f13.net

So, this is something I personally want to do (not to mention it's been brought up a number of times with people asking), but I want to see if people will participate. I'm thinking mostly PC games moving from 1999 forwards, and they need to be compatible with XP & Vista. Each Game would get a subforum under a main forum for this little thing where people could keep their playthroughs and whatnot. Anyway, poll attached for what we'll do. Also, to gauge interest, post.

Edit: Poll will run for a week or so. Also, the first game (not really, but a forum will exist, will be for Stone Soup, because it's fucking awesome).

Edit 2: Fallout 3 is not an option for now.

Edit 3: Also, what should we call it?

Edit 4: Oh, and 2 weeks or 4 weeks for each game?

I don't get it. Is this like a book club except for games where we vote on which game we'll play, play it for a bit, then give a "review" of it?

No, we just talk about it. Let's Play at SA is a little more anal retentive and ridiculous than I expect from us (nor do I want it like that) - but yea, it's basically a game club. There's no review involved. We don't pick brand new games nor is there some cohesive summary at the end. It's just a kind of organized tandem gaming.

This seems like a good excuse to lay off LotRO for a bit.

No clue what Lets Play is, since SA isn't my crowd. But this sounds like fun.

Let's Play is an extreme version of vicarious gaming. Someone (or more than one) person plays and records practically everything that happens in a game. It's fairly ridiculous. But it sounds better than book club.

Yeah this sounds like fun.  A good chance to motivate myself to go back to some good games I might have missed.

I don't think we would need longer than 2 weeks per game, even if people are still playing after two weeks the desire for everyone to still talk about it would diminish somewhat.  Could be dependent on the game though, A FPS is a lot quicker to play through than a RPG generally.

Sort of like the Dwarf Fortress thread?  :oh_i_see:

Does there really need to be a separate forum for each game? The Graveyard is just about ready to go to two pages of index as it is.

For everyone who's not familiar, just head over (http://"http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=191") and take a peek.

In their version, thread starters post something like Catch the Fever! Let's Play Patapon! (http://"http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3052950") or Worms gotta swim, Spice gotta flow. Let's Play Dune! (http://"http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3059831") and post videos of themselves playing. The particular one I saw, of some Sonic title had commentary as well. I think it's a pretty cool idea.

I wouldn't dump the forums if we kept it going and had actual participation, alternatively, we could just have one archive forum and cleanse the main forum each time and people could label threads "Hinterland - Schild" or whatever so it stayed organize. Wouldn't take much culling and setup each time unless we had a few dozen people doing it.

Also, blame MMORPGs for that particular grave overflow.

Videos and whatnot are too much of a pain in the ass to take that particular angle though, unless people really like FRAPs. Hell, I might frap some stuff, but the ease of screenshots is why I want to keep this to PC (or ROMs) for the most part.

I think you got a good theme going but your poll choices are....odd.
But I'd pick Hinterlands since I don't know what is it about.

I have no problem adding things to the poll.

Well, for starters, I love audience participation in LPs. It makes it very interesting to see how stuff goes and how you dealt with choices. Hence RPG is always preferable to shooters because: Hey guys do i use rocket launcher or shotguns? is less interesting than So how do i handle this guy? Do I shoot him or bluff him?

Those memorable LPs are always filled with choices that creates consequences, whether it's hilarious or lead to a complete failure. I think that Blade Runner game LP I saw on SA was really good. Or you can always do a turn based game and set a time period where you let people make decisions based on how far you are in the game. Hey if it leads to fail, we can always reload before decision time and discuss what went wrong. Shooters are...passive entertainment. Either you do a vid and people follow it with your commentaries or it plays like a bad documentary that make people hit the CTRL-F4 key after 1 minutes in.

YMMV.

edit: going over poll options:
Half-Life 2 (w/ Episodes 1 & 2): passive entertainment.
Bioshock: somewhat passive but lots of disturbing moments in game that people may never seen before, worth a shot with good commentary.
Deus Ex: lots of ppl praised it for good hybrid of RPG & Shooter elements. I'd say give it a shot, I never played this one before.
C&C Red Alert 3: No.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Well. It does have interesting locales but the missions are lackluster. Probably just passive vid entertainment.
Mass Effect: Good choice. Captain Jerkwad in Space.
Sacred 2: Nah.
Hinterland: I don't know wtf this is.

