New Red Orchestra 2 info + screenshots

[noxnoctum]

Interview (scroll down for English):

http://www.redorchestra.ru/index.php?categoryid=1&p2_articleid=96

Screenies (I only put the tags around the first, my personal favorite, so that it doesn't crash people's computers opening a bunch of screenshots at once ):

http://pics.roladder.net/c93d2156dab0a24a4e1e0ab3ebabee32.jpg

http://pics.roladder.net/a2e4b83a29e8d248084f409fa4fa4793.jpg

http://pics.roladder.net/e1716d23b25545f1b017e2a11f285d18.jpg

http://pics.roladder.net/187943923004a1e0433bf326596a1962.jpg

http://pics.roladder.net/653f01f1e1dc6d12479ed496268c4a6f.jpg

http://pics.roladder.net/d294e036e43a94bfb04be88a559bbe99.jpg

http://pics.roladder.net/ef2c14c0071b4d448ae4b1b87b9f8b2e.jpg

http://pics.roladder.net/a6ae885632e406787aa16b0eb567ec45.jpg

[dieseltaylor]

my genearla feeling is the better the graphics the worse the game play!

I am sure there are exceptions and these are mighty fine graphics. Not my sot of game though. I have to admit to overdosing on Borderlands as my only FPS but it is so darn funny and scary ..... and cheap.

[Thomm]

The problem is that these games look all alike already. Once you hit photorealism, where else do you go ...

... apart from playing Pit Walker 2!!!

http://www.freeonlinegames.com/game/pit-walker-2.html

Best regards,

Thomm

[noxnoctum]

Would you say that about say... DSC: Blackshark, or IL-2 Sturmovik (which had amazing graphics for the time and still looks pretty freaking good) or its upcoming sequel SoW (which looks incredible and will have the same gameplay as IL-2 except better, because the damage and flight models will be more realistic)?

Anyways, you guys clearly never played the original. Watch this and see if you say the same again:

(starts in Russian but there's a translator there for the American dev)

The people who are making this own the entire collection of small arms to be included, recording sounds straight off the real thing, and to make one of the maps "Grain Elevator" went to the ACTUAL Grain Elevator and took all kinds of screenshots. The map will be identical to the real thing. (they were actually the first Westerners ever let into it post WW2---probably mostly because the Russian government appreciates an American dev team making a game about the East Front... for once)

And comparing this to Borderlands is like comparing Combat Mission to Starcraft 2. They're not even remotely similar.

[Thomm]

Watch this and see if you say the same again:

Now this is impressive!

Best regards,

Thomm

[gautrek]

yes very impressive

[noxnoctum]

Now this is impressive!

Best regards,

Thomm

Told ya . Don't judge a book by its pretty cover :cool:

[dieseltaylor]

Very very pretty. BUT that does not mean it will be fun to play it may be, it may not. Games can be simple and very addictive and others are beautiful but fail to engage.

In fact for me it is entirely the wrong level - but then that is me.

[noxnoctum]

Look, I still play Red Orchestra: Ostfront all the time (the original) which is hardly "pretty" by today's standards being a 5 year old shooter, not to mention CMBB which is even older. I've been playing it for 4 years straight, pretty much all the time and I have yet to get sick of it. It's the most "engaging" shooter I've played since Operation Flashpoint back in the day.

I guess I just don't understand how you could enjoy Borderlands but not the most realistic WW2 shooter available? Have you ever played RO? It's not like any other shooter, the battles feel like actual... battles. It's not a bunch of people running pell mell around a tiny map with automatic weapons.

Here's a vid of the first game (RO1):

Assuming just cause it's got good graphics the gameplay sucks is pretty... dumb. The reason they have "pretty" graphics is because they were originally a mod team that won the Make Something Unreal contest... the reward was a free Unreal 3.0 license (worth a LOT of $$$) and a million bucks. That's why they're able to ramp up everything, not just the gameplay (which is being ramped up, I've yet to see another game with the quality of tanking that will be in RO2)

EDIT: Yes I'm a fanboy

[dieseltaylor]

Firstly, I did not say it sucked. I said it may or may not. I hope they make a bundle of money. In my experience though good detailed graphics does not always translate to good gameplay.

