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Achtung Wolfenstein Screenshots 144

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-at-least-it's-a-fps dept.
Thermodyne writes: "The sequel of the game that helped invent the fps is being developed and the first of the screenshots have been released here. The game is based on the Quake 3 engine, but seems to stray away from the original intent of the first game." I can't begin to count the number of hours I lost in wolf3d ... course, I hope it does stray from the original game: who wants to run around shooting dogs and finding hidden switches for 30 levels? The lighting in some of those screenshots is super impressive. (check out that flame thrower). Sadly, I think my fps days are past me. I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.
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Achtung Wolfenstein Screenshots More

Achtung Wolfenstein Screenshots

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  • You know, like every geek out there, I drooled over Wolfenstein 3D. It was new, different, and you could actually kill people. If memory serves, that is the reason that I first bought a sound card, was to hear the screams of the dead soldiers.

    But now, FPS has become a cliched genre. "Ooh, what do I do now? I search for a switch and it lets me exit the level! How original!" How many games have come out recently that are FPS? ALL OF THEM. The only exceptions are RTS games like Starcraft (itself only a new skin on top of Warcraft).

    PC games have hit a rut, and developers have no good ideas anymore. It nearly makes me want to buy an old Nintendo and bust out Bubble Bobble. PC game (and console, anymore) developers have no creativity and can't find a good storyline with a map and a flashlight.

    ------
    That's just the way it is

  • http://www.3d-shooters.com/screenshots/return_to_c astle_wolfenstein/

    Here's another site. Other server is too busy.
  • I'm sorry to here its based on the Quake3 engine, and it seems to me it makes things look way to cartoonish, I like the Quake2 engine much better.
    An Example being that StarTrek game based on Quake3, it looked terrible (atleast to me)
  • .. this editorial was written as a response to Grey Loki's editorial entitled Are We Living In A Broadband World? [3dactionplanet.com].

    For the goatse.cx weary, http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/editorials/ broadband/

    ------------
    CitizenC
  • Hopefully the game will be more than just another shooter. Will it's multiplayer ability be better than Unreal Tournament?

  • Rob Malda, always ahead of the curve: (Score:5)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @02:54PM (#405396) Homepage Journal
    I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.


    Yeah, that one's cool, but there's this new game coming out called "Chess" that I hear is *really* awesome. Anyone got a chance to play it yet?!


    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • I remmber playing wolfenstein when it was still around. It seemed kind of convoluted, but a bit fun. I missed all the fps in between then and now.

    I have no wish to kill imaginary people or real people. It probably would be safer if all you psychotics got guns and practiced at firing ranges, instead of internalizing your hate for your fellow humans.

    Trolls don't hate each other. Trolls have tough love for each other. And they at least, are a bit more creative than just shooting someone. After all, slashdot trolls started the whole "All your base are belong to us" thing. What have you ever done?
  • Ok, the original Fallout might be a valid counter-agrument, I forgot about that one. So, I'll grant you. ONE game in the past 3 years (that's a conservative time estimate) has an original storyline and plot. Now if only they would port it to Linux... But there's really no hope in that, since the games that get ported are always old, poorly done, and require such horrible system requirements, you'd need a P4 just to run Wolfenstein, much less something new...

    And you've given me 2 counter-examples for the future. Do you know that there will be more than 3,500 games released next year? I guarantee most of them will be FPS...

    ------
    That's just the way it is

  • Also, http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/editorials/ modemusers/ [3dactionplanet.com] is a good article about game developers and companies for analog modemers.

  • Inspiration? (Score:4)

    by Lion-O ( 81320 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @02:59PM (#405400)
    Now why do I get this feeling that these people completely ran out of ideas and in order to get more money in start doing re-runs? The screenshots look nice, but are we really waiting for a game which basicly offers more of the same?

    IMHO its a total shame that the whole game market seems to be totally out of inspiration these days. Sometimes you come across a title which offers a complete new setup (based on something allready these I guess) but in most cases its just more of the same. The last game I've bought (Oni [godgames.com]) is IMO a good example; its a 3rd person 'fight / shoot 'm up' but offers quite some new options. Ever fought 3 man at the same time by disarming one poor bastard and shooting the rest with his weapon? I've never seen Lara Croft do that, to name just another 3rd person game and perfect example. IMO another game which just kept on going adding basicly nothing to gameplay, just nicer landscapes and some new moves, in order to get gain more money.

