the Tactical Intervention: The Next Counter-Strike

doint you think its a bit pointles to make a new counter strike like game that woint even look nicer than the old one ? if the realy want to make this game than the shut change game engine even if this means going away from the Source engine it wold be cool if you able to get him on the podcast tho so he can clear things up (and guns that are modeld wrong is a big point)

A bit too much blabla.. at times. Something that some episodes have. It’s hard to stay focused when things go way off topic for a long time. And I don’t like how the releases were just rushed through this time. Talk about them, what they are and especially why they were or were not good. I am not up-to-date with all the things you cover, that’s why I listen to you. But yea, also because you are all fun lovable characters and make for a good laugh every week.

Anyway..for the questions raised in this episode. I don’t really care for Left 4 Dead 2. It just upsets me in many ways. Why so soon? Why not released through updates? How is Left 4 Dead 2 exciting for players who have the first game? There are not that many new features… Why can’t Left 4 Dead 2 be at a lower price and even lower if you own Left 4 Dead? But the most important question, where the f-ck is Episode 3? Left 4 Dead 2 is what episodic releases should be – new year = new release. I can’t believe they turn their backs on Gordon Freeman… Not cool. I will most likely not buy Left 4 Dead 2. I have the first game and a follow-up so soon is not needed. So this will be the first time I avoid a Valve game.

Great work guys, as usual. Now go omnom some turkey!

I paid a fair bit of attention to Korsakovia’s ModDB page after the release and there were very, very few people who simply didn’t get the whole idea (ie found it boring and not enough like your average action FPS) but there were a good number of frustrated people who wanted to play the mod but had real difficulty with things like that one ladder in the warehouse or the apartments level with doors everywhere you look. I think their criticism has been valid in that respect as the mod does still need to be playable and some concessions have to be made, having an great story and top notch audio doesn’t mean you can leave identifiable Half-Life 2 meshes referring to bits of HL canon and people won’t care.
I would suspect a lot of people had played Dear Esther and were having a good look around to find extra bits of story only to find the exact opposite. It breaks the immersion in quite a significant way.

The funding thing makes sense as it’s directly furthering his career by providing research data. Most mods are for fun or for helping to gain a career in game development, they’re more like practice whereas Dan’s projects are work. I can certainly understand him wanting to pay people and I suspect the people he works with only want a minimal fee.

I did find it quite surprising that the enemies were supposed to be a significant part of what Korsakovia was examining, enemies that don’t behave in a human way aren’t really anything new to gamers are they? I don’t think many people really look all that much into what the enemies in games are doing (they’re only playing preset animations after all), it’s just an enemy and you need to damage it in some way until it can no longer damage you. It can be a bipedal animal, a cloud of smoke, a textureless cuboid, a vehicle, a walking mushroom or a giant spider but at the end of the day if you have a weapon or several and they do damage to all of those things in a similar manner it doesn’t matter what the enemy actually is.

I’m rather wishing I’d stuck with Source now, I had a brief stint with it then moved onto Unreal as it’s so much easier to use (but unfortunately has a small playerbase). I’d have loved to be involved with a Korsakovia do-over too.

He’s definitely helping to push things in the right direction, hopefully we’ll see less generic sci-fi setting FPS deathmatch MP mods and more people trying to emulate the kind of single player experience that Dan has created with Dear Esther and Korsakovia.
I wouldn’t worry about ranting, it’s positive that the projects are inspiring a level of discussion about mods that goes beyond “weapon x is too powerful” and “those textures needs more work”.

Also if you do want to fly me to Toronto I am fine with that but I wouldn’t really want you to waste your money or the money of other people.