Borderlands is escapist comic science fantasy with lots of humour and is "unreal". The idea of killing men in as realistically possible world actually makes me quite squeamish.

1] Poor buggers fighting it out and dying to satisfy meglomaniac leaders is not fun.

2] In some ways I really think it cheapens the real deaths that occurred - however if it is the kind of game where you get shot your game destructs then perhaps the seriousness of what happened might be in some way brought to the FPS "soldier".

Playing at higher levels where it is a chess-proxy game does not require me to deal with the issue of killing people and why - it becomes a form of puzzle with unknowns. It could aswell be a business game - but then they are not common.

Borderlands is weak in that dying and respawning only takes a chunk of your money, however you keep all the weapons and shields you have laboriously acquired. And that is a weakness in an otherwise very good game. But then I suppose they have to satisfy - or feel they should satisfy - the twitch market.

[noxnoctum]

Fair enough. All I was saying is that assuming it will *probably* suck (which is what you said originally) is just wrong.

Of course, there are plenty of games with amazing graphics but terrible gameplay. Crysis is probably the pinnacle of that. There's also plenty of games with terrible graphics AND terrible gameplay (CMSF at release )

[MeatEtr]

So I suppose for now on all RO threads need a warning of: "Not for the squeamish like diesel!".

[dieseltaylor]

: )

No problem. If you believe the meta-research on whether media depictions affects peoples tendency to violence then you might also feel differently about graphic realism.

Most people instinctively feel that given a problem most people reach for the tool they are most comfortable with, so carpenters see a problem as how is it resolved by my tool-kit, ditto plumbers, lawyers, etc. Humans for all their potential powers are also creatures of reaction and habit, and generally quite primitive.

Playing Borderlands recently had me flinching with bird shadows the trigger [Rakk attacks]. My brother travelling in Syria recently was automatically looking at it as a tanker from playing the CM series.

Ok so who am I to put my opinion, and the meta-research on media influences against the power of capitalism and peoples preference for quick gratification/ black-white solutions in a complicated world. Next thing you know I will be moaning on that advertising affects people also - which can be no more true than media violence does.

: )

added

Victoria II, great for improving geography and improving knowledge of the complex world ...............

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_II

http://www.tsjonline.com/story.php?F=4774964

[noxnoctum]

added

Victoria II, great for improving geography and improving knowledge of the complex world ...............

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_II

http://www.tsjonline.com/story.php?F=4774964

But I feel this devalues the suffering caused by British Imperialism around the globe...

EDIT: Also, if graphic violence in video games made people killers, then 90-95% of the 12-30 year old male population of the USA and probably 80%-90% of that of Europe would be out killing people. It's BS.

At this point I'd like to invoke this great quote:

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989.

Though I guess the above could describe the rave community .

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.bigdownload.com/games/victoria-2/pc/victoria-2-demo/

Downloadable demo which shows just how deep it is. I mean population of 200 countries in 1836! play Peru, Persia, Prussia. Worry about the walloons and Flemish in Belgim. This is way way deep.

[dieseltaylor]

US murder rate : 1963 murder rate lowest at 4.6, below 5 1961-64, hovering at 5.5 in 2000's

US Violent crime rate 160 in 1960 , 2007 466.

I could argue that the violence would be even less without games and violent films.

Why the US crime rates are higher than Western Europe I attribute to American society and the larger inequalities in society. This is exacerbated by the dream world as portrayed by TV programs and adverts to which the majority of the country cannot reach. Also the level of general corruption, higher than most of Western Europe, and the way media and political felons are resurrected leads to a possible feeling that the only way to get ahead is not being honest.

Rubbing the faces of the have nots in the glossy world of the haves by an all pervasive media may well be divisive and disruptive of society.

That is my feeling about violence and general lawlessness. As for violence by film, TV, and video games - is that just showing how it can be done, and commonly it is done in TV land

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=c...esult&resnum=8

Interestingly this psychology books claims that 99.5% of the 3500 studies 1950-2000 show a negative effects of violent entertainment.