    As I said; the screenshots looked nice. The game itself is a shame IMVHO. Why not put the effort and money into something new?

  • Too bad their marketing sucks and they can't get any good hardware out there. I mean, they drop support of the Dreamcast just when people are starting to talk about it?!?!?!? WTF is up with that?

    Shenmue is a great game, but I was talking about the stagnation of PC games. Good luck ever getting SEGA to port something to a PC. They can't even program for their own hardware...

    ------
    That's just the way it is

  • Is "the first game" supposed to mean Wolfenstein 3-D? There were two Wolfenstein games before that, Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I don't know what system they were originally designed for, but I think they were made by Muse Software--at least, that's what I remember seeing on the title screens of the Apple II versions (along with some copy-protection cracker handles, heh).
  • Am I the only person left who remembers playing Wolfenstein games, well before Wolf3d even existed, back on the C64? It's amazing how far the games have come, but even then, I remember those original top down Wolf games to be more fun than Wolf3d ever ended up being to me. Ahh well...

  • When will it be ported to Linux? Everyone knows that Linux is a superior gaming platform. It could sell a million copies.

  • The best part about Wolfenstein being ported to Linux is that now, anybody with an old computer sitting in the corner can play it again. I mean, without paying $100 for an extra copy of Windows 9x to play it on (cause you have to have a separate license for every computer, you know).

    Anybody with a x86 could play games! Now how much more great could it get?!?!?! We need more games ported. I agree with you; when will developers start to take Linux seriously as a gaming OS?

    ------
    That's just the way it is

  • Where are the nazis???!!! (Score:5)

    by phaze3000 ( 204500 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @03:08PM (#405406) Homepage
    The screen shots show all these weird alien looking [3d-shooters.com] guys - where are the nazis? They look more like the goombas from the Super Mario Bros film than anything (except for the swastikas of course). I was looking forward to kicking some far-right butt...

    --

  • Re:It's sad, really (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stange, I can think of only a few "real" fps (UT/Q3 not included because they're multi-only) games that i've seen/played the last 2 years... Daikatana and Mortyr...

    There seemed to be more games like Deus Ex/System Shock 2 ,"thinking fps", and 3rd person games like DS9: the fallen, Alice and 3rd person melee games like Rune/Blade Of Darkness.

    Infact, I'm DIEING to play a true Doom/Quake style FPS! Doom 3/Wolfenstein/DNF/Serious Sam are the only ones I know about, and most of them will prolly take more then a year to be released! :(
  • . I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.

    I got that game last Christmas, I would have said the same thing a week after Christmas. Since New Year's, I haven't played it. I'm sure you'll be doing the same in about 1 or 2 more weeks. It is a good idea and a fun game, but after the initial wow factor, it is very very boring. You'll see.
  • You should really give the guy a break! Even if "The Sims" is quite old, some people (like me) do not have the time to play a lot of games.
    I have holiday the next week and I hope to check out some games lying around for ages...for once that I have time (For example I have Age of Empires 2 lying around which is very old: Never played it...no time...will check it out this week)

    Hehe, your sig matches well with your comment, by the way.

  • Wasn't that one called: return to the eagle's nest or something? My favorite C64 game.
  • Load up an Apple II emulator.
    Play the original Escape From Castle Wolfenstien. [requiem.qis.ca]
    The classic that started it all.
    Bribe guards, kill guards, and talk to guards!
    All in glorious 1D!
  • What is this game called Chess that you speak of? Will it run on my PII 400?
  • The original Wolfenstein was from Muse software in 1981 for the Apple II, and was one of the first with (almost recognizable) speech- "Achtung!"

    Check out this page [ufpel.tche.br] for a screenshot from the Apple II if you want a little memory trip. The page also has info about running it under emulation on a PC.

  • Hell yes. A scene looking like this [3d-shooters.com] is just laughable.

    -- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!

  • The first of the screenshots?!? (Score:3)

    by James Foster ( 226728 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @03:24PM (#405415)
    Uhm... The first screenshots were released over a year ago.
  • Well, there's this one [3d-shooters.com] at least.

