Game crashes.

[Moontoad]

Lovely, lovely game guys (I loved Uplink too) - in fact I think this one is the most fun I've had with a PC since Populous.

However, there are a LOT of bugs which make me wonder how much this was tested before release. And it's not really acceptable when you consider this is being sold in stores at a penny short of £30.

I've experienced the following...

* Gestures stop working completely on several levels. Work around: leave the area, leave Darwinia, start again.

* Triffids and centipedes respawning on various levels. Work around: none - kill them again. Bah.

* Various levels crash the program completely when re-entering them. Work around: restart them.

* Autosave seems to be a bit erratic - sometimes it saves your progress well, other times you lose huge amounts of progress. Work around: leave the area each time you've reached a milestone.

And finally, worst of all...

* Game crashes frequently, particularly when there's a lot going on (e.g. big battles). This is happening so much for me now that I've abandoned the game half way through the Temple level, because I'm finding the crashes too frustrating. Which brings me to the point - should people really be expected to wait for a patch in order to complete a £30 game?

Don't get me wrong here guys, this game is so good it had me putting up with the crashes - but I'm playing it in spite of them, which isn't the best state of affairs. Hopefully v1.2 will be a lot more stable. And I appreciate that pretty much all commercial games end up being patched - but most if not all can actually be completed without seriously trying your patience.

Finally, not a bug; the sound effects are great but the music is very low quality in terms of sound production and hiss. OK, I appreciate this is a retro styled title, but then again so was TRON 2.0 - and the soundtrack for that was gorgeous. It makes me wonder why you didn't use good quality MP3's - pretty standard these days. Maybe I'm being too picky as I'm an electronic musician myself, but I just didn't think the quality of the music production/playback does your game justice. I realise you were probably going for tunes that sound like they were from Amiga demos, but you could have used retro sounds in music that had today's production values?

Anyways... looking forward to the patch.

[NeoThermic]

Lovely, lovely game guys (I loved Uplink too) - in fact I think this one is the most fun I've had with a PC since Populous.

However, there are a LOT of bugs which make me wonder how much this was tested before release. And it's not really acceptable when you consider this is being sold in stores at a penny short of £30.

Or more like a penny short of £20, but lets move on to the real points

I've experienced the following...

* Gestures stop working completely on several levels. Work around: leave the area, leave Darwinia, start again.

Its an odd issue that people have said they've seen, but I've never seen it.

* Triffids and centipedes respawning on various levels. Work around: none - kill them again. Bah.

This is fixed in the next patch.

* Various levels crash the program completely when re-entering them. Work around: restart them.

Some of this has been fixed (due to armour) in the next patch. If you give exact level names, then I can confirm it.

* Autosave seems to be a bit erratic - sometimes it saves your progress well, other times you lose huge amounts of progress. Work around: leave the area each time you've reached a milestone.

You're quite right, autosave does it every so many minuites. Leaving a level and re-entering is a way to force it to save, and is the suggest method if you're not fully sure you'll be able to finish the level.

And finally, worst of all...

* Game crashes frequently, particularly when there's a lot going on (e.g. big battles). This is happening so much for me now that I've abandoned the game half way through the Temple level, because I'm finding the crashes too frustrating. Which brings me to the point - should people really be expected to wait for a patch in order to complete a £30 game?

If the game crashes, sometimes it will leave a blackbox.txt file. Rather than complaning at the fact it crashed, posting that file here will allow the issue to be fixed. As for the crashing, try turn off realtime sound and or 3D sound. That has been known to fix the issues.

Don't get me wrong here guys, this game is so good it had me putting up with the crashes - but I'm playing it in spite of them, which isn't the best state of affairs. Hopefully v1.2 will be a lot more stable. And I appreciate that pretty much all commercial games end up being patched - but most if not all can actually be completed without seriously trying your patience.

Every game has issues as such though, but normally you never hear about them. Take UT2003 for example. If you can grab an un-patched copy, try run it, and you'll get an ok-ish framerate that eventually bottoms out due to a small memory leak. Patch it and you'll get a great framerate with no leak.

Issues are still being fixed in Darwinia, but what you must remember here is that Darwinia was coded by one man, not a huge team.

Finally, not a bug; the sound effects are great but the music is very low quality in terms of sound production and hiss. OK, I appreciate this is a retro styled title, but then again so was TRON 2.0 - and the soundtrack for that was gorgeous. It makes me wonder why you didn't use good quality MP3's - pretty standard these days. Maybe I'm being too picky as I'm an electronic musician myself, but I just didn't think the quality of the music production/playback does your game justice. I realise you were probably going for tunes that sound like they were from Amiga demos, but you could have used retro sounds in music that had today's production values?