[noxnoctum]

I don't buy it. I couldn't care less what some psychology book says to be honest. I know most of their studies revolve around stuff like measuring the heart rate of someone who's played violent video games all their life when seeing violent images, and comparing it to someone who hasn't, and the results are as expected: the person who plays violent video games doesn't have his heartbeat go up as much. Conclusion: Video games lead to more violence. Utter, and total tripe. Having a lower heart rate when you see something disturbing does not mean that you're going to go out and kill someone.

Violence has gone up for exactly the reasons you said... the inequalities of society, which have grown exponentially in the US since the 60s. Throw that in with the rise of gangs through the drug prohibition and escalating racial tensions---now it's not just black vs. white, it's black vs. white vs. asian vs. mexican, and the ease with which you can get fully automatic weapons and you've got yourself a rising violent crime rate. You couldn't buy an Uzi on the street back in the 50s... I'm not for banning guns, I'm just pointing out that they're much more widely available in the US now then they were then---Canada for example has much looser gun laws yet has a much lower murder rate, because they don't have the social-economic disparities that we have, or a history filled with slavery, Jim Crow, race riots, the KKK, and other lovely things... it's not because their kids play video games less

I'd say by far though, that the biggest contributor to the rising violent crime rate is the "War on Drugs", pure and simple, which I'm sure you're aware began in earnest in the early 70s thanks to Nixon. Al Capone and co. weren't out blasting people with tommy guns for kicks back during the alcohol prohibition days. It was for $$$. Money and greed and idiotic laws, not violent video games, are the root of all evil. Colombia has the highest murder rate in the world, that should tell you something... And I'm pretty sure it's not cause everyone there is sitting around playing Call of Duty 24/7. Japan has one of the lowest, and their society is completely immersed with violence in the media, from video games to anime to... well everything. They're a pretty weird culture lol.

I've played "violent video games" since I was about 10 yet I still freak out at the sight of blood... even just seeing a dead squirrel on the road makes my stomach queasy. As someone who has grown up in this, (you haven't, I don't know how old you are but I know you're older than me IIRC), it's just total BS. And as someone who's had a knife pulled on them both in real life and in "virtual life" I can assure you the feelings they stir up are not even remotely comparable. Yet every time there's a school shooting, they say "Oh look, he was playing Counterstrike and listening to heavy metal!" Well guess what, so are millions of other people.

Virtual reality =/= reality, unless you just dropped a ridiculous amount of acid or are just mentally insane.

You are right though, occasionally this sort of thing tempts me to go on a murderous rampage:

[Thomm]

Lt. Col. Grossman warns of the effects of violent video games in "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society". That convinced me more than any psychological study to be careful, at least with my child.

And I am sure that playing FPS for half my life had an effect on me. Not making me aggressive, but having an effect.

Best regards,

Thomm

[noxnoctum]

Well, whatever suits you both, now I'm off to blow off someone's head from Sweden playing a German in Southern Russia 70 years ago. Cya!

[Thomm]

Well, whatever suits you both, now I'm off to blow off someone's head from Sweden playing a German in Southern Russia 70 years ago. Cya!

SHOOT THEM IN THE BELLY!

(See what I mean?)

Best regards,

Thomm

[noxnoctum]

Yep, I can feel the psychotic feelings coming on already.

Some commentary on this:

[dieseltaylor]

To save time here are the Manhunt "executions"

Well, a beneficial game!

The computer game Tetris may have a special ability to reduce flashbacks after viewing traumatic images not shared by other types of computer game, Oxford University scientists have discovered in a series of experiments.

In earlier laboratory work the Oxford team showed that playing Tetris after traumatic events could reduce memory flashbacks in healthy volunteers. These are a laboratory model of the types of intrusive memories associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In this new experimental study, the researchers compared the effectiveness of Tetris at reducing flashbacks with Pub Quiz Machine 2008, a word-based quiz game. They found that whilst playing Tetris after viewing traumatic images reduced flashbacks by contrast playing Pub Quiz increased the frequency of flashbacks.

A report of the research is published in this week's edition of the journal PLoS ONE.

In two separate experiments, the team showed a film to healthy volunteers that included traumatic images of injury from a variety of sources, including adverts highlighting the dangers of drink driving – a recognised way to study the effects of trauma in the laboratory.