  • When I was young and foolish I wasted many an hour blowing Smurfs to hell... The game was called Castle Smurfenstein [uic.edu], and was basically ripped off from Wolfenstein. They claimed that SMURF stood for Secret Military Undergound Resistance Force, and that the smurfs were actually Hitler's last chance at revenge. They would make all the worlds children peace loving and docile, then the smurfs would pop up with submachine guns and blow 'em all away, thereby reviving the third reich...

    There is something rather pleasing about sticking a virtual gun in a Smurf's chest, hearing it beg for it's little blue life, and then blowing it to hell... ;-) I may have to go find myself an Apple II emulator and relive my glory days as Smurfbutcher Bob...
    Regards,
  • Somehow I think what we're looking at here is the gaming equivalent of the new Gallactica series. An old concept, grown cheesy with age, given bright shiny new packaging. Besides &ltvalley girl impression&gtohmygosh, WWII games are like sooo 20th century&lt/valley girl impression&gt

  • More details about the game... (Score:3)

    by Cyrix Haldir ( 319646 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @03:35PM (#405419) Homepage
    I run an italian gaming site, and some time ago we interviewed Jonathan Knight from Return to casle wolfenstein dev. team... he gave us some details, maybe you are interested in them :)

    The interview is available in english [nextgame.it] and italian [nextgame.it].

    Hope you enjoy it...
  • No, you need one of these [ibm.com].

  • Mirror (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That page has been slashdotted, Shack has all those screenshots too though:

    Wolf2K Shots [shugashack.com]
  • For the goatse.cx weary, http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/editorials/ broadband/

    I don't see what the big deal is - you move the mouse over a link and the url shows up in the status bar.
  • Woops, wrong thread. Wrong post. Oh hell, this is even on the wrong FORUM! Feel free to mod me down to the netherreigons of Slashdot. =)

    ------------
    CitizenC
  • I don't see what the big deal is - you move the mouse over a link and the url shows up in the status bar.

    Except when they use Javascript mouseovers.

  • The URL works, it just had an included HR that needs to be removed.

    http://www.3d-shooters.com/screenshots/return_to_c astle_wolfenstein/ [3d-shooters.com]

    enjoy

  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but there were no giant robots in the original.
  • you gotta point there. I have it turned off, but if someone didn't that could pose a problem.

    I'd like to leave javascript on but disable any ability to write in the status bar (the status bar is MINE) or create any kind of popup window.
  • Actually, I am looking forward to this game more than I do most FPS (except HalfLife II) simply because it deals with a topic I find endlessly fascinating:

    European (in this case Nazi) WWII history.

    Granted, they will take many liberties with characters, environments, etc, but being able to run around as a 3rd-reich-0wn1ng-one-man-wrecking-crew-badass has me totally jazzed. I hope there is enough realism in the environments (rooms, uniforms, guns, buildings, architecture (Speer)) to add that extra spark to the game. Star Trek Elite Force was wonderful in that it was exactly like being in an episode of Voyager. (albeit with a lot more killing..heh)

    I think that as more companies adopt using previously-developed engines we will find many games that are either sequels to much older games, or that are derived from historical references or legends. I have no problem with this, if the games are done well. I also think fewer next-generation game companies are going to have the time/talent/budget to build Oni-type games, opting instead for simpler designs with stronger stories. Look at Half-Life. Outstanding game - simple (almost comic) storyline, executed perfectly and captivating from beginning to end. Opposing Force was nearly as good!

    There will always be game companies that do innovative things too, though. I just don't feel the need to spurn the ideas - only the finished products if they are poor.

    sedawkgrep
  • Didn't Hitler turn into a giant robot on the last boss fight?

  • Re:It's sad, really (Score:5)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @03:59PM (#405430) Journal
    Wait a second what about Half-Life? Listen it is an old game but I am personally VERY disappointed that other game companies did not take the hint and start creating FPS games with more depth and storyline treatments. Come on the idea of looking through the eyes of a character in a game and running in first person through an action sceneriao is wonderful.

    I think the industry has hit a rut and I agree with that but the possibilities are endless. I think the comparison is close to Sci-Fi literature which has the most possibility of brilliant ideas but constantly gets mired down in crappy output from publishers wanting to make another space opera and the quick buck.

