Off-Topic Thread

raymix

That pretty much sums up my DayZ experience, too. Met a bunch of awesome people ages ago while offering help to one of them, ended up joining squads and making huge 200m base in origins, now we are also playing lots of other games together

I never knew people from boards has such gaming community here where you can meet up, link?

Serephucus

Alright guys, I'd appreciate as much input as possible on this one:

I'm in the process of pitching my idea for my final project in my games development masters. What I know so far is that it's going to be a 3D space game, based largely on Freespace 2. If you haven't played FS2, that's ok, I'd still really appreciate any input you can give.

Basically, I'd like to know what elements you find important in a space sim. What mechanics you'd like to see, what sort of experience you want to have, all that sort of thing. Do you want particular types of movement? Would you like the AI to do certain things? Are graphics important to you? Is story?

ED E

Homeworld 1&2 are the epitome of the space game. Use that as your bible.

raymix

all i care about is being able to walk around the ship while its flying like in Mass effect series, while being able to sit down and control it from time to time. Basically a larger ship would require actual crew of few people flying a single ship. Also yes - I am excited about Star Citizen )) Not an easy task to do.
On more serious note - spaceship dogfights. A mossy or banshee from Planetside 2 would be a good example, but in space with asteroids and other annoyances.
If you are using unity, take a peak at planet generator addon, its generating worlds procedurally, but you can also save generated world as a prefab. There's also shader version.
Best of luck with a project.

Wossack

I likes me immense space battles. One of my gaming highlights (and Ive played a lot of games), is in the midst of a huge battle, seeing a capital ship get beam lasered in half by another one in Freespace 2.

Serephucus

I should mention that it's most-likely going to be an FPS, rather than RTS. The latter would require quite a bit more coding I think, to get formations and pathfinding working properly.

Also, the project is going to be too small to allow ship interiors, Shadow, so that's out. I'd love to include it, but I'd essentially be doing asset design for two games if that were the case.

Keep it coming!

Wossack

an issue with some of them is that dogfighting (vs ai) can be pretty monotonous.. 'target closest', and then just follow the arrow. So anything you can do to break that up is a bonus imo... ballistic weapons, very strong afterburners (so its not just constant circling), asteroids/debris to fight around etc.

An idea came to me earlier, is to be able to toggle Newtonian physics, along the same lines as that funky maneuver you can do in HAWX. So instead of all the time Newtonian (which, imo, could be pretty tedious, and not quite as fun as what I'd personally be aiming for), you could toggle it off to spin on axis to pew pew the dude on your six. It might make for pretty disjointed play however..!

Serephucus

That's actually exactly what I was thinking of doing. Similar to "glide mode" in BSG Diaspora. The high afterburner speed is also a good idea.

I'm hopefully going to be incorporating seeking missiles, ballistic weapons, swarm missiles, flak, countermeasures, as well as some form of strafe-doge, similar to Hawken. Thoughts?

Luck100

Great story about Doug Neubauer writing "Star Raiders" on the old Atari 400 home computer.
He was delighted to have 8K of ram since the Atari 2600 game console only had 128 BYTES.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130307/video_games_first_space_opera_.php

Seaaan

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/AMD+Radeon/Radeon+R9+290/Powercolor+Radeon+R9+290+PCS%2B+OC+4096MB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=59731


Arias customer service sucks? Power color?

OK so it was 250£ in the newsletter..

Wossack

Serephucus wrote: »

That's actually exactly what I was thinking of doing. Similar to "glide mode" in BSG Diaspora. The high afterburner speed is also a good idea.

I'm hopefully going to be incorporating seeking missiles, ballistic weapons, swarm missiles, flak, countermeasures, as well as some form of strafe-doge, similar to Hawken. Thoughts?

all good! customization is good in these alright (almost a requirement) I'd concentrate on good ballistic gun play primarily, and then add in missiles / rockets / mines / countermeasures as you go. I'd say its quite easy to bite off alot more then you can chew..! With solid ballistics, you can add in a wide host of weaponry, and just tweak fire rate/bullet velocity as applicable.

Sarz91

Probably a daft question but can I build up my system and throw this on it without having windows vista, xp or 7 as its a windows 8 upgrade.