I'm not quite sure what to say here. First Darwinia's music is OGG, which is higher quality than even 320Kb/s MP3's, but for way less size. Secondly if you put on 3D sound, it does make a diffrence (although as has been suggested, might be the cause of crashes in later levels. YMMV). I'm not sure what audio hardware you have, but that might be the issue here rather than the music.


NeoThermic

[Darksun]

I've not seen the gestures error being reported before, what is your system setup?

The triffid problem is being fixed, but the centipede respawn problem... are you sure they're not being created by the triffids?

The only level I know that can become corrupted is the yard level, I think it happens if you get too many ants. There is a fix for it, look around the forum

The game crashing affects some people, others it doesn't. Hopefully the v1.2 patch will help, it's currently being tested.

I was a beta tester, and in the RC I played from start to finish without a single crash or serious bug.

As for sound affects... I've never really thought them to be low quality, but mabey my ear just isn't distinguised enough

The game uses Ogg Vorbis which is comparabile to MP3 quality (some say better), but is a free format. MP3 has incredibly expensive licenses if you want to use an MP3 decoder in a game.

Edit: Damn you NeoThermic

[Dave2]

For more info on MP3 Licencing, see mp3licensing.com - the cost for a game licence is $2,500. The cost for a licence for Vorbis is $0.

The vast majority of games now use Vorbis for their audio - UT2004, Doom 3 and Halo (PC) all use Vorbis, for example. Tests also do show it to be superior to MP3 technically.

[gkscotty]

I believe the "gestures don't work bug" is purely a matter of slowdown.

The trick is not to release ALT at the same time as you release the LMB. Release the LMB after drawing your gesture, wait for the gesture to be recognised and then let go of ALT.

[0beron]

The only level I know that can become corrupted is the yard level, I think it happens if you get too many ants. There is a fix for it, look around the forum

I've read elsewhere on the forums that this happens because of the game not saving info about ant hills correctly. Since receiver is the other level with ants, it also suffers from this problem. The same problem is what casues the outro sequence to crash when loading the receiver level.

The workaround is to decrypt the level files for receiver and the yard once those levels have been played, and to delete any lines in the decrypted file that refer to ants or ant hills. The file can then be re-encrypted and you should then be able to access the levels and watch the outro (worked for me). Search the forum for 'redshirt2' to find the thread about decryption.

[Darksun]

Hmm, yes. The number in the hills go to silly numbers, like huge positive and negative numbers, I think it's an integer overflow or somesuch. Theres a quick fix in editing your userfile, and I think the problem is addressed in the next patch.

[xander]

...The file can then be re-encrypted and you should then be able to access the levels and watch the outro (worked for me)...

I am fairly certain that you do not have to reencrypt the file for it to work. At any rate, the encrypted version of the file is not unique -- there are several combinations of bits and bytes that will decrypt to the same thing. This has to do with the way that the algorithm works -- it is not a reversible algorithm. You can reencrypt the file if you want, but it doesn't really matter.

xander

[Moontoad]

Or more like a penny short of £20, but lets move on to the real points

Not true actually - yes, online it's £19.99, but in my local Gamestation it's £29.99, as is the stated MRP on the front of the game's own manual.

Gestures: Its an odd issue that people have said they've seen, but I've never seen it.

Happens often, ALT brings up the manager, but no amount of drawing summons anything.

Triffids and centipedes respawning on various levels. Work around: none - kill them again. Bah.

This is fixed in the next patch.

Cool. In response to the question whether the Triffids weren't respawning them, no - for example I saw it happen more than once with the Soul Destroyer on the central island of the Receiver level - I don't believe Triffids respawn them?

Various levels crash the program completely when re-entering them. Work around: restart them.

Some of this has been fixed (due to armour) in the next patch. If you give exact level names, then I can confirm it.

Can't remember which ones sorry - as I restarted them erasing the crashing versions. It happened on at least 3 of them though and I'm sure Receiver was one of them.

And finally, worst of all... Game crashes frequently, particularly when there's a lot going on (e.g. big battles). This is happening so much for me now that I've abandoned the game half way through the Temple level, because I'm finding the crashes too frustrating.

If the game crashes, sometimes it will leave a blackbox.txt file. Rather than complaning at the fact it crashed, posting that file here will allow the issue to be fixed.

