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Making Of: Hostile Waters
Written by Kieron Gillen on December 7, 2007 at 3:03 pm.
[Another brilliant game which should have been massive - I recall describing it as the first great game of the new millennium, which will annoy anyone who's anal over that Popular Millennium thing. In it I interview Julian Widdows, who I - when writing this - realise I haven't seen for years. Where are you, Julian Widdows? Also, reading it reminds me of one great videogame lost artifact - the Multiplayer Patch for Hostile Waters, which was finished but never released. For God's sake, someone - do the right thing and leak the bastard.]
Sometimes a game’s easy to sum up. For example… Hostile Waters: Lost Classic. There was a time, however that Hostile Waters was captured in a different way. That is, “Carrier Command for a New Millennia”, for that’s what it was. The idea of taking the ancient 80s classic, and riffing furiously off it was Rage’s Dave Percival and Andy Williams, but it was never turned out to be that simple or direct a tribute.
“You may argue, having played Hostile Waters, although you can see the seeds of that in there, it’s very different to Carrier Command,” says Project Manager Julian Widdows, now of Swordfish Studios, “It became clear to us pretty early on that updating it wasn’t going to work. It was a very quiet title.” Good point. While Carrier Command was based around two eponymous carriers and a massive series of islands, explored in a freeform manner, Hostile Waters was a level based Action/RTS hybrid and made good use of Rage’s famed explosion-code. It took a while to actually reach that point, however.
“One of the interesting things about making games is that at the moment there’s few people who differentiate research and development from games development,” Julian says, “We were very much in the R&D phase at the outset, while still having to develop a game on that technology. We were building a technology base, effectively”. The primary problem in this phase that Rage Birmingham, while experienced, had never actually made a strategy game before. “You can’t just reverse engineer other people’s games and make a carbon copy. That doesn’t create a great game,” Julian says, “Sure, it’s possible… but it’s certainly not the best way to go about designing a game”. This R&D state continued for just shy of two years, before amping up to a full – yet still slender – team of eleven people, after which it took almost another year and a quarter to bring it to retail.
“We didn’t set out with the intention of having an extended pre-production title, but we were in a position where we were allowed to build the team up to what we needed in that period. In retrospect, rightly so: it would have increased the cost at the wrong time,” Julian argues, “With all the resources in the world, extended pre-prod is incredibly useful. You can actually work out what you need to know about the game you’re creating.”
Hostile Waters cross-genre basis also proved challenging. Balancing the action and strategy elements satisfactorily proved tricky. “At the time, games like Battlezone were being released, which were very much controlled from the first person,” Julian says, “You were one person, one vehicle. One thing we always wanted in Hostile was the ability to step back from the action. If you’re always in the first person, things get confusing in terms of knowing where all your units are. How do you know what all your units are doing? Audio cues aren’t sufficient. You need to have the ability to take stock of your situation and know where it’s going wrong. But we also wanted the very immediate, visual action where you could pull the trigger yourself, and it felt good. Killing people felt really good. We knew you wanted to be on the floor, looking at the action, feeling the enemy breathing down your front. That engaging dynamic of being engaged in the action”
Their solution, they knew, had to centre on the Carrier itself. This aquatic base was already responsible for the construction of your individual units, but perhaps it could find another purpose? “What if you could take stock of the situation in the carrier as well here, in another room?,” Julian adds rhetorically. This lead to a map and the ability to add way-points, select and move around units. However, this choice lead to a pivotal moment in the game’s development. “I think the key decision we made, and probably the most important thing we did, was to pause the game while you were in there,” Julian says, “This changes the dynamic of Hostile Waters immeasurably. You really can take stock. You can think carefully in a controlled and relaxed way what aspects of the game you’d like to focus on.”
However, they didn’t want to reduce the game to a mere distant control. “We made it as simple and easy as possible to give orders to units in the game, so you didn’t have to go back to your carrier,” Julian says, “You could say “You – go over there”, and it worked and felt satisfying.” The balancing the two desires proved awkward. But, as Julian says, “It’s what made Hostile Waters unique in its way, is that you could really take control or take a back seat depending where you are. If you want it to be a good action/strategy title. The key thing is that it has to be fun to control the vehicle and pull the trigger, because if it’s not people won’t play it like that, and just play it like a strategy title… and that would have ruined it.”
