shinRaiden
Oct 18 2005, 16:30
21 days left in the US people! http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif
Quote[/b] ]First off, I'm not a console fanboy, and to be honest the best use of them imho is for wheel chocks on trucks. I've always preferred the sharper displays and enhanced editing capabilities of the PC platform, and I've always been suspicious of the viability of console ports of PC games. That said, OFP on the Xbox works. It honestly actually does work, and if you stop to think about what that means it's going to really spin the gears in your head.
I had the chance to go on a merry little vacation this summer, and as a obsessed fanboy I dutifully paid a visit to BIS. After arriving in Prague, I got stuffed in the trunk of a small car by a bunch of big burly ex-military types and driven to an undisclosed location somewhere in the greater Prague metro area. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif After being pried out of the trunk I looked around at a familiar looking house with a very familiar logo hanging discretely by the entrance. The general location is fairly remotely isolated, but the house has a clear view (free fire zone?) of all the approaches and is heavily secured. It's also surrounded by dense forests at a suitable range filled with things that go bump in the night. The hill above is also likely secured, that might be where they hid the tank. The village down the road is narrow and likely filled with informants on the lookout for n00bish looking people excitedly pointing at things while reciting the list contents of Data3d.pbo Definitely not a place to go uninvited, because as the old saying goes, if you see the flash it's too late.
After an extensive security check to verify that I wasn't smuggling in any EA contraband or recording devices ("Oh yeah, the other pocket, d'oh. Hmm, how did that get there? Honest, it's not mine, I swear! http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif ) I got ushered into the lounge meeting area. The villa is a partially remodeled upscale lodge-resort-type building, and is very nice, much nicer than the cheapo rathole I stayed in while in Prague. They have a nice projector theater setup in there, with extra padding on the walls and doors so as not to disturb people working. Interestingly, the DVD collection by and large is almost exclusively old John Wayne Movies.
After a little bit Marek himself came down to give me a tour of his little empire. He's incredibly humble and pragmatic about his achievements despite being a very successful businessman in a number of markets. I'd done a little bit of homework going in so I knew a little about some of the other affiliated businesses, but it's still amazing the amount of work that he has his hands in across multiple sectors of the computer software market and across Europe. Definitely a key player to watch, especially over the next few years as Eastern Europe comes more fully into the EU.
The first stop was the office shared by Placebo, Sith, and DnA. Placebo was off on yet another vacation so I didn't get banned from the forums for his Uber-Admin pleasure. The amusing thing about gaming companies is that when the boss walks in, the minions all scurry TO the games, instead of FROM them. The conversation went something like this :
Marek : "Hey, whatcha doing?"
DnA : "Sir! Playing Xbox, Sir!"
Sith : "Yeah, just some more testing. Who's the grub?"
Marek : "This is (shinraiden), he's wandering around today, so give him a tour ok?"
DnA : "Ah that guy. Heh-heh. Nice to meet you. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/rofl.gif So, we like show him the Xbox and stuff?"
Marek : "Sure. (Placebo) isn't in today, so feel free to borrow his."
Sith : "I think (Placebo) had his rigged up for video capture, but it shouldn't be too hard to take it apart."
Marek : "No problem, I got it" - and proceeded to yank the spaghetti mess of video cables out of the back of poor Placebo's Xbox. (My apologies to poor Placebo for having to put it all back together.)
As DnA started to show me the Xbox, he explained some of the details about the Xbox development process. The developer version Xbox's are a cool transparent green and have hooks for loading disc images off a network server. Since the guts are essentially a normal PC, development is done on a PC then quickly packed into an image and sync'd onto the Xbox over the LAN. I'm not certain about the development process for Playstations and Gamecube/Revolution, but the platform commonality between the Xbox and a standard PC makes it very easy for development. Whether that still holds up for Xbox/360 development remains to be seen.
What you do need to remember about the Xbox though is the baseline system guts :
CPU : Intel Mobil Celeron 733mhz/133mhz FSB
GPU : ~Geforce3Ti (Using Special Xbox DirectX)
RAM : 64mb
HDD : ~10GB IDE shared bus with DVD drive
I haven't played a console in a very long while, and even then not hardly at all. With any new game I always notice load times as I'm impatient to dive right in. As you well know from the PC, the OFP load point is at the beginning of the mission where it loads the map and objects needed, then the mission content. So in the PC OFP you have a big mission loading before you get to the main start screen. BIS removed that in the Xbox so that as soon as it boots up, it kicks you almost immediately to the main launch screen.