Let's play requires someone be incredibly, incredibly persistant and anal retentive about creating the entire thing. Like I said, this is more like a book club type thing where everyone plays the same thing and does more of a screenshots/diary thing.

So, uh, where are your suggestions?

i looked at your options and liked some of them. Just that the inclusion of red alert 3 and half life 2 a little odd. Sacred 2?
It's just off a glance comment really, nothing to get serious about.

Suggestions:
Vampires the Bloodlines RPG Shooter
Jagged alliance 2 Squad strategy game
Civilization 4: Fall From Heaven Mod turn based empire building game

Something recent:
Left 4 Dead Hardest difficulty run of you guys. Weekly vid release. With voice chat lulz.

Not getting serious, just clearing it up for people who wander in here later.

Also, an all crowbar run of Half-Life 2 is worth investigating, maybe. Perhaps all handgun though as the crowbar can't do some things.

Only thing I haven't finished in that list is Hinterlands. Ho-hum.

Clive Barker's Undying.*
System Shock 2.
Thief 1 & 2.


Did an all gravity gun run of HL2 episodes. It was shit. All crowbar would be even more boring.

Fucking hell., Remove poll button needs to go away. Fixing. Sigh. Goddamnit.

Does Thief 1 work in Vista 64?

I'd do this. It sounds like it'd be a blast. I downloaded Stone Soup last night but haven't fired it up yet.

I've always wanted to see this, awesome suggestion rk47.

Freespace 2 + FSO (just to make the graphics bearable).


Dang it I'm voting for this too, but I keep missing the steam sales of it!

It can be problematic getting it running on 64 bit OSes.  I know I haven't been able to play the Steam version since I switched OSes, but then I also haven't tried too hard.  Anyone else want to do the legwork on getting this running since I'm a lazy bastard?

I would definately do it, but unfortunately, I don't have the time.

As far as Gaming Graveyard, you could probably ixnay most of it. HGL, Planetside, SWG, and Titan Quest are all pretty much completely dead.  Hell, rather than have individual child boards, just have a dedicated thread for each game.

Well you have a what you are playing sticky, how about calling the new board "what we are playing".


That may get confusing as i wouldn't doubt that there will be the occasional post like this (http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=34) which would be messed up if it appeared on page 6 of some thread. 

A wiki for each game would be kind of cool.  Start a new game every 2 weeks and freeze the wiki after 4 weeks...

The wiki think would be up to NiX! :)

I think it sounds like fun.  Reading the lets play Patapon over at SA is what got me excited about the game.  Personally, I think it would be a nightmare to do for longer games but something short like Hinterland would work quite well.

I still need a name for this thing, though I'm partial to The Radicalthon.

I'm thinking Warcraft III / TFT over Battle.net would be the way to go.  Save the replay and have people do their thing.

I'm thinking I shouldn't have mentioned Let's Play and just called it Gameplay Diaries and Discussions so videos could stop being mentioned. The Let's Play people at SA are damned fanatical, moreso than I and reach levels of OCD that just simply shouldn't exist. I'm grateful for it but not trying to emulate it. So, no, I don't think people should "do their thing" with replays of WCIII.  :mob:

F13 Gameday

Herein lies Ashrik, the Minotaur Berserker
Beloved of Trog
Slain by a Centaur Archer
...on lvl 5 of the dungeon.

Bastards!



So, how does it work?

Warcraft III records the game as a sort of a scripted map with the player running in spectator mode.  Makes for handy analysis when you simultaneously have access to all points of the map.  Also, because the camera tilt + rotate remains the same as in-game you can do pretty nice screenshots of the other guy destroying your base in full cinematic mode.  If you got really batshit you could probably do machinima in it with a fair amount of ease without even touching the editor.

Which is why it makes a nice diary tool even if you're not uploading video.

