I must admit I've not found the inspiration to continue blogging for so long and this post should not be an indication that there will be regular updates. There is little to talk about, which makes a couple of months of activity crammed into a single post a fairly lengthy article.
I have been trying different games and I think we can go directly to that. I was intrigued by this title called 'Culpa Innata'. It is a PC point and click adventure game with a dash of non-linear gameplay sprinkled on it. You're this female cop in this fictional futuristic world and seems off on a personal journey of sorts. I am always up for a good story so I thought I'd pick this up and figure how it fares. As in my previous blog posts, I very much do not like the standard formula for adventure games with developers seemingly hoping to add challenge by squeezing academic mental puzzles into the game. Culpa Innata is no exception. It has some challenges you would normally find beside the 'Tower of Hanoi' and I find that quite frankly rubbish. It does not seem like a very realistic rendition and I hope developers do try a little harder to make for a more believable setting and more believable and playable challenges without turning the game into a mental course quiz. While we are on the subject of puzzles, some of them are so abstract you may need to give up and attempt a trial-and-error style of play, which is so reminiscent of ancient adventure game design. We are already more than a decade older than King's Quest and Legend of Kyrandia. I think us adventure gamers deserve more than being introduced to these kinds of puzzles.
Moving on to other aspects of the title, I wish to touch on its production values. Firstly, the visuals of the game are eye-gougingly terrible. The character models are barely passable and the backdrops are extremely plain. I tend to think that if you cannot produce good production values for the visuals, you ought to try something else. Get creative and try a different presentation, perhaps using a full-blown animation video like what the old Broken Sword games did or perhaps use a graphic novel type cutscene. I would say games several years back like No One Lives Forever 2 can boast of better visuals. Culpa Innata's use of in-game cinematics also do not help its cause to tell its heroine's travails. Character animations are extremely stiff, and the cutscenes lack the punch to deliver the emotional stress of the protagonist. Add to that the very bland soundtrack that coupled with the bland visuals is bound to put you to sleep and you have a title that has some potential but never fully lives up to it, which is a shame.
Culpa Innata is not without its intriguing implementation. Its design for non-linear events make for a fairly good way of making sure players do not experience the same events over. The actions you make have very real consequence over what happens in the course of your game session. Its dialog system, allowing your character to call up her friend for a chat and touching on multiple of the game's plot points is a very good idea as it allows the player explore several insights over the game's progression.
Ultimately, inspite of this, Culpa Innata in the end is just not a title that lives up to expectations. It hobbles around its limitations while making a poor attempt at showing it does have some luster deep within its core. If you choose to make this journey, be warned that you may have to dig deep to find that satisfaction. While perhaps adventure gamers would be very much delighted with Culpa Innata and ignore my complaints, it ultimately shows that the title plays to a narrow niche and that majority of gamers will see its cracks from the word go and probably toss it in the bin, as I have.
After that supreme disappointment, I journeyed to install Neverwinter Nights. Yes, it is an extremely dated title and I was dying to get a game to play on Linux. This game fit the bill pretty nicely, and inspite of age, the game really shows it is an incredible journey. Very good story-telling and the game's production values age pretty well. Of all the three expansions, I have to say that Shadows of Undrentide is the worst, the plot is something I do not particularly care for and the NPC henchmen do not resonate with me. Hordes of the Underdark is the best of the campaigns but it is incredibly unforgiving, giving out very tough challenges and very tough puzzles for players. The kind of roleplay it provides has been lost in this day and age of gaming. Only Bioware seems to understand what it really is. For that I am extremely thankful for Bioware's existence. Unfortunately, it seems like NWN is the final Linux entry in Bioware's portfolio of great titles. Atari is not a Linux-friendly publisher and I do not think EA is.
Speaking of Linux friendliness, over at Phoronix, I found a funny story where a poster mailed EA asking where he could find the Medal of Honor Allied Assault Linux port (it exists here). EA's personnel had a very interesting quote:
Perhaps this is a clear indication that the new owners of Bioware will not even consider Linux a platform even though they did announce they were doing Mac ports of their Windows titles. Even with that, it is certainly a funny scenario.
While we are on the subject of Linux games, what about Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux taking an extremely long time to get released. Ryan Gordon had released teasers on it but there has not been much visible progress other than that. Hopefully they sort out those proprietary software libraries keeping it from release. Linux gamers need decent Linux games.