Placebo had it set in "Release" mode, so DnA switched it to "Developer" mode to switch through the missions and profiles quicker, rather than stay in the campaign system. The campaigns are all there, as well as most if not all the addon missions. I didn't get a good look at the list to confirm it, and that wasn't the intent anyway, it was to look at the functionality. Like the PC game, you've got three easy to access options : Single, Live (Network), and Editor. I didn't get the chance to see it on the Xbox Live network since they were just on a LAN, but the developers assured me that the notoriously bloated net code had been completely overhauled and it was now something that they could be really proud of. We'll have to see what Network Analyzer has to say about that. ;-) Options mainly center around configuring your user profile and your controllers. OFP:Elite has a couple of preset profiles for each controller type AND operation mode, and you can customize them as you chose.
The first thing we took a look at was the mission editor. As you probably know already, there's no keyboard for the Xbox, so that changes things around a bit. The editor is significantly more than the SP/MP Templates, but not quite a complement to the full PC mission editor. You first start with a basic template that fits the map and mission profile, then tap one button to bring up a menu to add a unit or group. Tap another button to select that component, then use either the pad or the stick (I forgot, it's been a couple months) to move it around. Tap-and-push, that's all that's needed. Same thing for waypoints and triggers. Both of course don't have the edit fields you're used to, but are prepopulated with the options lists you need make a successful mission.
This is the point that the mission editor debate kicks in. Without the full editor and external coding tools and a keyboard etc-etc, you can't make some of the crazy scripting functionality and epic cinematic missions that we're used to in OFP : PC. However, in a later discussion with Marek about the development, he talked about where you have to draw the line in terms of implementation. Yes it's annoying that it's not in the Xbox. But more importantly, it's not needed to make a quality mission. How many missions have we played that have exaggerated intro's, music, and cinematics, then suck for gameplay? For BIS, supporting technical SPAM was far down the priority list compared to enabling the users to make playable and enjoyable content.
You the readers are all going to hate me for this, but I neglected to ask the details about future addon content, since that's such a crucial part of the OFP : PC world. All I got was that "it's supported via Xbox Live, more info to come later." What's likely to happen is that BIS will make an announcement and explanation of what's available and how it will work sometime (soon I hope) after the launch.
Next up we went in-game to see what they really accomplished. The Xbox was hooked up to a medium sized average tube TV. Visually everything was as crisp as could be. At home I play OFP and VBS normally in a 1280x1024 window on one of two 19" CRT monitors set to 1600x1200, so I'm picky about the sharpness and resolution. That's another reason why I don't like consoles. But when I took a step back and considered it for what it was - a console game plugged into a TV - it was as good as it could be. I didn't remember to ask if the TV was NTSC or PAL, but you can get a similar setup on your home computer by switching your refresh to 60hz and 640x480, or just running an S-Video-out patch if your video card supports it, and turn up the AA/AS.
On the other hand, such a setup doesn't adequately or accurately reflect what you're going to see on OFP : Elite on your TV. The content has all been completely rebuilt over the comparable CWC and RES content. You'll recognize it by the roles of course, but the new detail and artistry is wonderful. A lot of people have complained about how it appears that VBS1 content was lifted and dropped into OFP : Elite. After seeing Elite however, and in talking with the developers, and in light of the time I've spent with VBS, I'm more convinced that the similarities is due to VBS1 getting early preview builds of content intended for Xbox and Armed Assault. But in any case, the underlying technical differences are such that the Xbox content might as well be all new content that just happens to look like the models in VBS1.
The next item of note is the graphics immersion. It was hard to take mental notes, because it did what it was supposed to, that is not be visually distracting. BIS spent a lot of time and effort researching researching how players visually sense their environment, and it's paid off. The visual environmental effects are not noticed at first, because you're not supposed to notice them. Rather, you're supposed to concentrate on your task, and the effects impact your experience. In one mission I was running up a hill from a forest to a town when DnA told me to stop and turn around. I did, then turned back towards the village. He told me to keep doing it until I noticed the dynamic visual difference between the views. While the effect is really cool, what makes it awesome is that you don't notice it because it's so natural and smooth. Running into town, I didn't notice any problems, because the problems with collisions and shadows etc were fixed. It ran normally and naturally, and when it does that it gets far more immersive. There were the birds and the bugs if you concentrated on them, but normally you don't notice them because they're environmental ambiance like they should be, not a visual distraction.
