Rock, Paper, Shotgun

28/01/2009 at 08:41 bansama says:

The preorder is also up on Steam. No price reduction though and it’s regionally restricted (and regionally priced). Which makes me wonder why they even bothered putting the beta up worldwide on Steam, if they then aren’t going to sell worldwide =/

28/01/2009 at 09:24 Alex says:

Sold enough copies of Soulstorm? Not a long time ago, a beta was called demo und was downloadable for free. Blimey… And I fell to it.

Not that I had problem with paying 3,50 for Soulstorm but taking money for a demo is quite strange, though.

28/01/2009 at 09:46 Danny says:

Is there anyone playing the beta with a laptop by any chance? I’m reluctant to download the big client before knowing if I can run the game on low settings. I’m using a 2,4ghz dual core proc, 4gb ram and a mobile ATI 3650 256mb.

I thank you all for your help, of course.

28/01/2009 at 09:53 Xocrates says:

@Alex: Actually, they said long ago that the beta would go public today while Soulstorm owners would get it one week later. A lot of people did get the chance to get soulstorm though.

@Danny: My laptop has no problems running the beta (one minimum-medium settings, which quite frankly are not very different from the Max ones) and I doubt my laptop is better than that.

28/01/2009 at 10:04 the wiseass says:

The game forces you to install the games for windows live client and you need to register an account. So it seems like this game just lost my interest in trying or playing it at all….

Where are the good ol’ times when you just installed a game without the need of external bloatware networking clients. Just give me some basic tcp/ip support and leave me the f*ck alone!

28/01/2009 at 10:23 Alex says:

@Xocrates. I missed that one.

@The Sombrero Kid. So you really think, that the beta code is released about 3 weeks (?) before going gold? If this really was a beta, the devs wouldn´t have a chance to fix any bugs in 3 weeks of time. Produktion should be on its way since several weeks to asure distribution timelines (just a guess, I´m not into game production)… I dont´t call it betatesting… just clever marketing.

28/01/2009 at 10:29 Klumhru says:

@Sombrero Kid
Getting a game on Steam and then having to install 4th party software to play it seems redundant to me personally.

For me personally, Steam is my xbox live. I think the reason few people (not “nobody”) bitch about xbox live is the lack of alternative, not the quality of the service.

28/01/2009 at 10:53 The Sombrero Kid says:

it doesn’t save games online and the trueskill thing dow2 uses is GFWL and GFWL is a third party profile management system meaning game developers don’t have to implement thier own, granted steam can do most of what GFWL does

28/01/2009 at 10:57 Mike says:

Not a long time ago, a beta was called demo und was downloadable for free.

That’s nothing! In my day, we were ‘appy if the game were released at all! We used to go up the games shop and by empty boxes. etc. etc.

28/01/2009 at 11:01 Alex says:

@Mike… I remember ordering Red Baron II in my Games-Shop, waiting about 3 months for it getting shipped from the U.S. to my home town… what a rush when it finally got on my harddrive, just to discover that it was buggy as hell… I didn´t care. ;)

28/01/2009 at 12:19 Doctor_Hellsturm says:

GFWL is a pain in the arse, but can we please discuss the beta itself a little? I am really disappointed and want to know if i am the only one. To me the game is one step back from COH, in almost every aspect. Graphics as well! The zoomed level is rubbish, units have less flavor and unpredictability, while the commander is ok, the “zeal” system just stinks compared to munitions in COH. You never get to use those abilities. /whine off

28/01/2009 at 12:31 The Sombrero Kid says:

@Ginger Yellow

i have and it’s flawed in so many ways if john had used his ability to read at all during the process he’d've had a much easier time, it took me less than 5 minute to buy and download operation anchorage

28/01/2009 at 12:41 The Sombrero Kid says:

to change the subject i love dawn of war 2 for the simple reason that it’s the first game to be about about tactics and putting the right units in the right places rather than gathering the most resources to produce the most units, this in turn means anyone with a good plan can win rather than the starcraft 17 clicks a second model (which i love too).