Hostile Waters also brought in an external writer, in the form of the abrasively entertaining comic-writer Warren Ellis, which added much to the game fiction. “Our strength was designing games, not script-writing,” Julian states, “We wanted a high quality story, with cut-scenes as a reward for completing the level. We also knew the challenge for this would be that the story and the game are so closely entwined, it’s very difficult to keep the script current. You have to change it endlessly.” In other words, every time a level changed, the writer would have to rewrite something. Clearly this would be an impossibility in terms of having a writer on constant demand for months. The team hit a novel solution. “We had Warren write cinematics which had nothing to do with the main game narrative: he would do backstory about the world and the carrier,” Julian says, “William Burroughs had something called The Folding Technique, where he’d say you could take chapters and re-arrange them in any order, and it would still make sense. And you could argue whether that was actually true or not, but it was certainly true in Hostile’s cinematics. We wanted to tell the game narrative in the level, but do these ambitious, different cinematics for /completing/ a level. It wouldn’t patronise you by telling you what you’ve just done.”
In the end, Hostile Water’s critical success and commercial failure proved bittersweet. “We’re proud that we got it out… and we’re most proud that the people who bought it really, really liked it,” Julian says, “We got some phenomenal reviews. Including stuff like “The best game you’ve never played”. And still people show interest in the game. I hate saying this, even though I say it every single time, I know that deep down in our souls, we do this for one reason, which is to do good games that people enjoy playing. There’s not one of here who’s driving around in a Ferrari, or swimming pools or a harem of girls.”
However, despite its lack of success in terms of money, it wasn’t a loss, it was far from useless. “It did a huge amount of good – what it didn’t make back in money, it made back in reputation for the companies who were involved.” It was this groundwork which helped Rage Birmingham to reform as Swordfish Studios when Rage collapsed financially. “I wish we shipped with multiplayer,” Julian Widdow says, “Then Edge would have given it nine”. As it was, the publisher didn’t want to have a multiplayer game, despite the huge popularity of strategy-based multiplayer at the time. Not that, as it turns out it stopped them. “We did actually do a multiplayer patch, and there’s a LAN version of Hostile Waters which we completed. But we completed it the day Interplay went to the wall, who were distributing it… and it never got shipped.” Due to a complicated legal situation, it was never released.
Rage’s biggest regret about Hostile Waters and now ours too.
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Tags: Carrier-Command, Hostile-Waters, Julian-Widdows, Making-Of, Men-Swearing-While-Killing, MY-NAME-IS-RANSOM, tom-baker, Warren-Ellis
__________________
Kieron Gillen says:
In stock at amazon for a fiver.
I admit, proofing this made me think I should dig out my copy.
KG
December 7th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
AbyssUK says:
Another brilliant game which should have been massive :- Codename Eagle my friend Codename Eagle , nothing else came close to its mental multi-player, I loved that game so much.
December 7th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
fluffy bunny says:
I bought this a year ago or so, but could never get it to work. I think it was my GeForce it didn’t like.
December 7th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Kieron Gillen says:
Abyss: Codename did get the second chance due to becoming Battlefield though.
KG
December 7th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
alco says:
Utterly brilliant game.
No mention of Tom Baker?
December 7th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Pete says:
God yes. Loved this game, utterly top story, British sci-fi legends doing the VO, beautiful for the time (still is), and a wonderful mix of action and strategy. Sometimes retarded AI, but who the fuck cares given all the above?
It was your review that put me onto it actually KG, cheers for that. Think I remember asking about the multiplayer patch a while back too, strange that it just vanished into the ether. SOME bugger must still have it somewhere, I’d love to play it.
December 7th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Kast says:
Brilliant game. Got very fond memories.
OK, that’s it – I’ve got to go back and play it all over again.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Stick says:
Excellent game and – to me – completely unique. (But I haven’t played CC or XCOM.) Would’ve been cool with just the mechanics of it, but the narrative and the characters pushed it into “highly memorable” territory.
… there was code for multiplayer? Awww.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
phuzz says:
Five pounds? For something written by Warren Ellis and voiced by Tom Baker?
