It's that kind of gold you payed your tuition fees for.

[Harveyjames]

REDNECK RAMPAGE. Discuss.

[Cycle]

SOMEONE MOVE OUR FPS TALK FROM THE GAMES YOU'RE PLAYING THREAD TO HERE, K THNX.

I only ever played the demo of Redneck Rampage, years ago with some school friends. The demo was a beta and I don't think there was an exit from the one huge level? We couldn't find it. So yeah, I always wanted to play it properly because HEY BUILD ENGINE AND FUNNY STUFF but never got it working on modern computers, too. I guess I could try again now with DOSbox.
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[Harveyjames]

I know, I couldn't find the exit either! I looked in the manual .pdf that came with the demo and it was in the style of a fake newsletter, with all kind of dumb fake headlines about stuff Rednecks get up to. There was no information about the game. Then on the last page it said in huge letters 'YOU EXIT THE LEVEL BY HITTING YOUR BROTHER WITH A BASEBALL BAT, OK? THAT'S IT, BIG WHOOP. STOP CALLING US'

You'd think they would have made that more explicit!

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

The demo wasn't even the entire first level, they cut lots out of it like the drive-in that had turned into a swamp and another farm house I think. I used to like Redneck Rampage enough to buy the game proper but I grew out of it eventually. You can only yell so many jokes about hicks whilst running through murkily-textured levels before it gets tiresome and finding your character's brother at the end of every stage in order to get to the next one (you had to feel him up or hit him with a crowbar or something) sucked because if you accidentally kill him you can kiss any hope of progress goodbye. Like, when you spin your view around and mistake him for one of those guys with the scatter guns, which happens more times than you'd think.

Yeah, sucked.

The manual was pretty sweet, it was like a miniature newspaper like Harveyjames said right as I was typing out this so A+ for packaging. Best to stick with other Build games like Blood even though it's too fucking tough. Or Duke Nuke Them since you can play that Starship Troopers mod I talked briefly about.
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[Cycle]

I watched a movie of the first level, and the guy used no clip and found these signs that said WANT TO SEE WANTS DONE HERE? BUY THE FULL VERSION.

Also, I got it running dosbox! Woo! Rero makes me think it's not worth the bother, though! I'll play a few levels and see what's what.

Blood is awesome but yeah, way too fucking hard.
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[Harveyjames]

I wish I hadn't deleted my Duke post, I forgot what my major points were

If anyone was taking notes, could you do a run-down of what I was saying with bullet points?

[Cycle]

[Harveyjames]

WHAT

How the hell did you do that

[Cycle]

it's called USING HISTORY AND OFFLINE BROWSING

God DAMN this first level in Redneck Rampage is huge. Also, you can use cows as cover! Neat!
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[Harveyjames]

You may as well be speaking crazy moonspeak

Have you played Miss Management yet?

[Cycle]

Here's what I said in reply to harveys post!

[Cycle]

On the third level. Don't know how much longer I'll play. A game that calls its God mode "Elvis Mode" has its heart in the right place, but this game really is below average. Some of the guns are interesting, but apart from that, eh. Oh, there are posters for Troma films all over the place, though! That's neat!

I really do like the atmosphere. The murkiness somehow adds to it. Now I'm in a trailer park, after visiting a baseball lot, heading to the drive in! Also I encountered aliens that threw poop at you (?) and an advertisement for some meat company, who claims no one can beat their meat. Also played thorugh a junkyard which made me want to play Interstate 76. So yeah, I'm enjoying the locations. Bowling alley! Complete with bowling balls! Shame about the rest of the game.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Cycle]

Rise of the Triad was a better Tromaish game!
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

I didn't smell much of an air of Troma from ROTT.
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[Cycle]

Perhaps not, but I always felt like it was a good fake B-Game, like the Troma films are good fake B-Movies (well, sort of fake). Redneck Rampage... I don't know. Not feeling it. This chicken factory level is pretty amusing though.

I actually have the Troma computer game around somewhere, I haven't played it yet. I bought it for like 50 cents.
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[Harveyjames]

I hate Troma movies.

GEE LOOK WE MADE A PARODY OF ALL THOSE CRAZY RETARDED B-MOVIES

But you ARE retarded

THEN MISSION ACCOMPLISHED SONNY WHOOO!

