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Sujet: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Réponses: 177   Pages: 12   Dernier Message: 2 juil. 2002 20:27 par: **Scorched** »


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Cybernetsam
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 1 juil. 2002 08:42
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The GUI (Or lack thereof in some games) is a tool to be used by the
player(s). What I have seen overall in this large and neverending
discussion, is "The SC UI limits you, so it suxx0rs! But the TA UI doesn't
limit you as much, so it r0xx0rs!"

However, let me ask you this. How fun would a game of chess be if every
piece moves as a queen? Eh?
Without restrictions, there is no challenge. When Blizzard designed SC, they
were not attempting to create a UI to end all UIs. They wanted something
that would allow the player a certain amount of freedom, while at the same
time allowing enough challenge to be fun.

If you could select every one of your offensive units in one group, and
click 'attack' in the center of the enemy base, then the game would not be
very fun. Every player would race to create as many offensive units as
possible, then try and time an attack when the enemy is unready. Of course,
since the enemy would do the same thing, many games would just end either
as a stalemate, or would rule in favor of the lucky side.
Now, I have played TA. I have played SC. Each game is designed for a
very different audience. Those that like to micromanage every unit, and
create elaborate plans attempting to make as much use out of limted
resources as possible, will play SC. In SC, those that learn the numbers and
behaviors of the game win. Those that like to manage large groups with
larger scaled battles and larger amounts of expendable resources, will play
TA. Each game is a different subgroup of the RTS genre. This is like
comparing Quake and Thief, or A flight sim with a tank sim. It just cannot
be done correctly.

Now I know that this will go over the heads of many players, and some may
see this drawn-out post as pointless, but it all boils down to this: If you
like SC, play SC. If you like TA, play TA. Easy. Neither is truly better
than the other, which is why these 'discussions' never end. No side ever has
a winner, and neither side will accept a tie.

So shut up and deal with it already. K?




Eric Byers
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 1 juil. 2002 09:23
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On Mon, 01 Jul 2002 06:10:43 GMT, paranormalized
<cnendabeznyvmrdq@rndeguyvdax.arg> muttered something along the lines
of:

>Well, if metal makers bother you that badly, you could play games with
>them disabled. Likewise, if the 'unlimited' aspect of metal patches
>bother you, you could probably play a map with no patches and just
>carcasses to grab for metal.

And you could configure a SC map any way you'd like with the editor...

>Admittedly, it might be hard to find players for such a map/game
>setup, but on the SC side, well, over half the maps on non-ladder
>Battlenet look like $$$ to me...

Blame the players, not the game.

[...]
>The point has some validity, but it's not a fair picture to paint.
>One has to work as hard to keep energy/metal coming in at appropriate
>ratios in TA for unit creation as minerals/gas in SC.

The fact is that, in TA, metal is basically being spent refining it to
energy while in SC crystals are being spent building supply. And while
the two "resources" may deviate slightly in use or basic gameplay
mechanics, they basically have the same primary purpose.

Vespene Gas is in my book a proper second resource, insofar that it
can't be refined or bought by the first.

>The casual gamer outnumbers the hard-core by an order of magnitude in
>any thriving game. That's why those games thrive. One in ten of
>those casual gamers get deep into the game, joining the game
>community. If you can't keep joe blow buying, the community
>inevitably shrinks as gamers find other interests. So you aim for the
>general public as much as any of the gaming otaku.

They take the game quite seriously in, for instance, Korea...a
majority of the gamers that still plays the game, are somewhat
hardcore...

>You've also fallen into the trap of thinking that 'my clique (RTS
>gamers) is smarter/better than the general public.'

No, just the majority of the mainstream music industry...

[...]
>(1)- Of course, the other half of why Starcraft thrives is that it is
>a good game. But it's GUI is still silly by comparison to TA, which
>preceded it.

Depends on whether or not you want the game to play itself, rather
than to depend on you to control it...
[...]

--
The Oblivious Eric Byers
of the Adjective Army

Bury magnets. Swallow the rapture.