You could have made the entire post just the above info and I’d have been excited :)
*bought*
December 7th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Kieron Gillen says:
Both Ellis and Widdows have told me with great joy the stories about how fun it was doing a voice over session with Baker. He’s about as english eccentric as it gets.
KG
December 7th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Hump says:
@KG
Yeah but you can’t wing-walk in Battlefield ;)
re Hostile Waters:
I thought it was a novel design but when I played it , it just never grabbed me. it was a nice step-up for Rage at the time though because up to that point their games were very simplistic and repetitive.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Kast says:
Oh, and I’d just like to mention my favourite ever unit bark (even including Starcraft and Warcraft series):
Ransom: “Uh-huh… this is NOT a helicopter and this is NOT good!”
December 7th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Garth says:
I’m really considering getting this, given the comments I’ve read. It will be hilarious should I , though, as I’m willing to bet the shipping cost will be greater than the item cost, heh.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Muscrat says:
Ahhh makes me happy I bought the game – heck I still have the manual and box.
Fantastic game – though I never ended up finising it.
Guess its time for a re-install :P
December 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Kieron Gillen says:
Garth: While there’s no Budget US release, it seems, there’s a load of people on Ebay who are REALLY selling it dirt cheap. Like a couple of dollars cheap.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Homunculus says:
I’ve had the manual and overlay for this as a permanent feature on my desk (underneath an otherwise constantly changing pile of Other Stuff) for years now, and I can’t remember why.
December 7th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Theory says:
I loved Hostile Waters so much I tried making an ill-advised HL2 mod of it. I can’t have been more than 15 at the time, bless my cotton socks.
Disgracefully, the only cut-scene on YouTube is the Ransom one. Anyone with video capturing kit want to fix that?
December 7th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Stick says:
Kast – oh yes, the unit barks. Banters. Bickers. General cursing and screaming. Patton had some great ones, too. (”Son, I drive tanks” and “God damn this war, I am not a nurse” spring to mind.)
December 8th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Jarmo says:
I think a lot of missed sales could be attributed to the hideous, rat-poison-green package. I originally never even picked up the box in the shops as it looked so unappealing and uninteresting. Only when I ran across a really glowing review in the Finnish Pelit magazine did I give it a chance. Boy, was I glad I did. Lots of interesting things to do, with the freedom to do it in my own style.
Finding treasure like this is reason enough alone to read the hobby magazines and web sites. The same thing just happened to me with Armageddon Empires. Another happy find, this time with the help of Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Thanks! And tanks for the memories (of Hostile Waters)!
December 8th, 2007 at 1:56 am
Kieron Gillen says:
Jamro: Agreed, re: Box. I remember being horrified at it around the time.
KG
December 8th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Garth says:
Thanks Kieron, I may just pick one of these up. 7-8 bucks including shipping (for a game touted this much) is fine by me, heh.
December 8th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Sören Höglund says:
“God damn this war, I am not a nurse” spring to mind.
Oh, now I can’t help but remember how “Come to nurse Borden” made me feel all…funny inside.
Brilliant game. I think it was its presence in the PC Gamer UK Top 100 that made me pick it up on the cheap a year or two after release. Best ten euros I ever spent.
December 8th, 2007 at 9:44 am
malkav11 says:
Awesome, awesome game. And they may think not taking personal control ruins the game, but I prefer the hands-off approach to it myself, in most situations. Still a lot of fun, never been close to replicated.
Ellis has done one other game that I know about – a fun little PS2 shooter called Cold Winter. It seems to have failed much like Hostile Waters did, although more understandably so. It’s probably one of the best PS2 shooters, but that’s really not saying a whole lot, to be honest. It’s fun, the action and levels are solid, kills are gory, and there’s a couple of mildly inventive game mechanics like getting your armor from dead enemies, with more wounds = less armor, or the underused invention system. But it doesn’t stand out from the pack the way Hostile Waters did.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Kieron Gillen says:
I believe Cold Winter was done by Swordfish, who were the Rage Birmingham Hostile Waters team.
KG
December 8th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Rock, Paper, Shotgun: PC Gaming’s Ivoriest Tower » Blog Archive » And You May Have Missed… says:
[...] Making of: Hostile Waters [...]