28/01/2009 at 12:45 ExitJudas says:

@sombrero

Spot on. positioning, scouting is important and more so than in any other RTS your actions, even tiny move actions, can have severe consequences, which supports the tactics aspect, and fortunately limits the viability of the 240 CPM style.

28/01/2009 at 13:55 Mark-P says:

It feels like Warcraft 3 crossed with Company of Heroes. Which is just fine with me because those are my 2 favourite multiplayer RTS games.

Other first thoughts? Blimey – everything’s tiny, from the units in default zoom to the wee GUI buttons. The bloom’s gotta go too. The Orks sound more like gretchin. Yay, Tyranids at last! The AI is terrible, but that’s typical for a Relic game at release.

I’m looking forward to playing it properly tonight. Hats off to Relic for not rehashing the original with better graphics. Starcraft 2 will cater for the sugar-rush APM twitchers.

28/01/2009 at 14:19 RealHorrorshow says:

I don’t like this game at all. Outsource the expansion and make CoH 2: Eastern Front ASAP.

28/01/2009 at 15:41 Teth says:

People are giving this game so much stick on the steam forums, Kotaku forums and here simply for using the games for windows live system.

I really don’t get it. For years games have been employing online networking middleware. Gamespy and xfire. Anyone noticed those logos not being present in a multiplayer game of the last 5 years? Maintaining a secure, centralised database of user accounts to allow statistics with 100% up time so no one tries to play a game and finds their stats for that night are missing the next morning takes experience, money and smart people’s time. It is therefore expensive. Outsourcing that to a specialist 3rd party therefore makes perfect sense for them and for us. My gamespy ID has served me well through 20+ games now and my XBOXLIVE / GFWL ID (they are the same thing) will no doubt serve me well on PCnow as well as my console.

DOW 2 is a great advert for the relaunch of the V2 GFWL I was a tad sceptical after the trashing it took for shadowrun. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the experience in DOW2 and I think if you gave it a chance you might be too.

28/01/2009 at 16:03 The Sombrero Kid says:

@Gorgeras
you can’t make a new account for steam in game just like GFWL and you can out of the game just like GFWL, and you can change your name just like you can in steam as with most of the gripes with it, this is ill informed

28/01/2009 at 16:10 Jeremy says:

Remember how crappy Steam used to be? Hopefully GFWL will be that good, except Steam is made by Valve who seem to be clued in to what gamers want while GFWL certainly seems concerned with making good on the unholy pact they made with the devil.

28/01/2009 at 16:21 Tei says:

For no reason at all, I will put here a list of MasterServer thingies. Maybe for my amusement.

====

Coop or Die is a COOP Mod/MasterServer for Quake2.
http://www.coopordie.com/quake2/guide.html

Once you are registered, you are able to play Quake2 cooperative and persistant games.
Since your information is saved on map changes and the quit command. Don’t stop your Internet connection before leaving the game, or some of your player information may be lost.

– - -

SubSpace Continuum is a 2D space/maze combat game
http://subspace.legendzones.com/

To play Continuum, you have to create a profile on the master server.
Warning: Continuum is very modable, you can play different rules (gameplay styles, graphics, theme) on different maps

– - -

Steam is a MasterServer / Online community thing /Digigal download shop
http://store.steampowered.com/

It let you buy games and search for servers, make profiles, have public achievements

– - -

GFWL

Games for Windows is a MasterServer/Online community thing.
http://www.gamesforwindows.com/

Originally developped for the consoles has “XBox Live”, has ben adapted slighty to run on PC computers. It let you do community stuff, store achievements, download content you have already buy to microsoft and “protect” your savegames with encriptation.

– - -

GameSpy Arcade Network / Master Servers- Multigame
http://www.gamespyarcade.com/

Adware published by GameSpy. Based on the original GameSpy, with community features, like forums, irc chat, etc.

– - -

GameSpy Network / MasterServers-Multigame
http://www.gamespy.com/

Let you search and join servers on multiple games, and store a limited set of data (like unlockables for BF2) per profile.