I know how it works and you're talking about an entirely different exercise than what I'm talking about. Also, I can count the number of people who would want to be involved with WCIII on half of one hand. And even then, they'd want to play DOTA. But DOTA isn't a game. It's a mod. And the only mod I'm going to contemplate is FFH2.

We'll do DOTA when Champion of Champions or whatever comes out. Or Demigod. Whichever is first.

If you want to see a good example of an LP... KOTOR2.

I'd so do a FFH LP, but I voted for Vampire. 

So how's it work if you die/ lose? End the LP right there or just mention it, reload and continue on?

Hardcore mode is better for things like Titan Quest, Stone Soup and Diablo. And since it's diaries (AND NOT LP), it doesn't really matter what you do. Would be up to each person.

HAI I WIN

Bloodlines, too funny.  Go go Emo rage. 

Edit: for the record, I'd also go for  :cthulu:

Fortunately for me, I have never read a LP.  I'm on board with the Stone Soup thing, and any other game in which you can die horribly.

Hey, it's a great game that I haven't revisited in a long time.  Upon looking at the unofficial patch notes it also looks like a lot of stuff has been added to it.  Now I'm stuck in the quandry where apparently the unofficial patch fixes the problem where if you have more than 3 gigs of RAM the game reports that you only have 15 meg and won't launch.  Apparently the unofficial patch fixes this, but in order to install the unofficial patch for the Steam version of the game you have to have launched it once.  So I'm basically stuck in a chicken/egg scenario.

My quandary with VtM is that I am mid-game.  I could start over, though.

Any game that includes "Can I smell your hair?" as a pickup line gets my seal of approval.  :why_so_serious:

Mid-game being the interminably long sewer part of the game?  Yeah, that's when I turn on God mode and just blow through that section of it.

That section has never been hard after the first time I tried it.  Hell, you can sneak through most of it even with really crappy sneaking.

Fun game, I would definitely be down for a new run.  Perhaps a return to a Malk.  They are always fun.

Not hard, annoying.  You had a perfectly serviceable action RPG going and then they stuck in a half-assed shooter into the middle of the game, and it goes on FOREVER.  It's the glaring flaw of the game, and I see no reason not to blow through it as quickly as possible.

Noclip is faster.  I did the same thing my last four times through or so.  It's the one part of the game that plays absolutely the same (and is absolutely boring) no matter how your character's built.

I am not sure.  Playing one of those ugly-ass mofos, so it's all sewers, all the time.

I'm up for it.

I have no idea what this is, but I voted for D2:LOD Hardcore.

Edit: So it's basically a gaming group then? 

VtM is great, which is why I am so   :grin:

(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s104/Lloyd_Humph/emo.jpg)

I'd love to do system shock 2 if I could find my effing disc.  Seeing as that hasn't happened yet, I voted STALKER.

SA's Let's Play is probably my guiltiest pleasure.  I'd be completely behind an F13 version.  Colour me enthusiastic.

Heh, I have Dreamfall...Xbox version though.

Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy should be on the next poll.

I was just going to set the first month or two as the results from this poll, like 2 weeks of Bloodlines, 2 weeks of LoD, etc.

I'll join in with this when I can use a PC again. Voted for now anyway :)

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2472531 for those curious.



I voted for Mass Effect, since that's pretty much the only game on that list I have installed.

Ok, read a couple LPs.  Looks like an interesting idea.

However, I'm shocked that Planescape isn't up there.

PS runs for shit in Vista64. It's a mess. I finally got it working but it wrecks havok on anyone with dual monitors. Also, colordepth lol. Diablo 2 is the same problem but it plays a bit nicer.

Also, we're not doing Let's Plays. I'm removing that from the goddamn thread now.

I know, but I never finished PS so it would be perfect for me.

So do it.  For me.

You're too flaky for favors.

This is true.

My attention wanders like gypsies.

You are a gypsy.

Wait, are we talking about VtM or HalfLife 2?

Diablo 2, to me, seems highly likely to just turn into an endless series 'I got this and this and this to drop'.

It makes for great gameplay, but I am guessing it won't make for great literature.