  • I remember playing that on my older brother's Apple IIE. I loved that game. Thanks for the link.
  • >It's a shame. Great idea, marred by that one problem.

    Well, that problem, and also the fact that the AI in the game is ROCK STUPID.
  • ...and it is called Rise of the Triad [classicgaming.com]

  • Doom3 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    excites me much more than this. I have the MPG of the (engine) demo at MacWorld Japan, and the graphics are so FAR beyond this Wolf3D remake, its rediculous.
  • Wasnt spear of destiny the sequel to Wolfenstein?
    Billions of hours of my youth consisted of both of these games.. I think I still have the first 5 or so levels memorised of Wolfenstein.. :]
  • Why not put the effort and money into something new?

    That's something like saying, "why do all these movies still have light projected through them to show on a screen". All the while ignoring the fantastic advances in the technology producing those images.

    The original Wolfenstein wasn't the end of all fps games, it was merely the beginning. This techology is maturing before our eyes into a genre closer to interactive movies rather than simply just a game. A good case in point would be the first couple of levels of Unreal, and even more so with Half-Life. One of the most important aspects of each of these games is that they include characters that you should not just gun down, and in many cases are a part of the interactive story.

    In my mind, it's not so much the notion of inventing something new, but rather to take these wonderful technologies to the realms of artists, writers, and designers to give them depth that goes WAY beyond the media constraints of TV or movies.

    Reason we're not off on to completely new paradigms for this type of gaming is that we're really just getting out of it's infancy. There are still some really great problems to get through, like how to effectively interact with other computer characters beyond just shooting them.

    On a side note, was reading an article recently in PC Gamer about a new game that hopes to recreate the entirety of WWII as a multi-player game. Bringing together all these different technologies to allow you to work on strategy, tactics, FPS involvement, flight sim, and all that. Forget the name of it as I lent the mag to a bud of mine who is a huge history nut. The great thing about all this, is that we're just now seeing this kind of depth of plot and gaming coming to together.

  • I don't like those mutants and monsters... (Score:3)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @04:17PM (#405437) Homepage Journal
    [begin rant] I like realistic characters like in the original Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and the 2D versions. The game doesn't feel like Wolfenstein without those infamous Nazi soldiers, commanders, etc. Do we really needs mutants, zombies, robots, monsters, etc.? To think about that, I think this game will have strange weapons as well. :(

    I don't think I will want this game. [end of rant]

  • ok, so, there's an engine. it controls the framework of the game, rendering things, etc etc....

    that engine can handle pretty much any texturing and modeling that you want to throw at it (within reason of course, it is only a game). but, it could be used to make things look like anything.

    if things are cartoonish, that was a choice of the developers of the game, not the developers of the engine itself.

    -------

  • The Nazis are all too busy for the screen shots because someone set up us the bomb and they are trying to sweep them out [3d-shooters.com]. I think that we'll be seeing more pics of them soon however, as this guy here [3d-shooters.com] has stated that 'all the base are belong to us.' As you can see from the background, he's right.

    ---
  • I think ID needs to play the Medal of Honor games on the PSX to see how to do another nazi game again. Mutants, Monsters? Yeah, the nazi's did experiments but nothing like this. Doom 3, Wolf 3, Quake 3... Running out of ideas ID?
  • That's not really the point (slashdot disables the onmouseover attributes). The recet trend is to make hyperlinks to http://innocent-site/%20%20%20@goatse.cx, where the chain of %20's is so long that the address you see in the status bar is just http://innocdent-site/. The meaning of the URL is to log in as user http://innocent-site/(then a load of spaces) at the site goatse.cx.

    I

  • No he doesn't have a point. Not on slashdot, at least, where javascript attributes are not allowed for any elements in the user comments.

    Better luck next time, you ugly fuck of a karma whore.

  • And they said nothing good came out of Hitler :)
  • I myself and getting pretty tired of all these 'insightful' posts to any story remotely related to Q3. The way the game looks does not have much to do with the engine. Q# was meant to look cartoonish, and I think it has suceeded pretty well. But this result comes from the textures used (and dynamic lighting to some extent), not the game engine. You don't have to use lightly shaded pastel colours on your models.
  • I had to check the date on this story, just to make sure Slash wasn't fucking up. Weren't these screenshots out a *while* ago (like 3-4 months). I certainly remember seeing that flamethrower.
  • It's for the sheeple.

