Video Games Randomness - Prioritize specific game threads!

Redfive · Post by **Redfive** » Mon May 22, 2017 10:38 am

Speaking of Freespace, I've never played either one. I understand they are both very good and FS2 is considered somewhat Holy Grail like. I've fastidiously avoided spoilers forever though I don't think it matters much these days. Isn't there supposed to be some 'holy sh*t!' reveal during a mission or something in FS2?

I've decided to be honest with myself (for once) and since I'm never going to play this game I'd like to at least go find the big reveal on YouTube.

Can anyone assist?

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Mon May 22, 2017 10:59 am

Dive...dive...dive...hit your afterburners pilot! but it's much better to play through the mission.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:16 am

I am kinda surprised that I didn't use the targeting controls much in Freespace. Often I just "freehand" shoot (no targeting) the bad guys (not missiles of course) with full guns. Guess that's my reaction to "who uses this many targeting controls?!". Heck, I even shoot down the enemy bombs/torpedoes freehand if I can.

Some of these Silent Threat missions are **hard**. There's this mission where it started off calmly enough. 3 squads (12 fighters) babysitting 3 science cruisers on the way to jump point. A couple Shivan fighters dropped by, no big deal. Then suddenly One by one, the science cruisers started screaming "they escaped, AHHHHHHHH!!!!!" and went kaboom. Then SOMETHING apparently latched onto my fighter! Hit Afterburner and left it in space... Last science cruiser is dead in space, then a Shivan Demon-class destroyer jumped in with a ton of fighters and bombers! They keep sending out transports to capture the science cruiser, we shot them down. Our side sent in an Orion class destroyer to counter the Shivan destroyer. We launched tugs trying to tow the science cruiser out of the area, they tried to shoot it down, and we're trying to stop them. It took me about 5 attempts but eventually we were able to save that last ship as the tug managed to jump out with it. (Failure means I got executed as a traitor and be reported as "missing in action")

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Mon May 22, 2017 11:24 am

Zarathud wrote:Dive...dive...dive...hit your afterburners pilot! but it's much better to play through the mission.

The first time I played that mission I was like WTF!?? and froze like a deer in headlights. Thing ran over me like a opossum.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue May 23, 2017 7:36 pm

Finished Freespace 1 (using FSOpen), Silent Threat Reborn (the fan updated remake of the official FS1 expansion pack), and Operation Templar (kinda prequel to FS2)

I am ready to start with FS2 (using updated MediaVPs 2014) now, and I'm looking forward to playing with all the mods, as there are dozens to choose from.

I ordered a joystick but it won't be here in time to matter. (i.e. Not for another week, buying used)

The WC Saga Total Conversion sounds really cool, but downloading it is taking forever. Their server has sucky bandwidth.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Tue May 23, 2017 8:38 pm

I regret leaving the FreeSpace community after starting legal work, but there was no time to keep up. They've done an amazing job digging deep into the engine, tools and mission editor. And then remade it.

The engine outstripped era hardware and the mission editor allowed anyone who could use logic to program a challenge or story. Truly a classic.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Wed May 24, 2017 3:09 am

It was a sucky time for Volition. They have a full 3D engine, but Freespace is an Interplay property and Interplay is getting out of space sims (and out of business altogether). Volition got acquired by THQ, then THQ went out of business and sold off Volition to KOCH Media and got merged with Deep Silver.

Personally, whoever's holding on to Freespace property should just sell it to an interested buyer. Heck, let Volition buy it back or something so they can make FS3. Open sourcing it kept the game in circulation and making FRED available with open assets structure allowed total conversions to take place... and we get everything from WC Saga to B5 to BSG, and maybe even Star Wars...

I knew I played the original and I have the boxes to prove it, but I never got very far in FRED, or downloaded mods (until now). Too busy in school.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Wed May 24, 2017 3:41 am

The WC Saga Total Conversion sounds really cool

That was actually a very well done thing. It surprised me how good it was. I finished it. I usually dont bother with crappy fan made stuff but that one was a stand out.

Also I 'think' I played Blue Planet: War in Heaven

KDH · Post by **KDH** » Wed May 24, 2017 4:10 am

.