For Hardcore mode, it would be more like "I got this far before dying".

Definitely VTM. The Fun Factor just dropped like a rock at that stage. I was playing a Blood mage Tremere and would have to stop to drink rat's blood after 2-3 encounters cause I never invested on firearms.

I think I actually turned on no clip and just flew through the floors after the first few levels.

So it looks like it'll be Bloodlines, I should've asked, is there a way to run it at 1920x1200 and crank shit up?

For future polls, I recommend Mount&Blade.

Bloodlines is still $20 on Steam  :ye_gods:
Didn't that game release in like 1976?

So how do we do this and when?

Planescape should be old enough to run under Virtualization, no? Isn't that the first things gamers do when they get a retarded new OS? Establish backwards compability.

Not sure about a res hack, but Tessmage.com has some high-res NPC reskins on their downloads page. You just have to make it past all the nude mods to get there.  They also have a big fan patch that restores & completes some unfinished content.  No idea if it works with the steam version or not.

Why would you want to make it past the nude mods?  :awesome_for_real:

From what I remember there are instructions on that widescreen gaming board Sky has mentioned before, whatever it is called, for editing the settings to support widescreen. I know I played it at 1680x1050 last time.

My god that's a horrible website. Can't someone make some kind of law to stop people designing websites so badly?

So, I got the unofficial patch installed and the resolution patcher. I have the respatch files and will gladly attach them to the first thread, but let me say this:

1. Textures disappear, don't know if that's due to the resolution patch or the unofficial patch (this had not happened to me prior).
2. It's.... hard to navigate the character skill sheet. Also, 2D textures are laughably bad.

Anyway, should Bloodlines stay ahead come Monday, I'll start things off with that and it'll run for 2 weeks.

I played with the unofficial patch my last VTM go-around and didn't have any problems so it's probably the res patcher.

Shame. I'll have to figure out how to set windowed mode then. All very annoying. I forgot how buggy this thing was when I put it on the list.

I've always kinda sorta wanted to play that Vampire game, so this sounds cool.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com for future reference :)

Did you use the respatch from there, schild?

I'll also see if I can find my discs and get it running. Haven't played it in ages.

(I voted Thief 2!)

I voted for Undying, but Vampire sounds not too shabby. Need to find my old disk.

This makes me want to pull out my copy of Vampire as well. I only ever played a Nos, I'd be interested in trying a different tack now that I have a much better video card to play it on.

The game is still a mess. ;_;

When I played through it recently with the unofficial patch I almost felt like it caused as many problems as it solved.

I want to point out that this poll has neither Dungeon Crawl SS, or Dwarf Fortress.

I'm thinking of just making a forum called Radicalthon, and people can post diaries of any character and any game they want. If people want to play the same game, so be it. But most people have played all or most of the games on the list, and it'll be more interesting - I THINK - to let people pick the game they want to write that much about. Just a thought.

Probably get more input that way.

BTW, do you want that keyboard or what?

Isn't this what this forum is already about?  People posting about what they are playing?

Theres something to be said about sharing a directed experience.  I bought Bloodlines ages ago on special and never got around to installing or playing it, this is a good motivation for me to give it a try.  Thats what I'm looking for in some sort of gaming club, the extra motivation to try those old games I overlooked, or revisit good games worth the repeat.

It's the micron cherry switch one, right?


Never a good answer. Might as well say "Let's combine pc, mmog, the graveyard, and every other gaming forum since it's all just about gaming.

HP.  Unknown if it's cherry switch.  I think I sent you the model numbers and such.  Don't know if you can tell from that.

I think that would just end up like an extended version of BIIF, and without the directed experience as Wasted put it, there won't end up being a lot of discussion beyond the initial post (just like the majority of BIIF's).

I got to pretty much the end of this game and literally no joke I got stuck in an area I could jump into but not out of.  I decided fuck it, imagined my own ending and /quit.

My guy had like melee 9 though, it was easy mode, shrug off bullets while draining bitches, thin groups out with fingernail uppercuts.  Good times.  My female roommate kept watching me play, she has a vampire fetish, sealed set of Twilight (clit lit ftl) etc.

