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Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
For all its faults, I loved FC2. It had a terrific sense of place, and I'd sometimes take a detour between missions just to find a good spot to watch the sunset. The map editor was also fantastic; it's a shame that most of the highest-rated maps created by it were lazy, lovely snipe-fests, but that's more the fault of the players than the game.

Hopefully FC3 won't go too overboard with the scripted sequences (like the burning building in the early videos) - what I enjoyed about FC2 over any bullshit whack-a-mole shooter like COD or Battlefield was being able to approach a mission in any way and from any direction I fancied. Cut to shreds by guards? Then climb a hill and use an RPG to take out a fuel tanker from half a mile away. Or go Mad Max and charge through their camp in a jeep to mow half of them down, then turn round, rig it with C4 and bail out just before it careens into the survivors and explodes. :haw:

There'd better be an equivalent of the dart rifle in the new game, though. Those fuckers in the Post Office? Sweet dreams, scumbags.

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Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
I'm starting to find it a bit odd that we're only a couple of weeks from release and Ubi have said almost nothing about the map editor, which was one of the things that kept bringing me back to FC2. There've been rumours of a Timesplitters-style single player mode, where you can build a map and then place objectives and bots on it, but nothing official.

One of the rumoured item sets is also 'Airport'. Great, expect 376 lovely versions of MW2's Terminal to go up within a day...

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
Eh, I'm on PS3 and while peer-to-peer servers have their downsides, I can put up with them much better than the bullshit that ensued when EA introduced dedicated rent-a-servers for BF3. After a couple of days of 'killed by admin' messages and being randomly team-swapped or kicked because I wasn't playing the way some little Napoleon demanded, I traded the game in. It just wasn't fun.

On consoles, the playing field might be at the lowest level, but at least it is level.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Marshmallow Blue posted:

Edit. Does anyone know what will control the quality of custom maps? I don't know how many giant dick stadiums made of sheet metal I can handle.
Ubi are supposedly going to take more of an interest in the user-created maps for FC3 than they did for 2; they've said that ones they think are particularly good will become part of the 'official' rotation.

The problem FC2 had was that map ranking A: was determined entirely by players (so there was vote-whoring for maps that catered for very specific playerbases even if they were poo poo by any rational standard, like the godawful barren canyon map designed entirely for headshot sniping that was insanely popular for a while), and B: made vote-whoring easy by letting people vote for a map as many times as they liked.

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Nov 22, 2012

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

XenoCrab posted:

So it sounds like the map editor will have a "Single Player Sandbox mode" that lets you spawn vehicles/wildlife/AI in your maps to play around with. This is awesome since it's the exact feature I wished was in the FC2 editor. Thanks for reading my mind Ubisoft!

http://far-cry.ubi.com/fc-portal/en-us/community/detail_news.aspx?c%3Dtcm%3A19-74054%26ct%3Dtcm%3A6-231-32
The FAQ makes it sound like they included an 'invisible wall' feature (Q9), which will be a relief if you like creating maps that aren't surrounded by massive vertical cliffs. Making sure you've blocked every possible point from which a smart-arse player can climb onto a crate or a fence or a barrel or a truck and jump over the intended boundary of the map could take almost as long as building the map in the first place.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
If I hadn't already preordered it, being able to place sharks on a map would have sold it for me. :haw:

It looks pretty similar in function to the FC2 editor (even down to only supporting four types of 'paint' for the landscape - seriously?) so I might get out pen and paper to doodle some map ideas in preparation.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

"You're in a jungle or some poo poo and a coked out dude is trying to get philosophical with you. Then he tries to kill you but you live and now you're gonna make him pay. Time to let loose some tigers and poo poo."

I have never played a Far Cry game for the story, and I never will. :c00lbert:
Considering the ruthless and bloodthirsty way I played through FC2 the first time round, in my mind that last gunshot wasn't the PC killing himself but him firing triumphantly into the air as he strolled off into the sunset with a suitcase full of diamonds.

Also, the final cutscene was glitched so that some of the character models disappeared leaving their guns floating in mid-air as they walked around, the hilarity of which rather spoiled the intended mood. :haw:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
Just got an email from Amazon UK saying they've despatched my copy. :toot:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
Post came, no Far Cry 3. Dammit! After reading this thread I really want to start playing. :argh:

Anyone tried the map creator yet? What does it offer over the FC2 editor?