But your films aren't funny or clever on any level

THEYRE NOT MEANT TO BE, GOD YOU JUST DONT GET IT

gahhh

[Cycle]

I've only seen a couple. The original Toxic Avenger, Cannibal: The Musical and a couple others who names I forget. I think one was a Toxic Avenger sequel. I enjoyed them, though!
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[Harveyjames]

Oh yeah I forgot they produced Cannibal: The Musical. That film is great! It's written by, directed by and starring Trey Parker and Matt Stone, though, so it's barely Troma's movie.

[Cycle]

Yeah, I've been meaning to get that on DVD ever since I saw it on SBS, it really is great. But yeah, It's hardly a Troma film.
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[Harveyjames]

See, that was a nice conversation, why can't the conversation about MISS MANAGEMENT be this easy

[Cycle]

So yeah, Redneck Rampage has mostly good level... I wouldn't say design. Locations? But the rest of the game is pretty sucky. I didn't bother finishing it but I quickly saw the rest of the levels with cheat codes.

Let's take a quick look at other Build games!

Games that were built directly on the Build engine.

Blood (1997)
Duke Nukem 3D (1996)
PowerSlave (Exhumed in Europe) (1996)
Shadow Warrior (1997)
William Shatner's TekWar (1995)
Witchaven (1995)
Witchaven II: Blood Vengeance (1996)

Games that were based on the Duke Nukem 3D code

Extreme Paintbrawl (1998)
NAM (1998)
Redneck Deer Huntin' (1998)
Redneck Rampage (1997)
Redneck Rampage Rides Again (1998)
WW2 GI (1999)

Unreleased Build games

Legend of the Seven Paladins (completed but never released, used the Build engine illegally)
Fate (not completed, only a demo exists)
Corridor 8: Galactic Wars (never released, source code available)

Funny, I thought there were more than that. IN AN IRONIC TWIST (not ironic at all), Powerslave first appeared on the Saturn with a true 3D engine and it would go on to power Duke 3D and Quake ports to consoles. Interesting!
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Harveyjames]

Tekwar, that was fucking terrible! The frame rate was like twice as bad as Duke Nukem 3D!

What is wrong with William Shatner! He was even in the game! His face kept popping up on the HUD!

[Cycle]

[Cycle]

I've been playing some TERMINATOR: FUTURE SHOCK. It's quite entertaining! Levels are huge, you can enter any building, varied objectives, the driving is actually pretty darn fun and it has a great atmosphere (though it could have done with some better sound design, it's a bit bland here).

I do have a few problems. First, it feels weird that I'm the only guy running around killing robots, but I guess I shouldn't expect NPCs running about the place. There are also way too many items everywhere. Like, every building is crammed with them and they're all over the streets, too. It makes exploration a bit dull because you know you'll ALWAYS find something, and I think I already have enough ammo to last me the rest of the game. I also thought the game was way too easy, but I bumped into some terminators and they've turned up the difficulty a fair bit.

So yeah, pretty pimp game, so far.

EDIT: Sewer maze. RESPECT DOWN. Kyle Reese wears a Daggerfall shirt. This game echoes Jedi Knight.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Ha ha ha, just wait until you get to the jumping sections later on, it sucks. Especially when you just come short and get stuck on the environment and the only thing you can do is move backwards, fall off and land in a radiated pit (or die from the brutal falling damage). Man, fuck the engine it's that horrible x-ngine that Daggerfall ran on, the one where you could fall through the floor and look straight through the walls at times. Not to mention how many times it crashed. I'm glad you didn't need jumping in Daggerfall as it really makes Future Shock a contender for worst jumping sections of any game, ever. Ugh. If there's any game that needs a remake it's this one just to get it on a better engine. Typical Bethesda, that same stuff happened in Morrowind and that was on a different and better engine.

Still, it is a pimp game, it's definitely The Terminator. They nailed it perfectly, it's just like you are in one of the movies if it was set entirely in the future. I don't know if there are any licensed games can pull it off this well let alone games from 1995/96. They even give you a HK to pilot later on in the game, that's pretty boss. There's even a laser rifle that has a nightvision display that actually displays what you are looking at in attractive green and black and it doesn't impact on the performance of the game at all. I'd really like to know how they did this over ten years ago, it's definitely a "technology, whoa !" thing there.

Oh, and you'd better enjoy all your ammunition Cycle, some of the more powerful guns combined with the increased enemy numbers around the end of the game you go through ammo quickly.

EDIT: I think the Jedi Knight-ness comes from the combination of textured and flat-shaded polygons. it makes it look really futuristic but here it's much better since there's no organic characters that look unintentionally funny.
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[Cycle]

Does the expansion/sequel fix some of these problems?