It hasn't created a blackbox.txt file. I don't think it ever has either, as I've been backing up my game directory as I go along in order to keep copies of my progress in case a crash wiped something out - so I'd have noticed. The sound settings don't seem to make a difference - I've tried reducing everything to minimum and it makes no difference to stability for me.

Don't get me wrong here guys, this game is so good it had me putting up with the crashes - but I'm playing it in spite of them, which isn't the best state of affairs.

Every game has issues as such though, but normally you never hear about them. Take UT2003 for example. If you can grab an un-patched copy, try run it, and you'll get an ok-ish framerate that eventually bottoms out due to a small memory leak. Patch it and you'll get a great framerate with no leak.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that NeoThermic - a lot of games do have issues, I'm not denying that - but I haven't played a game with so MANY issues when unpatched for years.

Issues are still being fixed in Darwinia, but what you must remember here is that Darwinia was coded by one man, not a huge team.

Yes, and I do appreciate that honestly - I've been a "bedroom programmer" myself and understand the issues concerned. My complaint is not meant to be raining on anyone's parade - I find the fact that this was coded by one man and is available off the shelf very inspirational - my problem is I think it was released too early. Just a quick glance at the forums here will reveal there are many unresolved issues, hopefully fixed in the next patch - much more so than most commercial releases IMHO.

Re: Music - I'm not quite sure what to say here. First Darwinia's music is OGG, which is higher quality than even 320Kb/s MP3's, but for way less size. Secondly if you put on 3D sound, it does make a diffrence (although as has been suggested, might be the cause of crashes in later levels. YMMV).

I wasn't aware it was OGG and I appreciate the MP3 licensing issues, so I understand that decision. It was more about the quality of the music as opposed to sound effects - the tunes are nice enough in their own right, but the sounds used to play them are very hissy, sound very compressed, and are much more akin to old Amiga demos than modern game soundtracks - which perhaps is what was intended as this is a Retro themed title. I'm running using a Creative Audigy Platinum by the way, not exactly obscure - and don't get similar issues with any other title. So I think it's a matter of the sounds themselves as opposed to a playback issue.

Re: the other questions as to my set up - I'm running a relatively new machine, P4, Windows XP Pro SP2, with 2 Gig of branded RAM, new nVidia card etc. It will run things like Doom 3 without a glitch on high resolution with a nice frame rate, so I don't think the issues I'm experiencing are likely to be hardware related.

Please don't misunderstand my comments - I'm not out to attack this project - the bottom line for me is I simply think it wasn't tested enough before it hit the shelves. That's not a whinge - I'm looking forward to your next title - I just hope it will be more stable. It may not seem like it but I am trying to be constructive here - I played Uplink to death without ever having a single issue - I'm just hoping that your next release will be a lot more polished before it hits the shelves.

And if you think about it, the very fact that I've played this game to the final level before giving up due to the bugs is a compliment to it - if it wasn't so good I'd have given up long before.

[The GoldFish]

Well, Darwinia is only about a month and a half old.

And Audigy 1s suck so much ass, I hate them. There's alog good about them, sure, but also alot wrong

I'm pretty sure all the sound files are 64kbps mono ogg files.

[NeoThermic]

Or more like a penny short of £20, but lets move on to the real points

Not true actually - yes, online it's £19.99, but in my local Gamestation it's £29.99, as is the stated MRP on the front of the game's own manual.

The games manual was a ticket to darwinia. Plus:

We have lowered the price of Darwinia to just £19.99 plus delivery, which we think is an absolute bargain. Delivery costs for the UK will be £1.50. In other currencies the price will be $29.99 plus $3.00 delivery for the USA, or 29.99 euros plus 2 euros delivery for Europe. We think this is excellent value for money and we're hoping you will agree.

This will be matched by a drop in price in the UK high street.

So consder going back to Gamestation and getting some money back

Gestures: Its an odd issue that people have said they've seen, but I've never seen it.

Happens often, ALT brings up the manager, but no amount of drawing summons anything.

And you've tried the suggestion of holding down ALT for long enough for the gesture to register? Can you duplicate it with certianty?

Triffids and centipedes respawning on various levels. Work around: none - kill them again. Bah.

This is fixed in the next patch.

Cool. In response to the question whether the Triffids weren't respawning them, no - for example I saw it happen more than once with the Soul Destroyer on the central island of the Receiver level - I don't believe Triffids respawn them?

No, Triffids don't respawn soul destoryers. But as stated this is fixed in the next patch, so don't worry

Various levels crash the program completely when re-entering them. Work around: restart them.