Of course there was bad guys in town. The last console shooter I played admitted was Goldeneye along time ago, it's really fuzzy now. But I do remember hating it because the sloppy aiming was swiveled around the wrist. That doesn't work for pistols let alone rifles, and BIS didn't go that route. Rather they used the same animation system that we're used to with Torso / full-body-motion aiming, and the calibration is sufficiently weighted so your gun isn't flopping around, but is still soft enough that you have to be careful if you want to aim precisely. And it works, it works smoothly, and it works naturally. Like I said, I hate consoles and I hardly play them, but even I was able to pick up the obese controller and quite quickly get the hang of things. If there was any trouble, it was because DnA and Placebo both personally prefer controller layouts totally different from each other, although DnA didn't say too much about Placebo's eccentricities since since on a normal day Placebo can toss stuff at the back of DnA's head in their office.
Having run around on foot, next it was time to hop in something and drive and fly. No surprises with vehicle driving, if you drive like I do in-game you live with the consequences for getting TK'd by your team members who now have to get out and walk. Same with helicopters. The controller is very flexible to give a wide range of motion to the flight controls, but if you're heavy on the stick or erratic, then you're going to bite the farm. Any complaints about flight controls on a gamepad go in the same bucket that flying with a keyboard does, it's not a natural interface. But it gets the job done, and a n00b like me can make it work reasonablely well.
Lastly I flew down to a beach to check out the water. This I think will open a whole new chapter in the OFP experience over the next several platforms, since the water is volumetric and dynamic. This means REAL modeled waves. Now go over to BF2. It's a perfect sheet of glass. At least good old OFP had tides and moving 'wave' heights. But OFP : Elite introduces real waves with real crests and troughs. If you hop in a PBR, it goes up the wave, then down the other side. Up, then down. Up, then down. And if you take it sideways it tosses you around, though I didn't get it to roll. Driving the PBR, you look towards land and see it bobbing up and down sometimes hidden by the waves. We're going to have a lot of fun out on the water.
After we'd abused poor Placebo's Xbox for a while Marek came back to take me on more of the tour. We poked our heads in on a few other people then went down the hall to his office. I was pleased to see that he too is a proud member of the dual monitor addicts club. Better still, off the end of this desk is the medium-sized widescreen Plasma flatpanel that you saw from Ralphwiggum's E3 secret camera phone video. After chatting about the weather and other pleasantries, we got back to business and he handed the controller over to me to play around some more while sitting there in his office. OFP : Elite is not a button-mashing console rage-machine. Like the standard OFP, it takes calm and decisive action to survive, let alone succeed, although there's room for jumping on the couch yelling "BOOM, HEADSHOT!!!111" when you finally nail that sadistic little camper who's been ruining your raid on the village.
The other red flag item of concern with the Xbox was the action menu. In OFP you have a massive command menu and a unwieldy action menu. The command menu is widely scorned, and the action menu is aggravating. The concern was if that was the model to be used on the Xbox, how to make it work. Well, they rebuilt it and it works. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/yay.gif The command menu has been gutted and the functionality by and large moved elsewhere. The action menu pops up the single most likely action when it should be obvious. For example, if you move up to a vehicle getIn point, you'll see a single action menu item, triggered by one of the quad buttons, for the most likely command of "Get in vehicle as (something)". If that's not what you want to do, which isn't likely, you tap another button to popup the full list then scroll down usually no more than one or two items. It's simple, it's intuitive, it's reliable in testing, and it works on the Xbox.
We discussed how BIS had grown and developed, how they had made the decisions they had along the road, and so on. BIS is basically a whole new company compared to when they did the first work on OFP. Back then, it was just the Spanel brothers and friends stuffing code together bouncing from bankrupt publisher to publisher, while Marek was trying to start a bunch of businesses and Ondrej was finishing college and writing code. Now BIS has a complex of development facilities, cash in the bank, a trained and developed staff, controlling interests in a variety of entertainment media companies, industry visibility and reputation, and products to boot. One of the later parts of our discussion was quite interesting. In determining some of their marketing strategy, he figured out what it would cost to pay reasonable salaries to the BIS employees, what it would cost to put food on his own table, and keep the lights on at work for the next couple of years. That's his ballpark revenue target, and anything beyond that is gravy. It's not at all like EA where their emphasis is market share of total revenue. It was really wonderful to see a game developer who was so down to earth, and understood the decent market of gamers making games for gamers. There might be some rough spots when the Czech economy switches to the Euro in the next few years, but if there's any difficulties that will be more than made up by all the other business stuff BIS has their fingers in.