====

28/01/2009 at 16:47 Mo says:

Nevermind the GFWL thing, what really makes me mad is that there’s no way this is going to work on my laptop. Why don’t developers realize that there are *tonnes* of people with integrated cards willing to buy their videogames?!

28/01/2009 at 17:05 Fumarole says:

Last night I was a god among insects as the lowly Rank 1 players were crushed ‘neath my Apothecary’s boots. Of course in another week it’ll be back to business as usual – me as the internet’s whipping boy.

28/01/2009 at 17:09 Lucas says:

Teth: since when is xfire online game networking middleware, and when have gamespy hosting & browsers ever been any good? GFWL is getting flak because it still acts like its designed for a console (the custom game listing is really awful), and is basically superfluous. DoW2 also requires Steam, so why not just rely on it? The back end game servers could run on anything anywhere without needing an extra GFWL (or whatever) signup.

All that aside, the game itself is quite fun once your learn how to play. It’s really more of an action game with lots of tactical options than an RTS. Don’t overspend (income is biased by your unit cap), keep your hero and units alive, use their abilities and upgrade your stuff, and don’t walk into bad situations blindly or fight losing battles when you don’t have to. Also, find a hero you like and stick with them to learn their upgrades and abilities.

28/01/2009 at 18:33 Mo says:

@Jeremy:

I think that companies realize that there are people with those cards, but the majority of people that use the PC as a games platform don’t use integrated graphics.

Sure, but how will the market expand if developers only target existing PC gamers?

You have to make games that are going to appeal to a broad range, but if you make a game that can run well on an integrated card then they’d be making a game that is less impressive than their original DoW.

I don’t agree entirely. As a primarily PC game developer, scalability should be top priority for Relic. There’s no reason why a game couldn’t be made to work on a range of videocards. It’s A LOT extra work of course, but it’s nowhere near impossible. And just think about the marketshare benefits, Valve have made a fortune thinking this way.

I think a lot of people have the misconception that a GPU only affects the graphics in a game, which is kinda true in a way, but all the processing that the vid card is doing frees up RAM and CPU cycles to allow the game to run better, have more going on at once, etc. That’s why you can’t make a game that’s going to run on all low end cards, or integrated cards, not just because it’ll look less visually impressive.

I disagree. All laptops (with the exception of netbooks) ship with Core2Duos these days. I’m not convinced games are pushing the limits on a dual core CPU. And we aren’t at the stage where devs are offloading logic onto GPUs. So yeah, the GPU pulls some load off the CPU, but I’m not convinced the CPU couldn’t handle it anyway. RAM is a good point though.

28/01/2009 at 21:57 Jeremy says:

@Mo
Honestly, I think at this point the responsibility should be placed on the shoulders of companies like Asus, Biostar, etc to produce mid-range integrated options. The easy accessibility of consoles makes hardware targeting a non-issue for companies making console titles, and it makes it impossible for companies, especially PC only companies, to not alienate gamers in some way or another.

I do agree that scalability is a very important factor, but at some point you have to draw a line in the sand because you really can’t please everyone (the longer a game is in development, the more gamers will be potentially alienated anyway), and I think they’ve drawn a fairly reasonable line to both maintain their vision as well as target a broad range of users.

Companies like Valve and Blizzard are pretty lucky though, you have to admit. They were creating games during the Golden Age of computer gaming, consoles couldn’t even touch what PCs were capable of and scalability wasn’t as much a part of the discussion, they created vast amounts of money during that time and now have the resources to scale games to a ridiculous degree. Look at WoW, you can practically run that on a 386 dx.

As for GPU offloading, that’s a fair argument, I can’t say which companies do or do not offload onto the GPU (I do remember reading a dev article about this very thing however, I think it was a Stardock or Ironclad article). Those guys are magic though, so if anyone would do it, it would be them.

29/01/2009 at 00:30 Gorgeras says:

I never said you could make a new account in Steam, I said you could change your name. GFWL does not allow me to have a separate account name and player-name(the label ‘gamertag’ is very misleading). This means having played a GFWL multiplayer for the first time I found my real name displayed for all to see. I immediately set about changing the name and it turns out I must pay for this, so I just made a new account. Unfortunately after jumping through a thousand hoops it insisted on doing everything possible to link my new account to my old one if I even gave the slightest hint that it existed.

