Empathy and Call of Duty 4

I was struck by this fact when I completed Call of Duty 4 last week - games are becoming increasingly like films every year. Not so much due to the graphics, the score or any aesthetic reason. This game drew me in, so much so that I even began to empathise with the characters. I'm bound to drop spoilers here, so if you plan on playing CoD4 at some point, save this article for another day.

I don't play many new singleplayer games. For the past three years I've had a rather unhealthy obsession with Counter Strike - it started off slowly, I joined a clan and found myself hungering for organised matches every evening, I even went to a LAN at one point. The urge to shoot at virtual representations of real people was so great, it became a dominant part of my life. It was something of a social thing, more about the people than the gaming at times - but that's a seperate story. Most importantly, I began to realise how important a human face can be on a computer generated character's body. I barely touched a singleplayer game during my time with CS; and aside from the Half-Life series, Call of Duty 4 is the only new shooter I've properly played since 2005.

Top Ten Doom Clones

There's a fascinating graph that can easily be found on Wikipedia here that studies the usage of the terms "Doom clone" and "first person shooter", looking at their respective usages in Usenet posts between 1993 and 2002. The phrase "Doom clone" looks to have been conclusively defeated by "first person shooter" by late 1998, which interestingly coincides with the release of Valve's Half-Life. But like the secretive Trystero in The Crying of Lot 49 (I'm sorry, that's the second Pynchon reference in two posts – I'll try and cut them down) the phrase was not quite defeated, but merely forced underground, along with the games that remain lumbered with the label. To be honest, the fact that mainstream magazines and the game-playing public labelled games like these as "Doom clones" was a bit unfair. The games weren't exactly carbon-copies of the massively successful id classic, many didn't even use its influential engine – it's just that the early competitors to Doom were sometimes looked down upon and have been largely forgotten today – even when some of them were brilliant in their own right. So what defines a Doom clone? Well, by my definition a Doom clone is an FPS released between 1993 and 1998, which use sprites for their characters and objects and generally have Doom-esque technology to work with. Some games on the list are still famous today – others have fallen into at least partly undeserved obscurity. Because of the relatively primitive engines they use, they can often be difficult to get working on modern operating systems – but where possible, I'll offer some advice as to how these games can be played in 2008 (remember that DOSbox will theoretically run them all). Incidentally, for those who have yet to experience the joys of Doom itself, it can be found in a Collector's Edition on (for example) Amazon, and there's a guide to getting the game to run under XP over at the excellent Doom Wiki here. For now though, on with the list – from #10 right up to #1…

Using Eventscripts to mod CS Source

 
My last article detailed how to write a very simple mod for Counter Strike Source servers; here, I plan to go into more detail. I will assume basic knowledge of Python, and an understanding of how to create a simple addon on your source server - essentially I plan to discuss Eventscripts' API and features.
Userids
Each […]

Running Street Fighter III on your PC

Street Fighter 3 is a fantastic game. Utterly incredible for a rainy afternoon - and since summer 2007, it's been possible to play on the PC. If you want to try it out, all you need to do is follow these simple instructions.
1. Download CPS3 Emulator
I tried a load of different emulators, including the latest […]

Installing Commandos - A Tale of Woe

I used to love Commandos; that is, the first game in the series, Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. I often go back to play games from ten or more years ago, and this is the latest one I have a craving for.

Did I mention, I've just ordered a pretty powerful, expensive gaming laptop from Zepto? Some of its power, I think, might go wasted …

Anyway, the first thing I needed to do was find the disk. It definitely wasn't a DVD case, which meant trawling through boxes and boxes of disks, often with no names along the spines, hunting for it. Three hours later - and with a significantly less tidy room - I gave it up.

Five days of Ubuntu Linux

Last wednesday I ordered a new laptop. I'll definitely be installing Vista on it, if only for gaming and DirectX 10, but I also plan to use it as an excuse to get to grips with Linux. I've used Windows all my life, 3.1 followed by 95, 98, 2000 and now XP, and I'd describe myself as fairly competent at working with it: this would be a pretty new experience for me. A few years ago I'd installed Fedora Core 4, and I wasn't impressed a great deal, but this time I decided to go with Ubuntu. This distribution, from what I've read, seems to be fast entering the realms of user-friendly for those with no experience of Linux - that is, it would hopefully be less like jumping in at the deep end and hoping to surface. Ubuntu's apparent popularity among those looking for a place to start in looking for a Linux based alternative to Windows, made it seem like an increasingly good place to start.

Psychonauts and others for Free

As part of their Holiday Threesome offer, Gametap have provided a list of games which you can play for free until the 31st of December, including several Hitman games (to coincide with the release of the frankly dire film version), Tomb Raider Legend, as well as some classics like Metal Slug. However, the best […]

Five more great CS Source mods

Based on the relative success of the last article, here are five more CS source mods you should definitely try out, given the chance. They all include download links for the server addons, and a link to all of the servers running them, should you wish to try them out. Don't forget - if you want to try writing your own addons for CS Source, you can get into it within a week, and with minimal experience.

Writing your first mod for Counter Strike Source

Starting projects for anything new can be fairly daunting - but if you're a fan of Valve's Source games, you can be writing addons for their games within a week. Mattie's Eventscripts makes writing server addons a breeze - and if you want to see the kind of things you can create, look no further than my post on CS Source Mods.

Eventscripts actually comes with two languages built in - I've chosen to write about Python because in my opinion it's both easier and more readable than the inbuilt shell language - and if you're coming to it without knowing either, you might as well begin with it. If you already have experiences with interpreted languages, you'll find Python infinitely easier to follow anyway - plus it's magnitudes faster than the built in language, and has more power.

Crayon Physics

Play this game now. It's incredible; you draw two dimensional objects in-game, and they interact with everything else, in a way that fulfils a childhood fantasy I'm sure everyone had. I played through the full thing about five times in a row, and I'm still not bored of it.
http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/crayon/
You'll love it.
Best thing is, he's […]