Over on the Wii side of gaming I got to play Ferrari Challenge and it has been quite a good product. It has a very serious and solid racing engine coupled with some pretty visuals to boot. It is nothing close to high-definition, but why buy the Wii if you are hoping for that? As a sim racing gamer, I have been hoping for something like this on the Wii for a very, very long time and no, Need for Speed does not do it. The AI is incredibly terrible in this game. Your opponents seem to run on rails and never really react to your car's presence. That is a shame, but I have seen few games do it right.
Perhaps what is most baffling with Ferrari Challenge is that they have a pretty moronic controller setup on Wii. I remember Bruno Senna remarking how he prefers a controller or steering wheel over the Wii remote, but I'd say he ought to try playing other racers on Wii and see how the controls stack up there. Eutechnyx's control setup has been the worst I have ever seen on a Wii title and the motion sensing code is not up to EA's efforts. Wii games need to have some leeway on controls because different gamers move differently. Ferrari Challenge does not offer that customizability on the controls and that is just common sense. I cannot believe they play-tested the controls and passed it as playable. Control issues aside, the racing is very good as is the sensation of speed. Any sim racing Wii owner should have this title, as these kinds of title on the Wii are far and few inbetween.
Last game is an interesting journey of sorts. I played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on DS, Wii and a tad bit on Xbox 360. First of all, it goes without saying that the Xbox 360 version boasts the most incredible visuals among the three. There are a lot of background interaction and lots of special effects that go into this title which makes for a very good visual show. However, I found the gameplay to be severely lacking. In terms of gameplay I found my home on the Wii version especially when you and your opponent's lightsabers lock and having to twist the remote to win the joust. After a while of playing with the Wii version, you get engrossed and simply the visuals do not matter anymore. I can forget Xbox 360's wow visuals in place for what I believe is the definitive way of playing a 'Lightsaber game' or sorts. Both the Wii and the Xbox 360 versions suffer from similar things though, and that is perhaps that the game levels are simply too long and tedious. That right balance of gameplay and length is what I found on the DS game. The gameplay is solid with the touch panels being slid to produce different moves is pretty good and I am at awe with nSpace's efforts as of late, pushing the DS to its absolute limit while capturing the essence of what its brethren's games are (Look at their Call of Duty 4 on DS and this one). Force Unleashed on the DS has that right balance of difficulty and the gameplay to keep me going back to it. Also interestingly, because the voice acting and 3d model acting is just not good on both the Wii and Xbox 360 game, I like the way the DS version handles the story telling, which is through plain text. That leaves so much to the imagination and I get a kick out of seeing the scene much cooler than what the console games do.
My verdict for Force Unleashed is fairly straight forward, despite its hardware limitations, the DS is the best of the versions. It has some very impressive visuals for a DS title and it handles everything very solidly while never really frustrating the player. The Wii version takes second place for the very engrossing gameplay that I prefer over Xbox 360's visuals. The Xbox 360 version is a solid title, but I do not agree with using the conventional controller on this game. It needs that much more now.
I have been busy with Neveredit, which is an open source NWN editor for Linux and Mac (and Windows). My main objective has been on this are:
As part of that work, I have delved deeper into NWN Toolset, writing a short module though it is surprisingly still a large undertaking. The story is mostly done on a general note and I have just been quite busy going through the module's most critical scenes first to get something functional. It's very interesting in that it is a very good exercise in game development, in terms of designing the level and how you would go about telling the story. The NWN scripting language is very much reminiscent of C and that is a very good thing for sure. Sometimes, it feels like a strange cross between C and other scripting languages such as TCL or Python.
Well, that is all I have to say as of the moment. Pretty lengthy blog post and I am not sure when the next update will come. When I feel like it, that is what I can say.
I have been trying different games and I think we can go directly to that. I was intrigued by this title called 'Culpa Innata'. It is a PC point and click adventure game with a dash of non-linear gameplay sprinkled on it. You're this female cop in this fictional futuristic world and seems off on a personal journey of sorts. I am always up for a good story so I thought I'd pick this up and figure how it fares. As in my previous blog posts, I very much do not like the standard formula for adventure games with developers seemingly hoping to add challenge by squeezing academic mental puzzles into the game. Culpa Innata is no exception. It has some challenges you would normally find beside the 'Tower of Hanoi' and I find that quite frankly rubbish. It does not seem like a very realistic rendition and I hope developers do try a little harder to make for a more believable setting and more believable and playable challenges without turning the game into a mental course quiz. While we are on the subject of puzzles, some of them are so abstract you may need to give up and attempt a trial-and-error style of play, which is so reminiscent of ancient adventure game design. We are already more than a decade older than King's Quest and Legend of Kyrandia. I think us adventure gamers deserve more than being introduced to these kinds of puzzles.