I am hooked to the radio program that plays in the first scene. I literally can't get out of the apartment until it's finished. Anyone knows how long it is?

Five or ten minutes.  (It's been a long time since I've played.)  The radio in that game was awesome.  At various points in the story it changes, too.

There's lots of this stuff in the game as well.   Other radios will have new 'episodes' of callers for much amusement. Oh, and try the TV now and then.   Especially if you're Malkavian.  Actually, the whole game is  :grin:  if you're a Malk.

Actually I answered some questions at character creation and ended up a Malkavian. Didn't really know what it was: Vampires the Masquerade is one of the few RPG settings I really despised, too close to larping and too many dimwits trying hard to pretend charisma.

But the videogame looks good.

The secret to running a good PnP Vampire game is to enforce a strict "no melodrama/angsty bullshit" rule.  Granted, the source material makes that hard to do, but it is possible.

The P&P RPG had worse problems than being LARP-ish.  Like the fact that it was nearly impossible to give a player free reign over creating their characters while maintaining a cogent story that didn't take for-fucking-ever to actually start.  During character creation players choose a clan, and that the act of choosing different clans effectively fucked all interaction between players unless the GM slaved like a dog to give player A a reason to give a fuck about what player B was doing when all clans were ostensibly in a cold war with each other.  Otherwise the game degenerated into a story about how someone would off prostitutes night after night after night, which would, incidentally, work if the game was subtitled "I am down on whores and shan't stop ripping them."

Yeah, I never really bought into the whole 'self preservation/no killing' thing Jack tries to sell you on. You could see it in his eyes.

We solved the Clan cold war by generally giving our PCs more reason to trust (and work with) one another than their Clans.  Well, as much as self-serving leeches can.

Somehow myself and another player always managed to make characters which would start with the worst conflict in the group.  We would pull some nasty stuff on one another.  Damned if we were going to let anyone else beat us to making the other miserable though, and in the end they always ended up with the strongest bonds in the group.  So it's possible with a good group who are interested in fun and great RP.

There were some easy tricks to accomplish that. Threat of Sabbat attacks for one, the Prince of the city staking somebody in front of the (future) party for past transgressions against the peace at least helped you party members not killing each other. Personally I preferred Anarch campaigns, they didn't give that much shit about bloodlines and had to duck both the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Good times  :awesome_for_real:

I still prefer invisible ninjas.

Did I tell the story about that one, playing at an official AD&D tournament? My singer and I were playing nefarious villians hiding out amongst friendly adventurers. He was an assassin and I was a m-u/thief. They thought we were both friendly rogues, and we had trap-checking duty. Which translated into "fill our pockets with the choice loot, then hide in shadows during combat." The other players, the DM, everyone was so pissed off; the DM finally lost it. Started sending invisible ninjas against us.

Then he got smacked down by the admins of the event, we were given a pass to the next round of competition for excellent roleplaying. :)

There is no griefing in PnP, just excellent roleplaying!  :why_so_serious:

So true.  All three of those PKs were completely justified.

You know, a good one to add to that list may be "The ship".

If people played it, that'd be great. :oh_i_see:

Well, its cheep now, and we could technically take over a server, and make sure to use our form names. I just see all sorts of hilarity in this idea. Don't do it as a "all the time" thing, be maybe we could do some competitions.

I am sure at one point in time each of us has wanted to murder the others. =)

I think this is a swell idea, by the way. Deep inside me I have a horribly geeky Birth of the Federation after-action report, written from the perspective of the Cardassians as they take over the universe, and it's been waiting ten years to come out.

Too bad it is all PC. I don't think my rig is very good for gaming.   

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines it is!

Diablo 2 Hardcore 2 weeks later. Go! Also, Ongoing Stone soup! Making Radicalthon forum, initiate forum spam.

Cool.  You know I'm down w/ the D2HC.

You should throw M&Blade up there for voting at some point.  It's ripe for one of those in-game character diaries.  Seriously.  I captured a damn prince and traded him to get one of our lower end Khans back.