16 replies to this topic

[Shadowstarr]

1) Shadowrun.

Yeah this much loved ip got some love a few years back with a 360 fps title. WHile there were some folk who enjoyed it and I won't be down of em for that, I was all kinds of disappointed with it. It just wasn't shadowrun to me.

Anyways I love the shadowrun pen and paper system and felt since I first played Legends of Kesmai that felt shadowrun deserved that MMO treatment. Even for a good single player game it could be amazing. Looking at other games today I seem plenty that could be modded into a 1/2 decent shadowrun mod. saints row 2-3 come to mind, as does, fallout / skyrim .

Yeah I played the hell outta some duex ex and enjoied it, but i want my magic in my cyberpunk!.

2) Firefly / Serenity. Was word years ago someone was gonna give it a go and nothing since. Probably a far too nitch fanbase to consider.

3) Ultima While i don't wanta see a reboot of the franshice as I have no faith in Lord British. Rather i'd love to see a skyrim mod to redo a few of the older / better ultima's , V: warriors of destiny for sure!.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

<cough> Earthsiege 1 and 2 <cough>

[S3dition]

I'll settle for the BattleTech card game

[feor]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 10 December 2011 - 07:26 PM, said:

<cough> Earthsiege 1 and 2 <cough>

Seconded. I'd be happy if they picked up the Starsiege storyline, or hell, Cyberstorm 3!

There is a company making another Tribes game, though: http://tribesascend.com/

[Aaron DeChavilier]

feor, on 10 December 2011 - 09:19 PM, said:

Seconded. I'd be happy if they picked up the Starsiege storyline, or hell, Cyberstorm 3!

There is a company making another Tribes game, though: http://tribesascend.com/

no I mean reboot earthsiege -Starsiege was too much of a cluster..
Starsiege at its point of writing should have just been a new mech game
cause it beared 0 relation to the previous titles and even went so far as
to retcon characters that were never present in those titles and
generally make up bad filler for plot holes. With todays good writing
for AI characters (GlaDos, Shodan, Cortana) you could do it.

[feor]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 10 December 2011 - 10:05 PM, said:

no I mean reboot earthsiege -Starsiege was too much of a cluster..
Starsiege at its point of writing should have just been a new mech game
cause it beared 0 relation to the previous titles and even went so far as
to retcon characters that were never present in those titles and
generally make up bad filler for plot holes. With todays good writing
for AI characters (GlaDos, Shodan, Cortana) you could do it.

I didn't have any real problem with the Retcons of Starsiege. I mean, how many characters did the Earthsiege games have, really? Your chief tech in the first one (who was gone for ES2 IIRC), General Gierling, and Prometheus.

The only characters they added to the story that would have had any impact in the Earthsiege time period were Jake Hunter, Solomon Petresun, and his son who would become Harabec.

Admittedly, they went a touch overboard retconning in just about every Dynamix game ever produced except for The Incredible Machine, but It was done sensibly enough that I can't complain about it, and they developed a well built story for what had previously been had a depth of story that pretty much ran to "There's been a robot apocalypse, here's a walking tank, go toast some toasters."

Unfortunately the game itself wasn't nearly as polished as the background they developed for it, and so it kinda got its butt handed to it in a sad repeat of the Earthsiege 2 vs. Mechwarrior 2 battle . (I swear, if they had held off on ES until it was as good as ES2 and released that directly against MW2 we'd be discussing this in the ES:O official forums right now. )

[Aaron DeChavilier]

aye! I guess what I mean to say in a less nerd-rage tone was; They went too far
in changing the story to fit Starsiege including a massive timeline jump, dumping
some arguably cool designs with a gritty feel to some cartoony ones that look
rather dumb - the whole 'mechs without torsos' concept makes them look silly.
https://docs.google....zE5ZmU1ZjQ2NGM5

it looks a little silly but it has a turret-ring...

[CaveMan]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 10 December 2011 - 10:05 PM, said:

no I mean reboot earthsiege -Starsiege was too much of a cluster..
Starsiege at its point of writing should have just been a new mech game
cause it beared 0 relation to the previous titles and even went so far as
to retcon characters that were never present in those titles and
generally make up bad filler for plot holes. With todays good writing
for AI characters (GlaDos, Shodan, Cortana) you could do it.