Moving on to other aspects of the title, I wish to touch on its production values. Firstly, the visuals of the game are eye-gougingly terrible. The character models are barely passable and the backdrops are extremely plain. I tend to think that if you cannot produce good production values for the visuals, you ought to try something else. Get creative and try a different presentation, perhaps using a full-blown animation video like what the old Broken Sword games did or perhaps use a graphic novel type cutscene. I would say games several years back like No One Lives Forever 2 can boast of better visuals. Culpa Innata's use of in-game cinematics also do not help its cause to tell its heroine's travails. Character animations are extremely stiff, and the cutscenes lack the punch to deliver the emotional stress of the protagonist. Add to that the very bland soundtrack that coupled with the bland visuals is bound to put you to sleep and you have a title that has some potential but never fully lives up to it, which is a shame.
Culpa Innata is not without its intriguing implementation. Its design for non-linear events make for a fairly good way of making sure players do not experience the same events over. The actions you make have very real consequence over what happens in the course of your game session. Its dialog system, allowing your character to call up her friend for a chat and touching on multiple of the game's plot points is a very good idea as it allows the player explore several insights over the game's progression.
Ultimately, inspite of this, Culpa Innata in the end is just not a title that lives up to expectations. It hobbles around its limitations while making a poor attempt at showing it does have some luster deep within its core. If you choose to make this journey, be warned that you may have to dig deep to find that satisfaction. While perhaps adventure gamers would be very much delighted with Culpa Innata and ignore my complaints, it ultimately shows that the title plays to a narrow niche and that majority of gamers will see its cracks from the word go and probably toss it in the bin, as I have.
After that supreme disappointment, I journeyed to install Neverwinter Nights. Yes, it is an extremely dated title and I was dying to get a game to play on Linux. This game fit the bill pretty nicely, and inspite of age, the game really shows it is an incredible journey. Very good story-telling and the game's production values age pretty well. Of all the three expansions, I have to say that Shadows of Undrentide is the worst, the plot is something I do not particularly care for and the NPC henchmen do not resonate with me. Hordes of the Underdark is the best of the campaigns but it is incredibly unforgiving, giving out very tough challenges and very tough puzzles for players. The kind of roleplay it provides has been lost in this day and age of gaming. Only Bioware seems to understand what it really is. For that I am extremely thankful for Bioware's existence. Unfortunately, it seems like NWN is the final Linux entry in Bioware's portfolio of great titles. Atari is not a Linux-friendly publisher and I do not think EA is.
Speaking of Linux friendliness, over at Phoronix, I found a funny story where a poster mailed EA asking where he could find the Medal of Honor Allied Assault Linux port (it exists here). EA's personnel had a very interesting quote:
Link to actual post is here.
Greetings,
Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.
The minimum required specifications for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Spearhead are as follows:
* Windows XP, ME, 98, 95 and 2000 (Windows 2000 Server and NT are not supported)
* 450 MHz processor
* 128 MB RAM
o 256 MB for Windows XP and Windows 2000
* CD/DVD-Rom Speed: 8x
* At least 1.2 GB of hard drive space
* Sound: DirectX 8.0 compatible sound card
* Keyboard
* MS compatible Mouse
* A video card with at least 16 MB of video RAM with DirectX 8.0 compatible driver and one of the supported chipsets.
Supported video cards:
* Nvidia Riva TNT or Higher
* ATI Rage 128 or Higher
* PowerVR Kyro
If you need any further assistance regarding your question, please let us know by updating this incident.
Perhaps this is a clear indication that the new owners of Bioware will not even consider Linux a platform even though they did announce they were doing Mac ports of their Windows titles. Even with that, it is certainly a funny scenario.
While we are on the subject of Linux games, what about Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux taking an extremely long time to get released. Ryan Gordon had released teasers on it but there has not been much visible progress other than that. Hopefully they sort out those proprietary software libraries keeping it from release. Linux gamers need decent Linux games.