  • Re:Where are the nazis???!!! (Score:3)

    by oddrune ( 102921 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @04:59PM (#405448)

    You missed the "Pictures" part of the site -- featuring nazi-dressed models with a whip.

    How can anyone resist these two nazi's [3dactionplanet.com]?

    :-)
  • But he LIKES Windows. Isn't that a mortal sin for all Linux users?
  • I remember in the mid-late 80's there was a revival of old games with upped graphics. Super Mario Bros, Pacman land (or world or something) and other games. I would love to see a new revival of modern fps games and the end of the side shooter era....

    -Moondog

  • I didn't have a computer during the wolfenstien era, but I sure did spend too much time gibbing everybody's favorite purple dinosaur with the the BarnyDoom mod :).
  • But I didn't think that killing Nazis was bad, didn't we kill a few of them in WWII ?

    Games developers need to grow up and develop a sence of social responsibility. These games are turning normally reasonable folk into deranged psycho killers. Have we learned NOTHING from Columbing and Waco ?
    I really don't see the connection. But hey if you really think that violent games are turning us into killers and knowing the fact that most of us slashdotters play those games, how come you're not afraid of posting here?

  • My favorit part was always the fscked up German that the guards would babble out as they shot at you or died.
  • Are you on crack? Achtung Wolfenstein means Attention wolf stone. Is there anything violent about that, mister AC?

    You're tired of Slashdot ads? Get junkbuster [junkbusters.com] now!
  • but your Zero Wing refrences seem a bit forced. I've no problem with you trying to spice up your post a bit, but next time let's try and incorporate it a little better and make flow a bit more nicely, k? ;-)>

    Thanx :-)>

  • The Sims on Linux (Score:3)

    by SimHacker ( 180785 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @05:34PM (#405456) Homepage Journal
    I ported The Sims to Linux months ago, at the beginning of last summer, but Loki took ages to answer my email, and just didn't seem to be interested... Go figure. Anybody know what's up with them these days?

    Maxis was interested though, because the next vewrsion of The Sims Online will run on a Linux server. So now I'm working on optimizing it to run the multi player server side of the game on Linux without any graphics.

    If Loki had ever gotten their act together, then The Sims for Linux could have been published a while ago. I busted my ass and did a lot of work on my own time to try to make it happen, but Maxis isn't interested in publishing games on Linux, and I can't publish it all by myself. Are there any companies out there besides Loki who are interested in porting The Sims Online client to Linux? Does anyone want to start a new Linux game company?

    I've already done most of the hard work (it takes 2 hours to compile), and it'll be a slam dunk top seller. I hope to publish it soon after the Windows version is released, but I've totally given up on Loki.

    Back in 1992, I ported SimCity Classic to Unix, and added multi player capability, multiple views, chat, shared whiteboard, pie menus, and a bunch of other features. A year or so ago, I ported it to Linux and optimized it so it runs at least 17 years a second on my 500 mhz laptop, or more than a million years in less than a day. SimCity Classic runs so fast, it's a twitch game! And only on Linux. I hope to publish that as soon as I can hammer out a new contract with Maxis.

    -Don

  • You're right. I'm going to buy a Sega Megadrive
    and play myself a base of Zero Wing.





    .My sig is a mig do you dig?

  • Nah, they haven't figured out that Vietnam was really caused by John Wayne movies and that WWII was really caused by TS Eliot's The Wasteland; why would people suddenly be able to string together logical thoughts any faster now, and link Waco and Columbine to the extraordinarily obvious causal source video games?

    After all, it's obvious that being a heroic Britsh marine sneaking into a Nazi base to defeat the forces of evil promotes Nazism. Sometimes, I just don't get the stupidity of the American people.

    Next thing you know, people won't be able to figure out the Wayne Newton -> George Bush -> Barbara Streisand -> mind control with microwave beams connection. Just remember to wear your tin foil hat!

    Oh yeah, for readers other the poster, you'll gain a great deal of understanding of trolls if you read books on the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. Maybe these connections will make sense to you too then.

