Blogs - tastyjerk

BadgerDeluxe >>>>> tastyjerk. Haven't been on here in yeeeaaaars. Excited to be back. Came back to keep an eye on Master Chief Collection mods, and excited at the possibility of Half Life Alyx.

I was bored so I made you a video

This was on the front page a bit, but I felt the need to re-post it here. This is a bit of a lengthy read, but I STRONGLY think that everyone interested in game design and development should give it a read. It has some basic principles that are just common sense, but the experiences that NinjaDave goes through in this article really bring the points home.

Indiedb.com

I am not a strong-willed man. I can at least proudly proclaim that I surpassed purchasing Burnout Paradise at the god forsaken EA Store, despite their steamy proposition to access the game a full three days ahead of the official PC release. My love lies with Valve's gift to mankind: the Steam digital distribution platform. However, certain events have be doubtful about my loyalty in this particular instance.

For one, all of EA's upcoming titles that they plan to release on Steam have been listed under the Coming Soon tab on Steam's Storefront, minus a certain chaos-filled racer coming soon to the PC platform. That's okay, though, right? After all, we still got two more days until the "official" release on the 6th, and Steam has been known to just "pop" games on to their store upon the day of release with no prior fanfare. Plus, my computer still has some Kentucky Fried RAM, so it's not like I would be playing it anyway.

So what's the problem? Well, there's two problems.

1. For SOME REASON, Direct2Drive is able to offer the game 2 days ahead of the official release day, making the game available for download and play on this very day. Still, though, my RAM is fried, so what's the big deal?
2. My RAM arrives today from Newegg.

And now we're up to speed on my plight. I worry that if my RAM arrives in just a matter of time and there is no word of a Burnout Paradise release on Steam, I will break my resolution to wait and just buy the game on Direct2Drive, which in of itself isn't a bad thing, but I would prefer that all my games be under one account, that is Steam.

The reason that I bring this up is that for one, I just like to ramble about these things to kill time and stress, and also, it makes me wonder what exactly is going on behind the scenes of digital distribution. Is it truly the publisher's decision whether or not to distribute their games digitally? Because it seems that, sometimes, the finger is pointed at the developers when a game does not make an appearance on a certain digital store, and it would seem that a publisher would want their game to be as widely distributed as possible (depending of course on the royalties of using different programs).

If it is the decision of the developer's themselves, I can understand not wanting to distribute on many different stores, although I think it would be more beneficial to cover all of your bases. Also, to exclude distributing on the largest and most well-known instance of digital distribution doesn't make alot of sense to me.

However, another problem arises if, in two days, Burnout Paradise suddenly "pops up" on Steam's storefront. If it is indeed the responsibility of the publisher to work out digital distribution, then a move like this would certainly make EA seem a bit more shady. Would it be a tactic that they would use to discourage users to buy on Steam, and instead, choose a different means of purchasing? I say this because I've noticed a pattern in distribution with a few EA games of recent times.

1. Release on the OFFICIAL EA Digital Store, usually several days before the official release date
2. Release on another digital distribution platform, usually Direct2Drive, a day or two LATER
3. Release on Steam (if ever) days after that

Mirror's Edge has followed this guide to the "T". It's obvious that Steam and EA haven't always been the best of buddies, but it makes me wonder if EA is deliberately trying to persuade consumers to buy their products by different means. I could hypothesize about the reasoning behind this for quite some time, but I hope that I'm just thinking too hard about these events, and that EA isn't as petty as these events might portray them to be.

Computer's still dead, Newegg's RAM is en route to my house, so I'm hoping for the best. Bleh.

In other news, here's a good video of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Also, here's a very interesting article that was originally printed in EDGE Magazine regarding the possible future of voice chat, and a division of Dolby that's dedicated to furthering the idea of 3D Voice Chat.

Edge-online.com

So yeah, Burnout Paradise is coming out in a few days. I have to say, the Burnout games are my FAVORITE racing games, being that I'm a retard that doesn't enjoy realistic driving sims all that much. Something like Showtime mode, which is basically the Devil's version of Katamari Damacy in which you try to roll your car over as many other cars as inhumanly possible to create the most chaos and damage, really appeals to me.

However, after about a day of gaming on my *FIXED* computer, I found out that the damned thing wasn't actually *FIXED* at all. It's dead. Again. For the THIRD time. Well, technically, even computers can only die once, so I guess the proper term would be -still- dead. Anyway, the point is, I'm tired of dealing with it, so I'm going to commit suicide. I mean... I'm going to just buy some new freakin' RAM, since that seems to be the most logical source of this unkown problem.

I have to say, although this is a hassle that has crippled my PC gaming for about two months so far, I still love PC gaming more than console gaming, and it seems like this problem is most likely due to my own negligence. Besides, nowadays it seems like consoles are crashing almost as much if not more than PCs. Either way, I can't wait to put this problem behind me and log some good, solid hours into cruising around Paradise City.

As for those who haven't really gotten some hands-on time with the game and wonder what I'm talking about when I say "the Devil's version of Katamari Damacy," go ahead and peek at the video below.

Oh yeah, and I think the game might have some racing stuff in there, too. :D Is Burnout realistic? No, of course not. Then again, the same could be said of Quake. Not a realistic shooter by any means, but just like Burnout, its an unrealistic, fast-paced chaos-fest that's a heck of alot of fun to play.

I'm currently trying to open a bottle of Nos Energy Drink, and I think that the bottle is winning. Anyhoo...

I've just entered the conception phase for two mods. The first one will most likely be a stupid fun mod made by my team currently being formed just to get a hang of our new positions, and then if we all feel comfortable in our positions, we'll move on to a much more serious mod (I can't wait to get to work on this one, although it will probably be some time before we do anything more on this mod). Still struggling on what Engines to use... probably Source Engine (OB) for the first one, and possibly for the second one, as well, although it might be on the L4D version of the engine, if possible.

EDIT: Finally got a new power cord for my PC, but now I'm plagued by the rhino virus, so I refuse to remove my posterior from the comfort of my bed or couch until I am fully recovered. SO... I'm still stranded to my laptop with no capacity for gaming on it... oh well. I can still lurk around my favorite sites while I recover.

Oh yeah, and Flight of the Conchords are awesome.