Moen
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 1 juil. 2002 16:27
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On Sun, 30 Jun 2002 16:55:41 GMT, Eric Byers <eihjelmt@NOSPAMonline.no>
wrote:

> Besides, the goal of every game isn't to make it as realistic as
> possible (thank heavens), so whether TA is realistic or not, I
> couldn't care less about.

Yes, realism does not equal fun. And I play games for fun.


Christopher Childs
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 1 juil. 2002 18:45
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"Steven Ung" <steven@gtekmy.po.my> wrote in message
news:afodkh$g368q$1@ID-121643.news.dfncis.de...
> "Christopher Childs" <chris.c@dubba.net> wrote in message
> news:iH8T8.3158$vr5.910@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
> >
> > "Steven Ung" <steven@gtekmy.po.my> wrote in message
> > news:afgj21$efcqv$1@ID-121643.news.dfncis.de...
> > > "SHONNER" <shonner@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > > news:3d1bc5f0_1@news.vic.com...
> > > > And just because I told my Aircraft Plant to build 50 Bombers, it
> > doesn't
> > > mean that they will all get built.
> > >
> > > In SC, if you had queued 5 units, cancelling it would not get you back
> all
> > > the cash needed to queue that unit. Is it the same for TA?
> >
> > Incorrect. Queuing and cancelling units does not incur a cost penalty.
> > Cancelling a building in production, on the other hand, does incur such
a
> > penalty.
>
> It doesn't?! Are you absolutely, positively sure?! :p

You're doubting ME?! :P




Steven Ung
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 02:17
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"Christopher Childs" <chris.c@dubba.net> wrote in message
news:wG%T8.24679$vr5.591@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
> > It doesn't?! Are you absolutely, positively sure?! :p
>
> You're doubting ME?! :P

Uhmn...
*Wipes 1/2" thick of dust from his SC CD and begins playing*

Uhmn... Looks like you're absolutely, positively right :p

--
Steven Ung, ICQ# : 65203722 Nick : Nuubie
_________________________________________________________________
Get paid to be Online. Join Now ;)
Spedia - http://www.spedia.net/cgi-bin/tz.cgi?run=show_svc&fl=8&vid=1110171
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Marco
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 02:44
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Eric Byers wrote:

>>(1)- Of course, the other half of why Starcraft thrives is that it is
>>a good game. But it's GUI is still silly by comparison to TA, which
>>preceded it.
>
> Depends on whether or not you want the game to play itself, rather
> than to depend on you to control it...

I've heard you say this several times and I still don't know what point
you're trying to make. In what way does TA "play itself"? By allowing me
to select more units than 12 at a time? By allowing me to queue more than
5 units at a time? By allowing me to assign waypoints and multiple orders
to units? That hardly qualifies as the game "playing itself"? At the very
least it's a gross exaggeration on your part.

--
Marco

Cognitive dissonance due to reality conflicting with this post
may cause your brain to ache.


Marco
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 03:05
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Cybernetsam wrote:

> Now I know that this will go over the heads of many players, and some
> may see this drawn-out post as pointless, but it all boils down to
> this: If you like SC, play SC. If you like TA, play TA. Easy. Neither
> is truly better than the other, which is why these 'discussions' never
> end. No side ever has a winner, and neither side will accept a tie.
>
> So shut up and deal with it already. K?

Well, I agree with a lot of what you said. But I am just completely
unable to understand why someone would be opposed to "improvements" in
SC's GUI that would clearly have little effect on the gameplay besides
making the interface more friendly. Nothing regarding balance would be
affected etc etc.

It just seems that SC fans consider Blizzard's developers as some sort of
game Dieties - anyone that would speak against anything that was designed
by them is guilty of heresy and should be flamed off the planet! ;)

Anyway, I'm pretty much done with the thread, I think everyone has stated
their view and nothing more can really be said on the subject.

--
Marco

Cognitive dissonance due to reality conflicting with this post
may cause your brain to ache.


Eric Byers
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 03:49
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On Tue, 02 Jul 2002 01:05:22 GMT, Marco <marcosbox@hotmail.com>
muttered something along the lines of:

[...]
>It just seems that SC fans consider Blizzard's developers as some sort of
>game Dieties

No, I don't really think Blizzard are in the food business, for the
time being...