December 8th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Marvin the Paranoid Android says:
This game came with the first PC I had, I completely agree on it’s awesomeness.
Also, the discovery of the cheat codes gave me enough incentive to play it through again. Anyone who’s playing it after reading this article: put “-setusupthebomb” as the command line parameter, press F8 for the console and try: “deydododatdohdontdeydoh” or “allyourbasearebelongtous”
December 8th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Simon says:
A gametap/steam candidate then?
December 8th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
malkav11 says:
I wish.
I own it, but for some mysterious reason (probably the fact that my CD drive isn’t the letter the game expects) it won’t recognize my legitimate CD – I’d much rather Gametap it than crack it. And it’d be a great thing to buy again off Steam for cheap, too.
December 8th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
WCAYPAHWAT says:
I remember playing the demo years ago, then wandering around looking for it in various shops for about 4 years. I was always sadly disappointed. Ebay it is then.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Theory says:
The IP is owned by Vivendi (or should I say Activision Blizzard?) now, so the chances of its appearance on Steam are slim.
December 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Miles says:
I love this game. If the multiplayer patch ever does find it’s way into the world, I’ll be up for getting splodesored to smithereens by you Kieron.
[Is it wrong that I think it's the best thing Warren Ellis has ever done, though? It's probably just me.]
December 9th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Sören Höglund says:
Yes, it’s very, very wrong. It’s very nice writing, especially for a videogame, but it’s not close to being Ellis’ best work.
December 9th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Alasatyr says:
My favourite part of this game wasn’t Tom Baker or even Warren Ellis. It was Paul Darrow and Glynis Barber. Close your eyes and you’re back in season 4 of Blake’s Seven.
December 10th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Kieron Gillen says:
Julian Widdows has just mailed me. He lives! Hurrah.
KG
December 10th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Dave P says:
All the Hostile guys are reading this… ;0)
December 10th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Dave P says:
By “Hostile” guys, I mean the dev team, not a bunch of angry men.
Well mildly irritated perhaps. ;0)
December 10th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Dave P says:
I’d love to do a sequal.
December 10th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Dave P says:
Sequel even.
December 10th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Lachlan says:
MP Patch! MP Patch! MP Patch!
Hostile Waters was magnificent. Launching massive amphibious assaults while turning into your enemies’ horrified radio reports…cunningly shutting down an island’s radar and AA network with the sniping laser, before waving in your mighty air wing…decloaking in the middle of an enemy production site at night and then setting them all on fire….zooming in on the little people who wandered around the islands and thoughtfully putting your finger on the mouse button…
My only quibble was that you never got much ammo for the carrier’s guns, but quiet use of the entire-tech-tree-and-infinite-carrier-ammo cheat made for an extremely fun replay session after completing it.
December 11th, 2007 at 12:02 am
matte_k says:
this game was the second ever game i bought for my then new pc, on the strength of the demo. I lent it to a friend who’d never heard of it a few months back, and even he agreed it was one of the best games ever. Script, environment, game mechanics, voice acting and a neat little AI idea stolen from Rogue Trooper (the comic strip, not the game-years later that was) made for a fantastic session in front of the keyboard. And making the squad characters unique in many ways, Leon-lookalike Lazare, Patton being like his namesake, upper class twit Sinclair and that evil little recycler Kroker…dammit, i’m gonna go play it again (now where did i put it…)
“i could kill you just by lookin at you”- Kroker
December 18th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Kast says:
This past week I reinstalled HW and ended up mostly playing it at a LAN party. Having almost forgotten everything but the basics, I was pleasantly surprised to hear unfamiliar barks when I’d made new unit-AI combinations.
Hearing the delightful Borden croon from within a repair Scarab is an unusually stimulating experience. Patton’s gruff complaints and cheers always brought a grin. Most of all, Church and Walker’s memories on their final acts of the war stir some dull ache within one’s heart.
I don’t believe it would be hyperbolic to claim that Hostile Water’s voice characterisation was not surpassed until Half-Life 2.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
n0l0g0 says:
Its my favourite PC game – ever! But I never completed it. Some sort of bug kicked in 75% of the way through that made the copters rotate constantly. Expecting to complete it sometime soon.
