With Fall comes certain inevitabilities: Fallen leaves, Joe Buck, and truckloads of new Apple products at your local retailer. Today I've decided to review the 2011 New York Jonagold, which is a modern spin on the retro Macintosh. I first spotted it by the annual Apple Gala here in Yorktown, and got my hands on a model fresh from the box (some of the previous floor models seemed worse for wear). At first glance you might not even be able to tell the difference between the two, but trust me, the interior has been jazzed up with stylistic taste. It comes only in classic Apple white (with optional red skin) and features the same even, rounded contours as most contemporary Apple offerings, eschewing the more top-heavy designs of older models.
I'm happy to report that the Jonagold is a star ready for consumption by savvy consumers in the Empire state. Its performance profile is similar to its Macintosh roots, but with slightly more bite in its output. The single-core design lends itself to consumers looking to take their Apple on the go (perhaps to Rome or Mt. Fuji!)
Contrary to recent Apple pricing trends, this Jonagold was manufactured here in NY, so there's a steep retail discount locally compared to its competitors' products. I recommend heading down to the Apple store and trying one out today.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
BF3 UI notes
This is what greets you the moment you load into Operation: Metro on defense. (Please click through to each screenshot. The narrow blog column clipped and rescaled the thumbnails.)
I had limited BC2 screenshots, so please forgive the smoke grenade in the middle of the image. Note the solid, opaque minimap with far more visibility and terrain detail. Note the fatter triangles off in the distance. Note that I even see my squad's green icons with kit indicators instead of triangles. Note how not every square inch of screen is covered by obstacles or bushes.
Operation: Metro's interior sections somehow manage to make the UI visibility problems even worse. I don't think there's a shade of blue left for them to integrate into the metro tunnels.
This is a pretty typical metro screenshot, with blue lighting and shadows, cover everywhere and yet probably about to get sniped through that doorway just ahead. Unfortunately I didn't think to get some shots of the central platforms, but it's mostly just this in lighter shades of blue (and even some white!). Needless to say, it's hard to spot targets.
Cyan on cyan! I also failed to get a picture of the chatbox, which would normally appear below the kill register on the upper-right. It's an opaque black box with microscopic arial narrow white text. It's virtually unreadable without literally stopping your gameplay and trying to parse it. Contrast with BC2's chatbox, which is color-coded with a readable text AND has convenient easily-read tags for server vs. team chat.
It's not clear to me why I took this shot, but it's the only one I had showing red and blue text. I also want to point out here that that red diamond on the minimap is an MCOM, the main objective of the rush mode. There are always two per base, A and B. You can see that the BC2 version has its MCOM clearly labeled on the minimap. When your squadmate shouts "I'm arming A!" you can immediately discern where you need to place yourself to cover it. Scroll back up and see how much more confusing it is in BF3 when the minimap has no such labels.
The menu and other non-gameplay screens are perhaps even worse, in terms of design disasters. We'll start with the end-of-round score screens.
This is BF3. Compare with BC2:
How high up the management chain do you think "Guys, let's make it smoke on a black background, because that looks awesome!" came from? I think BC2 captured a lot of the flavor of the game by including those panoramic vistas in the load, end of round, and respawn screens. BF3 eschews all of that for...black. I also like BC2's text more, and the rank insignias. And, most importantly, there's that EXIT GAME button in BC2 that BF3 lacks. That's right, your stats don't save and you can't exit until you spawn into the next game, which means 35 seconds of staring at particle smoke effects and another 10 seconds of loading and another 5 seconds of pre-game countdown.
You can't even edit your game options in BF3 unless you're spawned into a game, by the way. There's no main menu screen per se, because you join a game via a browser-based server menu. There's no main executable. I think even the single player mode is launched from your browser. So you can't dick around with options until you're in the middle of a game.
Once you are in a game, you have the option to deploy or pick your "class" and equipment load. You do so from the following screen.
That sure is a lot of empty space on the right, so it's a good thing we have lots of smoke to fill it with useful graphical detail. Now you might think "Ok, this is a PC game, so surely I can just click on the weapons to change them." You would also then be operating under the assumption that anything in this game makes sense from a usability standpoint. Not only are you not even given text hints about what those equipment icons actually are, you have to enter a wholly different screen to swap them around. Click the LOADOUT button and we're brought to:
Couldn't this have just been on the right side of the previous screen? And why do we have to navigate weapons and gear via scroll arrows? This is a fucking PC game. I have 1680x1050 pixels to render a goddamn grid. I have a mouse to click boxes. Each category should be expanded automatically upon opening this screen if you're dedicated to having this customization screen separated from the kit selection screen before it. And this isn't even the extent of the customization. This screen doesn't address weapon accessories. Click another button, and:
What the flying fuck is this shit? I need three different screens to pick my gear? Look at all the empty space. This could easily be condensed to one screen. There's a hundred different ways to have made this more usable. But apparently there's only one way to MOAR SMOAK. The whole time you're navigating this clusterfuck and deciding whether you want the 4x scope or the 3.8x scope, you're receiving no game information, no ticket scores, no scoreboard, no maps, no squad status, no chat window. It's mindbogglingly poor design.