Some of this has been fixed (due to armour) in the next patch. If you give exact level names, then I can confirm it.

Can't remember which ones sorry - as I restarted them erasing the crashing versions. It happened on at least 3 of them though and I'm sure Receiver was one of them.

Let me guess... Receiver and Yard? Both have ants, and both have issues that are fixed in the 1.2 patch. If you can recreate it, paste the encrypted level here and I'll confirm it.

And finally, worst of all... Game crashes frequently, particularly when there's a lot going on (e.g. big battles). This is happening so much for me now that I've abandoned the game half way through the Temple level, because I'm finding the crashes too frustrating.

If the game crashes, sometimes it will leave a blackbox.txt file. Rather than complaning at the fact it crashed, posting that file here will allow the issue to be fixed.

It hasn't created a blackbox.txt file. I don't think it ever has either, as I've been backing up my game directory as I go along in order to keep copies of my progress in case a crash wiped something out - so I'd have noticed. The sound settings don't seem to make a difference - I've tried reducing everything to minimum and it makes no difference to stability for me.

Its not exaclty the sound settings as such, its just 3D and realtime sound. If set off, then there shouldn't be issues with the memory leak that is apprent.

Don't get me wrong here guys, this game is so good it had me putting up with the crashes - but I'm playing it in spite of them, which isn't the best state of affairs.

Every game has issues as such though, but normally you never hear about them. Take UT2003 for example. If you can grab an un-patched copy, try run it, and you'll get an ok-ish framerate that eventually bottoms out due to a small memory leak. Patch it and you'll get a great framerate with no leak.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that NeoThermic - a lot of games do have issues, I'm not denying that - but I haven't played a game with so MANY issues when unpatched for years.

Not even Uplink?
Lets see, although there might be 'many' issues, few, if any are showstoppers (as in can't continue in any way). But as seen above, the issues are being address and the patch is being very thourally tested (I've spent a good few hours hammering stats out of Darwinia over performance issues).

Issues are still being fixed in Darwinia, but what you must remember here is that Darwinia was coded by one man, not a huge team.

Yes, and I do appreciate that honestly - I've been a "bedroom programmer" myself and understand the issues concerned. My complaint is not meant to be raining on anyone's parade - I find the fact that this was coded by one man and is available off the shelf very inspirational - my problem is I think it was released too early. Just a quick glance at the forums here will reveal there are many unresolved issues, hopefully fixed in the next patch - much more so than most commercial releases IMHO.

It might of been released too early, then again it might not of. Phase 2 beta testing took place on all of about 25 machines, so they are not able to pick up all problems. This is not equal to some companies that have a whole huge QA section, and enough resources for a massive beta test. For the issues that Darwinia has, quite a few of them stem from very few aspects, something that the next patch has addressed.

Re: Music - I'm not quite sure what to say here. First Darwinia's music is OGG, which is higher quality than even 320Kb/s MP3's, but for way less size. Secondly if you put on 3D sound, it does make a diffrence (although as has been suggested, might be the cause of crashes in later levels. YMMV).

I wasn't aware it was OGG and I appreciate the MP3 licensing issues, so I understand that decision. It was more about the quality of the music as opposed to sound effects - the tunes are nice enough in their own right, but the sounds used to play them are very hissy, sound very compressed, and are much more akin to old Amiga demos than modern game soundtracks - which perhaps is what was intended as this is a Retro themed title. I'm running using a Creative Audigy Platinum by the way, not exactly obscure - and don't get similar issues with any other title. So I think it's a matter of the sounds themselves as opposed to a playback issue.

DMA SC - Visitors from dreams (running during the raytracer into for example) is ment to sound retro right down to its sound. Most of darwinia's music is, however, quite high quality. Un-rar the sounds.dat file and take a peak

Re: the other questions as to my set up - I'm running a relatively new machine, P4, Windows XP Pro SP2, with 2 Gig of branded RAM, new nVidia card etc. It will run things like Doom 3 without a glitch on high resolution with a nice frame rate, so I don't think the issues I'm experiencing are likely to be hardware related.

Its quite an apples and oranges thing to compair Darwinia to Doom3 though, and I've been able to run Darwinia on this PC (which sounds like a similar spec) without many issues. I've encounterd the issue of Yard crashing and the memory leak during pattern buffer, but the latter levels I've never had an issue with...

