Vendor Logos in Games ?

[KimB]

I disagree, the Flak Cannon was the most hated weapon in the original UT, spammage galore and don't even have to aim.

I don't see it, not at all. The only time the Flak Cannon's "spam" is really prevalent is in confined areas. While this means that there are some maps where the weapon is especially dangrous, in most it's not. I think this is pretty much proven by the fact that the weapon isn't seen used as often as the shock rifle or rocket launcher online.

I also have to laugh every time I hear somebody say that you "don't have to aim" with the Flak Cannon. Obviously you do. If you don't aim the thing right, you kill yourself.

 

[RM. Andersson]

I dont think a logo is reason enough not to buy a game.
But if the game is optimized for one companies cards in a way that means that I can´t enable effects that my card is able to support I would not buy it.
Or if it runs very slow on other cards compared to the card it´s optimized for.

I buy hardware from both Nvidia and ATI and I think games most be optimized to run on any card.
I mean the code should be general DX and not optimized for any specific vendor.

Regards!

 

[Doomtrooper]

I disagree, the Flak Cannon was the most hated weapon in the original UT, spammage galore and don't even have to aim.

I don't see it, not at all. The only time the Flak Cannon's "spam" is really prevalent is in confined areas. While this means that there are some maps where the weapon is especially dangrous, in most it's not. I think this is pretty much proven by the fact that the weapon isn't seen used as often as the shock rifle or rocket launcher online.

I also have to laugh every time I hear somebody say that you "don't have to aim" with the Flak Cannon. Obviously you do. If you don't aim the thing right, you kill yourself.

Go ask ladder teams...you know the people that play at a professional level. The Flak cannon is for the newb that can run around and spam the crap out of a room. Confined areas ?? Hmm I guess you have not played any CTF maps..they are all confined.

I also have to laugh every time I hear somebody say that you "don't have to aim" with the Flak Cannon. Obviously you do. If you don't aim the thing right, you kill yourself.

How many other weapons deflect off walls...How many spreads out almost in a 50 degree angle(walk up to a narrow hall and bounce some spammage into the room by shooting at the wall)...I may not have your 3D knowledge but I do have lots of UT experience (easily checked by looking up my online stats)..My opinion speaks for the majority (even mentioned in this review I linked above)...not the minority.

 

[KimB]

Go ask ladder teams...you know the people that play at a professional level. The Flak cannon is for the newb that can run around and spam the crap out of a room. Confined areas ?? Hmm I guess you have not played any CTF maps..they are all confined.

No, most CTF maps are not confined. Not enough to make the spam of the Flak Cannon truly effective, though most do have portions of the maps that are well-suited for the weapon.

By the way, I'm more of an "old school" player. I played a whole lot back in the days of the original Unreal and early in UT's lifespan. I was generally good, even part of a relatively informal clan at one point. But, my computer sucked and I had a crappy 'net connection, so I never joined any formal matches.

Personally, I've found most of the weapons, both in UT and UT2k3 to be very effective. In UT, the one that I didn't like was the razorjack (Did anybody like that one? Anyway, if there ever was a spam weapon, this was it...if used properly). In UT2k3, the one weapon I really don't like is the minigun. With everything else, I can do pretty well. I generally find the Flak Cannon is best for quick kills close-up, though that takes some aim. I've never found it useful for just spamming people, though the secondary fire is also nice at medium range.

The way I see it, if you're complaining about people making kills from just spamming with the flak cannon, then they're not going to be good enough to make many kills anyway, so it's not going to make much difference. In my experience, you actually need some skill to get many kills with any weapon (except in the excessive mod for UT...the flak cannon with that mod...now that's what I call spam...that and the shock rifle...wow).

How many other weapons deflect off walls...How many spreads out almost in a 50 degree angle(walk up to a narrow hall and bounce some spammage into the room by shooting at the wall)...I may not have your 3D knowledge but I do have lots of UT experience (easily checked by looking up my online stats)..My opinion speaks for the majority (even mentioned in this review I linked above)...not the minority.

In either game, the spread of the flak cannon is closer to about 15 degrees before deflection. All this does is reduces its effectiveness at long range. I really don't see why this is a problem. For the "aiming challenged" the spread makes it no better than the stream weapons. It's the deflection that makes the weapon powerful, but that's only useful in specific places (most maps have a couple).

Anyway, I've heard these arguments before, and I just don't get it. The way I see it, it doesn't really matter. Even if the flak cannon is a "newbie's weapon" it's not going to make a difference, because a smart player can get around a newbie anyway, no matter what weapon is being used. This is particularly true since most newbies tend to stick to repeating patterns, making them easy to pick apart in smaller matches.