The beta closes today so this is it for screenshots. In closing, I want to show you two images, from BF3 and BC2, that neatly summarize the design differences between the two games. You can figure out which represents which game rather easily on your own, if you've paid attention.
And here it is again slightly later when you've picked a bush to squat in.
Primary gripe: The translucent blue minimap. Given the rich environmental textures of BF3, it must be a real surprise to DICE that making the minimap translucent renders its visibility to essentially zero. I feel that this was just one of a dozen design decisions made at middle-management level to deliver an "awesome!" image without really thinking through the usability. Also relevant to these images, you can see the tiny blue triangles of my teammates off in the distance. If you squint really hard. And press your face to the screen. And if you're not looking at something in the blue-green spectrum in the background. I would describe them more as slivers than triangles. Enemy spotting is accomplished with an orange shade of the same small cluster of pixels, easily missed while scanning a horizon full of bushes. For comparative purposes, I'm going to show you the BC2 UI:
Operation: Metro's interior sections somehow manage to make the UI visibility problems even worse. I don't think there's a shade of blue left for them to integrate into the metro tunnels.
The menu and other non-gameplay screens are perhaps even worse, in terms of design disasters. We'll start with the end-of-round score screens.
You can't even edit your game options in BF3 unless you're spawned into a game, by the way. There's no main menu screen per se, because you join a game via a browser-based server menu. There's no main executable. I think even the single player mode is launched from your browser. So you can't dick around with options until you're in the middle of a game.
Once you are in a game, you have the option to deploy or pick your "class" and equipment load. You do so from the following screen.
What the flying fuck is this shit? I need three different screens to pick my gear? Look at all the empty space. This could easily be condensed to one screen. There's a hundred different ways to have made this more usable. But apparently there's only one way to MOAR SMOAK. The whole time you're navigating this clusterfuck and deciding whether you want the 4x scope or the 3.8x scope, you're receiving no game information, no ticket scores, no scoreboard, no maps, no squad status, no chat window. It's mindbogglingly poor design.
The beta closes today so this is it for screenshots. In closing, I want to show you two images, from BF3 and BC2, that neatly summarize the design differences between the two games. You can figure out which represents which game rather easily on your own, if you've paid attention.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The beta version of a BF3 beta review
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was my first significant experience in the genre of competitive online multiplayer shooters, so it's destined forever to color how I feel about my future experiences with FPS games. Having established that, here are some quick thoughts on the BF3 beta.
The Graphics
I enjoy coffee. I drink it a great deal; at minimum one or two cups per day, and generally more on the weekends. Some years back when I was temporarily living with my grandmother, she would routinely make me coffee in the mornings and after dinner. That was great, thanks nonna. However, she didn't really make coffee so much as coffee-like quantities of espresso, brewed in batches just big enough to eventually give me either an ulcer or enough acid reflux to debilitate me for a solid week. Similarly, whenever she asked if I'd like "a pretzel" and I stupidly mumble "sure", this resulted in six hours of dough-kneading, baking, and fifteen pounds of fennel pretzels that I'd be forced to grudgingly consume in quantity with every meal and drink for the next five years.
I like graphics. Well-designed environments are pretty. Rendered autumn leaves are nice to look at while I'm crawling through a bush trying not to get sniped by Commander_Fartcupper. The dynamic lighting and raw fidelity of the Frostbyte 2 engine are very impressive. This is the first game I've played where there's no visual or operational difference between interactable objects/environments and static background scenery. Even with the graphics dialed down for the beta client, it's truly awesome to behold. The shadows casted by an RPG rocket flying down a darkened subway tunnel are beyond textual representation. This is the best looking thing I've ever seen on my PC.
And I absolutely hate it.
It's too pretty. It's too distracting. Fleshing out bushes means I can't see Corporal McBallsinyourface squatting in them. Every meticulously detailed branch and leaf and locker and scaffold is just another thing to look at and shoot when you're trying to shoot bad guys. I'm hopelessly lost in the scenery whenever I play. I can't find enemies. They're just giant amorphous shadows with assault rifles. It's even worse in the outdoor settings, where snipers set up from seventeen miles away and still headshot you after you've spent ten minutes crawling from your spawn camp, where you somehow avoided being killed before the screen finished loading. When you try to find those snipers later, it's just explosions and rubble and individual motes of dust and eventually the killcam when he puts another bullet through your face while you were scanning the horizon for a quarter of a second.
