What are you playing right now?

[Perturabo]

Gunship for C64 and Firefight.
I love Gunship. I'm going through training stage again. I have a full boxed version and a Gunship Academy guidebook. Awesome stuff.

[carnifex]

Dwarf Fortress, for the ultimate in complexity and bad interface http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

and

Red Orchestra, for the grenade spam http://www.redorchestragame.com/

[vonRocko]

Currently I'm trying to play Storm over the Pacific, But with a lousy tutorial, worthless manual, and hard to see counters, this is very trying and I am loosing interest very fast.[:(]

[redcoat]

War in the Pacific: AE. It does not leave me much free time to play anything else at the moment.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: vonRocko

Currently I'm trying to play Storm over the Pacific, But with a lousy tutorial, worthless manual, and hard to see counters, this is very trying and I am loosing interest very fast.[:(]

I looked at the Time of Wrath demo while thinking about Storm Over the Pacific. The main thing I noticed about Time of Wrath is that the map is dark, the map features are dark, the unit counters are dark, the hex sides are bright white and all I can see on the map are the hex sides. Everything else just blends in with all the darkness. I'm thankful there is a demo out there of the series because it really prevented me from making a co$tly mi$take. [X(]

[GaryChildress]

This is what I'm talking about. Look how dark the map is! See the top image. Now look at the bottom. I brightened up the map features file a little to make things stand out better. Honestly...which looks better, the top or the bottom image? I say the bottom image is easier to see what's going on. Why didn't the developers just make the map a little brighter?

[doomtrader]

Gary,

First of all, there is no problem to brighten the source files.

Also there are some mods that are really changing the way the game looks like:






Also some skilled modders already started to change Storm over the Pacific, take a look:

[vonRocko]

Doomtrader, show the real map and counters, not the mods. I guess it is up to the customer to mess with files to fix the game.

[GaryChildress]

Don't get me wrong. I love most Matrix games but I don't think it should be up to the customer to fix the maps in this one. It's a simple fix but it's something that should have been done with the stock version. The aesthetics out of box look horrible.

[PunkReaper]

Can mods be incorporated in a patch giving several map and counter combinations. Too lazy and too much of a technophobe to be messing inside files...[&:]

[PunkReaper]

Just realised that this should be discussed elsewhere.....

[GaryChildress]

I started the thread so I guess I'll be the one to derail it. A little editing in photoshop would have gone a long way with Time of Wrath I think. Here's before (top) and after (bottom) again...

[Bamilus]

BFTB, WITP, TOAW, PGII, Eagle Day and Bombing the Reich. All when I get the time

[GaryChildress]

Really the game should look like this...



Not this....

[Frido1207]

Hi Gary,
don´t let you get distracted.
I hear what you´re saying & don´t disagree with you at all.
But afaik, one of the main purposes of the game developers was/is the high modability of the game.
I don´t say its easy, but probably manageable. For SoP there are some graphics mods in the work.
I would recommend to wait for the Demo of SoP, to make your final jugdement. Many improvements compared to RTV/ToW.
For me Witp ff. are too complex, but SC: Pacific is in some regards too abstract. That´s why i was waiting for SoP.
Its someway in between of both the other mentioned games. Take some time to get used to it. But my first impressions are quite positiv. Also there is much help from the game developers.

[ilovestrategy]

I'm heavy into Oblivion right now. I cannot get enough of that game. 

[doomtrader]

Really the game should look like this...

Gary, nobody before raised that the game is too dark (at least I haven't got chance to read such opinion). I don't see a problem to include brighter version of sprites to the next patch.
BTW: I see you are playing a demo version of Time of Wrath. There were many major changes in the first patch, especially in air combat.

Doomtrader, show the real map and counters, not the mods. I guess it is up to the customer to mess with files to fix the game.

Von Rocko, I made clear statements that the screens below are mods. How does the game looks like can be seen at the official product page or at the product subforum.
I don't think that changing how the game looks should be measured in terms of fixing. We are trying to give as much modding possibilities as we can without harm for the engine and the game itself.
Not every game offers such opportunity and not every developer gives feedback how to change the game.

Can mods be incorporated in a patch giving several map and counter combinations. Too lazy and too much of a technophobe to be messing inside files...

Punk Reaper, Most of them could be, but there are IP issues. We would have to have a letter from mod creator that there are no copyrights on the materials he has used.
But fortunately most of those mods are very simple to be used. Just unzip and paste.


th1207, thanks for the kind words. We are trying to answer every question and consider every proposal.

[MajFrankBurns]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

I started the thread so I guess I'll be the one to derail it. A little editing in photoshop would have gone a long way with Time of Wrath I think. Here's before (top) and after (bottom) again...

Gary can you make those bottom units LIME GREEN please? [&o] I miss my lime green army men days.

[vonRocko]

ORIGINAL: doomtrader

Doomtrader, show the real map and counters, not the mods. I guess it is up to the customer to mess with files to fix the game.

Von Rocko, I made clear statements that the screens below are mods. How does the game looks like can be seen at the official product page or at the product subforum.
I don't think that changing how the game looks should be measured in terms of fixing. We are trying to give as much modding possibilities as we can without harm for the engine and the game itself.
Not every game offers such opportunity and not every developer gives feedback how to change the game.

Yes Doomtrader, I understand about the games moddability, but I don't mod, I don't know how nor do I want to learn! I pay money,for the game, to have others write programs and mess with files. It is great to be able to mod a game, but not if you are forced to mod a game to get it in decent shape. You would think that after TOW, you guys could have done better. I remember the same unit and map troubles there. Your games have much potential, but the whole package is cheap and amateurish.

[bairdlander2]

I agree a lot of these games have outdated graphics.I think BftB graphics are much better.