Personally I thought Starsiege was brilliant. Tribes is where they went off the rails. (Way to rip off BattleTech again, there, guys. Because one set of Clans wasn't enough.)

[feor]

CaveMan, on 11 December 2011 - 05:30 PM, said:

Personally I thought Starsiege was brilliant. Tribes is where they went off the rails. (Way to rip off BattleTech again, there, guys. Because one set of Clans wasn't enough.)

Even Tribes wasn't that bad. It was enough of a timeline jump to justify the changes, and the story worked itself out well enough. Got a little funky when they brought in the Bioderms for Tribes 2 (which were an offshoot of Cyberstorm, which was an example of RETCON ALL OF THE GAMES! since Gir Draxon and the Bioderms are from the Stellar7/Nova9 game series) but even that was enjoyable to an extent.

Aaron DeChavilier, on 11 December 2011 - 02:50 PM, said:

aye! I guess what I mean to say in a less nerd-rage tone was; They went too far
in changing the story to fit Starsiege including a massive timeline jump, dumping
some arguably cool designs with a gritty feel to some cartoony ones that look
rather dumb - the whole 'mechs without torsos' concept makes them look silly.
https://docs.google....zE5ZmU1ZjQ2NGM5

it looks a little silly but it has a turret-ring...

I dunno, I liked the No-Torso designs myself, especially the Sampson. But you seem to be arguing against yourself there. Such designs had gone the way of the dodo for Starsiege. The only HERC carried forward from ES2 to SS was the Apocalypse, and it was joined by things like the Minotaur and Gorgon. Plus the refitted Martian Construction HERCs, like the Emancipator and Olypian

[Aaron DeChavilier]

Sampson has a torso and turret-ring.... >.>
All Earthsiege hercs have torsos, even the 'chicken walker' designs
Torso being a section of mech connecting the pelvis to the upper
body. The Starsiege mechs that are humanoid have no torso:
Basilisk
Emancipator
Minotaur
Talon
what you have is the cockpit being pt in the middle and the legs and
arms sprouting off of it in a weird awkward formation...
the end result is that they removed torso rotation in Starsiege and I don't
know how you have a mech game with no torso rotation

If i was at home i could use pics to demonstrate my case but I can't right now

design aesthetics of Starsiege aside, it was too much of a leap in my personal
opinion from Earthsiege. Starsiege should just been a new mech game, same
goes with Dynamix's Outpost 2 - its radically different than Outpost 1 (which
was also rated mediocre) so why even make the sequel?

Edited by Aaron DeChavilier, 12 December 2011 - 11:33 AM.

[feor]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 12 December 2011 - 11:32 AM, said:

Sampson has a torso and turret-ring.... >.>
All Earthsiege hercs have torsos, even the 'chicken walker' designs
Torso being a section of mech connecting the pelvis to the upper
body. The Starsiege mechs that are humanoid have no torso:
Basilisk
Emancipator
Minotaur
Talon
what you have is the cockpit being pt in the middle and the legs and
arms sprouting off of it in a weird awkward formation...
the end result is that they removed torso rotation in Starsiege and I don't
know how you have a mech game with no torso rotation

If i was at home i could use pics to demonstrate my case but I can't right now

design aesthetics of Starsiege aside, it was too much of a leap in my personal
opinion from Earthsiege. Starsiege should just been a new mech game, same
goes with Dynamix's Outpost 2 - its radically different than Outpost 1 (which
was also rated mediocre) so why even make the sequel?

Ah, I see, I thought you were referring to the tendency of HERCs from the original Earthsiege to have the cockpit and upper weapons supported on a pair of uprights with a big hole right through the machine. Hence having "no torso".

And I think a mech game without Torso rotation worked quite well, actually. The controls for StarSiege worked quite well, IMHO, and completely removed the circle-o-doom that always ended up in MW games. You could target 90deg to the left or right, but only with about half your weapons. And if gave tanks a reason to exist, 360deg turret rotation.