  • Re:This simply glorifies Naziism and Violence. (Score:3)

    by Symbiosis ( 39537 ) on Saturday February 24, 2001 @05:40PM (#405459) Homepage
    Hmm... Columbing doesn't seem to ring a bell... I'll do a search online and get back to you on that one ;-)

    Now, Waco, I remember that one... just one thing... this faulty memory of mine... I don't remember anyone placing the blame for Waco on the video game industry of that time... rather than Wolfenstein, I'd say part of the violence at Waco was learned through, oh, I dunno, military/SWAT/etc. training... just a guess.... ;-)

    /me sits back and waits for cynicism levels to subside...

    Ok, sorry about that, just had to get that out of my system... :-)
  • I missed that memo... where does it say that using windows and/or playing a game on windows == liking windows? Maybe it's in that Trolling for Dummies book... it was all checked out of the library, so I haven't got a chance to read it, sorry ;-)

  • yay (Score:1)

    by phoebe ( 196531 )
    Another feeble excuse to plug my site - a Win32 conversion of the old Wolfenstein 3D code:

    http://www.phoebe.co.uk/glwolf/ [phoebe.co.uk]

    :)

  • I always wondered why it looked like "http://innocent-site/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20% 20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20 %20%20%20%20%20%20" in my Netscape 4.76 status bar :). After a while, I just learned that the string of %20's meant it was a goatse.cx link.

    What will they come up with next?


    kickin' science like no one else can,
    my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
  • Originally, the "ai" in the game was smart enough that it would always figure out the best thing for the characters to do all of the time, but that meant that anything the poor player told them to do would just make their lives worse off. That resulted in bad game play. So Will Wright decided to tone down the ai and "blur" their motivation, so they choose randomly between several good actions to do, instead of always choosing the best. Good game play is much more important than having the best possible ai.

    There's also a good reason for the way time is distorted: it amplifies the importance of building a house with "good feng shui". If your characters take 15 minutes to take out the garbage, you need to rearrange your furniture and add some doors and trash cans, so they can live more efficiently. That's the whole point of the game! It's about building an efficient household, and the family of Sims evaluates how good your design is, by living in it.

    -Don

  • Violent games do worse things than turn people into killers. If only they really did turn people into killers, more kids would murder their families and friends, and maybe it would clean up the gene pool a bit. But even worse, violent games turn people into ASSHOLES, who we now have to put up with, day in and day out, because murdering them is illegal! For this legacy, we have Doom and Quake to thank.

    -Don

  • Seeing as how my karma is over 50 and can only go down, I'd have to be pretty stupid to decide to go karma whoring.

    Now, if you are the moron I think you are, you will respond to this saying something like "exactly, you _are_ stupid" so at least be original otherwise go fuck yourself.
  • Sadly I think my fps days are past me. I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.

    But now, FPS has become a cliched genre.

    Indeed. These games have bored me stiff, since completing the original W3D. Really, I have to drink 4 shots of espresso just to even read reviews of this stuff without drifting off into rapid eye movement.

    Like Sims (which also bored me to tears after the first evening playing it, but I actually played it for 4 hours before dislodging my lower jaw with a large yawn.) But strategy, yeah!, get me screaming profanities at my computer when some 60K compiled C program (the old Conquest grid game) takes away my favorite planet and I'm fixated. I'll get even! Bits will be spilled! AAARRRGHHHH!!!!!!

    I've loved reading books on tactics and strategy and playing games written by someone who relies more on recursive functions than collision detection. The journey, like the old saying, is the reward, not the destination (the last few turns are kinda dull as I mop up the enemy.) Need more of these games.

    --

  • In my opinion, first person shooters have been going downhill since the original Wolfenstein, mainly due to the lighting in the games. I'm obviously in the minority, but will someone please explain to me why gameplayers enjoy running around in the dark so much? Ever since doom, the trend has been towards using lack of light as a complicating factor.

    These games are obviously meant to simulate reality, and although cool lighting effects help in this respect, I always find myself thinking, "This isn't realistic. If this was real life, I'd be able to see the damn door on the opposite wall." I personally wouldn't mind it at all if someone released a new fps with the bright no-lighting-effects (and admittedly somewhat cartoonish) feel of the original Wolfenstein.
  • I suppose because it's a whole lot more eerie when the environment is dark - and it gives you an excuse for pulling the shades and turning out the lights... :)
    _____
  • Well, id Software isn't doing "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", just so you know. I don't know offhand what the name of the company is that's doing the game, but I do know that id isn't.
    _____
  • What? Wolfenstiein3d had zombies! Those were those guys that waved their arms around while the shotguns in their chest fired. Dr. Schabb would turn you into one if you weren't careful! (I believe that was Episode 2).

