ragnar_mike

I mean, its not like I think Disney is any better or worse as a company than Fox in regards to media. Big companies gonna do what they do. I guess my biggest worry is that they will tone down the out there violence and mature themes from things like Deadpool and Logan, but I would have to imagine they realize those did well and people like them so they will just keep it compartmentalized without the Mouse brand on it.

Xmen could probably stand a retooling at this point. Fantastic Four certainly can. Spiderman was a lost franchise for me, but Homecoming has me excited again for stories of my youth. After Infinity War, there's plenty of ground to tread.

Disney is reconciling all the mistakes Marvel made with licensing in the 90s. I'm a believer in the MCU having all their IP and the freedom to do what they will with it. Sony and Fox deals are all about that and you can tell that Disney wants them bad if they're willing to basically buy out the entire film division just to get them back.

In a sense, I suppose. I think the biggest deciding factor was that Anthem took up too many of the resources of the Bioware and they therefore didn't have access to the tools and infrastructure they needed to make Frostbite work for them in that particular type of game. There were/are plenty of people who can do that and who had knowledge of the development pipeline for Frostbite at the time of ME:A's development. They just weren't working on that game.

I would argue that no engine has a super smooth workflow at the scale of game we're talking about, though. And that rather than asking if having a unified engine across the company was a mistake we should be asking if it was a mistake not to have a unified support and development network to go along with it and instead rely on each team to make the tools they need during the course of development. The answer to that, in my mind, is a resounding yes.

@chummy8: Cincinnati chili, much like pork roll (or Taylor ham if you're nasty) are shit foods, but they have so much nostalgia associated with them for me that it bumps up their deliciousness every time I have them. Its like that food critic at the end of Ratatouille.

@soulcake: That stuff is always fun to read about. I don't have any actual dev experience, but I have done some stuff in unreal and using the default entities like the characters and things is a good way to at least see what you need to do custom. Plenty of platformers and stuff have the default dude with the gun hidden just because it's easier when you start out. I forget what game it was (Fallout: New Vegas perhaps?) where scripting wise it was easier to give an NPC a hat that was the geometry of a train and have that dude run along the tracks rather than make up a whole new train entity. When a game is on a tight timeframe (all of them are to some degree) cutting the right corners lets folks focus on the important bits.

As an aspiring game artist, Frostbite intrigues me. It's pretty much the only engine you can't get as a student or indie dev. Well, aside from bespoke engines, of course. I mean ones that get licensed out or used across multiple games. So far my favorite has been Unreal, but that's because I'm a lowly artist and don't have to code in C, so the blueprints and GUI scripting stuff in UE4 makes my life easier. Unity's fine, if a little DIY, and Cryengine is gorgeous, but also was a pain in the ass to use when I was messing with it. I hear it's gotten better, but that was mainly as a reaction to Unreal drinking their milkshake right as it was gaining steam. I'm curious to see what the Lumberyard stuff adds to it.

Getting more on topic though, I don't think it was a huge failure on EA's part to have one ubiquitous engine, especially one that focuses on FPS, as that is their money maker besides Sports. I think a lot of games that struggle with it didn't have the time or budget to allocate for testing and development of tools that would make it easier to work with. I seem to recall in that ME:A postmortum article that they basically used the tools developed during Dragon Age: Inquisition because the RPG tools didn't exist before that and they didn't have time to make new/better ones. No engine is made to make all kinds of games, it just so happened that the games that needed to extra time to develop tools to work with the engine had tighter windows to get things done.

@rorie: This reddit thread apparently states that there's some weird thing with Spotify that sits somewhere in the middle of the capture layers and screws it up. Could be spotify for you or maybe Battlenet. Supposedly there's a hotfix coming, but you can disable some things to get it to work apparently.

Said Link.

Yeah I mean realistically Taker's probably been worse for wear than Kurt for the past few years, to say nothing of Mick's last few ring things. They will let dudes who can't go week to week or even month to month anymore have a last hurrah, but Bryan is a different kettle of fish. Much like Edge and Natty's Husband (=p), they only really say no when its the "you could literally die from one match" type deal, or is related to something they are trying to improve upon/being sued for, like concussions. You could argue that Ziggler's career has been stalled out because of that concussion he got after he snagged the belt.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like that it's a gimmick match. He needs to stay away from taking the big bumps which he is known to do. I have this horrific vision in my mind of him doing the moonsault from the ladder like he did from the cage in TNA. That wasn't that long ago. I don't need to see that.

This feels like to me he signed up for coming back with this match as a dealbreaker. Well not this match specifically. But probably Survivor Series, hence why he's in good enough ring shape to jump in fairly last minute, as I suspect he was planning on needing to go within the quarter. If he can go well enough, I would love to see him do a nice safe ground wrestling classic with someone at Wrestlemania and leave his boots in the ring. That would be a nice send off and one he deserves at this point.

@dazzhardy: Nah, they're cool as far as I know. Jericho has said very flattering things about him in the past and compared their styles, since they're both from Winnipeg.

@thisisacooltag: Aw, bummer. Hope things go well, Jason!

Hopefully the new hire comes in soon. GBWest could use an Abby/Drew type to handle these types of unforeseen issues, but also Jason could use a break. You can tell when Vinny is overworked. Not because the product is lessened, he just has less time to participate in other cool stuff. I feel like the teams do best with 2 full time video peeps, which is obviously tricky to manage and why Abby and Ben have been a great help.

That sounds a lot like the matchmaking system of Clash Royale, ie why a lot of people stopped playing that game. I feel like a lot of F2P games already do that, so I'm not sure how successful Activision is going to be at actually receiving said patent. I actually don't mind loot crates, but I do prefer they be limited to ornamental things and not gameplay affecting elements. When you shift the balance of the game in favor of trying to lure in whales, that's when it feels badto me.

@bollard: I think this one was from an early intoduction video where they showed a buncha games to her to get the vibe of what the crew was digging. Let's see...

Yep...Vinny's futzing with audio stuff while she plays Resident Evil VR haha. Something like two hours in for that bit.

The series you're talking about is also great too!