On the rest of the tour I got to see most of the rest of the developers. The lead artist, (Ohara), had a mountain of books all across his desk, with more on the floor and bookshelf. All the books were advanced academic reference texts on physiological forms, botanical structural analysis, and lots of other topics that were making my head spin just looking at the titles. I'd been rather skeptical of why BIS had elected to do a lot of their components such as the graphics engine, plant modeling, and physics system in-house, when they could have simply walked up and down the aisles at E3 and cherry-picked library licenses. The unspoken response that I got walking around observing the developers was that by researching and developing the systems internally, that trained them to be experts in their areas of content development, and to much better appreciate what they were building, as well as more accurately and immersively create the game content. Ultimately, I think this is the best possible Win-Win solution for BIS and us Gamers. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/notworthy.gif
While the Xbox was obviously a hot priority item when I was there two months ago, nearly all the developers seemed to be actually working on Armed Assault and Game2 content. Unfortunately Game2 crashed and was unplayable on Marek's machine, but he cheerfully blamed his brother for breaking his build. On an interesting side note, I had come with a short list of engine features I wanted to see implemented. One of the items was a subject that BIS had considered, but due to weak support for it in current DirectX libraries they're delaying possible integration until Game2 and Windows Vista. Apparently there's a lot of major DirectX upgrades under the hood in D3D.10 that should make certain functions much more robust. That will be interesting to watch.
The other impression that I had was that the gaming world may be coming to a crisis in modding content development. If you consider how much time and effort and money it takes for professional studios such as BIS to create insanely high-detailed content using the very latest in 3d Modeling and Texture development, how much more difficult is it going to be for the community to step in and create content to a similar level? With the imminent demise of Maya and Gmax, and the high cost of 3DS Max and Photoshop, either community tools such as The GIMP and Blender will need to be seriously upgraded to provide affordable high-detail content creation to casual hobbyist modders, or risk a significant decline in the modding culture and a shift to more passive non-interactive content. On the plus side for now, Armed Assault and Game2 pwn for eye-candy, and the completely rebuilt engine is wonderful in terms of functionality.
After many other merry adventures in BIS's hallowed halls, it was time to get stuffed back in the trunk by the same bouncers and driven back up to the rundown cheap hostel across the street from the stadium that looked like a place that prominently featured public executions in the bad old days. That evening, I had the opportunity to go out to dinner with DnA and Sith, and a number of the other developers the next night as well. They'd all been working hard all week on crunching out OFP Elite, but it was Friday night and time to honor the old adage "What goes on in Prague stays in Prague." Except for the games of course. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/whistle.gif
Like I said before, I hate consoles, and I suck at them. I was worried that OFP : Elite would be crippled or clunky. Plus we were all sure that there's no way to cram all the OFP goodness onto a Celery Xbox. Well BIS did, and it's a landmark improvement over CWC / RES. The controls are intuitive enough that a n00b like me could pick it up and within a minute or two play as competently as I can on the PC. Note that some in the community may disagree with my interpretation of competent, but I assure you that my vehicle driving in-game is generally deliberate, if unorthodox. The mission editor works, and is intuitive, and in many ways superior to the current OFP mission editor for simplicity. This may encourage more mission development by those not previously inclined to do so. The game runs smoothly and at no point was there any stuttering. The environmental ambiance was incredible because I didn't notice it, yet it significantly impacted the gameplay appropriately. You've seen in the screenshot pics rather shiny textures, this is due to the Xbox DirectX library and GPU limitations. The screenshots are also 'worse' on your PC because they're not blurred by the structure of your lower res TV screen. When played on a standard TV, or a widescreen plasma display, the shine is much less aggravating.
Is it enough to make me break my piggy bank and go buy an Xbox? Probably not, considering I don't play games much, rather I just wander around in the editor tools, unless it's an RTS and then I can kiss the entire day and night and week for that matter goodbye. I'll probably buy a copy anyway out of fanboy courtesy and obnoxiously promote it to game store sales clerks and friends though. It's simple and intuitive enough that a Halo kiddie can grab the controller and start mashing buttons, but complex enough that an OFP old-timer has something to do and enjoy. BIS has also made it reasonably playable so those that have short time console interests - ie pick up a controller for a quick few-minute gaming high - can play it, while those who want to settle into their couch for an all-night invasion can do so as well.