January 6th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Kast says:
Note: I have FINALLY completed it – I always gave up through the painfully difficult final mission. What a setup for a sequal – what are the odds? :P How owns the IP?
January 15th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Dave P says:
We do. That is Swordfish/Vivendi I believe.
January 17th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
phuzz says:
I did indeed buy it for a fiver from amazon and I’m slowly shooting my way through the missions, apart from the massive slowdown in the ops room making controlling units incredibly annoying (which I’ll assume is a driver issue) I’m enjoying it loads. It even distracted me from Zelda for a while…
February 24th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
MadMart says:
How do you do the command line thing for the cheat codes?
This game is awsome, I’ve had it for a few years and I keep comming back to it.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:52 am
guster456 says:
i love this game is a 10+ this is the game thaet is gold i hope it will apear a part 2 :)
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
GuestZ says:
Ditto on the cheat, i cant figure out how to do the -setusupthebomb command line
can anyone walk us through the process?
Also great game, i always get stuck on one mission, that is why im trying to cheat to continue on w the game
July 12th, 2008 at 2:30 am
Dead Space: Some of it is Warren Ellis’ | Rock, Paper, Shotgun says:
[...] and smoking. Last time Warren contributed to a PC game was the brilliant and conceptually splendid Hostile Waters , so we have to take this as a good sign. [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Bursar says:
If you play FPS’s with WASD then Hostile Waters is absolutely brilliant as all the ‘wingman’ commands are based around WASD key presses.
The first time I played it I was using cursor keys in FPS’s and it never clicked. I came back to it after a couple of years during which i’d retrained myself to use WASD and it was phenomenal.
Directing 3 or 4 wingman quickly and accurately whilst driving a vehicle yourself has never been done better in my opinion.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Freeman says:
I’ve completed this game by 5 times and i still have a question-is something like multiplayer? i really need it….thx for answer.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
AlexF says:
Loved this game to bits, one of the best ever. I always wanted to reduce the gravity in it for the explosion debris, couldn’t figure out why it was so high. If anyone knew how to do this id play it again!
August 15th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Rock, Paper, Birthday: We Are One | Rock, Paper, Shotgun says:
[...] with Developers on the origins of classic games Collect them all by clicking the Making Of tag. Hostile Waters Freedom Force Harvey Smith Rise of Nations Laser Squad Nemesis Arx Fatalis City Of Heroes The [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 8:12 am
No ‘Freakangels’ Week says:
[...] after all this time, a few folk out there still talk about it. How very charming of them. No Comments, Comment or [...]
August 31st, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Demonsslayer says:
I releaized after some cleaning that my copy had been lost. I have brought it out from time to time and have always had a “blast” through out the game. I was hoping if they had gone ahead with a sequal that they expand the reclimation since the game always seemed to have something reclaiming more then just metals and also wished to make Outpost of my own and such so the carrier was a start point later in the game. It is so tempting to see if a group or another Company could get the rights to allow it to be remade as Hostile Waters: Antaeus Resurrection which continues the story even a few years later or something. Well back to playing the game :)
September 7th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
John says:
You can get this on that great new website/company that is getting a lot of buzz at the moment – ‘Good Old Games’ (gog.com). It was $5.99 for a download that had no DRM and was guaranteed to work in XP and Vista! I have already bought Fallout 1 and 2, and those games are playing great! If you’re into classic games, go check out gog.com!
September 10th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
cheeba says:
Indeed, I just bought it from there myself. It didn’t click with me first time I tried the demo way back, but I’m buggered if I know why now. It’s absolutely tremendous, and I’m only a handful of missions into it.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:10 am
John says:
Good to hear cheeba! We all need to shout about gog.com to every corner of the gaming web! :) I am doing my bit anyway! :)
September 26th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Wurzel says:
Well, there is a nw Carrier Command game in development; hopefully they decide to go down the HW route of blending RTS, squad strategy and third-person shooter. Even now, it’s still the only game of its kind that I can think of (glad to have kept his CD in pristine condition.)