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
In some ways I actually prefer FC2; as others have said this lacks the immersive feel the paper maps and minimal HUD provided. The constant nagging about the next required mission is annoying, and I much preferred the more open 'do what you want whenever you feel like getting round to it' approach of the previous game. I'm just forcing myself to ignore the prompts as I wander around. The game engine also feels like it's straining a lot harder to do what's asked of it - the 'transporter beam' pop-up effect is really noticeable in places, and somehow more visually irritating than a simple fade-in.

I'm a bit disappointed by the map editor, too. I know it needs to use assets from the main game, but the relative lack of buildings is a let-down. I quite liked building COD-ish urban environments in FC2, but the more limited selection of structures is going to make that harder. (And taking out the simple toggle between 2D and 3D camera movement makes positioning things precisely a real pain in the arse.)

All that aside, I'm enjoying it so far. I think I'm going to have to go on a hunting spree, because running out of item slots all the time is a bloody nuisance. Cassowaries and tigers and bears, oh my! (Ka-chak, boom!)

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Eponymous posted:

Can you change difficulties midgame? I see a lot of people saying to play on hard, but I'd rather not get stuck halfway through what sounds like a long-rear end game.
According to the pop-up hints, yes. I was tempted on the burn the drug fields mission because I kept running out of ammo and more guys kept spawning in the village, and I was also getting sick of Skrillex (I assume that was him - I've never heard any of his songs before, but the way he kept saying his name was a hint), but then I found the weapons cache. :haw:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
One of the trailers showed Jason blind-firing from behind cover, Uncharted-style, but I've never once done it and in fact don't even know how to do it. I tried pushing up against various cover objects to trigger it, but nothing happened. Did I miss something in the tutorial?

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
The silenced .50-cal with a zoom scope is basically an instant easy mode. I never managed to get a single undetected outpost clearance until after reaching the second island (some bastard always spotted me), then phoont phoont, two in a row and a new skill unlocked. :v:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Captain Diarrhoea posted:

This should be called Jurassic Park
I had a "Clever girl..." moment with some komodo dragons near one of the radio towers; two of them were attacking some pirate guards and I was just hanging back in the bushes watching the show when I hear a hiss, look round, and find a third one about six feet away. :gonk:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
I just discovered the world's most chillaxed guard. I was cleaning out a mine outpost on the second island, and thought I'd got everyone, but wasn't getting a victory message. So I started sneaking around, using the camera to try to tag him... still nothing. I was starting to think something had glitched (not for the first time) when I heard whistling and muttering. A bit more exploring... and I found him leaning against a building overlooking the main road, watching the sun set (he was possibly even having a smoke) and utterly oblivious that I'd just massacred all his buddies. I even crept up alongside him without being noticed. I was almost temptedjust to stand there to see how long it would take for me to register in his peripheral vision.

Almost. :ese:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
Am I alone in actually liking the second island? It's got a distinctly different atmosphere to the first Island's tropical paradise, even the lighting having changed; it's harder and more bleak while still being beautiful in its own way, like Scotland or New Zealand (with added palm trees, obviously). There are parts that reminded me of the Yorkshire moors, which as a Yorkshireman made me all nostalgic.

Also, if you haven't shot a seagull yet, you should do so just to read Willis's file on them.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Cardboard Box posted:

There'll still very rarely be some enemies, but yeah, clearing an outpost more or less makes that entire area completely safe, except for wildlife. It's kind of a misstep.
You can still get surprises, though. I went back to the first island to collect letters, and while driving through an area I'd cleared out early in the game I suddenly got the spotting warning. I thought it was an animal, but then two jeeps came tearing into a little homestead and a load of pirates piled out to start shooting everyone in sight.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

gibbed posted:

The only one I had trouble with was the yellow cassowary one, when I killed it, its corpse rolled down the cliff into a crevice I couldn't get to. Had to kill myself to reload. :v:
That reminded me of one of the weirdest bits of AI I've seen - I saw a civilian carrying a girder (!) out in the middle of nowhere, and decided to follow him just to see what the hell he was doing. He walked all the way to the top of a hill, dropped the girder (the physics engine causing it to roll downhill for a bit before stopping) and then carried on down the slope.

Because I was curious about the object physics, I went to the girder and nudged into it. It rolled downhill again at quite a rate and knocked the guy over. :haw:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

CJacobs posted:

Huh. Maybe I'm late on this, but apparently the sun moves the wrong way ingame for some reason. I've never noticed it but I can see how that could be distracting and/or really really stupid.
I noticed that early on. It's the same in the map editor; I was building a map today, and changing the clock to late afternoon made the sun set in the east. :wtc:

Maybe it's set in the Futurama universe after Amy reversed the Earth's rotation.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

NESguerilla posted:

Beyond how linear that mission is, no matter how many times I reloaded, the bottom end of one of the zip lines was a blaze of fire and it would be pretty much an insta-kill as i was getting shot by 5 dudes while trying to escape the fire. Luckily I eventually remembered what game I was playing and just wing suited my rear end to the end of the river, ran up the bridge and avoided everything.
That reminded me that in the mission where you have to infiltrate Hoyt's privateers, I managed to find a way to get to the boat without having to sneak past all those guys by the dock, but because I didn't pass the yellow marker on the dock itself the game wouldn't accept it. I had to do that section so many times and throw so many rocks. :argh:

I've played with the map editor now, and the performance indicator bar is utterly worthless compared to FC2. What's the point of having the thing if you can't see it while testing a map? It makes it impossible to tell where things are going to chug (as does the omission of the 'object poly budget' numbers). Mind you, sometimes things chug even if you're looking straight down at the ground without a single object in view. :iiam:

You can tilt power lines to use as ziplines, though, so that's one thing they improved. :haw:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
Dammit, I just want to try out my new map with actual players, but the matchmaking system for user-created maps seems worse than FC2's, which is quite an achievement. At least in FC2 you could force-start a game so you could wander around and test it in actual play, but you can't do anything here but sit and stare at a screen with a "Waiting for X more players to join" message until the sun burns out.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Riversideblues posted:

What the gently caress got changed between 4am last night and right now? I never had one crash in 20 hours and today I've had 4 crashes on fast travel and saves, both of which caused me to lose all progress.

I don't know what the gently caress happened but the game went from awesome to unplayable over night.
I've had a lot of trouble with loading hang-ups today (PS3), for some reason.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Samurai Sanders posted:

edit: killing four leopards in a row with a bow without being killed myself in the process is turning out to be rather difficult. It's not possible to one-shot leopards with arrows no matter what you do, right?
That loving mission. :argh: I ended up cheesing it using the syringe that lets you see the position of animals so I could tag them with the camera, then firing at a leopard, legging it back to a rock near the hut where you collect arrows that the AI pathing couldn't climb and shooting the spotted bastard from my little rock island.

Speaking of AI pathing, I switched it on in a map I created and found it's laughably awful. I'd assumed that you would get to somehow 'paint' areas where the AI could go to create paths around buildings, etc. But nope, the blue zone included water (so characters would run straight into it and drown) and let people get stuck running on the spot against low walls, barrels, lamp posts, bits of garbage... A slight dip or bump in the ground? As impassable as the Grand Canyon.

(Another annoying thing when creating your own maps is that you can do things in the editor that you can't in an actual game. My map had a harbour, and I made sure there were places where I could climb out of the water without needing a ladder. Worked fine in testing, but not when it was uploaded, dammit!)

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
I just played some Bronze Tier maps and there's some awful, lazy, badly-made poo poo in there. A huge empty dom map where one team's spawn points are as far as they can possibly be from the closely-placed flags and the only terrain feature is a single giant vertical cliff in the centre? Glad you put so much time and effort into it, mate.

Then I tried some Silver Tier maps (ie, ones that people have voted as being good) and they're every bit as horrible. A perfectly flat island with almost no cover and houses randomly dotted around with spawn points on the roofs so that if you've unlocked a sniper rifle you have a 360-degree field of clear fire over pretty much the whole map? Job well done! :ughh:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
I started a new game, and once all the mandatory stuff at the start is out of the way it's surprisingly relaxing just ignoring the missions and playing tourist. (A tourist with a machine gun, admittedly.) Cruise around, admire the landscape, watch the wildlife, steal everything that's not nailed down, occasionally get into a gun battle or be attacked by a wild beast. Jason's actually getting the holiday he was promised.

I'm now tempted to see how far it's possible to progress before even visiting Dr Earnhart. Pretty sure a bag full of invincibility syringes should make some missions a lot easier.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
The map editor just locked up my PS3 after I hadn't saved for about an hour. :argh: And this seems to be one of those games that when it locks up the PS3, it forces a hard reset with the power button, which is a bit worrying. Why does moving a tree crash things down to the OS level?

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
I found a loving infuriating glitch/feature/cockup in the map editor. Some of the textures in the collection system include rocks along with grass and so on - all very nice for flavour on relatively flat surfaces, but if you have steep slopes you tend to get rocks and stones floating in mid-air. So you have to go around and make sure you erase any you find if you don't want to pretend Rook Island is on Pandora.