For me, the flak cannon is, in general, no more useful than any other weapon. As far as I'm concerned, if it's no more useful to the skilled player than other weapons, I don't care. Newbs will lose anyway.

 

[dksuiko]

But, I guess this detour (?) is done. Yet another discussion between us that is on two completely different wavelengths--I guess.

/stumbles off in confusion.

I see you fell into demalion's semantics trap.

 

[jb]

I disagree, the Flak Cannon was the most hated weapon in the original UT, spammage galore and don't even have to aim. We did a survey on the ladder forums and the complaints about that weapon were 100 times more than any other, we even fired off emails years ago to epic showing the poll...I heard one of the lead programmers likes it and why it was brought back.

I think the most hated weapon was the sniper as thats where I heard all of the compliants about how it can kill you with you have no idea where it was coming from. This is why the lighting gun was created. Also they did listen the flak is a heck of a lot less spammy now then it was before and it does a lower ammount of damage. Keep in mind that the ladder forums and only professional gamers make up the minority of the UT comminity. Not saying they are not important... but I spent load of times in many different communities (mods, clans, public, ect) and never really got that impression w/ the flak

JB I have over 20,000 hours in the original UT and I was in the Top 20 in CTF in UT 2003 using no binds or aim bots, ...I have alot of time invested in UT 2003..but all my clan mates agreed...it simply doesn't have the gameplay the original had...possibly due to the leak but bind scripts were rampant.

Yeap I agree with you there!

I disagree again, trying loading up Quake 3 arena or some other older Quake 3 mods done with that engine..the graphics are at least equal to UT 2003..

I have code mods for both engines. I fully am aware what the Q3 engine can do and what the old and new UT engine can do. There is no doubt in my mind that today, UT2k3 is the best looking game bar none. Now I repeate that Epic/DE may not have brought out the best of what the engine can do. But after playing with the code for the last 3/4 months (yes I had access to the code early) there is a ton more thing I can do that I could not do in the Q3 engine.

The system requirements are a joke to run the game with any kind of detail and framerate for decent play.. I was averaging a whopping 40-50 fps with detail at medium,
Even a 9700 has a hard time handling this DX7 engine...be better off running a 5GHZ CPU if it was available.

What was your average frame rate in UT back when it first came out? How about Unreal? My point is that Unreal games have never had super fast FPS back when that game first showed up.
Hmm well on my 2100XP+ and the r9700 pro it runs just fine in full detail in the heat of battle. I also have a 8500 and a GF4 ti4200 that I test on to ensure what I have done code wise does not tank frame rates. Yes the game is a system hog but arent most new games on new engines kind of "hard" on current video cards???

No server side CHSP for Public servers or Match...aim bots were out and so were script binds galore...no PURE server mod.
Yes script binds are cheating IMO, can you fire the...

Oh sorry I spent a good deal of the last two days trying to recode some AI behavior. I found it a lot better than what UT had. So I was thinking bots/script in that sense. Sorry

 

[Doomtrooper]

JB,

I ran a Voodoo 3 3500 with Unreal Tournament and averaged 90-100 fps with max detail (max detail for the V3 was a 256 x 256 texture) yet it looked good and played a whole lot better. Then switched to a Radeon and OGL and was getting well over a 80 fps 32-bit. (Athlon 1ghz)

I agree some games are system hogs, but IMO the game is far too hard on hardware. Look at MOHAA, the graphics are amazing and still cranking out over 100 fps.
Its good to see the community supporting the game, and maybe if there is some game optimizations and improvements I may purchase it again.
For now I wait for Duke Nukem

A great example of a balanced engine is the Madden Football 2001-2002, game looks great...great model detail and runs smooth.

 

[KimB]

A great example of a balanced engine is the Madden Football 2001-2002, game looks great...great model detail and runs smooth.

There's a difference in rendering just a stadium than rendering many different kinds of environments.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Lots of enviroments in Madden Chalnoth...pick the packers, click on weather..have snow coming down, lighting on the field, the crowd is animated, myst coming from the player models mouth and many many high poly models on the field at one time.

 

[nooneyouknow]

Madden 2003 has come a long way and is now has more 3D features besides HW T&L. With that last patch, the one that added TRUFORM, also added Per-Pixel effects as well. And they were for all hardware. Also, in the front end, and I am not 100% sure about this, but I think they did software TRUFORM so that all cards could see the nice smooth helmets / players to show off the per-pixel stuff. Again, I know that was the original plan but not sure how it ended up.

