Random Video Game Crap

Been watching gameplay of the new Doom, and I have to say it looks pretty fun. I don't really give a shit about multiplayer, so I might pick it up later on whenever it gets a sale.
 
That video should be called John Carmack is a fucking genius.

And then I got to the end of the video and he basically says that.
 

fade

Staff member
Okay, I guess. The problem with this video, though, is that it's kind of a moving goalpost that depends on your definition of 3D. Clearly, none of it is 3D, and even the true 3D stuff uses some variation of raycasting or raytracing to fool your brain into thinking the image is 3D. It may actually be represented in 3 dimensional coordinates, but the rendering tricks still aren't terribly different.

KD-tree searches have been around in non-game 2D/3D modeling (e.g. for science) for decades. He adapted science concepts to gaming--which is fine, but it's important to note that those techniques were already being used for 3D modeling--just not for demons on Mars.

Not that it's not impressive. I don't mean to imply that.
 

Wolfenstein in color.


Wolfenstein with depth.

I don't have any problem with calling it 3d when compared to what came before.[DOUBLEPOST=1463494461,1463494239][/DOUBLEPOST]...and how I first played Castle Wolfenstein.

 

GasBandit

Staff member
And then when Ken Silverman (another 90s video game genius) rewrote the Build engine for Duke3D, he figured out a way to cause one section of the map to lead to another section of the map that wasn't actually adjacent... sort of like a seamless "portal" line edge. This allowed the game to fake multistory maps with one area over another, by connecting them with a staircase and then putting the "portal" in the middle of the stairs which actually moved you to a different area of the map so you weren't really "over" the part of the map you used to be in. And it all looked good because there would be another portal line edge in the "windows" on that "upper level" which then connected back out to the street, but on a small ledge whose elevation was much higher than the street. It was all pretty clever, how he figured out that once you break down the map into little chunks, and use a visual trick to render them, the little chunks don't actually have to really be physically located together.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
You know the drill, work, no videos, and so on. But good to know.
Yeah, he outright admits that the video name is just clickbait, and praises Doom for the innovation it was. I think the video is actually quite fair in defining it's arguments, and laying out the difference between Doom's pseudo-3D (and why it acts somewhat like a 2D game played from a first person perspective) and a game that actually uses 3D coordinates for the location of characters.

Also, enjoy this retrospective on Quake:
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Highlights of a Polygon reviewer proving you don't need to be moderately decent at games to keep your job.

Agh, it's also painfully apparent that person is playing with thumbsticks. Playing Doom with thumbsticks is worse than putting ketchup on steak. It'd be less awful if you played with the keyboard alone, at least that's historically accurate.
 
Random gaming story from my childhood:

Every Sunday, after church, my family and I would go to the local flea market. I usually had little interest in most tables (aside from tables that sold He-Man or wrestling figures), so I spent most of my time at the arcade. Dad gave me a couple of bucks and sent me off.

At one point, Turtles in Time was the new, awesome game everyone surrounded. Almost always had 4 players going at a time. So I'm there, playing Leonardo as usual, and there's a little boy squeezed between two of us so he can watch us play. I'm about 10, he's about 4.

Eventually, he ducks under my arm and keeps watching from there. I'm like, "Meh, okay. He's not really in the way."

Then he throws his arms up, pushes my arms away, starts playing on MY QUARTER.

I grab him by the shoulders, move him out of the way, shout, "NO!" and kept playing.

Later on, the mother comes by and finds him crying. He points to me, saying I stole his game or something. When I explained to her what happened, she scolded him and dragged him away.
 
I tried playing Overwatch on XBox during open beta one night, and I still don't get how people can do that shit. [emoji14]
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Random gaming story from my childhood:

Every Sunday, after church, my family and I would go to the local flea market. I usually had little interest in most tables (aside from tables that sold He-Man or wrestling figures), so I spent most of my time at the arcade. Dad gave me a couple of bucks and sent me off.