    Did you play beyond the free downloads ever?
  • >> ACTIVISION LICENSES CLASSIC ID SHOOTER, WOLFENSTEIN 3-D® Gray Matter Interactive Studios Set to Develop New Wolfenstein Game Using QUAKE III Arena(TM) Engine Activision Acquires 40% Equity in Newly Formed Gray Matter Interactive Studios
  • If you think there haven't been good story lines in FPS then you missed NOLF. If you think you think the technology is stagnet, look @ the Doom3 engine footage - it will get better. As for the Sims, since when does it take you 10 minutes to pee?
  • Screenshots of W3D last summer on IGN. I can't find a preview or the article there now, but they looked just as good then. Scooped!


    aztek: the ultimate man
  • Yet again id software show that they have no concern for the moral welfare of children. But this time they have sunk to previously uncharted depths. The subject matter is too serious to feature in a 'game' (if you can call graphic portrayal of extreme violence a game).

    What makes you say this? "[M]oral welfare of children"? How is that their responsibility? They make games, and those games are not for kids. What do you want, for Carmack to go around to your local computer software store, and stand in front of all of id's titles on the shelves, checking the age of everyone who looks at 'em? C'mon, give me a break. One word - parents. But then, that'd be too big an imposition on them - they can't actually be expected to RAISE the snot-nosed brats they bring into this world?

    (Note, I don't think all kids are snot-nosed brats, but they're getting more and more common.)

    It's time slashdotters voted with their wallets. There are plenty of games out there which do not encourage Naziism or Violent behaviour, and which are equally entertaining. Games like The Sims, Myst, Riven, etc I could go on.

    How does this game, or the original Wolf3D, encourage Naziism? You're KILLING the Nazis. :P And Myst and Riven - all I have to say is yawn.

    Games developers need to grow up and develop a sence of social responsibility. These games are turning normally reasonable folk into deranged psycho killers. Have we learned NOTHING from Columbing and Waco ?

    Umm. You watch too much TV, methinks. It's been proved that there is no substantial connection between youth violence and video games - in fact, how about RESEARCHING it. You'll find that since the gaming industry has gotten big, school shooting incidents have gotten LESS common. The media just gives them more coverage.

    And how does it have anything to do with Waco? That was a cult, plain and simple. Don't go dragging in completely unrelated issues!
    _____

  • Re:The Sims on Linux (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nope, this guy posts here whenever Sims or NeWS comes up...
  • Most people didn't, I know I at least didn't until the full version was a free download...

    -----------------------

  • How many games have come out recently that are FPS? ALL OF THEM.

    What's worse than that is they're the same FPS! I'm not just talking about look and feel, I mean codebase. Are the Quake 3, UT, and Half-life engines so perfect that nobody is even trying to design new ones?

    And don't get me started on RTSes. It's kind of sad, the computer game industry went from one where people designed games out of love to one where everyone's trying for the next blockbuster. Kind of like what the movie industry went through in the early 80's.
    --
  • Oh yeah. Those enemies were annoying. I liked the other human enemies. Yes, I played the whole game.
  • not only that, but i saw most of these "new" shots a couple months ago.
  • In my mind, it's not so much the notion of inventing something new, but rather to take these wonderful technologies to the realms of artists, writers, and designers to give them depth that goes WAY beyond the media constraints of TV or movies.

    My idea, games should be about fun, not technology. No, I don't run around with my DEC PDP-1 saying "Spacewar is it, all other games are just derivitave trash", but gameplay must come first. Look at the store shelves sometime, most games are "Foo II" or "Bar 3 Ultra" or some such jazz, same gameplay, rehashed graphics. The last new genre that I can remember is the real-time stragety, and it has been published to death.

    Bagh! Enough ranting for now.

  • Somebody set us up the website [allyourbase.net]
  • Some of the mods are really new games in my opinion; even if you discount them, Gunman Chronicles is based on the Half-life engine, and I think it qualifies as a new game.
    --
  • You meant Xen levels (alien worlds). Ugh!

