Fallout tactics seemed like a good idea initially idea and the demo was promising but the game itself was a let down. What happened next is not even worth mentioning. And now Bethesda are doing the latest Fallout game, I’m sure you must love that after your assessment of Oblivion.

Personally I quite like Oblivion, but then, I didn’t have a decent enough computer in the heyday of Morrowind so I can’t make a proper comparison.

You’re absolutely spot on about the change in gaming demographic, the mainstream have taken control and those of us born in the late 70s and early 80s are beginning to understand how our parents probably felt about the mainstream pop music that we grew up with.

Now, to the guy studying games development with noble intentions of making proper games. Don’t go and work for Sony or EA or the like. You will not have the time or the energy left to work on your own projects as much as you feel you would be able to right now. Trust me, I speak from experience. Seek the advice of other people in the industry before deciding who to work for and at all costs try to join one of the few remaining independent studios.

I went to my friends house once while he was playing xcom and he started shooting all the civies on a terror a mission. I yelled,”Waht are you doing those are civies?!?”. He simply repied it took me 3 hours of flight time to get here. Any real civies left these are all looters.

I do have to say tho turn by turns are my favorite. Master of Monsters, Fantasy General, Xcom, even games like Moo 2.

I bookmarked sourceforge ages ago and i look at things and read a lot but im pretty useless until i learn c++ or assembly and i reckon itl not take a few months

I can picture myself going to work for sony in the day and coming back to my dank room and programming open source games or maybe one of my own projects

I realized too its a good thing to keep in contact with other game developers because thats how you create teams that work the dreams

Even if it is in our spare time…

Simon

Thanks for the comments, and glad this post struck a chord with you hopefully you’ll stick around? We post meaningful stuff LOADS. Honest!

Im not as old hat as the amiga (im 21), my first console was the sega genesis and first computer an amstrad (crappy as hell), my favourite game of all time would be fallout 2 and i love any game that can immerse me and keep me entertained in such a fashion.

Il tell ya, this bog says it all about what i feel about games coming out today, it just so happens im taking a course now in games programming and im really going to be involved in games development in the future.

I agree that the games market has went from a very small “geeks hobby” to a huge industry, furthermore i find it a damn shame how its also went almost completely commercial.

Its only right the way you naturally compared it to the music industry because it has went the exact same way in the last decade or so in my opinion. When you find a good group they are considered underground and freak out! because no one knows who they are. The thing is good music will (should) always find its way to the top but a game that could be a work of art might be sitting on a back shelf that wasnt marketed properly thus will never amount to anything.

Your right Sony are to blame though how can i hate something that i stood in front of for so long. I recently bought a playstation 1 on ebay and loads of classics back because i missed it so much…..

Its true that the boom happened when the playstation 1 hit homes worldwide and took it to a huge scale.

So the question now is, as a budding games developer will i…

1) Sell out??
2) Stay faithful to what now is an art to me??

Good blog m8 and the first I’ve ever been arsed to replied to

Simon

No good if EVERYONE online plays real-time though, is it?

Cheers for the comments

Fallout Tactics is not an RPG (and it didn’t ever pretend to be,) or the sequel to Fallout 2 (and it didn’t ever pretend to be). Fallout Tactics is just turn-based squad combat. It doesn’t feature the amazing story or any of the freedom that you’d expect but it is definately decently faithful to the Fallout atmosphere and worth the playthrough.

And here’s where the developers did a clever thing. The marketing people wanted real time combat and so they put it in but then didn’t waste any time on it. You shouldn’t either, switch the damn thing off. Go back to pure turn based goodness.

Colm Mac

I couldn’t agree more with every damn word of your extensive ranting!!

I myself was introduced to the game “Laser-squad” many many moons ago on my friends Amstrad-cpc-464 (yeah, we are going back some now!, hehe).

Iv’e been playing games on xbox360-live thingy recently, yep it’s all high-tech and interactiv’y and stuff. But im not having the _FUN_ that I had on that old radium-depleating retina-destroying sadly-now-dust-gathering machine.

So anyway, yeah… Laser-Squad is one of my ALL-TIME-FAVES, and the creators of that went on to make U.F.O-Enemy-Unkown. (esentialy the same game but with a 2D-isometric view). this isometric view kind of put me off to be honest, I much prefered the straight top-down method of laser-squad as I could better visualise what was actualy going on. I feel annoyed about the switch to iso-view in much the same way that you feel about it going real-time-bullshit ;). (kinda like it was the beginings of them pandering towards mass-market-chavs-wants-3D-type-crap).

Hehe, anyway, We played laser-quest in glorious GREEN-SCREEN, and when I made my moves my friend went into the next room, and vice versa. We had no need for REAL-TIME bollocks! ITS A TURN BASED GAME!!! Which GOD-DAMN cretin though that real-time and turn-based could be combined ?!?!?!? They are two diametricaly opposite systems for f***s sake!!

Hehe, anyway, I just wanted to say you guys rule, and I totaly agree with your rant!!, and yet my reply is turning into a rant of it own!

So yeah, Iv’e played tons of old game (back in the day) and loads of modern games and of the lot these are the turn-based strategie games that I rate and you might wanna have a look at:-

Laser-Squad (Speccy,Amstrad,c64, Amga, ST, PC)

Lords of Chaos (By the laser-squad/UFO dudes, but with wizards and unicorns and stuff) (Speccy,Amstrad,c64, Amga, ST, PC)

Battle-Isle (Amiga) (hexegon layout turn-based game in the same vain as those mentioned above with aliens and stuff, with land, water and air-based units)

History-Line-1942 (Amiga) (This is basicaly Battle-Isle re-skinned from aliens into a world-war-II setting with loads more scenarios/maps to play on. Bloody fantastic it is too)]

So yeah, I really love turn-based games I also like some Real-time games! But those Fuck-Witts in their fancy board-rooms need to realise that they are TWO-SEPERATE-THINGS and stop pandering to “Cretin-Jeff from Marketing” and his big-gay-demographic-flip-chart and thinking they can mix the two and actualy end up with a system that works!!! MORONS I TELL YA!!! hehe!

err, Keep up the good work fella’s and I look forward to more rants from you

Cheers,
Nickenstien.