--
The Oblivious Eric Byers
of the Adjective Army

Bury magnets. Swallow the rapture.


paranormalized
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 07:28
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On Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:23:11 GMT, Eric Byers
<eihjelmt@NOSPAMonline.no> wrote:

>On Mon, 01 Jul 2002 06:10:43 GMT, paranormalized
><cnendabeznyvmrdq@rndeguyvdax.arg> muttered something along the lines
>of:
>
>>Well, if metal makers bother you that badly, you could play games with
>>them disabled. Likewise, if the 'unlimited' aspect of metal patches
>>bother you, you could probably play a map with no patches and just
>>carcasses to grab for metal.
>
>And you could configure a SC map any way you'd like with the editor...
>
>>Admittedly, it might be hard to find players for such a map/game
>>setup, but on the SC side, well, over half the maps on non-ladder
>>Battlenet look like $$$ to me...
>
>Blame the players, not the game.
>
*shrug*
I was placing the blame/responsibility on the players. They're the
ones that choose how to set up their games. So you shouldn't blame TA
for 'unlimited' resources either, since it's not too difficult to put
caps on production via zero metal patches, with metal makers disabled.

It just seems that most people like the unlimited resource thing,
witnessed by the proliferation of user-created money maps in SC.
Whether this is a good thing is quite debatable.


>[...]
>>The point has some validity, but it's not a fair picture to paint.
>>One has to work as hard to keep energy/metal coming in at appropriate
>>ratios in TA for unit creation as minerals/gas in SC.
>
>The fact is that, in TA, metal is basically being spent refining it to
>energy while in SC crystals are being spent building supply. And while
>the two "resources" may deviate slightly in use or basic gameplay
>mechanics, they basically have the same primary purpose.
>
>Vespene Gas is in my book a proper second resource, insofar that it
>can't be refined or bought by the first.
>
*shrug again* I view resources from a utilitarian perspective, rather
than a lofty 'non-convertable' standpoint. i.e., do I have to keep
an eye on ratios consistently? Even if your base never gets hit too
badly in a short game, you will have to work to balance energy and
metal. Bulking up on air or construction units? Make sure you turn
enough metal makers off while building. Building a navy instead?
Turn them back on.

This is as opposed to supply, which is something that once built,
needs no monitoring, beyond maxing it out and rebuilding if destroyed.

>>The casual gamer outnumbers the hard-core by an order of magnitude in
>>any thriving game. That's why those games thrive. One in ten of
>>those casual gamers get deep into the game, joining the game
>>community. If you can't keep joe blow buying, the community
>>inevitably shrinks as gamers find other interests. So you aim for the
>>general public as much as any of the gaming otaku.
>
>They take the game quite seriously in, for instance, Korea...a
>majority of the gamers that still plays the game, are somewhat
>hardcore...
>
And how many of those serious gamers would have picked it up w/o the
ease of Battlenet? Face it, console-like accessability is the holy
grail of game design, both from a marketing perspective, and even from
the gaming perspective.

The ideal is something that can be picked up in minutes, but takes
hours to master. Unfortunately for TA, joining multiplayer takes too
long to access for that critical first time, so it lost the popularity
battle to Starcraft. So blame Cavedog for doing the multiplayer
matchmaking service thing wrong, but try to avoid the whole "it's more
popular, so it's undoubtably better!" attack. Starcraft is different,
not better, than TA.

You like spell units. Fine. Some people like extremely refined
conventional warfare. SC is for you, TA is for the latter type of
person.

The debate is still out, however, on whether SC would be improved by
automating the non-combat parts better or not. Mostly because AFAIK
nobody's tried to combine the spell-casting importance of SC with the
level of automation of TA. Currently we're mostly arguing in a
vacuum, since nobody has tried to take the RTS this far in this
direction.

>>You've also fallen into the trap of thinking that 'my clique (RTS
>>gamers) is smarter/better than the general public.'
>
>No, just the majority of the mainstream music industry...
>
And the general public doesn't support the majority of the mainstream
music industry? ;)

OTOH, the Music Industry is pretty damned warped as far as culture
goes. I'd start to claim that any discussion that drags them in as
an example has gotten too warped/inflammatory to stay with, sort of
like Godwin's law, except with the RIAA rather than Nazis.