Amazon and EB Games both have it listed for preorder for $40. It's cheap enough under an EA title that you can still afford to grab some pizzas and go to town root out Guba's minions all over again. Only this time, they're not going to go easy on you. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/banghead.gif
Quote[/b] ]First off, I'm not a console fanboy, and to be honest the best use of them imho is for wheel chocks on trucks. I've always preferred the sharper displays and enhanced editing capabilities of the PC platform, and I've always been suspicious of the viability of console ports of PC games. That said, OFP on the Xbox works. It honestly actually does work, and if you stop to think about what that means it's going to really spin the gears in your head.
I had the chance to go on a merry little vacation this summer, and as a obsessed fanboy I dutifully paid a visit to BIS. After arriving in Prague, I got stuffed in the trunk of a small car by a bunch of big burly ex-military types and driven to an undisclosed location somewhere in the greater Prague metro area. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif After being pried out of the trunk I looked around at a familiar looking house with a very familiar logo hanging discretely by the entrance. The general location is fairly remotely isolated, but the house has a clear view (free fire zone?) of all the approaches and is heavily secured. It's also surrounded by dense forests at a suitable range filled with things that go bump in the night. The hill above is also likely secured, that might be where they hid the tank. The village down the road is narrow and likely filled with informants on the lookout for n00bish looking people excitedly pointing at things while reciting the list contents of Data3d.pbo Definitely not a place to go uninvited, because as the old saying goes, if you see the flash it's too late.
After an extensive security check to verify that I wasn't smuggling in any EA contraband or recording devices ("Oh yeah, the other pocket, d'oh. Hmm, how did that get there? Honest, it's not mine, I swear! http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wink_o.gif ) I got ushered into the lounge meeting area. The villa is a partially remodeled upscale lodge-resort-type building, and is very nice, much nicer than the cheapo rathole I stayed in while in Prague. They have a nice projector theater setup in there, with extra padding on the walls and doors so as not to disturb people working. Interestingly, the DVD collection by and large is almost exclusively old John Wayne Movies.
After a little bit Marek himself came down to give me a tour of his little empire. He's incredibly humble and pragmatic about his achievements despite being a very successful businessman in a number of markets. I'd done a little bit of homework going in so I knew a little about some of the other affiliated businesses, but it's still amazing the amount of work that he has his hands in across multiple sectors of the computer software market and across Europe. Definitely a key player to watch, especially over the next few years as Eastern Europe comes more fully into the EU.
The first stop was the office shared by Placebo, Sith, and DnA. Placebo was off on yet another vacation so I didn't get banned from the forums for his Uber-Admin pleasure. The amusing thing about gaming companies is that when the boss walks in, the minions all scurry TO the games, instead of FROM them. The conversation went something like this :
Marek : "Hey, whatcha doing?"
DnA : "Sir! Playing Xbox, Sir!"
Sith : "Yeah, just some more testing. Who's the grub?"
Marek : "This is (shinraiden), he's wandering around today, so give him a tour ok?"
DnA : "Ah that guy. Heh-heh. Nice to meet you. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/rofl.gif So, we like show him the Xbox and stuff?"
Marek : "Sure. (Placebo) isn't in today, so feel free to borrow his."
Sith : "I think (Placebo) had his rigged up for video capture, but it shouldn't be too hard to take it apart."
Marek : "No problem, I got it" - and proceeded to yank the spaghetti mess of video cables out of the back of poor Placebo's Xbox. (My apologies to poor Placebo for having to put it all back together.)
As DnA started to show me the Xbox, he explained some of the details about the Xbox development process. The developer version Xbox's are a cool transparent green and have hooks for loading disc images off a network server. Since the guts are essentially a normal PC, development is done on a PC then quickly packed into an image and sync'd onto the Xbox over the LAN. I'm not certain about the development process for Playstations and Gamecube/Revolution, but the platform commonality between the Xbox and a standard PC makes it very easy for development. Whether that still holds up for Xbox/360 development remains to be seen.
What you do need to remember about the Xbox though is the baseline system guts :
CPU : Intel Mobil Celeron 733mhz/133mhz FSB
GPU : ~Geforce3Ti (Using Special Xbox DirectX)
RAM : 64mb
HDD : ~10GB IDE shared bus with DVD drive
I haven't played a console in a very long while, and even then not hardly at all. With any new game I always notice load times as I'm impatient to dive right in. As you well know from the PC, the OFP load point is at the beginning of the mission where it loads the map and objects needed, then the mission content. So in the PC OFP you have a big mission loading before you get to the main start screen. BIS removed that in the Xbox so that as soon as it boots up, it kicks you almost immediately to the main launch screen.
