> which tasked the company with working on updates for "America's Army," the 2002 first-person shooter
30 seconds
Ahhh so they're the ones who made that game less realistic and more modern shooter-y. Which I have no doubt is exactly what they were asked to do, because the original AA game was slow and a lot of people hated it compared to ut or cs1.6
Shame though, it was the only game that kinda had that level of realism, with "rifle from prone while waiting can hit you at 400+ yards, but if you're running around you struggle making hits under 100 yards" that encouraged very methodical play with teamwork and spotting.
gundmc [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I still remember sitting through a legitimate field medic first aid course before unlocking the medic class. That game was something else!
dtech [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It was finances by the army as a recruitment tool and to save on training costs, that's why
lawlessone [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I remember sitting in the prison...
petsfed [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> Shame though, it was the only game that kinda had that level of realism, with "rifle from prone while waiting can hit you at 400+ yards, but if you're running around you struggle making hits under 100 yards" that encouraged very methodical play with teamwork and spotting.
The original Ghost Recon came out the year before, and the Delta Force series was already well underway. I recall enduring the interminable mandatory training of America's Army, just to discover that it was a flashier, gamey-er version of games I was already playing.
In fairness, I think you can definitely see AA's impact on the design of e.g. Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter on the PC, but hilariously (and true to form) when ArmA came out in 2006, its clear they took not one cue about how to build a playable game.
dmoy [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Fair, I guess I never played Ghost Recon
I do remember winning a lot of AA games without ever even taking out my rifle, and just using binoculars and telling all my teammates (who were lying in bushes for minutes not moving) where people were moving.
nocoiner [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Wasn’t ArmA the successor to Operation Flashpoint?
Tuna-Fish [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yes. Operation Flashpoint was made by Bohemia Interactive and published by Codemasters, with BI owning the code but Codemasters owning the trademark. When the companies went their separate ways (iirc there was some drama, but can't remember about what), BI had to rename the next installment of the game series.
fetzu [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Operation Flashpoint having also been spun off into “VBS” (Virtual Battlespace Systems) a military combat simulator whose first client/user was incedentally the USMC. So AA’s was probably arguably the first mainstream (from the heavy promotion and the fact it was free, something out of the ordinary for an “AAA Game” at the time) “realistic shooter”, but certainly not the first.
lawlessone [3 hidden]5 mins ago
OF was great, i'd spend hours in the editor just making custom scenarios.
Bjartr [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Doesn't the ARMA series at least support that level of realism?
Hikikomori [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Could snipe people at 2km+ in arma 2.
fetzu [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Which is also (arguably not easily) doable IRL. The most realistic part of it surely being the pacing and “tactical” aspects of it.
somenameforme [3 hidden]5 mins ago
At those distances there's a lot more involved in shots than just bullet drop/gravity, which AFAIK is all that ARMA models.
What do you mean, 'meme video game'?
Played this for weeks with friends in Mumble to climb the (time-trial) leader boards. As always lots of fun + lots of being angry on the person who fumbled the third run in a row (me, most of the times).
The final song in that one is so subtly sophisticated; check out the underlying text. For example, to get it to sing "it doesn't matter now" the user types "tdah zih ntmae trr nnaw"; they're providing the phonetic sounds of every word rather than the words themselves, presumably because it produces better output and it allows them to change tone in the middle of words.
Aardwolf [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Another one is the Microsoft Sam (& co) speech synthesis, it can also produce funny results, like someone making copter sounds with it:
Bad TTS is like an inverse uncanny valley where it's so inhuman it's charming.
shibeprime [3 hidden]5 mins ago
kick it in the front seat
imchillyb [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Ben Bova wrote a book: "Welcome to Moonbase."
I purchased that as a kid, in a souvenir shop, on our way out of Cape Canaveral. We were there specifically to see the Space Shuttle slow-crawl to it's launchpad destination. I never got to see a shuttle take off first hand.
That book, though, began a life-long love of space and all things unexplainable.
I love space, science, and the unknown. That love all comes down to a childhood fascination with the Space Shuttle program, and Ben Bova opening my childish mind to the idea of life on the moon, and how different everything would be.
Thank you Ben Bova. And thank you NASA for daring to dream big. You've both made a lifelong friend.
HN.zip
30 seconds
Ahhh so they're the ones who made that game less realistic and more modern shooter-y. Which I have no doubt is exactly what they were asked to do, because the original AA game was slow and a lot of people hated it compared to ut or cs1.6
Shame though, it was the only game that kinda had that level of realism, with "rifle from prone while waiting can hit you at 400+ yards, but if you're running around you struggle making hits under 100 yards" that encouraged very methodical play with teamwork and spotting.
The original Ghost Recon came out the year before, and the Delta Force series was already well underway. I recall enduring the interminable mandatory training of America's Army, just to discover that it was a flashier, gamey-er version of games I was already playing.
In fairness, I think you can definitely see AA's impact on the design of e.g. Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter on the PC, but hilariously (and true to form) when ArmA came out in 2006, its clear they took not one cue about how to build a playable game.
I do remember winning a lot of AA games without ever even taking out my rifle, and just using binoculars and telling all my teammates (who were lying in bushes for minutes not moving) where people were moving.
brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbr
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6RbEOlqRo
- Here's a web version (with backend): https://webspeak.terminal.ink/
- Steam thread: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=91936...
- "Modern" codebase and builds: https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk/
Pappa pia
Baby got a
The final song in that one is so subtly sophisticated; check out the underlying text. For example, to get it to sing "it doesn't matter now" the user types "tdah zih ntmae trr nnaw"; they're providing the phonetic sounds of every word rather than the words themselves, presumably because it produces better output and it allows them to change tone in the middle of words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_vNhLYW_e4
I purchased that as a kid, in a souvenir shop, on our way out of Cape Canaveral. We were there specifically to see the Space Shuttle slow-crawl to it's launchpad destination. I never got to see a shuttle take off first hand.
That book, though, began a life-long love of space and all things unexplainable.
I love space, science, and the unknown. That love all comes down to a childhood fascination with the Space Shuttle program, and Ben Bova opening my childish mind to the idea of life on the moon, and how different everything would be.
Thank you Ben Bova. And thank you NASA for daring to dream big. You've both made a lifelong friend.
"JohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMaddenJohnMadden"
"uuuuuUuuuuUuuuuuuUuuuuuuUuu"
First episode saw the moon permanently leave Earth orbit.
EDIT: whoops I thought this was moonbase commander, another NASA sponsored game from another time.
That would describe Crypt of the NecroDancer.
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU