General Discussion [ Page 85 ]

War Z Beta

http://gamergrub.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-War-Z-Zombie-MMO.jpg

So, today a friend gave me a key to the War Z beta. I had hopes that this would be a good experience but didn't really think the game was going to be amazing. Now, I realize this is in beta and they still have a lot of changes to make, but I feel like its almost too late for some of the issues.

First off, the animations are dreadful. Running and jumping throughout the game just makes me laugh because the animations are just THAT bad. It makes me not able to take the experience, a game like day z has or war z should have, seriously. I feel like the game should have a serious, life or death, feeling to it, but it doesn't. Its just a laughable clone of day z that can't be... Read All So, today a friend gave me a key to the War Z beta. I had hopes that this would be a good experience but didn't really think the game was going to be amazing. Now, I realize this is in beta and they still have a lot of changes to make, but I feel like its almost too late for some of the issues.

First off, the animations are dreadful. Running and jumping throughout the game just makes me laugh because the animations are just THAT bad. It makes me not able to take the experience, a game like day z has or war z should have, seriously. I feel like the game should have a serious, life or death, feeling to it, but it doesn't. Its just a laughable clone of day z that can't be taken seriously.

Second, the building and towns. Almost every single town in the map is exactly the same and has the same buildings with the same layouts. There was almost no effort in making the map feel dynamic. If you didn't start out with a map, it would be impossible to tell a town apart from another besides for the surrounding hills and trees. This makes the experience very dull and repetitive.

Lastly, the game in general. There is nothing in the game that makes me think of it as an independent game. I feel as though almost every aspect has been stolen from the day z mod. There is zero creativity involved in this game. The only difference is the inventory system and the fact that you can see a weapon a mile away because it glows extremely bright. When you die, you lose all your stuff and must wait an hour to play that character again. This is pointless because you are allowed about 5 characters. If they are worried about you logging back in with the same character to get your stuff back, they should of made it to where you cannot join the same server. The fact that you can make multiple characters defeats every purpose of locking your dead character from being played again for 1 hour.

Really, War Z did not have a good impression on me at all. I feel as though the day z mod is a million times better. There is really no point in me playing war z again as I feel that I would make better use of my time if I played Day Z. If any of you guys want to criticize my judgement than go ahead. I'm just stating my opinion on the game. I just wanted to warn anyone who wants to play this game to not get their hopes up before hand.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/05/2012 at 11:32pm

Is this the standalone Day Z project or something different altogether? From how you called it a laughable clone of Day Z, I'm assuming it's not related.

BR Supporter Post Author wrote on 11/06/2012 at 12:32am

It's not related. The Day Z standalone I believe is called exactly that. War Z is something entirely different. Made by different people. I believe its Arktos Interactive.

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/06/2012 at 02:44am

Thanks for letting me know, this wasn't on my radar.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/06/2012 at 04:34am

Sounds like it shouldn't be on your radar after all ;)

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/06/2012 at 05:00am

What I meant is I now know about it, yeah not going to follow them. :D

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State of The Ghost: 3.0

In keeping with the spirit of the very infrequent "State of the Ghost" posts I add yet another to the mix. Going forward I plan on doing about 4 a year talking about the nuts and bolts of what's going on and what we have brewing on the site.

Overall I am really happy with how far Cheerful Ghost has come since I launched the site this year in January. Ill paint a larger picture at the year end with how far we have come, but needless to say I am really proud of Cheerful Ghost as it sits today. Since the site is still so young if you have any suggestions or recommendations forward I would love to hear them.

Last month I added a lot of stuff to Cheerful Ghost to clear out... Read All In keeping with the spirit of the very infrequent "State of the Ghost" posts I add yet another to the mix. Going forward I plan on doing about 4 a year talking about the nuts and bolts of what's going on and what we have brewing on the site.

Overall I am really happy with how far Cheerful Ghost has come since I launched the site this year in January. Ill paint a larger picture at the year end with how far we have come, but needless to say I am really proud of Cheerful Ghost as it sits today. Since the site is still so young if you have any suggestions or recommendations forward I would love to hear them.

Last month I added a lot of stuff to Cheerful Ghost to clear out some long needed features to make it easy to start up some new awesome stuff we will launch very soon. Before I get into the upcoming features currently in the works, lets discuss what I rolled out last month:

Posts now have titles. Its funny because people have been asking for this since the site first launched. I thought it was nothing important so I kept dismissing it as something we needed. Over time I realized that being the ONLY person that felt we didn't need post titles was a bad idea, so I gave you what you wanted. I sort of did it thinking no one would use it but... since its launch its has been used in 100% of all new posts proving without a doubt I can be wrong about what features we actually need :D After using the post titles myself, I can say they are an awesome addition and I am glad people kept pushing on that one. I think this proves that if enough people want something and are vocal about it, it will be added. Post titles now work with our Atom Feed, Emails & Google Searches and when you share a post to Facebook and Google+ the title is incorporated in the content.

If you come to the site on a popular Holiday you will get a trophy. So far I have added Trophies for All Hallows Eve, Turkey Day & Leprechaun Day. As more holidays approach, I will add more. If you have a holiday you think should be memorialised in trophy form, let me know. Yes, I will add a trophy for Star Wars Day. :D

If people haven't come to the site in a few weeks we send out a email letting them know the most popular conversations that happened since they were away. I send this out every two weeks as to not be annoying. We now randomize between 5 or 6 different subjects for the email. I don't want to give the impression the content of the email is always the same because the subject line was. Now the subject will be different enough to hopefully let the user know the content of the email is new and interesting.

We were having a problem with certain people posting content a few users and myself didn't think was awesome. I implemented a system to "bury" a post. Basically it means that a buried post won't be visible to anyone on the main or corresponding game page. The post will be visible to the originating user and on the users personal area. 99% of posts are fine, occasionally some are not and this is just a way to ensure stuff on the main page is awesome for everyone.

Tungsten, Panickedthumb & WhiteboySlim are site moderators. Basically this allows them the ability to bury posts and add and edit games in the Cheerful Ghost database. Wherein its not new they are moderators, they can now bury posts along with me.

I experimented with adding video embed support for Twitch.tv. Basically I can't get a good method to ALWAYS display the video feed to browsers on your phone, tablet and desktop. What I ended up doing is displaying a Twitch graphic pointing the user to the twitch content on the site. I don't love this solution, but I like it more than displaying a broken box to people on iPhones and Androids. Eventually Twitch will provide an embed that will work on all clients and when they do I will be the first to incorporate it.

I had to migrate the database of the provider we host the site with. The free database plan we were on was no longer valid because of all the data the site stores. I guess tracking 26k games all the posts and comments take up more space than they felt should be under the free plan. :D
I also fixed a few bugs and made some improvements to the overall site look and feel as well as a bunch of other stuff I don't remember off hand.

I cleared this list off because I wanted to put us feature wise in a good place for something I have wanted to do since the site launched in January.

Cheerful Ghost is getting a visual upgrade. First off I want to let you know that the site will not lose any functionality you love. I am merely taking the design we currently have and making it better. Since I am the lone developer you have been stuck with the best visual design that I could muster. For not being a designer I am pretty happy with how it turned out but I want the site to be "moar awesomerz" in its visuals.

Yesterday I started the process of working with the new design made with the amazing Twitter Bootstrap Framework(http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/) and after showing it to a friend I am really happy with the direction. What I am doing is recreating the main page in HTML and making sure it works well on phones, tablets and desktops. When I complete the initial design and mockup I will post a "Lets Play: Cheerful Ghost Design Edition" to show you what I have cooked up.

After the design is tweaked and I feel it is awesome enough, ill spend a week or whatever cutting up the site to operate with the new design. After the bugs are all ironed out ill push it out for everyone to enjoy.

The reason I want to give the site a visual lift is because I want the visuals of Cheerful Ghost to be as awesome as the community and the content we create together. For many months I have considered what to do about this and think I am on a pretty good path, but I look forward to your input here when I post the visual "Lets Play" video showcasing the new goods.

Thanks for reading and if you have any thoughts about the above, please let me know.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 11/04/2012 at 11:47pm

Awesome job getting all of those things into the website. I look forward to the visual overhaul. If what your using has a way to add in anything semi-fancy you should ask me or my brother. I did graphic design on cards and a lot of other things for along while. I believe he is taking courses in school to do some things as well.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/05/2012 at 03:11am

When I get the Lets Play video up showing off the new design I'd love to get your thoughts for sure!

Travis Admin wrote on 11/05/2012 at 03:44am

You should do a beta.cheerfulghost.com for a couple of weeks before launching the new design, just to have a ton of eyes on it with suggestions.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/05/2012 at 04:00am

A beta is a good idea I might do that depending on how much work it is to do it.

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 11/05/2012 at 05:07pm

Great work so far, Jon.

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Another interesting article on games journalism

http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles/craig-test/1351787650.43.jpg/EG11/thumbnail/360x200/

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-11-02-the-games-media-must-renew-the-trust-of-its-audience

Table Top: Star Fluxx

Table Top just released a new episode covering the Board Game Star Fluxx. One of my friends recently picked this up and I need to play it with him sometime. He said it was good, looks like it from the video.

The Best Thing To Happen In The 21st Century

http://www.oculusvr.com/. The first ever cost effective version of simulated VR to ever be developed. It's on kickstarter if you guys want to support it. It's the stepping stone to real and true virtual reality in the future. Take a few minutes of your time and watch that video.

The Final Games of 2012 And Best Of

Reddit user BarryJordan23 made a pretty awesome list of the games remaining to be released in 2012.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1222ba/complete_list_of_all_upcoming_video_games_for/

I looked over the list a few times and nothing really jumped out at me as something I needed to play and as such started thinking about the best games I got this year. I immediately wanted to do something with you all about it and decided a post made sense so we could hash out the details.