Over on the Wii side of gaming I got to play Ferrari Challenge and it has been quite a good product. It has a very serious and solid racing engine coupled with some pretty visuals to boot. It is nothing close to high-definition, but why buy the Wii if you are hoping for that? As a sim racing gamer, I have been hoping for something like this on the Wii for a very, very long time and no, Need for Speed does not do it. The AI is incredibly terrible in this game. Your opponents seem to run on rails and never really react to your car's presence. That is a shame, but I have seen few games do it right.
Perhaps what is most baffling with Ferrari Challenge is that they have a pretty moronic controller setup on Wii. I remember Bruno Senna remarking how he prefers a controller or steering wheel over the Wii remote, but I'd say he ought to try playing other racers on Wii and see how the controls stack up there. Eutechnyx's control setup has been the worst I have ever seen on a Wii title and the motion sensing code is not up to EA's efforts. Wii games need to have some leeway on controls because different gamers move differently. Ferrari Challenge does not offer that customizability on the controls and that is just common sense. I cannot believe they play-tested the controls and passed it as playable. Control issues aside, the racing is very good as is the sensation of speed. Any sim racing Wii owner should have this title, as these kinds of title on the Wii are far and few inbetween.
Last game is an interesting journey of sorts. I played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on DS, Wii and a tad bit on Xbox 360. First of all, it goes without saying that the Xbox 360 version boasts the most incredible visuals among the three. There are a lot of background interaction and lots of special effects that go into this title which makes for a very good visual show. However, I found the gameplay to be severely lacking. In terms of gameplay I found my home on the Wii version especially when you and your opponent's lightsabers lock and having to twist the remote to win the joust. After a while of playing with the Wii version, you get engrossed and simply the visuals do not matter anymore. I can forget Xbox 360's wow visuals in place for what I believe is the definitive way of playing a 'Lightsaber game' or sorts. Both the Wii and the Xbox 360 versions suffer from similar things though, and that is perhaps that the game levels are simply too long and tedious. That right balance of gameplay and length is what I found on the DS game. The gameplay is solid with the touch panels being slid to produce different moves is pretty good and I am at awe with nSpace's efforts as of late, pushing the DS to its absolute limit while capturing the essence of what its brethren's games are (Look at their Call of Duty 4 on DS and this one). Force Unleashed on the DS has that right balance of difficulty and the gameplay to keep me going back to it. Also interestingly, because the voice acting and 3d model acting is just not good on both the Wii and Xbox 360 game, I like the way the DS version handles the story telling, which is through plain text. That leaves so much to the imagination and I get a kick out of seeing the scene much cooler than what the console games do.
My verdict for Force Unleashed is fairly straight forward, despite its hardware limitations, the DS is the best of the versions. It has some very impressive visuals for a DS title and it handles everything very solidly while never really frustrating the player. The Wii version takes second place for the very engrossing gameplay that I prefer over Xbox 360's visuals. The Xbox 360 version is a solid title, but I do not agree with using the conventional controller on this game. It needs that much more now.
I have been busy with Neveredit, which is an open source NWN editor for Linux and Mac (and Windows). My main objective has been on this are:
- Dusting off my OpenGL coding which has taken a very big degradation, the last time I have coded on it has been at least five years ago. Coupled that with forgetting some of the math concepts and I have had a much harder time dealing with it.
- Second is to learn Python which is an interesting and easy to learn language. I am not a master by any stretch of the imagination, but I can work my way in the code.
- To have an editor available for us Linux folks (Peter would perhaps lean on Macs instead. :)). It has been fairly frustrating to see that the only way I can get to use the toolset is through Wine. I try to avoid Wine when possible so I hope this project gives us some options.
As part of that work, I have delved deeper into NWN Toolset, writing a short module though it is surprisingly still a large undertaking. The story is mostly done on a general note and I have just been quite busy going through the module's most critical scenes first to get something functional. It's very interesting in that it is a very good exercise in game development, in terms of designing the level and how you would go about telling the story. The NWN scripting language is very much reminiscent of C and that is a very good thing for sure. Sometimes, it feels like a strange cross between C and other scripting languages such as TCL or Python.
Well, that is all I have to say as of the moment. Pretty lengthy blog post and I am not sure when the next update will come. When I feel like it, that is what I can say.