The game certainly has a Bethesda quality to it, but I haven't noticed anything too bad yet. A few graphical glitches, gotten stuck on scenery a couple times (my own fault for jumping in stupid places but hey, the recoil from weapon fire knocks you off) and TWO desktop crashes... but it's actually much more solid than I expected.

I've found the gun you talked about, it's pretty awesome! I have a nice selection of guns now, and I'm off to capture the H/K. It's awesome when you kill a H/K and the falling debris kills enemies beneath it. The challenge is much more rewarding now. I find myself skuling about the environments carefully and using much more tactics than in the first couple levels. Is it worth playing the jumping puzzle bits to see the rest of the game? I'm not sure if this game is good enough for me to finish, yet...

I really want to try the first Bethesda Terminator game but I can't find it anywhere. It sounds VERY interesting. It also sounds similar to a game I designed in my head. The second and third Terminator games soudn a bit eh, though.

EDIT: Gah, some jumping puzzles. Not too painful yet, but the engine really isn't suited for them. Plus they were in MORE sewers. Ergh. Thankfully the sewers never seem to last too long.

I'm in the H/K now. It's Terminal Velocity all over again!

Tell me more about Skynet.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Cycle]

DOSBox seems to love Future Shock!

I'm pretty amazed this game came out in 1995. It's very impressive, despite how rough it all is. How come I hardly ever hear people talking about it?

Well, it might be the bugs... I just encountered a game breaking one. I don't know if I can be bothered playing the entire level again... and the skip mission cheat doesn't seem to work. Another problem is how loose the mission objectives are, I have to keep referring to a walkthrough so I know what to do next. STILL, it was a good way to spend my GAME DAY on the long weekend.

Multiplayer... was this the first game to feature vehicles in multiplayer? I think just about everything else it has done was done in other games first, but it did them all PIMPINGLY. Also, yes, co-op would be amazing. We won't see a sequel from Bethesda because they don't have the license anymore

SKYnet... doesn't sound that appealing. Sounds like they made it more action-intensive? And changed some things for the worse? Eh.

Also I liked following directions in the jeep mission!

EDIT: Got the cheat to work. The indoor SKYnet bases sure look like system shock!
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[Cycle]

Damn, that feedback sure would be helpful in Future Shock. Half the time I have no idea if I'm hitting enemies at a distance. I also like the mission briefings! I watched the FMV briefings on youtube, haha, man, I'm glad that fad is dead.

Also, cripes, this last level. It was pretty obtuse.

I'd go for Spear of Destiny before I went for DooM II when I comes to stand alone expansion packs, by the way!
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[Harveyjames]

The only thing I liked about Future Shock was that you could shoot down the moon!

[Cycle]

I guess you don't appreciate over-ambition as much as Rero and I, Jams!

A handsome fellow hooked me up with the original terminator game, so I'm going to give that a shot later.
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[Cycle]

So I played a bit of the original Terminator game, which is quite interesting! First thing I did was find a car, then I mowed down a few people. Then I went to go grab some weapons, but I had no money and couldn't rob the place without a weapon. Luckily, a bank was right across the road! I managed to rob it without any weapons, attracting the police. I ran outside, avoiding the cops, and went back to the gun store. Bought a berreta, and robbed the place with it. Got myself a M16. I went back outside to fight the cops, before I realised I forgot to grab ammo, and I couldn't go back in the shop since I just robbed it, so I ran to the nearest car, got in, and escaped while trying to run over any cops I could (which was none).

I went around looking for another gun store so I could get some ammo. I robbed a sports store first, which was hilarious because I didn't need any of the crap in there (you can buy anything, even if it's useless). Finally found another store, bought some ammo and stole another gun, this time without getting busted. I drove my car into a tree and healed myself up. I went into a hospital but the doctors found out who I was and the cops were waiting for me outside, so this time I tried to mow them down with my weapons. I took down four of them but the remaining ones killed me.

So yeah, it's a pretty neat game. Great use of the license and quite possibly one of the earliest sandbox games. Shame the engine is so sluggish when lots of stuff is on screen. Oh, I also read the manual at the-underdogs which helped me get into the game much easier than if I just experimented. I still have no idea how I'm going to find Sarah Connor in this huge city, though.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

You have a phone book but it's a Yellow Pages not a White Pages so you can't look up the addresses of all the Sarah Connors in town. It would make her much easier to find that's for sure.
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