edgeofinfinity

Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhar announced this, and I’m glad someone at Obsidian has finally noticed that QA hasn’t really been their company’s strong suit for awhile. Now, I understand that for some of their releases the problems haven’t been entirely their fault. Knights of the Old Republic 2 was rushed, so the entire final section was an exercise in generic, monotonous level design. Neverwinter Nights 2 was saddled with the abysmal Aurora 2 engine which didn’t work out too well for CD Projekt’s The Witcher either. And New Vegas had the Gamebryo engine which, considering Bethesdia hasn’t had a stable release with it, might not be all that great either. However, the Godawful mess the was Alpha Protocol can and should be laid squarely at their feet. When your publisher Sega straight up announces that you’ve made an unplayable mess a few months before you release, you know you’ve got a real mess on your hands. Now, Sega could have held off on the release, and given Obsidian time to work out the kinks. But with the state of the final product, it becomes apparent that the only thing that could have saved the game was a complete do over. As that was the case, I’d say Sega did the right thing, releasing the game to try to recoup some of their investment.

Now, I won’t get into why I feel it was a mistake to bring the Fallout franchise back to the area of the original Fallouts, but I will say that Obsidian has never changed a franchise’s universe for the better. Their obsession with making existing franchises “grittier” I find generally annoying. Bioware seems to have added gradual amounts of grit built into the Mass Effect story, and that’s fine. Dragon Age was supposed to be gritty to begin with, and that’s cool too. However, taking a game that was probably the best Star Wars anything since the original trilogy, and making it “darker” and “grittier” I think misses the whole point of why the game’s story was good in the first place. To be fair to Neverwinter Nights 2, I’ve never actually got that far into it. I played the initial area, got bored, frustrated with the laggy game play and stupid camera, and now have no idea where my copy of the game actually is.

Now, Obsidian does do some things well. They have a good track record of revamping RPG systems in the games they’re sequelizing. Iron sights, weapon mods, and the Companion Wheel were great improvements in New Vegas. While it’s been years since I’ve played KOTR 2, I recall liking the actual gameplay better.

…And that’s it. For as many veteran devs as they have, Obsidian should be a lot better than they are. But, whether it’s poor corporate culture, or just bad luck, I would say Obsidian is one of the best worst studios in the business.

Posted in Uncategorized

Seem it be on a bit of an F1 kick recently. The latest result of this madness is a garage for a sci-fi race team.

Still need to fiddle with lighting a little more, as most of the objects in the image don’t really appear to be sitting on the floor. I’ll probably add a workbench with some clutter on it in the foreground, and add some general clutter on the floor and toolchests.

Also, because I did too much damn work on it to just stick it in the background, here’s the engine rig all by itself:

Here as well, is an engine test that I never used:

Posted in Maya, Metaverse

I was watching old episodes of Top Gear, and in one of them they did a test of a sort of F1 road car: the Caparo T1. I thought it was pretty cool and all, but I wanted to see what I could come up with along that vein. So, here it is: the Arrow Saber.

The model’s still pretty rough, I’d like to smooth it a hella lot more, mostly the side pods. Textures are pretty nonexistent at this point, so is most of the fine detail. Wheels also need to be completely rebuilt (they’re just my generic placeholder wheels).

*edit: Noticed WordPress downsampled my images into suck… should probably fix this.

Posted in Cars, Maya

A few years back I was sitting in my Environmental Science class bored out of my skull, and decided to make a board game based, as most of my ideas, in my science fiction universe. The game was a sort of bastardization of Axis and Allies, tabletop wargaming, and Magic. After jotting down a few notes next to stuff about renewable energy sources, I worked on it for about a week. But, on getting bored (a reoccurring theme, I’m afraid) I never finished it, got distracted, got married, got on with life. On finding it once again two days ago, in all the miscellaneous crap I’ve filled my Projects HD with, I was like “Hey cool something else to procrastinate with!” and started working on it once more in earnest. Since I haven’t play tested it yet (or wrote most of the cards for that matter) most of the stats, bonus, etc. are subject to change.

The rules can be found here.

*edit: Did some more work:

Map prototype is here.

Space map prototype is here.