In the first experiment, after waiting for 30 minutes, 20 volunteers played Tetris for 10 minutes, 20 played Pub Quiz, in which they had to select one of four on-screen answers, for 10 minutes and 20 did nothing. Those who had played Tetris experienced significantly fewer flashbacks of the film than those who did nothing, whilst those who played Pub Quiz experienced significantly more flashbacks.

In the second experiment, this wait was extended to four hours, with 25 volunteers in each group. Those who played Tetris again had significantly fewer flashbacks that the other two groups. In both experiments, all groups were equally able to recall specific details of the film.

'Our latest findings suggest Tetris is still effective as long as it is played within a critical six-hour window after viewing a stressful film,' said Dr Emily Holmes of Oxford University's Department of Psychiatry, who led the work. 'Whilst playing Tetris can reduce flashback-type memories without wiping out the ability to make sense of the event, we have shown that not all computer games have this beneficial effect – some may even have a detrimental effect on how people deal with traumatic memories.'

These latest findings support how the team believes the approach works:

The mind is considered to have two separate channels of thought: one is sensory and deals with our direct perceptual experience of the world through sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. The other channel is conceptual, and is responsible for putting together these perceptual experiences in a meaningful way – putting them into context. Generally, these two channels work in balance with each other, for example, we would use one channel to see and hear someone talk and the other to comprehend the meaning of what they are saying.

However, when someone is exposed to traumatic information, these channels are thought to function unequally so that the perceptual information is emphasised over the conceptual information. This means we are less likely to remember the experience of being in a high-speed road traffic collision as a coherent story, and more likely to remember it by the flash of headlights and noise of a crash. This perceptual information then pops up repeatedly in the victim's mind in the form of flashbacks to the trauma causing great emotional distress, as little conceptual meaning has been attached to them.

Research tells us that there is a period of up to six hours after the trauma in which it is possible to interfere with the way that these traumatic memories are formed in the mind. During this time-frame, certain tasks can compete with the same brain channels that are needed to form the memory. This is because there are limits to our abilities in each channel: for example, it is difficult to hold a conversation while doing maths problems.

The Oxford team reasoned that recognising the shapes and moving the coloured building blocks around in Tetris competes with the images of trauma in the perceptual information channel. Consequently, the images of trauma (the flashbacks) are reduced. The team believe that this is not a simple case of distracting the mind with a computer game, as answering general knowledge questions in the Pub Quiz game increased flashbacks. The researchers believe that this verbal based game competes with remembering the contextual meaning of the trauma, so the visual memories in the perceptual channel are reinforced and the flashbacks are increased.

Dr Holmes said: 'Whist this work is still experimental, and any potential treatment is a long way off, we are beginning to understand how intrusive memories/flashbacks are formed after trauma, and how we can use science to explore new preventative treatments.'

The group will continue to develop this approach further as a potential intervention to reduce the flashbacks experienced in PTSD, but emphasise that the research is still in the early stages, and careful steps need to be taken before this can be tested clinically.

[MeatEtr]

It should also be noted people in my age bracket have often been called the first videogame generation. Which is great and I still have fond memories of the Atari, Coleco, Intellivision, and the classic Apple II. But even for us to say "Well I grew up playing games and I'm fine!" statement isn't really valid when comparing the games. The violent videogame game debate didn't really start until about the early 90s. The hyper-realism violence found in todays games aren't even comparable to the old games.

"Hey little Jimmy, would you like to play Pac-man or Call of Duty?" He'd probably look at you like you were nuts.

But in the end it's about the parents raising the child. No study trumps this. If they let movies and games raise their child, then yeah there may be problems.

[Wengart]

Crysis was by no means a terrible game, and in fact was a nice departure from linear shooters that dominate the market then and today. Its a game that encouraged the player to experiment and made for great anecdotal tales. Instead of talking about the scripted sequence that every player experienced the player can talk about how he rigged a house with explosives and lured a North Korean squad inside before detonating them, made his way through an entire mission without killing anyone, or punched a hole in a wall to escape encroaching enemies. Crysis showed an unrestrained revelry for player agency and was much more of a game than many of todays shooters could say.

[dieseltaylor]

Sounds more of a thoughtful game than most.