Keystone Announced

Digital Extremes announces Keystone, an upcoming free-to-play multiplayer shooter that looks for a new take on the concept with a deck-building strategy component. If you're interested, you can sign up for closed alpha testing on the Keystone website, where they are accepting alias reservations. They explain that this is being handled by a separate team from WARFRAME, and say the first testing will get underway this week:

With the look and feel of the 1970's retro-pulp era, Keystone will take players on a journey through a multi-verse that begins on the starting square of an intriguing, mystical board game. Players will wield unique decks of cards throughout the match that offer handy benefits, amazing powers, and fearsome weapons. With timing and resourcefulness, personally customized decks give players the upper hand in battle both individually and when strategically coupled with teammates' decks. To find out more and to participate alongside the developers in building the concept of Keystone, sign up for the Closed Alpha today.

First-wave players will be notified this week on Thursday, May 25 to download and prepare for the first Closed Alpha session beginning Friday and ending Monday, May 26-29.

"The long-running success of Warframe has enabled us to build up a second internal team to create a wholly different but equally satisfying game concept that we're really excited about," said Sheldon Carter, studio head at Digital Extremes. "Keystone originates from our roots in the FPS world and mixing genres like we have done with Warframe. We believe there's room to expand the confines of what defines a good FPS and hope our community will see the potential and get on board for the ride."

from: Blues

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu May 25, 2017 1:21 am

Finished Freespace 2. Wow, that last mission was a doozy. First time around, got too close to the 2 cruisers, got slaughtered by the beam. Second time, got slaughtered by the fighters while I was trying to take out the two cruisers' engines. Third time, too far from the exit, still had 6000 left when the time ran out. Fourth time, lower the difficulty to wimp, and decided to stick relatively near the exit node (within 10K) and was able to last until it's time to run. Jumped with 10 seconds to spare.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri May 26, 2017 7:45 pm

Taking a temporary break until my joystick gets here.

Started Tomorrow War, the Russian Wing Commander. It's supposed to be kinda based on some novels? It's designed with Russian audience, and for people who got used to Wing Commander, it's a mess. The missings are boring as HECK, and the game just lacks a lot of the options you'd expect while having way too much of OTHER options.

The translation of manuals and ingame dialogue are... atrocious. I don't mind them naming their space fighters "fluggers", but calling carriers "aircraft carriers" just screams "machine translated!"

Before you get into the cockpit, there's a bunch of cutscenes... And you can go to various locations, and with 3-D wrap-around, click on characters to talk to them for additional background info (but no idea if it affects anything!) I guess it's kinda improvement on Wing Commander 1/2 but kinda weird.

The plot is pretty basic. Apparently as new flight cadets at UN Space Navy, you are called to help our traditional enemies against some aliens that invaded and dropped some xenoformers on the planet.

I like the idea that the missions give you seamless transition from space flight into atmospheric flight and back again, but the game really has a flow problem. Every time you get a target update, you get a big dialog box that pops up in the middle of the screen and pauses the game. You have to hit OK to dismiss it and resume the game. Furthermore, this game is, in many ways, reminiscent of Darkstar One, in that it has two modes: flight mode, and UI mode, while you're flying! Toggle between the two with space bar. In UI mode, you fly with keyboard, while you click on things on screen for commands you couldn't map to a key (or didn't bother to). In flight mode, mouse only controls flight and shoot.

80% of your time is spent in autopilot watching your ship flying from here to there. WTF?! Not that the autopilot isn't smart. It can keep formation, it can fly from A to B (except through asteroids), it can go into mini-warp (super-fast velocity for intra-system travel), it can even land your fighter! But it can't fight for you.

Fighting is really weird. You have two guns to start... a long-cycling laser, and an auto-cannon. The problem is mouse control has a deadzone, and sometimes the game will take a pity on you and give you limited autoaim, and sometimes it doesn't. Micro-adjustments means a quick and subtle jerk to the side, rather than small movement from the center. WTF?! And there's no way to config this. Dogfight is next to impossible. And I can't seem to remap my gamepad's twin sticks.

