CliffyB Talks Game Development
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I seem to recall reading the game would be released "when its done" and that they were aiming for Q4 2007. UT3 would have massively benefited from a beta taking place months ahead of when it did. Doing things last-minute is always a huge risk. Haste makes waste, so they say. "Dr." Capps should have learned this in all his coursework to get that doctoral degree.
I will second this. Although UT3 has its problems, optimization is not one of them.
Wow, what version of Vista are you using? It has its problems, yes. It's a resource and memory hog, yes. It has some of the stupidest design decisions ever in an OS, yes. I wouldn't use Vista, yet, and I would never advise businesses/organizations/clients to use Vista, yet. However, it went through a UT3-like design process up until the QA part. Back in longhorn it was supposed to be built from the ground up without all that legacy stuff just like how UT3 was supposed to have conquest and all these other nifty features. That proved too daunting for each so both projects were scaled back. In both cases the two projects proceeded to be built up, but when it came time for QA testing UT3 was kicked out as a beta and virtually nothing that people were harping on was changed when the game was "finished"...er, shoveled out in time for holiday sales last year. Epic doesn't want your feedback and in many cases will delete and/or ban people for what they say regardless of if its true or not. Now when Vista was getting its beta releases and release candidates before going final, there were a ton of complaints and issues popping up. Last time I checked any negative comments about Vista that had been posted by myself and others on MSDN and other sites were NOT deleted without notice. Some of the people involved in building Vista would read over these comments and others while probably not directly responding to them. However, everyone was kept in the know about what was going on. Did Vista have major problems on its release? Yes, it was pretty bad on release and still hasn't been completely fixed. Unlike Epic, Microsoft isn't sending its employees out to silence people for their comments about Vista and has instead set up numerous blogs, corporate focus groups, and feedback gathering teams (besides all that "help make _____ better" monitoring tools). They may be out talking sunshine like Mark Rein is, but they're not actively screening the negativity out there--in many cases it's getting attention and Microsoft is letting people know, officially, that it's getting attention. Vista and UT3 were botched on release, but the two products are getting completely polar opposite treatment after release.
Then you weren't paying attention. UT2007 was slated for "mid 2006" then "late 2006" then "early 2007" then name changed then "mid 2007" then "late 2007" before finally settling on November 19th. That's a crapload of delays no matter how you look at it.
Also, Mike Capps likely had very little to do with the development of UT3 or Gears of War. He's a businessman, not a developer. This is the equivalent of blaming Bill Gates because Windows is incomplete.
You mean Microsoft is out there personally responding to flaming trolls on message boards? Wow! Props to those amazing MS guys!
while Vista hasn't been the massive faliure a lot of people paint it as for me, I have to agree with the last part of this sentence. You dont go around deleting every peice of feedback that isnt a glowing positive review. It's just bad buisness. Why don't they see that?
I recall them opening the floor to all manner of feedback, and as you said, some of that feedback made it into Patch-1, but alot of us thought it would make it into the retail game, because we thought the retail game was still a ways off.
It would just plain have been smart doing it that way, logical even, it would have made perfect sense, the release they ended up doing made none, it was a bad release and i think most everyone will agree on that, releasing the game in that state, at that time, up against that competition.. not good.
Epic really had a chance to make a PR killing here, if they had waited, and the retail game had included a bunch of the stuff people where giving feedback on, people would have felt they had a say in the thing, and that Epic had showed remarkable interest in them, not to mention the game would have been the better for it.
It's a shame that did not happen, and i would think you can agree?
As it stands though, the whole release just seems botched, and i for one can't shake the feeling that something went wrong, and the game was pushed out the door early for the X-mas sale, a poor choice as evident but the December sales, it was not worth that, and a Jan or Feb 08 release with more polish and features would have sold better in the end i'd say.
Lets not turn this into some e-peen contest, suffice to say, yes, i remember them all, including Unreal, and i even remember back when "software piracy" was something that was done on a 2 deck Ghettoblaster, i also remember Epic pinball and Jazz Jackrabbit, please stop asking me how long i have been playing Unreal allready, we've been over it before..