September 26th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Mr. Weedy says:
This game is awesome. I STILL have the original cardboard box, the cd, the manual and the key layout sheet and it still is AWESOME fun. I have had this game like 7 years now and I have played it 69 times through. I’m about to start playing it once again and play it 70th time through.
This is Undescrivably awesome game. Rage indeed did their career’s very biggest error when they went to bankcrupty and didn’t manage to release that multiplayer patch for this game. This game would have sold millions, millions and millions and even more millions of copies and made literally massive amounts of money.
Just so awesome. 69 times played through, doesn’t that already tell something?
Normally I play games through maybe once or twice, barely ever three times because nowadays they are just utter shit. This isn’t. Next best game which I have played second most through is Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds game which I have played throug roughly… maybe 8 times.
69 times and 70th is about to come up.
Just think about that. Awesome game, can’t say anything better than that because I can’t find enough awesome words to represent the greatness of this game. :D
October 11th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
John says:
Mr. Weedy – you the MAN! :)
October 11th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
MadMart says:
I got on this GOG site, registered (back in sept.), and It still will not let me past the title screen. WTF?
October 25th, 2008 at 12:58 am
John says:
MadMart – GOG is now public beta – so anyone can now login in, Their servers were down for a while, while they changed, so maybe try again.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Jubaal says:
Hostile Waters has to be one of my favourite ever games on any platform. It has the exact kind of gameplay I love i.e. the ability to manage units from a strategic level or get in there and dirty yourself.
The background story and cut-scenes are nicely put together and with a narration cast like Paul Darrow, Glynis Barber and Tom Baker you can’t go wrong.
What puts the icing on the cake for me is the personality of the characters and the banter between them. Listening to Patton say “Son, this is not a gun” if you dare to equip him with any weapon smaller than the statue of liberty still makes me smile.
Personally I always tried to allocate the characters the same vehicles, Ransom was my main chopper pilot, Borden flew my Pegasus, Koralev was my healing scarab, Patton had a Rhino etc. What about the rest of you?
I’ve started playing it again and I’m surprised how much I am still enjoying it. So often when you come back to old games you loved they never quite live up to how great you remembered them, however I’m loving Hostile Waters this time as much as I did the first.
It is such a shame to hear that the multiplayer code was never released. To be honest though I would have preferred a plain skirmish mode where the game creates a randomised island based on some user defined settings e.g. island size, difficulty setting etc.
Right, I’m off to perform a ritual sacrifice and bargain my soul in return for the development of Hostile Waters 2.
October 31st, 2008 at 6:57 pm
John says:
Let’s not forget, amongst the names mentioned, the Sean Connery sound-a-like! :) Made that first cutscene sound like a movie or TV show! :)
October 31st, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Jubaal says:
If only I could alt+tab without the game crashing *sobs*
October 31st, 2008 at 8:32 pm
John says:
Many games don’t let you ALT-Tab, so don’t blame a single game about it! :) Anyway, plenty of very average games don’t either – so having a great one like Hostile Waters makes it easier, surely! :)
October 31st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Jubaal says:
Bah no. If it was an average game I wouldn’t care, but as I love Hostile Waters so much it makes me a sad monkey. :(
October 31st, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Mr. Weedy says:
The game is old and I don’t think the developers at that time imaginated that anyone would alt+tab back then because the computers weren’t powerful enough for that. I still remember how my old computer choked up because of my PCI graphic card instead of AGP. The AGP cards were very high-tech back then. :)
Anyway, if someone can offer their help in the sense of creating a game, know what it takes to create a game and you know what Steam program is, feel free to contact me: minimister [at] gmail [dot] com.
Antaeus may raise again. ;)
November 1st, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Jubaal says:
Just found out from some helpful soul at http://www.gog.com that if you create a shortcut to the HostileWaters.exe file, and add a ‘-windowed’ (Minus the ’s) at the end of the target line in the shortcut properties, the game runs in windowed mode. So you can alt+tab to your hearts content. Yay!
November 7th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
John says:
Jubaal -great! Thanks! Gotta love that GOG!
November 7th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Jubaal says:
My pleasure. Spread the Hostile Waters Love!
November 7th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
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I remember playing a demo of this and loving it, where’s my best bet for picking up a copy now?
December 7th, 2007 at 3:09 pm