Which brings me to AI... the enemies, while visually different, do the same moves... accelerate away, shoot at something, spin wildly, come to a stop, turn, repeat. While there may be a dozen enemies, there are plenty of friendlies in the initial missions that they will often kill things for you.

I'm not sure I like it. I know I owned this game for years (bought it back in 2014, and by then it's already old!) and I can guess why I didn't play it more. Will try it for another couple missions.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Fri May 26, 2017 8:37 pm

Kasey Chang wrote:I'm not sure I like it.

Um, you don't.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri May 26, 2017 10:27 pm

Holman wrote:
Kasey Chang wrote:I'm not sure I like it.
Um, you don't.

It seems pretty clear that he alt-likes it.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Fri May 26, 2017 11:41 pm

Let's say I can see what the makers tried to accomplish, but it's not really for Western audiences, much like a lot of Russian games are almost masochistically hard, or has weird gameplay mechanics when compared to existing Western classics.

I decided to get back into Eterium, which is basically a WC clone. "UES Canopus", new pilot joining a carrier in the middle of alien invasion, a hostile captain... The problem is they decided to go anime-cute for all the characters... with console-style dialog boxes for the dialogs. I had to click through a TON of convos just to get to the darn mission. And the convos are kinda lame.

I tried a couple missions in the Freespace Total Conversion WC Saga. It was a VERY nice attempt to emulate WC with the Freespace engine, complete with "auto-pilot".

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat May 27, 2017 3:30 am

Why not just play Starlancer?

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sat May 27, 2017 8:21 am

I have that somewhere.

What's kinda sad is I kinda want to play Freelancer, but it's not available for sale anywhere.

Brian · Post by **Brian** » Sat May 27, 2017 8:39 am

Kasey Chang wrote:I have that somewhere.

What's kinda sad is I kinda want to play Freelancer, but it's not available for sale anywhere.

Freelancer Jewel Case Edition

I bought this edition a couple years back when I got the itch for another playthrough and it worked just fine.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat May 27, 2017 9:22 am

I think I got my boxed Freelancer off Amazon years ago. Im sure Amazon or Ebay would have a copy.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sat May 27, 2017 11:12 am

Brian wrote:
Freelancer Jewel Case Edition

I don't want it $30 USD bad... Besides, I may have that somewhere. Hahaha. Let's just say I have too much crap around.

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Sun May 28, 2017 1:27 am

I just tried a casual game called #monstercakes that literally gave me all 118 achievements in the fist 6 minutes of playing the game. I guess I'm done.

As for the game itself, it's like Triple Town, except Triple Town is much better.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun May 28, 2017 3:06 am

Decided to start with Deux Ex (the original). Not Revision, the original. I went through training okay. Why can't I take down the goons with darts? Sheesh. I was hoping to stealth the whole way, but I guess I have to play Splinter Cell sneaking instead? Argh.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Sun May 28, 2017 5:04 pm

Apparently I'm very calm and very still when I'm playing HoI4. For each of the last 3 sessions that I played, my fitbit decided I was sleeping.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Mon May 29, 2017 1:37 am

Just fought my way through Hell's Kitchen, decided to go lethal all the way, and realized I missed half the level with all the secondary objectives.

Dang, this game was so open-ended and multi-pathed it really is very much way ahead of its time.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Mon May 29, 2017 1:47 am

Played the first 3 Deus Ex games and loved them. But the first one has always been way ahead as my favorite. Im not sure if its the gameplay, the areas, or engine or what. I got the last one the other week for $12 and installed but waiting to start it until I finish the Witcher 3 which Ive been putting off because of Dijkstra. Dont wanna do what Im going to have to do.

Hope Mankind Divided is cool.

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Mon May 29, 2017 9:26 am

One of my top three FPS memories was when I did objectives out of order on Deus Ex and one of the NPCs said something like, "Well, I was going to tell you about so and so but I see you already cleared that up."

The others:

-Half-Life, when you approach a door to hear two guys talking about how they're going to kill you when they find you. Meanwhile, I slid a satchel charge up to their feet.
-Jedi Knight, when I was halfway through the game on software rendering and bought a Voodoo card.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Mon May 29, 2017 10:15 am

I remember getting a Voodoo card during Quake and switching to GLQuake or whatever. Amazing.

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Mon May 29, 2017 10:16 am

Smoove_B wrote:Huh. You're clearly a power user.

Another of my gripes about Steam is the crappy store search function. Why can't you sort by discount? If the search results can indicate games you own, why can't it exclude them? When there are more pages than one of results, why does the order of items shift around as you page through so you can't tell if you are seeing all the results (this happens in community item searches too)?

And now that they've rearranged the box to the right of game pages in the store where they tell you if the game is relevant to you (friends have it or recommend it, for example), the functionality of that box seems to be a bit poor. For example, I own a ton of those Artifex Mundi hidden object games and have finished several, yet I can look at the store page for one I don't have and it says "This game doesn't look like other things you've played in the past." There was a time when the recommended games at the bottom were crap (because I own so many games I probably confused it), but that improved when they made the discovery queue. Still, apparently the new algorithm thinks I primary play anime-style visual novels, but that is minimal.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Mon May 29, 2017 10:43 am

JetFred wrote:(because I own so many games I probably confused it)

That's probably a big factor. The algorithm was likely designed with a typical buyer in mind. I seriously doubt that it was optimized for someone who has the kind of library you do. You probably register as every type of user at once.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Mon May 29, 2017 10:54 am

Yeah, I just did a quick Google search and the internet tells me the average STEAM account owns about 11 games. That seems absurdly low, but maybe when you factor in all the bots and fake accounts used to move games or hats or cards around it's pulling down the average. I more or less figured anyone with 100+ games isn't someone STEAM is actively targeting anymore as part of sales or promotions and all of their recommendations and splash-page advertisements are designed to get people with few games more invested int he STEAM architecture so they're "locked in" like the rest of us. At some point I think people really do just say, "Well, I have 40 games on STEAM already, I should just keep buying them there..." and the cycle never ends. Anyway, I think most of us aren't of interest to them, JetFred decidedly so. They know we're going to mostly lurk about and try to snatch AAA games for $5 during a holiday sale but that we mostly just collect games and don't really play them.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Mon May 29, 2017 11:21 am

Anyone with 500 games has already confused Steam.

I have 1000 games listed. Nowhere as many as JetFred, but hey, we can't all be JetFred.

KDH · Post by **KDH** » Mon May 29, 2017 1:08 pm

.

.. Gooooogle-Images-Search ... Atari Breakout

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon May 29, 2017 1:32 pm

And it even works on mobile.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Mon May 29, 2017 6:05 pm

I dug an old game out of my pile... Soldier of Fortune: Payback. Unfortunately, it's impossible to run it on a modern system, even with compatibility on. It crashes within the first couple minutes, missing textures, and screen turns yellow when you get hit. WTF!? (and stay yellow, clearly a video problem) Then the program randomly freezes, even tried a couple different resolutions. Argh. Uninstall it goes.

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Mon May 29, 2017 8:04 pm

Kasey Chang wrote:Anyone with 500 games has already confused Steam. I have 1000 games listed. Nowhere as many as JetFred, but hey, we can't all be JetFred.

Thank God for that. Really.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Mon May 29, 2017 9:55 pm

As far as I remember Ive been with Steam since beta. I 'think' I joined because of Counter Strike or something now I dont recall.

JetFred · Post by **JetFred** » Mon May 29, 2017 11:24 pm

Daehawk wrote:As far as I remember Ive been with Steam since beta. I 'think' I joined because of Counter Strike or something now I dont recall.

Can't claim beta, but I can claim 2004. Didn't start this current mess in force until 2011, though.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue May 30, 2017 2:14 am

My first ever purchase on Steam was 2011. It's probably when I joined too.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue May 30, 2017 2:16 am

Decided to do something completely different... Started up Remember Me, the dystopian brawler. I am currently stuck on the huge security bot, about to reach New Bastille.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Tue May 30, 2017 9:32 am

He sucked. I remember that much.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Tue May 30, 2017 9:54 am

I broke down and made my first purchase on Steam in 2009, because there wasn't any other way to play Borderlands.