The interior of the Operation: Metro map isn't much better, since with the crazy lighting engine comes crazy-ass darkness that I under no circumstances can see though, but that doesn't seem to prevent the other team from pinpoint accuracy. Bad Company 2's lighting is mostly static outdoor settings with shaded but even interiors. BF3 interiors are cones of light piercing a vast evil void where I might as well not even bother moving through because I'm going to get punished by somebody who I can only assume is physically wearing night vision goggles inside his home, at his computer. Enemies in BC2 are always dark on a light background. When they stand up in the middle of a field, you see them. In BF3, they're (to my eyes) indistinguishable from the minute details of the objects and scenery behind them.
The Sound
I have a sense that the sound engine is only half-finished, given that it seems to default to mono in the game settings. Certain sounds like sniper fire breaking off flecks of stone cover are amazing, with full 3D direction. Footsteps, however, are woefully static and non-directional. And you only hear your own (where BC2 sometimes gave you enemy foot traffic when they walked through branches or on wooden floorboards). I've only played with two or three weapons, so I can't report on the diversity of weapon pitches. I'm just going to assume the final product will be a marginal increase from the previous BF game.
The Gameplay
In comparison to BC2, I hate almost everything about it. Almost every change has been to the detriment of what I liked about the previous game. It takes fewer bullets to die, so engagements for most normal players seem to just be games of peekaboo while laying on the floor. For me, it usually means moving two feet from my spawn location and being the subject of an impromptu Top Shot competition by the opposing team. Rockets and grenades seem to be abused just as much as before since even a glancing blow by either explosion can still kill you.
Medic revive timers are nearly half the duration of BC2's. If a teammate dies and he wasn't standing immediately next to you, it's virtually impossible to run over to a different location, kneel down (because paddles and standing miss 90% of the time), and electrocute his balls in the scant few seconds you're permitted to make the attempt. On the flip side, if you're the one that died, the killcam timer has increased, and so has the respawn timer. So you're out of the game longer, and you're forced to watch xXxDeezButzxXx teabag you for long enough to actually physically leave the computer, enter the kitchen, make actual tea, and return with your beverage without missing much action.
There are these things called "tactical lights" which in effect are broad-beam lasers of death. You can put them on your guns and flip them on and off, flashing them in the eyes of your foes. The effect is to whitewash 50% of your screen with searing would-burn-your-plasma-display white, so you can't see anything in that direction of the map. The effective range is measured in parsecs. A flashlight is the deadliest weapon in the game.
There are "mobile spawn points" which can be placed down anywhere on the map and serve as the name would indicate. They're roughly the size of a small packet of mustard, and black so you can't see them against most floors, and certainly not in the depths of the metro tunnel. One recon can sneak behind the defensive spawn, put one of those down in the tracks, and suddenly have an endless spawn point aimed directly at your back at all times. Last night one of our own recons inadvertently put down a defensive mobile spawn adjacent to an offensive one, and I spent five or six lives fruitlessly exchanging close-range deaths with a full squad of dudes while hunting a tiny black box nestled in the darkness.
Attacker spawns are vulnerable to defensive fire and camping at all times. In BC2 the attacking team was usually awarded a slightly shielded spawn point so you couldn't die immediately upon loading. This is now gone, and snipers can and will kill you within 5 seconds, if the engineer who's sitting behind your spawn zone doesn't get you first.
I'm making myself angry just typing about it. I'll have more to say later. I want to address some display and HUD issues with screenshots.
The Graphics
I enjoy coffee. I drink it a great deal; at minimum one or two cups per day, and generally more on the weekends. Some years back when I was temporarily living with my grandmother, she would routinely make me coffee in the mornings and after dinner. That was great, thanks nonna. However, she didn't really make coffee so much as coffee-like quantities of espresso, brewed in batches just big enough to eventually give me either an ulcer or enough acid reflux to debilitate me for a solid week. Similarly, whenever she asked if I'd like "a pretzel" and I stupidly mumble "sure", this resulted in six hours of dough-kneading, baking, and fifteen pounds of fennel pretzels that I'd be forced to grudgingly consume in quantity with every meal and drink for the next five years.