The only problem with this is that the RIAA is alive and thriving,
like Germany in the late 30's, so ignoring them is way too naive. I
do think the game industry is currently a little more sane, but we'll
really start having to worry about things any day now... we already
have Mario doing milk commercials, is Tassadar and a Pepsi sponsorship
too far off?

Personally, I'd prefer Kerrigan, but we'll see if sex appeal wins out
over wholesomeness... expect Raynor first, of course.

>[...]
>>(1)- Of course, the other half of why Starcraft thrives is that it is
>>a good game. But it's GUI is still silly by comparison to TA, which
>>preceded it.
>
>Depends on whether or not you want the game to play itself, rather
>than to depend on you to control it...
>[...]

Riiight.. So Starcraft is the epitome of RTS GUI evolution, and
everything I've read about what they're doing in WC3 is wrong. Good
heavens, autocast?! Selecting a group of spellcasters and being able
to easily use spells w/o horrible overlap problems? What are these
fools thinking! Anything that reduces the amount of clicking,
selection, and scrolling brings us closer to the day when HAL9000
starts telling us, "I can't let you do that Dave. That peon must
harvest lumber, not build structures. My judgement is always
correct."


Jonathan Fisher
open the cd-tray door, Hal....
----------
paranormalized man, subnormalized otaku

ROT13 and then delete all instances of the letter after P to email
Yeah, I've been getting my alphabet mixed up the past couple months.
Sorry.


**Scorched**
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 20:24
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"Eric Byers" <eihjelmt@NOSPAMonline.no> wrote in message
news:cu12iuo2tqol0php66dh1nh5c75863ilh2@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 02 Jul 2002 01:05:22 GMT, Marco <marcosbox@hotmail.com>
> muttered something along the lines of:
>
> [...]
> >It just seems that SC fans consider Blizzard's developers as some sort of
> >game Dieties
>
> No, I don't really think Blizzard are in the food business, for the
> time being...
>

Cheap shot by a cheap person.

--
===============> http://gameworld.f2g.net <===============
"Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies."
"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether *I* win or
lose."
"I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it."
"Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will
leave a bloodstain."
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" -Stalin




Invité
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 20:26
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**Scorched**
Re: A gift to you guys from TOTAL ANNIHILATION
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 20:26
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"SHONNER" <shonner@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3d1dfb6b_1@news.vic.com...
> "Moen" <h-news@operamail-dot-com.invalid> wrote in message
> news:i9hohusk28fc89jshlq026h86ifjsnujrn@4ax.com...
> > On Fri, 28 Jun 2002 09:05:07 GMT, Marco <marcosbox@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > Man *THAT* is war.. starcraft just seems so tame in comparison.
> >
> > You have obviously never seen a real war, or even a simulated one in
> > real life.
>
> I don't know whether to laugh at this guy or put him out of his misery.
If
> we were in a HL game, I'd kill him first before anyone else.
>

Don't get the sailor boy started on his fantasies of "real war" again ;)

--
===============> http://gameworld.f2g.net <===============
"Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies."
"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether *I* win or
lose."
"I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it."
"Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will
leave a bloodstain."
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" -Stalin




**Scorched**
Re: a units look the same
Publié: 2 juil. 2002 20:27
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"paranormalized" <cnendabeznyvmrdq@rndeguyvdax.arg> wrote in message
news:l7ovhu447f6fdbrvdgb7qoh2ai82jien3g@4ax.com...
> ? Shonner, why no longer crossposting? The thing re: tank lines was
> a good point, and actually occured during a battle in WWII, being
> duplicated by the Germans against a line of Allied tanks parked too
> closely together on a road, but you're now preaching to the choir by
> staying in agt-a.
>
> Unless, of course, some people from the SC group have decided to start
> following us for the heck of it, which I somewhat doubt. Anybody new
> here to prove me wrong?
>

*grins and waves*

I just quit the SC group anyway :)

--
===============> http://gameworld.f2g.net <===============
"Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies."
"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether *I* win or
lose."
"I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it."
"Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will
leave a bloodstain."
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" -Stalin