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Matthias

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Everything posted by Matthias

  1. Yeah, that is not really implied by that short quote from the EA CEO with the catchy title. The section at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts#Studio_acquisition_and_management_practices already references it and gives a more varied view. Big companies have big company problems. Nothing new there.
  2. Tried to fix things up, but the German Wikipedia articles are way better as it has more high quality and recent sources. There is an interview http://www.gamestar.de/artikel/wie-schlimm-ist-electronic-arts-wirklich-im-reich-des-boesen,3059248,seite2.html (sadly only in German) where Louis Castle described how the creative freedom and unlimited budgets EA granted them, actually let to hiring too much inexperienced staff as well as feature creep and waste of developer resources in their games as all ideas, even the mediocre ones, were implemented. I always thought the opposite was the case: reducing workforce and cutting budgets. I am not sure if he ever made such statements in an English language article.
  3. I agree that this seems to be a common misconception. However many publicly available sources with high impact all repeat that claim. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwood_Studios#Acquisition_by_EA_and_liquidation is full of gaps, very one sided in that regard and contains a lot of unverified claims Also these community run social media sites like https://www.facebook.com/westwoodstudios and https://twitter.com/westwoodstudios spread a one sided view making people only remember the positive elements. This nostalgic "what if" dream also reinforces the perception that something fully functional was taken from the community by evil corporate overlords.
  4. Yep, I have to agree on this. It reminds me of this terrible XCOM 3rd person shooter where you can "control" your AI combatants and blow up a lot of generic alien enemies. It might sound great, but become really trashy.
  5. I have no idea why they started C&C: Arena in the first place after Sole Survivor was so unsuccessful. Good marketing as they pretty much marketed those quick uninformed turn-ups into brave new design decisions in their "game designer interview" clips.
  6. I am not a lawyer, but it could also be a copyright thing. http://artlawjournal.com/night-photos-eiffel-tower-violate-copyright/
  7. Weird that the radar displays a green background on a desert map.
  8. "Would you like to spend 42 pink Tiberium crystals to finish construction instantly?"
  9. Matthias

    Throwback Thursday for 22nd October

    But the Brotherhood of Nod only had the technology and budget of a 90s video game producer so no one believed them.
  10. A leak of unreleased developer material with extensive uncontrolled press coverage. Looks like we are becoming more and more professional.
  11. Cool. Especially the UI improvements are impressive as there is no direct access to the source code. The great RA95 map editor was also a huge inspiration for https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/3377
  12. They should at least disable http://www.commandandconquer.com/en/beta-registration Those people get paid to maintain the franchise and the community is actually doing a far better job in their free time. *shaking head*
  13. Matthias

    OpenRA July Release Available Now

    Too few people giving the playtests a try and reporting bugs is indeed a problem and delayed this stable release significantly.
  14. I think this hobbyist service is more professional than Westwood Online ever was. Great work!
  15. That is one of the reasons we added the mod chooser to highlight them, too.
  16. Matthias

    What's in the Pipeline for OpenRA?

    See https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/4361 for the WIP.
  17. Matthias

    The Cynical Brit Reviews OpenRA

    I posted some Tiberian Dawn mod gamecasts at https://plus.google.com/100332364931123881367/posts and Twitter/Facebook to compensate
  18. Matthias

    Free alternatives to classic games

    Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn Command & Conquer: Red Alert Dune 2000 OpenRA
  19. Matthias

    OpenRA Release 20130915

    Our September release is another huge jump, with over 1,100 changes and improvements by 17 authors. The headline changes in this build are: Refined Fog of War behavior (buildings and ore/tiberium/spice are now frozen as they were last seen). Added game options for starting units, starting cash, team construction, shroud, fog of war. Reworked engineer behavior - C&C again uses the classic behavior, and RA/D2K external (C&C Generals style) capturing. Overhauled firing, projectile, and explosion effects for all mods. Native support for the D2K game files, significantly improving the artwork and sound quality. Fixed windows installer problems. A lot more bug, crash, and performance fixes. Please note that that OpenRA now requires GPU support for framebuffer objects. This should not be a problem for most computers manufactured in the last 5-7 years, but some older high-end GPUs may not work from this release onward. The full list of changes is far too large to include here, so we recommend clicking through to the human-optimized changelog or full list of commits. If youd like to get involved, the best point of contact is our IRC channel #openra (webchat). This release also adds beta support for Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 assets. Work has started on an official Tiberian Sun mod, but we dont expect this to be ready for several more months. In the meantime, modders can take advantage of the new voxel and shp(ts) support in their own projects. D2K now uses the original translucent explosion effects. The overhauled lobby interface offers several new game options. An early test showing voxel units in OpenRA (we have no plans on shipping this!). We have also taken this time to overhaul our website. Its hot off the virtual press, so please let us know if you spot any typos or rendering glitches.
  20. Matthias

    OpenRA Mammoth May Madness Release

    Did it myself at https://submit.symantec.com/whitelist as no one voluntered. Oh and http://www.moddb.com/games/openra/news/playtest-20130629 had been released.
  21. Matthias

    OpenRA Mammoth May Madness Release

    See https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/3326 for problems with Norton Internet "Security".
  22. Matthias

    OpenRA Mammoth May Madness Release

    Maybe the fact that we use dynamic code generation for the new syncreport.log / automatic Trait documentation or that it can download stuff like new maps or Freeware assets gets falsely detected as malware? Please ask Symantec to whitelist us. Code can be checked at https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/
  23. Matthias

    OpenRA Release 20130514

    Today we're announcing our long-overdue "Mammoth May Madness" release. In the last 7 months, 26 authors have contributed more than 1,100 individual changes and improvements. Some of the highlights in this release include: Significantly improved AI. UI improvements to the menus and lobby. New UI for replays, spectators and defeated players. New construction radius limits for C&C and D2K. Repairable bridges. Desert theater for RA. Left-click mouse controls (beta). 5 new missions for RA. 20 new multiplayer maps across all three mods. Significant balance improvements across all three mods. More bugfixes than you can shake a tesla coil at. Screenshots A Composite screenshot showing the new lobby tooltips and player color selector in the Dune 2000 mod The Red Alert mod includes a new main menu and desert-themed shellmap. The C&C and D2K mods now require buildings to be constructed near a construction yard, reducing the effectiveness of multiple-building-queue base-walking strategies. Bridges can now be repaired by sending an engineer into the rubble. Head to the Official Website or Desura to download.
  24. Matthias

    Your top ten favorite freeware games

    Black Mesa Source OpenRA Urban Terror DOTA 2 Settler 2.5 Return to the Roots OpenTTD Warsow 0.AD Hedgewars Dune Legacy In fact Black Mesa: Source is a mod and mostly everything on this list is Free/Libre Open Source Software except game files and not "Freeware" or "Free-2-Play" how they call it nowadays.
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