I like graphics. Well-designed environments are pretty. Rendered autumn leaves are nice to look at while I'm crawling through a bush trying not to get sniped by Commander_Fartcupper. The dynamic lighting and raw fidelity of the Frostbyte 2 engine are very impressive. This is the first game I've played where there's no visual or operational difference between interactable objects/environments and static background scenery. Even with the graphics dialed down for the beta client, it's truly awesome to behold. The shadows casted by an RPG rocket flying down a darkened subway tunnel are beyond textual representation. This is the best looking thing I've ever seen on my PC.
And I absolutely hate it.
It's too pretty. It's too distracting. Fleshing out bushes means I can't see Corporal McBallsinyourface squatting in them. Every meticulously detailed branch and leaf and locker and scaffold is just another thing to look at and shoot when you're trying to shoot bad guys. I'm hopelessly lost in the scenery whenever I play. I can't find enemies. They're just giant amorphous shadows with assault rifles. It's even worse in the outdoor settings, where snipers set up from seventeen miles away and still headshot you after you've spent ten minutes crawling from your spawn camp, where you somehow avoided being killed before the screen finished loading. When you try to find those snipers later, it's just explosions and rubble and individual motes of dust and eventually the killcam when he puts another bullet through your face while you were scanning the horizon for a quarter of a second.
The interior of the Operation: Metro map isn't much better, since with the crazy lighting engine comes crazy-ass darkness that I under no circumstances can see though, but that doesn't seem to prevent the other team from pinpoint accuracy. Bad Company 2's lighting is mostly static outdoor settings with shaded but even interiors. BF3 interiors are cones of light piercing a vast evil void where I might as well not even bother moving through because I'm going to get punished by somebody who I can only assume is physically wearing night vision goggles inside his home, at his computer. Enemies in BC2 are always dark on a light background. When they stand up in the middle of a field, you see them. In BF3, they're (to my eyes) indistinguishable from the minute details of the objects and scenery behind them.
The Sound
I have a sense that the sound engine is only half-finished, given that it seems to default to mono in the game settings. Certain sounds like sniper fire breaking off flecks of stone cover are amazing, with full 3D direction. Footsteps, however, are woefully static and non-directional. And you only hear your own (where BC2 sometimes gave you enemy foot traffic when they walked through branches or on wooden floorboards). I've only played with two or three weapons, so I can't report on the diversity of weapon pitches. I'm just going to assume the final product will be a marginal increase from the previous BF game.
The Gameplay
In comparison to BC2, I hate almost everything about it. Almost every change has been to the detriment of what I liked about the previous game. It takes fewer bullets to die, so engagements for most normal players seem to just be games of peekaboo while laying on the floor. For me, it usually means moving two feet from my spawn location and being the subject of an impromptu Top Shot competition by the opposing team. Rockets and grenades seem to be abused just as much as before since even a glancing blow by either explosion can still kill you.
Medic revive timers are nearly half the duration of BC2's. If a teammate dies and he wasn't standing immediately next to you, it's virtually impossible to run over to a different location, kneel down (because paddles and standing miss 90% of the time), and electrocute his balls in the scant few seconds you're permitted to make the attempt. On the flip side, if you're the one that died, the killcam timer has increased, and so has the respawn timer. So you're out of the game longer, and you're forced to watch xXxDeezButzxXx teabag you for long enough to actually physically leave the computer, enter the kitchen, make actual tea, and return with your beverage without missing much action.
There are these things called "tactical lights" which in effect are broad-beam lasers of death. You can put them on your guns and flip them on and off, flashing them in the eyes of your foes. The effect is to whitewash 50% of your screen with searing would-burn-your-plasma-display white, so you can't see anything in that direction of the map. The effective range is measured in parsecs. A flashlight is the deadliest weapon in the game.
There are "mobile spawn points" which can be placed down anywhere on the map and serve as the name would indicate. They're roughly the size of a small packet of mustard, and black so you can't see them against most floors, and certainly not in the depths of the metro tunnel. One recon can sneak behind the defensive spawn, put one of those down in the tracks, and suddenly have an endless spawn point aimed directly at your back at all times. Last night one of our own recons inadvertently put down a defensive mobile spawn adjacent to an offensive one, and I spent five or six lives fruitlessly exchanging close-range deaths with a full squad of dudes while hunting a tiny black box nestled in the darkness.
Attacker spawns are vulnerable to defensive fire and camping at all times. In BC2 the attacking team was usually awarded a slightly shielded spawn point so you couldn't die immediately upon loading. This is now gone, and snipers can and will kill you within 5 seconds, if the engineer who's sitting behind your spawn zone doesn't get you first.
I'm making myself angry just typing about it. I'll have more to say later. I want to address some display and HUD issues with screenshots.
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