Monotype

To install Windows 8 Pro, you must be running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 Consumer Preview, or Windows 8 Release Preview.

Edit: Oops, didn't read your question properly. It is possible, but you're not supposed to do it. You have to do a few registry tweaks and stuff. As part of the agreement, you should be forfeiting one of those licenses.

You can definitely do it with a clean install and some patience, as well as some search skills on the internet; I've done it myself but don't recall the steps. It may also be possible to install a trial of Win 7 and upgrade from that.

Sarz91

Monotype wrote: »

Edit: Oops, didn't read your question properly. It is possible, but you're not supposed to do it. You have to do a few registry tweaks and stuff. As part of the agreement, you should be forfeiting one of those licenses.

You can definitely do it with a clean install and some patience, as well as some search skills on the internet; I've done it myself but don't recall the steps. It may also be possible to install a trial of Win 7 and upgrade from that.

I assume it wouldn't be a far cry from installing a windows 7 OEM? there were a few tweaks in order to activate it properly but that seemed to be it. Is it similar for windows 8 upgrade?

Monotype

It's slightly more complicated. I think I did a 7 install and it was just a matter of skipping the key on install then putting in the key and that was it. 8 is a bit more complicated in that I'm pretty sure that it demands the key at install or is fussier about it. I don't think you can run trials the same way as 7. I don't really remember how I avoided this but it might have been that you put the key directly into the registry or something. Just give it a go and have some patience. If one way doesn't work one way, try it another.

Oh and just to add the disclaimer again - you would be supposed to have another license that you are forfeiting by doing the upgrade.

raymix

That's actually pretty awesome, especially if you work in IT.

Serephucus

I'd seen Linus (I think) do a video on this at CES I think, but I actually ordered one after seeing this video. :P

marco_polo

Sweet I suppose optical drives were all but dead anyway but that Zalman enclosure is just dancing all over their grave :pac:

raymix

marco_polo wrote: »

Sweet I suppose optical drives were all but dead anyway but that Zalman enclosure is just dancing all over their grave :pac:

I was hoping that, too, but some of the older laptops have trouble recognizing bootable USBs. So with the great pain we just dust off our old optical drives and burn that darn DVD-RW drive "for the last time".

ED E

I was expecting a much higher price tag, gonna have to order one too.

Danger781

I JUST REALISED I REALLY NEED ONE OF THOSE.

robk24

Been using one of those for the last 6 or 7 months, great piece of kit.
Installs windows 7 in about 15 mins start to finish on any laptop under around 3 years old using USB2.
Installs in about 8 mins on a machine equipped with USB3!

TerrorFirmer

Since using usb to install windows, can't imagine going back, unless necessitated. Takes about 15 minutes. Have a usb2 key I keep lying around with Win7 ultimate on it.

In other news, Origin Insider were running a competition for 3 people to win Crysis trilogy keys, left a comment an hour ago and got a reply ten minutes later telling me I'd won a copy! :cool:

xtal191

Thinking of getting the following cooler for a 7970

http://www.quietpc.com/gel-icy-vision-amd

Anyone here have one? Are they hard to install?

Gumbi

xtal191 wrote: »

Thinking of getting the following cbutoler for a 7970

http://www.quietpc.com/gel-icy-vision-amd

Anyone here have one? Are they hard to install?

I have an Accelero on my own 7950. Different aftermarket cooler but similar results. Is it a reference 7970 you have? If so, then this might be a worthy investment, if not, don't bother with it.

I'm not sure if you get VRM cooling with thst cooler or if yoy just leave the stock VRM cooling on it.

xtal191

Yeah its a reference 7970. Are there any other coolers for around the same price?

Seaaan

What's this like

deceit

Seaaan wrote: »

What's this like

VTX3D have non existent support and with the 6970 at least they used cheaper components and skimped on parts so it was less reliable than a reference 6970.

..Brian..

Not sure about the VTX3D but the Powercolor card you linked the other day is being very well received. I'd defo pick one up if it goes on sale again. I nearly would even if it didn't!

Gumbi

The price is amazing, price performance would be great. If you can get a sub 85 degree, relatively quiet, 1100mhz 290 for 290 pounds, that's insane value.