? posted by Alien_Sniper

um...ok and i thought i said some random things...

Duke will make them both his bitch!!!!

How about this: Doom III is a cramped, underlit, restricted and engine-whored experience from the first second; that's the experience I got from playing my brother's alpha.

I consider the level design sloppy because they must have poured hours of work into something a player might give a passing glance to for five seconds. In the end, maybe the ten thousand polygon pipes in the corners make the game slightly more atmospheric, but it's just for show.

HL2 I have never played, under kind of an oath, but I believe its designers and production are worthy of just a little more respect than the community has been giving it.

I didn't like Far Cry at first because it seemed to be so engine-whored; that is, that the guys who coded the graphical effects were more to thank for the game's looks than any artist. Far Cry showed itself to have excellent craftsmanship value eventually, however.

I like Half-Life and Half-Life two because when you make something with them, that's a direct measure of your skill. No static meshes, fancy lighting effects, random map generators or oversized textures are in HL; it takes real talent to make something good looking. Maps in UT2k3 can slap a static mesh or two and use some lighting effects and look great; with HL, a nub could never pull that off.

If Half-Life 2 is just HL with more polies, I'll be getting exactly what I wished for about two years back before the game was announced. f**k all the shaders, real-time reflections, soft lighting, dynamic lighting, all of it - real talent has no part in that.

then why don't you go map for DOOM or Pong to show off you 'skillz' Cassius.

I agree -somewhat-, though. I get a thrill out of coming up with new visual fx and stuff in Half-Life, it's quite a challenge.

however, what you said about being able to make some amazingly beautiful map in UnrealEd right off is bulls**t. that's what's been so hard for me- the fact that I know my first UT maps are going to be crap compared to my Half-Life ones because I'm a newbie at it. sure, the engine has lots of bells and whistles that Half-Life doesn't but they don't just magically work, you have to learn the editor just like with Half-Life. and the more perks and s**t, the more you have to learn, and the harder it is to get it all working smoothly and looking right.

You're also being unfair to those mappers who make their own static meshes, props, etc. Don't tell me someone who has mastered Maya & a map editor has no 'real talent'.

bleh. I hope HL2 and DOOM3 get out sometime this year, I am itching for some fun 1 player action.

Hmmm, thing with Doom 3 is that it is meant to be played slowly (if you haven't noticed you walk through most of it). Alot of the should be played anticipating a creature coming out of every crevace... Take for example the part where your walking along and suddenly a pinkey bursts through some pipes, ripping them open. Such aspects simply arn't available for HL2. They use the old func_breakables and stuff.

And while we're at it, let's go back to mixing our own paints with egg-white. Because those painters who use pre-mixed pigments clearly don't have real talent