playing games on a PC, misc. chatter, Steam names, etc...

I'm now able to d/l Civ IV in Steam Mac---it's kinda huge so obv. I can't test it yet...pure excitement however

This week's Mac additions on Steam (on sale):

Killing Floor
Altitude (Free weekend)
Madballs in Babo: Invasion

Also:
Sam & Max Season 2
Windowsill
Hearts of Iron III
Chains
Caster
Simplz Zoo
Eschalon Book I

what's up w/all-stars throwing up duds this year, first tremé now alpha protocol :_(

I worked on this game (a fact of which I am not proud). I'm not here to defend it; I agree with all these reviews.

First, a comment for the guy at Cheesecake Factory - Most devs eat in the office most days, if they do go out they tend to grab something at the food court and head back. I know the execs take long lunches, but they often use them for informal meetings as well. Most of the programmers and designers very rarely ate outside the office during the time I was on this project.

There was a ton of work put into this game. The problem is that is was a ton of undirected work, or work on things that were just stupid. The Executive Producer for the game, Chris Parker (also an owner of the company), seemed to think he was the world's greatest designer ever, and created all these absolutely shitty systems and wouldn't listen to any of the real designers or devs about things that just didn't work. And you can't exactly argue with one of the owners of the company when he doesn't want to listen. He basically took over the game and dictated exactly how everything would work (or not work, as the case may be). The other producers realized this early on and just gave up, leaving Parker to micromanage all the designers and programmers directly.

Sega also was a factor, because they kept changing the design requirements (yes they had heavy influence there), which never gave the producers and designers time to actually decide on one set of features to make and polish. The blame is still mostly Obsidian's because the execution was absolutely terrible, and it was obvious 2 years ago that this game should have been scrapped. Instead, though, they focused on adding still more features and never fixed the ones they already had. That is a recipe for tons of bugs and no polish... as is obvious.

This game was just an absolute failure of production, and it's no wonder that so many of the developers left the company, even after the 40% staff layoffs. I am still happy about some of Obsidian's other current projects, New Vegas included, because they are going pretty well. Their big unannounced project is looking great and is already much better than AP ever was, and that may end up being the game that everyone was looking for with AP.

Sega should have canceled AP instead of Aliens...

I've just downloaded Steam on Windows, didn't seem to work on Mac OSX (running a dual boot on a MacBook Pro). I don't seem to have any time to play games (apart from procrastination browser games) these days, but in the event I do (and once HL2Ep3 comes out it's on) my Steam name is RTotaleXVIII

my steam name is im dying squirtle

Anyone interested in getting Monday Night Combat? As usual the TF2 tie-ins make it that much more enticing...

I'm on Steam now. same name as my email addr, in the ILG group.

this game looks like it owns an awful lot: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-26-frozen-synapse-review

How is it? Interested, but I'll likely wait until the summer sale.

definitely worth $10 if you can find someone to split it with and gift you the other copy. it's basically electric football but with shooting; I'm just playing the campaign mode now until I get the fundamentals down but it seems like something that will be a bunch of fun to play with other folks.

Yeah my pal and I bought it in the alpha or beta or whatever and it was pretty good, the addition of shit other than just an online play mode is greeaaaaatly appreciated tho

Convinced a friend to split it, will get around to it soon!

thank fuck Steam exists otherwise i'd have have to sit around watching a game install off a disc in 2 minutes

Anyone want some Steam coupons? I have two 50% off Valve, one 50% Codemasters, one 33% Bethesda (which will work for Skyrim), and 50% GTA: Vice City.

I'll take the Bethesda one. Steamtag is jay dee ess aye ell emm oh enn

Oh yeah, these coupons all expire on the 1st... I've got a bunch if anyone wants them:

50% off Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword
25% off Atari
50% off Nail'd
50% off Spacechem
50% off Shadowgrounds
And a crap load of x% off Valve products

https://www.facebook.com/OnLive?v=app_100442513383559

Valve developing a console? W.T.F.

According to sources, the company has been working on a hardware spec and associated software which would make up the backbone of a "Steam Box." The actual devices may be made by a variety of partners, and the software would be readily available to any company that wants to get in the game.

Apparently meetings were held during CES to demo a hand-built version of the device to potential partners. We're told that the basic specs of the Steam Box include a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU. The devices will be able to run any standard PC titles, and will also allow for rival gaming services (like EA's Origin) to be loaded up.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/2/2840932/exclusive-valve-steam-box-gaming-console

eh, i feel like this idea's been tried and announced so many times by so many different companies but nobody has really pulled it off (or even really proven it's a good concept, market-wise)

I sincerely hope they make a console. I'll never own a PC and Mac gaming is still a pretty sad (and expensive) place.

it's not nearly as bad as it used to be, with Steam and Mac App Store in the last year or so helping a lot. plus, many indies now seem to be figuring that's a good idea to build cross-platform, showing up on steam and indie bundles. that said, i did eventually cave and get an xbox last year

My steam games better transfer to that thing.

aaaaaaaargh pc gaming is starting to try my patience.