But poor performance in the past is something one should strive to better in the future, not repeat or emulate.
Never think the above if the demo comes out in October and the full game has an announced release date in November.
Thinking that less than one month is "ways off" can make you look confused.
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Well i am confused to be honest, i just don't understand how Epic could let this happen after seeing how 2k3 played out, why would anyone want to make the same mistake twice?
**** cliffyB, Epic hasnt made a good game in years, not since UT99 infact.
What do they expect people to do? buy console-ified **** and like it? **** him
What do they expect people to do? buy console-ified **** and like it? **** him
This isn't the "same mistake". UT3 is better than 2k3 in almost every way. I only compared them because they both had relatively sub-par releases.
And are in fact, sub-par games. Though I liked UT2k3 on release, even I will concede that it was not good on release and that UT2k4 was a huge improvement. UT3 is just plain sub-par on many levels. The maps, weapons, mouse issues (I still cannot get a mouse setting and crosshair, honestly where the **** did crosshair options go, was that so hard Epic, was it really? - that make the game at all playable), poor design, consolised interface, consolised feel to the game in general and much more.
It's selling poorly on the PC because PC gamers don't like buying consolised crap. Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief: Deadly Shadows and such, all demonstrate the principle very well.
I wouldn't ever use the 'consolized' arguement. The fanboys have already figured out a million ways of dismissing that arguement so they don't ever have to actually address it. Instead describe why you don't like it.
eg - Interface/browser...lack of options, unreliable, basic interface, designed for joypad. gameplay... sludgey, heavy, basic, less skill more speed. etc etc etc
Off topic - I hear (from the very vocal pro-UT minority) arguements that UT3 has a much realer feel and is the better for it. This is Unreal iirc.
@supermoose & bigdragon - i was basing those remarks on a lot of comments by people with 3 year + old comps struggling to run UT3 on lowest settings with any decent fps and comments that it looked nasty on very basic settings. I wouldn't know since my own system's pretty sh1t-hot
so i fully withdraw that particular comment.
TheIronKnuckle
What the hell is this "ballin" thing?
well duh. You would expect the technology from 2007 to produce a better game then the technology from 2003. The only thing it can't account for is gameplay, but epic has done a good job there. (of course, i believe that UT1 is the best one so far, and that uses old technology, the thing there is the gameplay factor).
EDIT: also, this IS the same mistake again. Only this time it didn't turn out to be a mistake, EPIC has raked in the big bucks because of it. When UT2k3 came out the pc was the platform where shooters were supposed to be played. So when EPIC delivered a consolized game for pc back then it angered the community AND lost them money.
These days consoles are where it's at, so delivering a console game on pc isn't as big because it won't lose much money, just rake in a fair amount more to add to the pile already accumulated by console based sales.
So with ut3 they delivered a consolised game for pc, (Although gameplaywise, it disguises it pretty well) which has angered the community, but still earns epic money - so who gives a **** eh? The community obviously, but who cares about them? You can sell a game without a community. Just look back at the days of nes and whatnot. The only community that existed was you and your friends with the game.
We really should organise a gameplayers union. You know. We all go on strike and don't buy the game until our demands are met.
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Bye Bye Epic 
Epic's been slowly falling down a steep Grassy Knoll like a dead horse with its PC Consumers so their making the right decision to focus on consoles.
Hopefully a Company will notice that Epic is Dethroned and produce a New Fps Aesthetic for PC Only.
Epic's been slowly falling down a steep Grassy Knoll like a dead horse with its PC Consumers so their making the right decision to focus on consoles. Hopefully a Company will notice that Epic is Dethroned and produce a New Fps Aesthetic for PC Only.
Bye Bye Epic
Hopefully a Company will notice that Epic is Dethroned and produce a New Fps Aesthetic for PC Only.
Someone has ... Crytek.
In what regard?
I'm interested to hear peoples views on the merits (or not) of EPIC vs CRYTEK.