Posted in gaming, Metaverse

I’m always annoyed by my increasing skill in Maya. Not so much because I find getting better at something terrible, but rather because I’m forced to go back to some of my older models and update them. I should probably explain: I’m working on a science fiction novel, and rather than just describing things in the course of the narrative (I do that too of course), but I also build them in Maya. This is fine, it gives the gun, ship, whatever a sense of being, and I find it helps me implement the thing better in my writing. The problem is when the model just starts to disgust me, or I decide to update some part of the universe. Tech starts working differently so the models are suddenly obsolete. Take for instance the Marine’s main assault rifle, the MBR-10. At some point today, I decided that plasma guns (what was originally written) weren’t quite fitting with the direction the technology was going, so I decided the all small arms would be railguns. That’s fine and all, but now I had to rebuild the MBR-10.

The MBR-10 started out life looking like this:

That’s fine, a bit over simplistic to be sure, but not a bad looking gun. The big, fat plasma drums on the side always annoyed me however, but I couldn’t think of a better in-universe system for storing plasma.

The new MBR-10 came out looking like this:

The only things I kept from the original was the scope (but added the viewfinder texture) and the grip, and while I kept the idea of a screen on the side of the frame, I made it flip out. Everything else had to be made from scratch, or stolen from other, better models, like the stock. But even this has some problems. The way I had done the geometry for the stock and grip was such that, when I decided to make the stock thumbhole, I couldn’t just extend the mesh. I ended up having to make a bridge object connecting the two parts. So, while I’m quite pleased with the result now, in a year so, I’ll be completely disgusted with it and go build a new one from scratch.

C’est la vie.

As a side note: Whoever nicked my XPS from Franciscan University’s cafeteria, you can keep the damn thing. Just give me back the revamped Hussar model, and we’ll be even.

*edit: Never mind, built a better one

Posted in Maya, Metaverse

So, Fable III… Finally purchased it, after lacking the funds since it came out, and my opinion can be summed up in a single word: “Meh.” Now, I’ve extensively played both Fable and Fable II. They were both good games, and Fable II extensively built upon the strengths of the original Fable, and is in my opinion the best of the series. But, Fable III contains a great deal of experimentation simply for its own sake and that can be a problem.

Good stuff first. The setting and atmosphere are amazing. Albion has always been pretty, but with this game pulls out all of the stops. Drabness has crept into Fable’s color pallet, but that is not a bad thing considering the darker storyline. The voice acting is superb, the Crawler is downright demonic, and the first time in encountered him I got the willies. Speaking of the Crawler, the dungeon you fist encounter him is probably the creepiest, and most atmospheric I’ve ever encountered in a RPG. Combat’s still great, executions are awesome, and the one button for each type of combat (ranged, melee, magic) works great.

Now, the bad stuff. My first main problem is the menu system, or lack thereof. Fable has always sacrificed realism for game play and for the most part that worked. But the Sanctuary in Fable III is both annoying and draws me out of the game. It was a good idea, an attempt to add a real sense of of ownership to my gear and money, but the annoying part is walking everywhere. For instance: I want to change my sword. In I and II that was a simple as opening a menu and selecting what I want to equip. In III however, I have to go to the sanctuary (fortunately jut press start), go to my weapon room and scroll through all my stuff till I find it. Leveling too is made needlessly complicated. In Fable I and II you just had to go to the menu and select what you wanted. But in III there is The Road to Rule, a linear path lined with chests containing abilities for your character. In Fable II you could do pretty much what you wanted to do from the start. However in Fable III, if you want to buy and rent houses, you have to spend XP to get the ability. If you want to buy stores, that a separate chest unlocked later. If you want to get married, again, another chest. Expressions are also purchased with XP, if you have a kid without the “Good Parent Pack” you won’t really be able to interact with it.  I’m sure the design rational was so players could be eased into the concepts, but if a player isn’t ready to own property, or get married they probably just won’t. Property has taken a turn for the worst. Before, the player just bought property, set the price, and got money. Now, however rental property degrades over time eventually stopping to make money, this requires money to fix to property ad regain you revenue. In theory not a bad idea, but the renovation system is really annoying. Instead of having a list of you properties, you have to go to each individual zone in the Sanctuary map and select each of your properties individually to renovate, this can be really annoying. Minigames for money is still really annoying and stupid, but you can unlock the ability to make more money and increase their easiness.

In all, not a bad game. Romping through Albion is always enjoyable. But the new “features” are honestly more annoyance then they’re worth.

Posted in gaming