  • That was in the PC version as well. It's secret levels so... :)

  • I'm pretty much a 3D junkie. Each year I buy the latest video card and the lated First Person Games. I install the video card, reinstall the drivers a bazillion times along with game patches hoping to get the thing to run. Every time I am disappointed. The moment of disappointment comes when I sense the futility of walking down 3D hallways mindlessly shooting seemingly endless supplies of uglies and bad guys. Pointless. A taste of what I really want and a feast of mindless violence.

    What do I want? I want a sense of wonder and exploration. Danger, surely. But not mindless killing. I want a challenge. A challenge to think and learn. Myst was a start, but instead of treading down that path, all the game developers are marching lockstep down a dead-end path of designing stupid games. Until they figure out their mistake I am resigned. Resigned to the only game that comes close. Its called life. Not always as pretty or mysterious as a CGI Generated-3D world, but , at the end of the day it's the only other game available.

  • The top three screenshots look pretty good - I don't think they look very cartoonish:

    http://www.3dactionplanet.com/wolfenstein/images /p hoto/index.asp

    The ones below with more cartoony subject matter look more cartoony, but that's the point - I think you're confusing the engine with the way the artists use it. The Quake2 engine rendering looks a lot more cartoony to me than Q3 does, though the art, design, lighting, etc, are more cartoony in Q3A.

    Or maybe we just grew up watching different styles of cartoon :-)
  • My idea, games should be about fun, not technology. No, I don't run around with my DEC PDP-1 saying "Spacewar is it, all other games are just derivitave trash", but gameplay must come first. Look at the store shelves sometime, most games are "Foo II" or "Bar 3 Ultra" or some such jazz, same gameplay, rehashed graphics. The last new genre that I can remember is the real-time stragety, and it has been published to death.

    It sounds like you're talking about Hollywood movies, and in a sense you are because the problem is largely the same - There is no limit to the number of directors with clever, deep, new, experimental ideas for film, and with the talent to make them. But they'll never get the funding they need to make those films because Hollywood is not about entertainment, it's about money. And since cringe-comedy "there's something about Mary" films are cheap to make and earn lots at the box-office, that's the type of film that the corporations will fund.

    In the game industry, it does not matter if your game is good if you can't get the shelf space to sell it, and getting that shelf space is a game of intrigue and back-room deals that usually requires millions in marketing just for the up-front entry fee - regardless of eventual success. That's assuming you've got a great game. Getting there itself requires that you find funding, and that usually means going to investors. And investors are not usually interested in trying out something new because something untried is likely to fail in this industry.

    The solution? I don't know. Everyone thought that Doom was the solution - it was a bestseller that bypassed the shelves alltogether. A new era was dawning in which the games availible to buy would nolonger be limited to the shelf space (and associated politics) of retailers. But it seems Doom was a once-off and we're back to square one, despite the new ubiquity of the net.

    The film industry has been around longer than the game industry. How have they solved the problem?
    Well OK, they haven't, but they seem to have made a little more progress towards alternative systems. Unfortunately, I suspect some of this is due to film being considered "culture" and thus more ameniable to things like government aid, while games are "youth timewasters" and thus entirely at the mercy of the largest/lowest-common-denominator tendancies of unfettered capitalism.

    It's so stupid - we have a huge alternative distribution channel sitting unused, but the whole games market is locked into a vicious cycle that doesn't look like it can be broken any time soon.
  • Ok, the original Fallout might be a valid counter-agrument, [...] has an original storyline and plot.

    Was Fallout original, innovative, and an all-around great game? Hell, yes. Was the plot original? Not quite -- the whole "military base churning out bad guys in a post-apocalyptic future" storyline is nearly identical to that of its unofficial predecessor, Wasteland.

  • The screen shots show all these weird alien looking guys

    While looking through the screen shots, I couldn't help but imagine someone like Jeff K. [efront.com] suggesting that the new Wolf3D game should have killer robots and zombies and flamethrowers and ninjas and tanks and mummies [somethingawful.com] and...

  • Damn good point, you know there is still a small underground industry for things like hardcore wargames that only sell a few thousand or tens of thousands of copies. Going back to shareware would definitely be an improvement.

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