Placebo had it set in "Release" mode, so DnA switched it to "Developer" mode to switch through the missions and profiles quicker, rather than stay in the campaign system. The campaigns are all there, as well as most if not all the addon missions. I didn't get a good look at the list to confirm it, and that wasn't the intent anyway, it was to look at the functionality. Like the PC game, you've got three easy to access options : Single, Live (Network), and Editor. I didn't get the chance to see it on the Xbox Live network since they were just on a LAN, but the developers assured me that the notoriously bloated net code had been completely overhauled and it was now something that they could be really proud of. We'll have to see what Network Analyzer has to say about that. ;-) Options mainly center around configuring your user profile and your controllers. OFP:Elite has a couple of preset profiles for each controller type AND operation mode, and you can customize them as you chose.
The first thing we took a look at was the mission editor. As you probably know already, there's no keyboard for the Xbox, so that changes things around a bit. The editor is significantly more than the SP/MP Templates, but not quite a complement to the full PC mission editor. You first start with a basic template that fits the map and mission profile, then tap one button to bring up a menu to add a unit or group. Tap another button to select that component, then use either the pad or the stick (I forgot, it's been a couple months) to move it around. Tap-and-push, that's all that's needed. Same thing for waypoints and triggers. Both of course don't have the edit fields you're used to, but are prepopulated with the options lists you need make a successful mission.
This is the point that the mission editor debate kicks in. Without the full editor and external coding tools and a keyboard etc-etc, you can't make some of the crazy scripting functionality and epic cinematic missions that we're used to in OFP : PC. However, in a later discussion with Marek about the development, he talked about where you have to draw the line in terms of implementation. Yes it's annoying that it's not in the Xbox. But more importantly, it's not needed to make a quality mission. How many missions have we played that have exaggerated intro's, music, and cinematics, then suck for gameplay? For BIS, supporting technical SPAM was far down the priority list compared to enabling the users to make playable and enjoyable content.
You the readers are all going to hate me for this, but I neglected to ask the details about future addon content, since that's such a crucial part of the OFP : PC world. All I got was that "it's supported via Xbox Live, more info to come later." What's likely to happen is that BIS will make an announcement and explanation of what's available and how it will work sometime (soon I hope) after the launch.
Next up we went in-game to see what they really accomplished. The Xbox was hooked up to a medium sized average tube TV. Visually everything was as crisp as could be. At home I play OFP and VBS normally in a 1280x1024 window on one of two 19" CRT monitors set to 1600x1200, so I'm picky about the sharpness and resolution. That's another reason why I don't like consoles. But when I took a step back and considered it for what it was - a console game plugged into a TV - it was as good as it could be. I didn't remember to ask if the TV was NTSC or PAL, but you can get a similar setup on your home computer by switching your refresh to 60hz and 640x480, or just running an S-Video-out patch if your video card supports it, and turn up the AA/AS.
On the other hand, such a setup doesn't adequately or accurately reflect what you're going to see on OFP : Elite on your TV. The content has all been completely rebuilt over the comparable CWC and RES content. You'll recognize it by the roles of course, but the new detail and artistry is wonderful. A lot of people have complained about how it appears that VBS1 content was lifted and dropped into OFP : Elite. After seeing Elite however, and in talking with the developers, and in light of the time I've spent with VBS, I'm more convinced that the similarities is due to VBS1 getting early preview builds of content intended for Xbox and Armed Assault. But in any case, the underlying technical differences are such that the Xbox content might as well be all new content that just happens to look like the models in VBS1.
The next item of note is the graphics immersion. It was hard to take mental notes, because it did what it was supposed to, that is not be visually distracting. BIS spent a lot of time and effort researching researching how players visually sense their environment, and it's paid off. The visual environmental effects are not noticed at first, because you're not supposed to notice them. Rather, you're supposed to concentrate on your task, and the effects impact your experience. In one mission I was running up a hill from a forest to a town when DnA told me to stop and turn around. I did, then turned back towards the village. He told me to keep doing it until I noticed the dynamic visual difference between the views. While the effect is really cool, what makes it awesome is that you don't notice it because it's so natural and smooth. Running into town, I didn't notice any problems, because the problems with collisions and shadows etc were fixed. It ran normally and naturally, and when it does that it gets far more immersive. There were the birds and the bugs if you concentrated on them, but normally you don't notice them because they're environmental ambiance like they should be, not a visual distraction.