Sombrero Kid; it’s not ill-informed when this bollocks happens right in front of my eyes and I’m spending hours trying to get round it. I didn’t hear it second-hand so where the fuck do you manage to draw that conclusion from?

29/01/2009 at 05:55 TheSombreroKid says:

@Gorgeras
Home -> Profile -> Name

no need to set up a new account that’s why you are ill informed.

29/01/2009 at 12:20 Primar says:

@TheSombreroKid:
Except, that doesn’t work. All that appears to change is some random “name” field, not your actual player name.

Your login and in-game names are forced to be the same as each other, and like Gorgeras, I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to work out how the hell to change it. From what I can understand, the only way to do it is by buying 1000 “Microsoft Points”, then spending 800 on a name change.

Not only is this completely stupid and irritating (why can’t I just pay the exact amount rather than sodding about with “points”, ignoring the fact I shouldn’t have to pay at all), it’s also going to cause massive problems with the likes of clan tags and such. Imagine if you were locked to a single player name in, say, Counterstrike, and every time you wanted to change your name, or change a clan, or just have a laugh without people recognising you, you had to pay ~£10. Stupid, isn’t it?

You can argue that we’re the ones at fault here and not GfWL if you want, but most sensible people recognise that it does have major shortcomings when compared to other similar services.

29/01/2009 at 15:28 Teth says:

@ Catastrophe & Lucas

Xfire is a server browser with limited player matching system just like gamespy. http://www.xfire.com/games/ any game with a joypad icon on the left most column uses it as its default ingame browser. I’ve been asked / required to install it numerous times in order to play games online.

Steam to my knowledge but I’m not 100% about this has not included server browsing and matchmaking services for any non valve game so far. The only games I have ever joined using it are Left 4 Dead, TF2, HL2 DM and their asscociated mods. Games I own on steam from 3rd party developers such as CoH use Gamespy or Xfire matchmaking despite being delivered by steam.

Maybe I was quietly brainwashed by my xbox360 over the last 3 years but I find the GFWL interface intuative and at least on my main gaming system quick. My only complaint is the default “invite a friend to game” option when you are host requires you to type the gamertag of the person to invite. This is easily bypassed by instead opening the GFWl UI and clicking a friends name in the friendlist and clickign invite. Or forming a GFWL party with VOIP and just tellign your friends “game is up. join me”. They can then pick you from their friends list and select “join session in progress”.

Trueskill matching is unique to the xblive / GFWL systems and should hopefully encourage new players like it does in Halo 3 by matching them with other new players not rank 12 Vets. Steam and Gamespy don’t offer that.

In a choice between GFWL, Gamespy and Xfire (steam not being an option because it doesn’t seem to available to non valve games) I prefer GFWL. Shoot me :)

29/01/2009 at 16:04 Jeremy says:

I honestly had no problems getting GFWL, so that isn’t so much the issue for me. I just wonder what kind of nefarious plans these “Microsoft” folks have in store. Also, as much as I hate to admit it, the only reason it bothers me is because I know I’m going to jump through all these hoops to play the games, because they will be good games, and I’m not young enough to reject things on principle anymore.

29/01/2009 at 20:55 Lucas says:

Teth: Xfire is an IM client with voice, downloads, game tracking, server listing, video recording, lobby hosting, in-game utilities, and instant joining (which is what the gampad icon means).

Not a single game anywhere requires you to install Xfire for server listings as far as I know, and I’ve been using it for 5 years. None use it as a back end service like Gamespy or GFWL or Steam. It simply does not do that.

The fact that it is frequently bundled with installs or presented as though you need it does not make it unavoidable like the Gamespy hosted master server listings (games like BF2, 2142, UT3, recent C&C titles, etc). This is MARKETING ONLY.

30/01/2009 at 02:22 Doc MacRae says:

Catastrophe: word is Empire:Total War will be using Steam matching for multiplayer, and it isn’t a Valve game. We’ll see how it turns out in about a month though.