 

[crimson guard]

Personally I don't think it is a problem unless the advertisement comes with strings attached. For example it's not aproblem unless Nvidia said we will pay you $1,000,000 and in return you have to put out log on the splash screen, use cg in your game development and limit ATI's access to game betas for driver development.

cg

 

[Althornin]

JB I have over 20,000 hours in the original UT

20,000/ 16 hours per day (need time to sleep and time to work) = 1250
1250/365 = 3.5 years.

Are you sure about this?
You played it every day for 16 hours for the last 3.5 years?

 

[Crusher]

Even the worst EverQuest addicts don't have over 10,000 hours of played time. 20,000 hours in UT would be unimaginably difficult to accomplish. Not only would your wrists be crippled for life as a result of the constant abuse, but you would probably have died from malnutrition by now.

 

[Nagorak]

I don't want either logos or BS trailers when I open up a game. If they put some spare trailers on the Install CD, fine, I'll watch them if I want (which I never will, but...). It's bad enough that we have to see 25 different logos from all the different development teams, engine license, publisher, etc, but I don't mind that too much since it's kind of like the movies and those guys (usually) deserve to have their logos in there. When it comes to hardware, though, I'm sorry but they shouldn't be present. This isn't like back when 3DFX glide was big and it only ran on one company's cards, so no hardware company deserves prominent placement at the game start.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Even the worst EverQuest addicts don't have over 10,000 hours of played time. 20,000 hours in UT would be unimaginably difficult to accomplish. Not only would your wrists be crippled for life as a result of the constant abuse, but you would probably have died from malnutrition by now.

Last I checked it was 14,000 hours on NG stats recorded for me in UT and UT2003, with over 7 million translocator throws and three mice...I didn't count every hour and wasn't the point...point was I have alot of time invested.
You are correct though, getting that many hours was difficult and it was not unusual to see the sun coming up many times.
So I have overestimated, the point still stands...I had 426 hours in the short time I played UT 2003...and I didn't like it much.

 

[KimB]

I think you just got too used to the UT style of playing that you didn't want to try anything new in terms of gameplay.

Personally, I think UT2k3 has some significant improvements in gameplay. The amount of spam is reduced, and I really like the way the new rocket launcher works (The grenades in the previous one were just pointless 99.9% of the time, so I never taught myself to make any use of 'em). They actually made the plasma gun useful, and got rid of the stupidest weapon ever to grace UT (Razorjack). The "headshot" area also seems to have been reduced.

The way I see it, I think it's just funny when people complain about things being worse in UT2k3 than they were in UT. For any kind of skilled player, as long as there's not just one simple strategy (like control the rocket launcher spawn point or somesuch) that can essentially win any match, then it's going to be good for competition. Anything else is just personal preference, and I feel too many people just don't seem to want change.

 

[UberLord]

Chanloth hit the nail on the head.

I see people moaning about many things, weapon balance, flak cannon, shock whores and "its a Q3 clone".

I've got one thing to say to those peeps - stick to playing UT if you love it so much.

UT2003 has it pretty much right now with lower ammo for rockets and higher ammo for minigun. Now if only they'ed increase the area of the shock combo ..... hey - now I'm bitching too

And I agree with the sniper being the most hated weapon - I HATE IT!!!!! At least I can get a bead on the sniper now. So if you wanna snipe, then snipe -move - snipe - move. Just like a proper sniper eh?

 

[Doomtrooper]

Just like a proper sniper ...

Snipers are not meant to be seen, thats the whole idea. The sniper rifle was a minor issue period...the people that used it were not skilled at close combat but at least gave them a opportunity to enjoy the game..and not everyone that shelled out cash is a ace shock combo/rocket monkey and are entitled to some enjoyment too.

The amount of players online reflects what people think of the game...and last time I looked it was under 2000..when Original UT was 8000 +.

Mini-gun is horrid and they destroyed that weapon..rocket launcher is so slow...I disagree alot.


I don't need your permission to make my own judgements either

 

[UberLord]

So what about people using the sniper in close combat? It's a silly gun becaue it's ROF was way too high.

Nothing wrong with the mini in UT2003 - just use primary instead of secondary and you're well away. Is it me, or is seconday fire as useless as UT's primary fire for the mini gun?

 

[Doomtrooper]

IMO the entire mini is uselss now...notice IMO.

Since myself and other clanmates were born in the 60's and even the 50's I had a few members that were great with a sniper rifle but were far too slow play close combat (that was not their thing).
Yet put a rifle in their hands and could pick off heads moving or not with one shot. The people that complained about snipers ( I was one of them) was also the one that appreciated them when the enemy has your flag and is about to cap and is taken down five feet from the flag from a head shot.