Please don't misunderstand my comments - I'm not out to attack this project - the bottom line for me is I simply think it wasn't tested enough before it hit the shelves. That's not a whinge - I'm looking forward to your next title - I just hope it will be more stable. It may not seem like it but I am trying to be constructive here - I played Uplink to death without ever having a single issue - I'm just hoping that your next release will be a lot more polished before it hits the shelves.

I'm surprised you managed to play Uplink without issue. The source code to Uplink is a huge shocker!

However, it is a learning cycle. Darwinia won't be dropped, issues will be fixed, new things will be added, issues will be fixed. Things will be learned. Whatever the next game is, I can assue you that IV won't let things happen the same way to end up with issues

And if you think about it, the very fact that I've played this game to the final level before giving up due to the bugs is a compliment to it - if it wasn't so good I'd have given up long before.

You can never say no to helping a Darwinian

NeoThermic

[Superpig]

The beta testing programme had upwards of 100 people involved. So it was pretty extensively tested... I don't think I've ever actually had the game crash without a blackbox, even from the early beta releases. Granted, it doesn't seem to have helped you much, but they did make a reasonable effort to test it.

[Moontoad]

The games manual was a ticket to darwinia.

LOL - oh come on NT, it's quite obviously a statement of price. As the posting of lowering of price indicates. As for the lower price in the High Street - it hasn't hit my local branch of Gamestation yet. Oh and I never said I'd paid £30 for it by the way - I bought it direct from IV. Both because it was a tenner cheaper and because I was guessing that direct sale would probably benefit IV more. But people have been paying £30 for it in stores - and I think it's reasonable to expect a lot less crashes for that kind of price tag.

And you've tried the suggestion of holding down ALT for long enough for the gesture to register? Can you duplicate it with certianty?

I'm not stupid NT. When this problem happens you can keep ALT held down for three quarters of an hour and doodle and NOTHING is summoned. Leave the area, leave Darwinia, relaunch, and provided the level will load without crashing, the next time you try gestures they work fine.

As an aside, I've never understood why anyone thinks gesture recognition is a good idea anyway. I'd have thought "Black & White" would have been enough of a demonstration that they're an unreliable and irritating control mechanism to use in any software title, let alone in a game where high speed control is needed during combat.

Not even Uplink?

In all honesty, nope, no issues at all. If I was forced to complain about anything it would be that the black card with copyright codes on it is too hard to read in a dark room.

Lets see, although there might be 'many' issues, few, if any are showstoppers (as in can't continue in any way).

Well, the Temple level turned out to be a complete show-stopper for me - I suspect possibly due to me having so many Darwinians (and a large red Darwininan army going on also). So much so I've now deinstalled the game and will return to it post Patch.

Re: the audio, I think you've addressed what I was talking about in referring to the whole "retro" thing - it's not the quality of the compression I was referring to, it was the choice of instrument patches. I think the music could have been a lot better - e.g. my TRON 2.0 example - very retro - but also glorious.

Its quite an apples and oranges thing to compair Darwinia to Doom3 though.

Not sure why? Different types of game for sure, but Doom 3 is a bit of a resource hungry beast - if a machine will run that OK, surely it should run Darwinia?

However, it is a learning cycle. Darwinia won't be dropped, issues will be fixed, new things will be added, issues will be fixed. Things will be learned. Whatever the next game is, I can assue you that IV won't let things happen the same way to end up with issues.

You understand the point of my posting perfectly then. Living in an age where games are all style and little substance (e.g. the admittedly beautiful but utterly linear, unimaginative and formulaic Doom 3, Half Life 2, repeat ad nauseum) nobody more than I hopes IV goes from strength to strength. I'm just hoping that next time around there's more testing. I really do want to see IV succeed, because it deserves to much more than many of the giants dominating the gaming industry at the moment (another God-awful Tomb Raider, anyone?)

[NeoThermic]

The games manual was a ticket to darwinia.

LOL - oh come on NT, it's quite obviously a statement of price.

Yes, a statment of price. Either you're agreeing with me (in which case skip this point), or you're not. The exact wording on the front of the manual is:

Visit Darwinia...
A land of contrast
Purchase your
ticket now -
Only £29.99

That, as you can clearly see, is a ticket to darwinia. The relation to the actual price of the game is somewhat conicidental, but its not supposed to relate to it.

As the posting of lowering of price indicates. As for the lower price in the High Street - it hasn't hit my local branch of Gamestation yet. Oh and I never said I'd paid £30 for it by the way - I bought it direct from IV. Both because it was a tenner cheaper and because I was guessing that direct sale would probably benefit IV more. But people have been paying £30 for it in stores - and I think it's reasonable to expect a lot less crashes for that kind of price tag.