Of course there was bad guys in town. The last console shooter I played admitted was Goldeneye along time ago, it's really fuzzy now. But I do remember hating it because the sloppy aiming was swiveled around the wrist. That doesn't work for pistols let alone rifles, and BIS didn't go that route. Rather they used the same animation system that we're used to with Torso / full-body-motion aiming, and the calibration is sufficiently weighted so your gun isn't flopping around, but is still soft enough that you have to be careful if you want to aim precisely. And it works, it works smoothly, and it works naturally. Like I said, I hate consoles and I hardly play them, but even I was able to pick up the obese controller and quite quickly get the hang of things. If there was any trouble, it was because DnA and Placebo both personally prefer controller layouts totally different from each other, although DnA didn't say too much about Placebo's eccentricities since since on a normal day Placebo can toss stuff at the back of DnA's head in their office.
Having run around on foot, next it was time to hop in something and drive and fly. No surprises with vehicle driving, if you drive like I do in-game you live with the consequences for getting TK'd by your team members who now have to get out and walk. Same with helicopters. The controller is very flexible to give a wide range of motion to the flight controls, but if you're heavy on the stick or erratic, then you're going to bite the farm. Any complaints about flight controls on a gamepad go in the same bucket that flying with a keyboard does, it's not a natural interface. But it gets the job done, and a n00b like me can make it work reasonablely well.
Lastly I flew down to a beach to check out the water. This I think will open a whole new chapter in the OFP experience over the next several platforms, since the water is volumetric and dynamic. This means REAL modeled waves. Now go over to BF2. It's a perfect sheet of glass. At least good old OFP had tides and moving 'wave' heights. But OFP : Elite introduces real waves with real crests and troughs. If you hop in a PBR, it goes up the wave, then down the other side. Up, then down. Up, then down. And if you take it sideways it tosses you around, though I didn't get it to roll. Driving the PBR, you look towards land and see it bobbing up and down sometimes hidden by the waves. We're going to have a lot of fun out on the water.
After we'd abused poor Placebo's Xbox for a while Marek came back to take me on more of the tour. We poked our heads in on a few other people then went down the hall to his office. I was pleased to see that he too is a proud member of the dual monitor addicts club. Better still, off the end of this desk is the medium-sized widescreen Plasma flatpanel that you saw from Ralphwiggum's E3 secret camera phone video. After chatting about the weather and other pleasantries, we got back to business and he handed the controller over to me to play around some more while sitting there in his office. OFP : Elite is not a button-mashing console rage-machine. Like the standard OFP, it takes calm and decisive action to survive, let alone succeed, although there's room for jumping on the couch yelling "BOOM, HEADSHOT!!!111" when you finally nail that sadistic little camper who's been ruining your raid on the village.
The other red flag item of concern with the Xbox was the action menu. In OFP you have a massive command menu and a unwieldy action menu. The command menu is widely scorned, and the action menu is aggravating. The concern was if that was the model to be used on the Xbox, how to make it work. Well, they rebuilt it and it works. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/yay.gif The command menu has been gutted and the functionality by and large moved elsewhere. The action menu pops up the single most likely action when it should be obvious. For example, if you move up to a vehicle getIn point, you'll see a single action menu item, triggered by one of the quad buttons, for the most likely command of "Get in vehicle as (something)". If that's not what you want to do, which isn't likely, you tap another button to popup the full list then scroll down usually no more than one or two items. It's simple, it's intuitive, it's reliable in testing, and it works on the Xbox.
We discussed how BIS had grown and developed, how they had made the decisions they had along the road, and so on. BIS is basically a whole new company compared to when they did the first work on OFP. Back then, it was just the Spanel brothers and friends stuffing code together bouncing from bankrupt publisher to publisher, while Marek was trying to start a bunch of businesses and Ondrej was finishing college and writing code. Now BIS has a complex of development facilities, cash in the bank, a trained and developed staff, controlling interests in a variety of entertainment media companies, industry visibility and reputation, and products to boot. One of the later parts of our discussion was quite interesting. In determining some of their marketing strategy, he figured out what it would cost to pay reasonable salaries to the BIS employees, what it would cost to put food on his own table, and keep the lights on at work for the next couple of years. That's his ballpark revenue target, and anything beyond that is gravy. It's not at all like EA where their emphasis is market share of total revenue. It was really wonderful to see a game developer who was so down to earth, and understood the decent market of gamers making games for gamers. There might be some rough spots when the Czech economy switches to the Euro in the next few years, but if there's any difficulties that will be more than made up by all the other business stuff BIS has their fingers in.