At one point, Turtles in Time was the new, awesome game everyone surrounded. Almost always had 4 players going at a time. So I'm there, playing Leonardo as usual, and there's a little boy squeezed between two of us so he can watch us play. I'm about 10, he's about 4.

Eventually, he ducks under my arm and keeps watching from there. I'm like, "Meh, okay. He's not really in the way."

Then he throws his arms up, pushes my arms away, starts playing on MY QUARTER.

I grab him by the shoulders, move him out of the way, shout, "NO!" and kept playing.

Later on, the mother comes by and finds him crying. He points to me, saying I stole his game or something. When I explained to her what happened, she scolded him and dragged him away.
One time when I was playing Q-zar (laser tag), when I was 17 or so, a little kid who was like 10 or 12 did a full-on body check on me, trying to bash me out of the way. Well, I was a larger dude even then, so he barely jostled me. But I took my hand off my laser gun and kind of shook my finger at him and said "hey, watch the physical contact!"

Well, his dad came up behind me at that moment, and my hand and arm is kinda obscured from his vision, all he sees is my elbow drawn back, so to him it looks like I'm winding up to slug his kid in the stomach. So the dad (who is built like a marine, btw) basically picks me up by the scruff of my neck and pins me to a wall. A game warden comes around the corner, and to cut a long story short, I get kicked out of the game.

So, I'm glad your story had a less irritating ending.
 
I tried playing Overwatch on XBox during open beta one night, and I still don't get how people can do that shit. [emoji14]
Hey, that night overwatch refused to allow me keyboard controls when I played with you and Gas, I somehow managed to make thumbsticks work.

But it felt like heresy.
 
I don't know why people are so mad at someone being bad at a game. You don't need to be good at games to like games, or even write about them.

I don't even like Polygon at all, and I hate that I'm defending them.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I don't know why people are so mad at someone being bad at a game. You don't need to be good at games to like games, or even write about them.

I don't even like Polygon at all, and I hate that I'm defending them.
You'd think Polygon could have found SOMEBODY in their entire game-oriented organization to play the game for them to record that actually wasn't awful at games.

I mean, one of our 5 radio stations is spanish language. That doesn't mean everybody who works here speaks spanish, but I sure as hell wouldn't assign a spanish language commercial production job to one of the staff who doesn't.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I don't know why people are so mad at someone being bad at a game. You don't need to be good at games to like games, or even write about them.

I don't even like Polygon at all, and I hate that I'm defending them.
Yeah, but some level of competence is needed in order to render a valuable opinion. If you're reviewing a car for Consumer Reports, you don't have to be able to compete in NASCAR, but you'd better have more experience than just having passed your drivers test. That gameplay isn't just bad, it's very inexperienced. That's either someone who hasn't played first person shooters much at all, or somone who is using a gamepad but is really used to keyboard and mouse. You wouldn't trust the review of someone who had one driven one or two models of car before, and you wouldn't trust the motorcycle review of someone who'd only ever driven cars. So why would you have someone review an FPS, playing it with thumbsticks, if they've obviously not at all experienced doing so?

This actually bugs me about a lot of internet reviews, not just video games. I've looked for product reviews on various pieces of kitchenware before, and some of the videos are made by people who have no idea what they're doing in a kitchen. They might be humorous, or entertaining, but their review is completely useless to me if they have no idea what they're doing in general, let alone using a specific gadget.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The person playing the game on Stream isn't the person who reviewed the game. So what does it matter?
Because this is the footage they chose to use.

It shows:

1) A failure to be able to play the game, thus implying
2) A failure to be able to understand the game, thus rendering any "review" suspicious, in addition
3) A failure to be able to recognize poor playing when seen, or perhaps just an indifference to the quality of their product (the review).

So basically all indications are that they either suck, don't care, or both, and you can be as truculent and sullen as you want about it, but it doesn't change that.
 
Top