Why can't all games just recognise my fucking joysticks like they used to in the good old days. Can't get any of my joysticks to be recognised by any of my emulators. pc gaming sucks.

Because games now are set to only auto-recognize 360 controllers. There's at least two translator programs that will map any gamepad input, and I successfully used both on stuff like SR3 or Arkham

cheers, will hunt something down. Yeah everything seems to be looking for the analogue stick which my pads don't have and I don't want to use my xbox controller on old 8 bit games.

this does the trick for me:
http://code.google.com/p/x360ce/

superb. thanks

or maybe not. just don't understand how that works, doesn't want to save my settings either.

is there any other app i can try?

when i try assigning any of my dpad controls to the 'stick' up, down, left, or right. it doesn't register them.

Humble Indie Bundle V http://www.humblebundle.com/
Amnesia
Psychonauts
Limbo
Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery
Bastion (pay over the average price)

best one yet?

Nice! Is Amnesia good?

This is where I curse under my breath a bit because I bought all of those games except Superbrothers in the Steam xmas sale and still haven't played them yet

anyone played Superbrothers? any good?

sweet! purchase made.

Superbrothers isn't fun to play imo but very cool to look at. Great art style and music.

What's everyone buyin' in the steam sale?

Today I scooped up Anno 2070, the Portal bundle and Legend of Grimrock. Idk when/if I will ever play these games, but, but.

There's some chat here:
merry xmas (GOG/Steam direct download weekly specials)

I did buy Grimrock in the end and it runs perfectly happily at medium settings. So far it's a little... sedate, but given that I don't think my nerves or my speed with the controls would stand for any more action, I guess that's ok

...by which I mean I suspect it will soon/eventually get a lot less sedate and I will be floundering trying to click on things with my crappy laptop mousepad and failing to work out how to cast spells - dunno if I'm being stupid, if it's going to be explained in-game later, or if there's just a manual I haven't read - while monsters rain fire down on me or sth

I'll move over to t'other thread :)

bought
Trine 2
the Serious Sam RPG

will probably buy (but wait to see all the daily sales first)
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Lost Horizon
Legend of Fae

Death Rally is out (again) for PC today. I do like these top-down racers, but I didn't like what little I played of the iOS version, mainly because I couldn't get used to the (shit) virtual controls. Since the PC version has controller support, it should be pretty good?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/108700/

i liked the iOS version, just wished there was more of a story mode or something

JCL, did you play Bang Bang Racing? I thought it was pretty decent.

I sort of regret not buying it during the steam sale. I tried the demo and thought it was fun (on 360), but the lack of online multiplayer has held me back so far from dropping the cash. I'll probably get it during the christmas sale though (I'm sure it'll be cheaper)...

Steam's Big Picture display mode for TVs is live (well, in beta) now. The interface is really slick and pleasant to use, and I've found I can set it up with about $15 worth of cable (a ten-foot HDMI mini-to-HDMI cable and a ten-foot USB extension for my Xbox controller) so I'm going to give it a shot over the weekend.

Yeah, I've been looking forward to this and it's turned out a lot nicer and a lot more functional than I'd expected. Long hdmi tends to be flaky though, I thnk it's more likely I'll end up just building a new small quiet living room machine (although small + quiet + powerful is still really hard to pull off - I'm kind of hoping that the fact this mode exists now will be enough to convince Dell or someone to make something along those lines, and save me the trouble of speccing one up).

hmmm i have an unused Quad Q6600 PC that could be hooked up to my tv, would just need to buy a decent graphics card for it. If this thing works as promised then maybe i don't need to buy a nextgen console? its certainly a tempting idea.

I've turned my quad-core PC into a HTPC. I popped in about £150 of new fans and a fan controller and it's silent as a mouse - certainhly quitere than a PS3 or an xbox. I've got a satellite screen sitting next to "my chair", so I can stream footie on the big screen and read ILF on the little screen. With a wireless mouse+keyboard it's kinda all I need. Will certainly not be needing a next-gen console (although probably will need a new graphics card at some point, which means new fans - hurumph)

Tips for quiet fans? £150 is waaaay more than I've ever spent, but I've never got it to sound any quieter than a hoover.

On closer inspection it turns out I spent a lot more than £150, but on reflection I probably overdid it

The two items that made the biggest difference to me were a quiet graphics card fan (graphics cards are small = fan has to go quicker = fans are loud. The hoover in your PC is probably the graphics card) and a fan controller so the the fans only come on when needed. Those will set you back around £70 and will make the biggest difference imo.

http://www.quietpc.com/kaze-server - fan controller
http://www.quietpc.com/gel-icy-vision - graphics cards

I also splurged out on a monster cpu cooler as well, which mostly cools the CPU passively and only flicks on when you're doing something intensive. Whether or not it would be overkill for you, you'll have to decide.

http://www.quietpc.com/nh-d14

The QuietPC website is great btw. Good range, informative website, and cheaper than Amazon on the odd item I compared.