Reasonable to expect, yes; reasonable to start demanding, no.

And you've tried the suggestion of holding down ALT for long enough for the gesture to register? Can you duplicate it with certianty?

I'm not stupid NT. When this problem happens you can keep ALT held down for three quarters of an hour and doodle and NOTHING is summoned. Leave the area, leave Darwinia, relaunch, and provided the level will load without crashing, the next time you try gestures they work fine.

I'm not saying you're stupid. Hell, if you can find a point where I've suggested that you are, call me on it. Else don't assume and try to put words in my mouth.

Anyway, I've never encounterd this bug myself, so I can't say the paticulars of it.

As an aside, I've never understood why anyone thinks gesture recognition is a good idea anyway. I'd have thought "Black & White" would have been enough of a demonstration that they're an unreliable and irritating control mechanism to use in any software title, let alone in a game where high speed control is needed during combat.

There's a huge topic in GD over the use of gestures, and about how people haven't liked them. However, if gestures were not used, then the game would become a crap click and do game, which is not what Introversion wanted to do again.

Not even Uplink?

In all honesty, nope, no issues at all. If I was forced to complain about anything it would be that the black card with copyright codes on it is too hard to read in a dark room.

Hehe. A lot of lessions over code were learned from Uplink (as John told me), Uplink's code is very unforgiving, I'm surprised you had no issues at all

Lets see, although there might be 'many' issues, few, if any are showstoppers (as in can't continue in any way).

Well, the Temple level turned out to be a complete show-stopper for me - I suspect possibly due to me having so many Darwinians (and a large red Darwininan army going on also). So much so I've now deinstalled the game and will return to it post Patch.

Thats ponderous. I've only ever had slowdown on pattern buffer, but only when Darwinia was using up 1.7GB RAM. Anyway, 1.2 incorperates better soul code, and a better rendering setting (once issues are sorted that is), so you'll get a better rate out of it.

Re: the audio, I think you've addressed what I was talking about in referring to the whole "retro" thing - it's not the quality of the compression I was referring to, it was the choice of instrument patches. I think the music could have been a lot better - e.g. my TRON 2.0 example - very retro - but also glorious.

IIRC, Visitors from Dreams was done in... 6 hours (I was drunk at the time this was said to me, so its not 100% fact). But it was done to encompass the style of the game, even down to the speccy bootloader.

Its quite an apples and oranges thing to compair Darwinia to Doom3 though.

Not sure why? Different types of game for sure, but Doom 3 is a bit of a resource hungry beast - if a machine will run that OK, surely it should run Darwinia?

Why? Doom 3 is done by a company that has had *years* of experence with games, has a *huge* QA department, while Darwinia is done by a company that doesn't even have the numbers to make half a football team, and its QA department was 25 Phase 2 beta testers and about 100 active Phase 1 beta testers. I'll let you draw from that the conclusions.

However, it is a learning cycle. Darwinia won't be dropped, issues will be fixed, new things will be added, issues will be fixed. Things will be learned. Whatever the next game is, I can assue you that IV won't let things happen the same way to end up with issues.

You understand the point of my posting perfectly then. Living in an age where games are all style and little substance (e.g. the admittedly beautiful but utterly linear, unimaginative and formulaic Doom 3, Half Life 2, repeat ad nauseum) nobody more than I hopes IV goes from strength to strength. I'm just hoping that next time around there's more testing. I really do want to see IV succeed, because it deserves to much more than many of the giants dominating the gaming industry at the moment (another God-awful Tomb Raider, anyone?)

Of couse I can understand the point of the post, however you have to see an argument from both sides to really argue effectivly. If I go out there and plonk my money down for UT2004, I expect it to be a solid game because of the very simple fact that they've had more resources to throw at problems to solve them. However, I've seen all of what IV is, its very amazing and all credit that they managed to pull it together so effectivly, and yet there are people on the side lines still picking holes in them.

I dunno. This whole post might sound angry, and so might of my previous post, but all I'm trying to do is to get you to see what is there and understand that is all that can be there rather than wishing for something that won't happen without either money or a huge leap of faith.

P.S. The only problem I have with you at this moment in time is your refferal of me as NT. I'm not going to start calling you MT, so I wouldn't like it in return. I'm sure you'll understand Moontoad.

NeoThermic

[xander]

...while Darwinia is done by a company that doesn't even have the numbers to make half a football team

Would that be American Football, or Soccer?

/me ducks

xander