Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: "Nick Ferguson" Newsgroups: scea.yaroze.freetalk,scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Net Yaroze 2 ? Please. Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 00:43:48 +0100 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 75 Message-ID: <7gqkr0$iko4@chuka.playstation.co.uk> References: <7gaug1$2mq3@scea> <7gpfti$iko2@chuka.playstation.co.uk> <37304b8c.2367490@www.netyaroze-europe.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: dialup137-51.saqnet.co.uk X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 Xref: chuka.playstation.co.uk scea.yaroze.freetalk:1344 scee.yaroze.freetalk.english:3980 Hey all, :) I'm with Rob on this one. It strikes me as pretty rich that so many people clamouring for a NY2 on this group haven't really turned out a substantial demo on their current Yaroze. If you're struggling (either due to your technical ability, or the amount of time you have to spend on it) with the current machine, what makes you think having a PlayStation 2 to fool about with will make things any easier? If anything, it will only be more difficult! As a brief aside (i.e. rant) - although new technology drives the industry forward, there are really only a handful of developers who push for advances in game design, rather than just make old games with prettier visuals. Unfortunately, there seems to be plenty of evidence that the same disease of "pure techno-lust without intelligent application" exists on this newsgroup. Maybe that's just a result of the sort of people drawn to Yaroze..? This oft-cited argument along the lines of "the PS will soon no longer be a viable platform for developers so we need NY2 to stay up to speed" is the only decent reason I've heard for getting a NY2, but I'm not entirely convinced it will make any real difference in the quality of the demos we see. And by "quality" I don't mean knocking off a clone of some game with nicer graphics (or 100 trees), but coming up with something new and different that you would never see in the commercial scene anymore. Rob's "Adventure Game" (with its knowing piss-take of the action-RPG genre and the Yaroze in-jokes) was the sort of thing I expected to see more of when I first got the machine. Snowball Fight has always struck me as a good, fun two-player game - a bit of an undiscovered NES classic (I had 100's of NES games and it's a shitload better than most of them - and I'm not just saying all this coz James R's my mate). All SBF needs is a few more maps (I fear the much-needed multitap support will never happen) and it would be an OPSM cert. I single these games out not because they are the best-looking or the most ambitious or indeed anything other than the fact that they had a strong impression on me. I wish we saw more games these days and less demos, but I know that's just my preference. I also know I can't talk either - my priorities this year WRT games and Yaroze have, by necessity, not always been what I'd have liked them to have been. Still, I believe I have a valid point which deserves to be made :) With Phil Harrison's recent statements, I think NY2 is likely to happen in the next 2 years. I hope that we see a lot more from the European and US scenes; the quality of the demos is certainly beginning to give the Japanese stuff (which looked to be waaay ahead of us 12-18 months ago) a run for its money. My own wish is for people - once they get to grips with the basics of writing a game - to use the machine's abilities to come up with something new and original, rather than a souped-up clone of an old game (or inferior version of a current one). Surely having a demo which is brave and unusual and clever is only a good thing? I really, really hope the Edinburgh team happen to turn out a storming original game this summer... make us proud, guys! I'd like a Net Yaroze 2, sure - but mainly so I could have a multi-system PlayStation 2 and thus not have to worry about the whole chipping malarkey... a prime benefit of the original NY! :) If anything, the most important thing the Yaroze teaches you is how much bloody work it takes to write a good game these days... Nick F > we all want NY2, but would we benefit from it? I reckon not. First of > all, there isn't one Yaroze demo Ive seen that would benefit from the > 'rumoured' 5000% increase in speed. What it would allow would be for > us to take a simple game and add hundreds more incidental graphics > (eg, racing + 100s of trees whizzing past the side) which wouldn't > fulfill the criteria of the original NY brief (and presumably what the > 2nd would be based on) which was to help allow amateurs to develop and > fulfill their creative ambitions. I personally am not really sure that > 100s more trees shows any advance in what we would be trying to > acheive. The power of the NY2 would allow advancement in graphics and > the game engine, but so far I cant really think of anyone who has > followed the writing a complex game engine thread. That isn't a > putdown at all; the resources available to us are miniscule compared > to full dev houses, and the gap is only widening.