For everyone that wants to participate we should all create our "best of 2012" game lists. I am even thinking that we could do a "Cheerful Ghost best of 2012" as well. I could create a new page... Read All

Happy Halloween!

Wanted to wish everyone a safe Halloween, especially everyone with an increased Hurricane quotient this holiday! I have collected a bunch O links of various Halloween bits from sites around like Reddit. I am lumping them together in one post because I find 1000 of these posts to be a bit on the annoying side. All together now.

Video game inspired Pumpkin Carvings:

Borderlands 2: http://i.imgur.com/R6CG2.jpg
Mario Bob-omb: http://i.imgur.com/dg1CZ.jpg
Pichatchu: http://imgur.com/isI0E
Borderlands Gun: http://imgur.com/8WVu5
Cl4pTr4p: http://imgur.com/a/Cny12
Limbo: http://imgur.com/d9GXS
Wario: http://i.imgur.com/hQjtd.jpg
Mario Himself: http://i.imgur.com/lxOEO.jpg
Mario Goomba:... Read All

Steam Halloween Sale! Fear Your Wallets Safety!

After this years Steam Summer Sale and learning how much some of my friends spent on it, I think the most scary Halloween news of all is Steams Halloween Sale! This sale is themed around games that contain lots of blood, killing, shooting and various other bits marked so far down they are 6 FEET IN THE GROUND!

A few of the marked down titles are classics such as:

Left 4 Dead
F.E.A.R. & F.E.A.R. 2
Dead Horde
Zombie Shooter
Killing Floor
Zombie Bowl-O-Rama
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
DEAD Space
Painkiller Complete
Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime
Prototype
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
.. And more!

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/halloweensale_2012

Will_Owens wrote on 10/30/2012 at 12:37pm

What a coincidence after posting about STALKER. I may FINALLY pick up the Walking Dead series to play with my wife... if she doesn't get too scared.

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 10/30/2012 at 04:20pm

Everyone needs to play The Walking Dead.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/30/2012 at 09:15pm

I am going to nab The Walking Dead when they are all out as a entire series bundle.

One thing about the games thus far though, are they all the same style or do they change a bit over the different episodes?

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 10/31/2012 at 04:38pm

The Walking Dead? They're very narrative driven so the change happens in the plot, not in the mechanics or anything else. It's consistently gripping. Essentially, it's making you feel like shit about decisions you make: the game.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/31/2012 at 11:41pm

Sounds great. Its been sometime since I played an adventure like game since Monkey Island 3.

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What Games Are You Playing this Halloween Week?

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Halloween week and was also wondering what games you were playing to usher in the holiday? Recently picked up Doom 3: BFG Edition and that was pretty well timed as it plays well around Halloween. Sometime thing week I am going to crack open Amnesia: The Dark Descent as well.

I am wondering what other Halloween / Horror themed games are you playing this week?

BR Supporter wrote on 10/30/2012 at 12:50am

As you know, I am playing killing floor. Lots of fun. Other than that, I may or may not pick up one of the STALKER games. Not sure which one yet. I can't think of any other games currently that I might play.

By the way, thank you so much for showing me the star crafts animations. I absolutely love them. The Halloween one is really good.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/30/2012 at 01:24am

Yeah, this episode reminds me of the Peanuts Halloween Special... Well minus the Great Pumpkin!

Travis Admin wrote on 10/30/2012 at 01:43am

Just an FYI since we're talking about Halloween-- There's a Halloween sale going on.

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 10/30/2012 at 04:21pm

I'm going to be able to LP the first bit of Call of Cthulhu, as well as a bunch of monster themed NES games. That's my halloween plan! I wanted to do a play through of Amnesia but that will have to wait for Xmas break. Those games have a wintery feel to me anyway.

BR Supporter wrote on 10/30/2012 at 06:42pm

I just picked up Home from the steam sale. Its already a cheap game but the sale made it even cheaper so I decided to buy it. I'll tell you guys how it is after I play through it. I might even try my hand at a LP of it.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/30/2012 at 09:19pm

Always +1 to any Lets Play. Something about them makes me realize if I could have done them as a wee lad I would never have left the house...

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 10/30/2012 at 09:57pm

Home is petty good as long as you're not expecting a long game. I like it a lot as a bite sized nugget.

BR Supporter wrote on 10/30/2012 at 09:59pm

That is what I figured. Something that cheap can't be very long.

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 10/31/2012 at 04:37pm

It's also very deliberately paced and there isn't much game to it. It's a little like Dear Esther in that respect, though I think Dear Esther is a bit stronger.

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An Interesting Idea for Interviews

I was chatting with @panickedthumb on Steam yesterday and he had a pretty cool idea. We were talking about the recent interviews I have been giving and he wondered if if would be good to interview the users of Cheerful Ghost itself? I hadn't considered that before and decided that is something I wanted to do.

I want to interview you all, the topics all swirling around gaming and you. Ill contact people one at a time and hopefully make my way through everybody. I am not going to go in any particular order and don't worry, I will get to you soon :D

Thanks to @panickedthumb for the idea and expect to see some interviews with CG users soon.