Letter of the Day

We get a lot of good stuff in the mail but we can't respond to all of it. Here's a great letter sent to the mailbag this week.

Why do u always answer the easy, not so much aggro questions?
I would like to know :

1: why the germans have better equipment(BEF as I am) , ie thier sights are better and thier air is better

2: Why we have the choice to decide which side to play, i know too many who have switched, if u want to play then play on one side and dont switch(this wil elimate the chance of spying, slightly)

3: Why change the game completely with TOE? I am not too new to the game but the old system helped keep people in one place,I can understand the new way of thinking but this is going to change the whole game competely! Is it really that good an idea? have u asked the people that subscribe?

4: Was gonna carry on moaning about 3 but whats the point? If we subscribe to this game(which is the best I ever played) surely you should listen to the vioce of us all and not the few! get on-line and read the chat channel, not a thing you want to remember, THIS GAME IS GREAT, BETTER THAN GREAT AND YOU SHOULD APPRECIATE THE GUYS(N GALS) THAT PLAY IT,

we play this game coz we love it

lets make it a game that we wanna keep on loving !

rant finished


Thanks
Anon (sic)
please put it in newsletter, u will be surprised at reponses, or maybe not !!!

Unfortunately, Rafter felt it was inappropriate to answer so I'm posting it here as a fill in the blank. Go ahead and answer it your self in the comments and feel the joy that is being a Rat.

Slow News Day

Haven't been on the blogging trail much lately with 1.26 getting so close to release so I though I's just share this gem. That just ain't right...

Oli on the Vlog

1.26 Squad Auto Recruiting Vlog

Second Life Smells St00p1d

CK fragrances Makes 'Scents' in Second Life: "Residents and visitors to Second Life (www.secondlife.com) will be able to visit the ck IN2U site to pick up virtual bottles
of the new ck fragrances, connect with other in-world virtual partners by spraying them with fizzing fragrance bubbles to initiate dialogue - and use specially modified ck graffiti bottles to express themselves and whatever they or their friends are 'in 2'."

Dude. they're 'in 2' furries. Really. That's about all Second Life is. That and a bunch of reporters trying to sell themselves as being into the next big thing. Oh and a really bad key map. Yeah, that about sums up Second Life.

VW Legends

No, i'm not talking about my busted up 1965 'vert. TerraNova has a great little piece about legends in virtual worlds. One of the best is from Dr.Cats, whom you may remember from Furcadia which Playnet hosted so many moons ago. What fun, furry memories... he recants the many ways in which Lord British has died over the years which is very close to my heart as Ultima VII is one of my top ten games of all time. Great read.

YouTube - WWIIOL

Hot off the heels of my first video podcast (Rafter got a new camera natch) I got this link in my Google Alerts. Looks like Kbar and the boys have started a new YouTube group for WWIIOL Cool. Maybe we can get all those clips floating around up there. Reminds me I want to get the pre launch video interviews posted up along with WWIIOL in 60 Seconds which is always a hoot.

As for my ugly mug, look for it in the newsletter this week. w00t... er, NOT.

P.S. When did I turn into such a sour puss fat ass?

YouTube - WWIIOL

"Games for Windows" My Ass

I've had it with Vista and vVidia driver restart errors so naturally I rant.

As a producer for a game company I can't express my displeasure on this issue enough. Of the machines that I have built to test out on Vista, fully half of them suffer from restarting nvlddmkm errors.

My experiences on multiple machines are very similar to the posts in these threads in that each machine seems to have a different set of symptoms. Some machines crash if you do anything in windows or even when you do nothing.

Some machines are identical except for a single part such as the mobo and one will crash and one will not. Some only crash on 3d etc.

The deeper problem is that I cannot go in and "fix" these machines to get them working.

I have to assume that my customers are not even technical enough to find a forum like this let alone derive which of the 20 posted possible fixes might be right for them and execute that fix without bricking their machine and calling my tech support.

I can say with all honesty that for the last 6 years I have exclusively recommended nVidia graphics cards starting with TNT2's.

I recommend a mid level card every season to our playerbase (7600GT right now) and I always recommend nVidia chipset motherboards.

I can currently not recommend "Games for Windows" using Vista nor can I recommend nVidia with any conscience.

Fortunately for the games business, most gamers are quickly learning NOT to upgrade to Vista. It will be a real shame if they learn not to purchase nVidia while they are at it. Like me, they have long memories and as early adopters they often set the tone for the more casual in the space. Every hardcore or technical person has a particular brand that they shy away from for life (ECS anyone?) because of a single bad experience.

Please don't let this be that experience for me nVidia.

-Gophur

Ok, so it's a weenie of a rant but I've learned that screaming like a baby doesn't actually make anyone who can do anything about it want to bother to read it. You learn those kinda things in this biz. Anyhoo, if you're having these issues, and if you are running nVidia and Vista I'd say it's 50-50, please take a moment to post.

What a nice Tool

I leave the MMO Lessons to Ryan. He's got the web meme sown up at this point and they tend to be a good read. A very good thing to be writing down and mulling over whether you are planning your company's next project or if you are slogging away at the reality of the live support and ongoing design of an established MMO.

One thing he hasn't "lessoned" about yet is tools. Tools are it baby. Good tools are worth a gym locker crammed full of inspiring designers. A good tool is better than having John Carmak coding on your project every Sunday for a year for free! Good tools are better than getting asked "Hey dude want a pile of cash to make a Lego MMO?", having no idea why that would ever be compelling and in the end not caring cause it's just so damn cool (Hey MO!).

Tools, kids, are the key to life, the universe, and everything and these Crytek dudes have one impressive tool.

The Sky is Falling!

Just had a pretty interesting meeting. We've been aware for some time, since we introduced it actually, that the weather changed for the game rocked for the ground game and pretty much blew for plane guys. Lots of issues but the main issue is the loss of horizon when at altitude. We're gonna try some new stuff, largely changing colors but Killer thinks it will work pretty well as he's been playing with it for a couple weeks.

Speaking of planes, well and all vehicles, DOC made a good prod note this weekend covering the changes he's been up to on the vehicles. You should go have a look if that's your thing. I was most pleased about the new planes coming along so nicely. The VC pits may be a challenge as ANIMAL hasn't done a lot of planes but if things look to be coming together for 1.27 we may need to bump up the priority of a couple plane features to have a combo patch. I'd like to shoot for radar but that largely depends on how the rewrite of the pending ToE system gets done and how soon it gets into beta from dev. Hope Oli is stocked up on his espresso. He's gonna need it.

So hopefully we'll have some better fly boy sky for 1.26. If the color isn;t enough, I'm prepared to get the whole thing torn out again. Weather is a cool idea but we just can;t get where we need to with the limits of our first graphics engine. Unity II to the rescue on that front I hope.