[Evgeny Bear]

What does IP and PGI mean? Oo also read this in the FAQ

[Aaron DeChavilier]

feor, on 12 December 2011 - 11:57 AM, said:

Ah, I see, I thought you were referring to the tendency of HERCs from the original Earthsiege to have the cockpit and upper weapons supported on a pair of uprights with a big hole right through the machine. Hence having "no torso".

And I think a mech game without Torso rotation worked quite well, actually. The controls for StarSiege worked quite well, IMHO, and completely removed the circle-o-doom that always ended up in MW games. You could target 90deg to the left or right, but only with about half your weapons. And if gave tanks a reason to exist, 360deg turret rotation.

to be fair, I felt Starsiege had a few more gameplay problems than just torso twist
but it is an issue. Circle strafe parties are intrinsice to video games... ask yourself
honestly; in the FPS do you take people head on? or do you try and gain the flank
on them? is it easier to kill someone while spinning around them on the edge of
their vision - or to just shimmy left and right?

They key here is in level and game mechanic design to minimize the circle strafing.
In FPS, most levels will have their open fields yes, but the identified 'crucial' points
on a map where action gravitates too well these areas are generally more built up
and cluttered. So why can't we just scale this paradigm up to mech size? have our
levels with rolling hills, but put in cliffs, rocks, bluffs, villages. Maybe even make it
so heavier makes have a slower torso traverse?

So yeah, sry I derailed this post...

Edited by Aaron DeChavilier, 12 December 2011 - 01:30 PM.

[feor]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 12 December 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

to be fair, I felt Starsiege had a few more gameplay problems than just torso twist
but it is an issue. Circle strafe parties are intrinsice to video games... ask yourself
honestly; in the FPS do you take people head on? or do you try and gain the flank
on them? is it easier to kill someone while spinning around them on the edge of
their vision - or to just shimmy left and right?

They key here is in level and game mechanic design to minimize the circle strafing.
In FPS, most levels will have their open fields yes, but the identified 'crucial' points
on a map where action gravitates too well these areas are generally more built up
and cluttered. So why can't we just scale this paradigm up to mech size? have our
levels with rolling hills, but put in cliffs, rocks, bluffs, villages. Maybe even make it
so heavier makes have a slower torso traverse?

So yeah, sry I derailed this post...

Why does it have to be intrinsic? I can appreciate that every other FPS/mech sim has done it but that was part of why I liked StarSiege, it didn't do things the same way as everyone else.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

feor, on 12 December 2011 - 05:00 PM, said:

Why does it have to be intrinsic? I can appreciate that every other FPS/mech sim has done it but that was part of why I liked StarSiege, it didn't do things the same way as everyone else.

so in a tank game, it's acceptable for all MBT's (main battle tanks, aka modern tank design doctrine) to have fixed or limited traverse...
that turret traverse should not be intrinsic to the tank game in order to ward off potential tactics (circle strafe)
are they 100% non-intrinsic? perhaps but it's not an easy sell at all list how many games with mechs without torso rotation

[feor]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 12 December 2011 - 07:47 PM, said:

so in a tank game, it's acceptable for all MBT's (main battle tanks, aka modern tank design doctrine) to have fixed or limited traverse...
that turret traverse should not be intrinsic to the tank game in order to ward off potential tactics (circle strafe)
are they 100% non-intrinsic? perhaps but it's not an easy sell at all list how many games with mechs without torso rotation

No many, but again, that's part of what I liked about StarSiege, it was a different feel. HERC combat in SS was alot more like aerial fighter warfare. One explosive initial pass trying to blow your opponent away, and if you survived that it became a desperate battle of twisting and maneuvering to try and get him back under your guns. A walking dog fight, if you will. In Mechwarrior, you rush towards each other, make your initial pass, then turn right, rotate the torso, and walk in a circle until one of you fall over. *yawn*

And StarSiege had the advantage that there were units that did have turrets: tanks. And they were just as effective as HERCs. I spent the last 4 or 5 missions of the Martian Campaign in the hovertank. (Havoc? Or was that the fighter from ES2? bah! memory fail)

[Demi-Precentor Konev]

I would pay 80USD for FFG to re-imagine the Succession Wars boardgame.