Only problem is... sometimes the algorithm that decides where to place rocks will randomly reseed itself. So all the floating rocks you've laboriously erased reappear in different positions, usually intersecting placed objects or spawn points. :argh:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Harmonica posted:

I just played this beauty of a map in the silver playlist.




It's called Close Encounter. And for obvious reasons it made me feel like a little kid. Running around under that thing was amazing. Never mind that there's way too many open areas, the attention to detail in replicating a classic moment from film history is crazy.

I highly recommend jumping into the custom playlists when there are enough people playing to support a few lobbies.
That looks really rather cool, and it's a map that's obviously had a lot of effort put into it. Which sadly seems to be a rare thing. Most of the player-created maps I've tried have been the equivalent of kids making GBS threads into their hands then holding it up to say "Look what I made!" Even on the Silver tier, which supposedly Ubi moderates to a degree, there are some horrors. I played one Silver map last night (wish I could remember the name so I could warn people) where the 'thought' process behind its creation seemed to be:

1: Create flat plain with default sand texture
2: Drop warehouses in pattern that vaguely suggests a street grid
3: Fill gaps with random buildings, making sure they're dropped below ground level just enough that the only way to get out through the doors once inside is by repeatedly crouching and bunnyhopping
4: Block streets with random objects that you may or may not be able to fit between, who can tell
5: Place spawn points either at the extreme edges of the playable area or right in the middle of wide-open intersections
6: Publish! :downsbravo:

Yet this monstrosity had been upvoted, and had helpful tags like 'large' and 'small'. Meanwhile, maps that have clearly had work put into them invariably get voted 'confusing' because they're not flat, wide-open sniper playgrounds. :ughh:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Baron Bifford posted:

It's better than Far Cry 2's story. Was there even a story in that game?
Yeah; you're an amoral mercenary hired to kill a even more amoral mercenary, but you eventually realise that the only person in the entire country who wasn't using you for their own selfish ends was the guy you were sent to kill, because he'd seen Apocalypse Now come to understand the madness of war, and through him now you do too. Then you both commit suicide.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
Dammit, I need to get my addiction to making maps under control. I found a trick that lets you create massive WTC-style skyscrapers really easily, so went right to work on an Escape From New York map (complete with crashed and burning Air Force One and Snake's plane way up high on a rooftop), and once the layout was in place spent probably an hour making sure there was enough garbage scattered everywhere. And now I'm thinking that an Arkham City map should be next. Help! :ohdear:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Attention Horse posted:

Is it possible to add ziplines to the maps in the map editor? I can't find them on the object list :(.
Use a telephone line and tilt it - if you position the upper end right you'll be able to grab it with X (or whatever). You can't get very long runs, though. :(

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
I've found an extremely annoying bug in the map editor (PS3) where it will suddenly decide that ladders are below ground level (when they aren't) and refuse to validate the map, even though it was perfectly happy with them earlier. On one map I made I had to quit the whole game and reload before the issue disappeared, but on another not only did ladders that had been fine before now still fail validation even after a reload, but deleting them and replacing them with new ones caused the same problem. The only way to fix it was to raise the ladders six feet off the ground, which wasn't quite what I was after. :argh:

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Shnag posted:

The custom maps add to the replay ability of the multi-player,I found some of the silver maps too flat (too much sniping), never braved the bronze maps yet.
Some of the Bronze maps are actually really good (there's an insanely detailed urban one on PS3 called 'The Street Is Mine' or something similar, that left me jawdropped at the patience of the guy who created it), but because hardly anyone plays Bronze maps, and even fewer bother to rate them, and the ones that come up are completely random so you're more likely to get a procedural landscape with some buildings dropped on it than anything that's had effort applied, they just get lost amongst the chaff.

Then a lot of the Silver maps are utter poo poo yet get high ratings because they get voted up by little cliques, but Ubi's criteria for Silver selection seems to be based entirely on votes rather than actual quality, so welp.

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Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
FC2 had probably the best atmosphere of any game I've ever played, despite its flaws. It had such a great sense of place, Pala and the other settlements having a genuine desperate, grotty, sun-baked reality to them, and just exploring this hostile-yet-beautiful landscape was great. Shame it was always being interrupted by assholes in jeeps and blurry yellow vision. (I really wish they'd patched in a post-game option like FC3 that let you do what you wanted around both maps without the drat malaria kicking in.)

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