On the rest of the tour I got to see most of the rest of the developers. The lead artist, (Ohara), had a mountain of books all across his desk, with more on the floor and bookshelf. All the books were advanced academic reference texts on physiological forms, botanical structural analysis, and lots of other topics that were making my head spin just looking at the titles. I'd been rather skeptical of why BIS had elected to do a lot of their components such as the graphics engine, plant modeling, and physics system in-house, when they could have simply walked up and down the aisles at E3 and cherry-picked library licenses. The unspoken response that I got walking around observing the developers was that by researching and developing the systems internally, that trained them to be experts in their areas of content development, and to much better appreciate what they were building, as well as more accurately and immersively create the game content. Ultimately, I think this is the best possible Win-Win solution for BIS and us Gamers. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/notworthy.gif
While the Xbox was obviously a hot priority item when I was there two months ago, nearly all the developers seemed to be actually working on Armed Assault and Game2 content. Unfortunately Game2 crashed and was unplayable on Marek's machine, but he cheerfully blamed his brother for breaking his build. On an interesting side note, I had come with a short list of engine features I wanted to see implemented. One of the items was a subject that BIS had considered, but due to weak support for it in current DirectX libraries they're delaying possible integration until Game2 and Windows Vista. Apparently there's a lot of major DirectX upgrades under the hood in D3D.10 that should make certain functions much more robust. That will be interesting to watch.
The other impression that I had was that the gaming world may be coming to a crisis in modding content development. If you consider how much time and effort and money it takes for professional studios such as BIS to create insanely high-detailed content using the very latest in 3d Modeling and Texture development, how much more difficult is it going to be for the community to step in and create content to a similar level? With the imminent demise of Maya and Gmax, and the high cost of 3DS Max and Photoshop, either community tools such as The GIMP and Blender will need to be seriously upgraded to provide affordable high-detail content creation to casual hobbyist modders, or risk a significant decline in the modding culture and a shift to more passive non-interactive content. On the plus side for now, Armed Assault and Game2 pwn for eye-candy, and the completely rebuilt engine is wonderful in terms of functionality.
After many other merry adventures in BIS's hallowed halls, it was time to get stuffed back in the trunk by the same bouncers and driven back up to the rundown cheap hostel across the street from the stadium that looked like a place that prominently featured public executions in the bad old days. That evening, I had the opportunity to go out to dinner with DnA and Sith, and a number of the other developers the next night as well. They'd all been working hard all week on crunching out OFP Elite, but it was Friday night and time to honor the old adage "What goes on in Prague stays in Prague." Except for the games of course. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/whistle.gif
Like I said before, I hate consoles, and I suck at them. I was worried that OFP : Elite would be crippled or clunky. Plus we were all sure that there's no way to cram all the OFP goodness onto a Celery Xbox. Well BIS did, and it's a landmark improvement over CWC / RES. The controls are intuitive enough that a n00b like me could pick it up and within a minute or two play as competently as I can on the PC. Note that some in the community may disagree with my interpretation of competent, but I assure you that my vehicle driving in-game is generally deliberate, if unorthodox. The mission editor works, and is intuitive, and in many ways superior to the current OFP mission editor for simplicity. This may encourage more mission development by those not previously inclined to do so. The game runs smoothly and at no point was there any stuttering. The environmental ambiance was incredible because I didn't notice it, yet it significantly impacted the gameplay appropriately. You've seen in the screenshot pics rather shiny textures, this is due to the Xbox DirectX library and GPU limitations. The screenshots are also 'worse' on your PC because they're not blurred by the structure of your lower res TV screen. When played on a standard TV, or a widescreen plasma display, the shine is much less aggravating.
Is it enough to make me break my piggy bank and go buy an Xbox? Probably not, considering I don't play games much, rather I just wander around in the editor tools, unless it's an RTS and then I can kiss the entire day and night and week for that matter goodbye. I'll probably buy a copy anyway out of fanboy courtesy and obnoxiously promote it to game store sales clerks and friends though. It's simple and intuitive enough that a Halo kiddie can grab the controller and start mashing buttons, but complex enough that an OFP old-timer has something to do and enjoy. BIS has also made it reasonably playable so those that have short time console interests - ie pick up a controller for a quick few-minute gaming high - can play it, while those who want to settle into their couch for an all-night invasion can do so as well.
Amazon and EB Games both have it listed for preorder for $40. It's cheap enough under an EA title that you can still afford to grab some pizzas and go to town root out Guba's minions all over again. Only this time, they're not going to go easy on you. http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/banghead.gif