h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Day of Defeat - the Computer Game - A963353
Author: Pete (Keeper of Disambiguating Semicolons) - Updated PS, come and visit! - U151654

My first ever entry despite 2 years and 5 months of being on h2g2.

Compared to the articles on Couter-Strike and Team Fortress, this article is quite verbose, but I think it needs to be in order to explain its uniqueness (especially regarding machine guns). Nonetheless I'd be interested to hear from anyore who has played "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault" or "Battlefield 1942" because I haven't

A587117 ("World War II") is not an Edited Entry (so obviously the Sub will remove it). I just thought it would be good for a

Ho hum. I've never played this game, in fact I only ever played the original Half-Life once before it seriously crashed my computer . Now I'm using Linux it seems even less likely I'll play a game like this (except Unreal Tournament, which runs even better under Linux than it does under Windoze on the same hardware).

That said, this is a very well written (and I should think so too - pedant ) and comprehensive article about what appears to be a very good game (I guess if you play this solo, the AI will have to be quite considerably better than the AI in Unreal Tournament, hohoho).

Here, have a .

~

Finally! I wondered how long it would take to get noticed

There's no single-player game, it's multiplayer only. There are 'bots' available for it though, which are AIs written by third parties. (Actually a bot is any AI designed to imitate a person, so your enemies in the single-player UT or Quake 3: Arena are bots too.)

You can run Half-Life quite easily under Linux if you use Wine... see http://lhl.linuxgames.com/

I've put the link to dayofdefeatmod.com in the 'References' section. I feel that people will be inclined to click on that link and read what's there instead of this article, which would kind of defeat the point. I've also added a reference to the article on Unreal Tournament, for a bit of a contrast.

}:=8 <--- GNU smiley

OT: Thanks for that link. I'm not going to use the CVS wine to run half-life (because I don't own it) but I reckon it'll significantly improve the performance from the debian-sid pre-packaged jobby.

(It's just compiling now but I guess I should leave it while I go to bed )

Thanks again!

~

I think one bit of info that should generally be included whenever you're writing an entry about a computer game is what kind of hardware requirements are involved. What operating systems will work? What kind of graphics cards are needed? How much memory, RAM, etc? How fast of a machine? I have games that will run just fine on an old 486, but I know of games that won't run well on anything but a souped up machine designed especially for 3D gaming.


Mikey

Half-Life generally runs very well on pretty much any Wintel machine built since launch (1998). The stated minimum specs are 233 MHz Pentium or equivalent, 32 MB, 28.8 kbps, 6 bpp SVGA. Truth be told, this gives a resolution of about 400x300 at 3 fps and appalling latency. Throw more memory and a 3D card at this (practically any compatible card will do, meaning practically any 3D card) and you take a lot of strain off the processor, improving resolution, framerate and latency, all of which are important in realtime online multiplayer gaming. (Exactly what performance it will give, though, I don't know). An 800 MHz/64 MB machine with no accelerator gives 640x480 at about 25 fps, which is quite playable.

DoD uses rather more detailed models and MUCH bigger maps than other mods (and HL itself), meaning extra memory will provide a large performance boost. 128 MB is recommended.

As for operating system, you'll need Windows 95 or later. You can actually run it on an x86 Unix system under Wine (with some tweaking) or WineX, though I haven't (yet) done that myself.

(Most of) These system information details ought to be included in the article on HL (A481033) rather than this one, as they apply to HL, Counter-Strike and TFC as well. I'll insert them tomorrow (when I have more time) though, to see if it fits.

Speaking of latency, there's an interesting article at A956207 about latency in realtime simulations; which could be expanded to include online gaming, which could be seen as a sort of simulation.

P.S. Thanks for commenting... most people seem to have nothing to say, and certainly nobody else seems to have played the game.

I know how it feels -- I have quite a few entries in PR myself, at the moment, and one has been there for a few weeks without a single comment....

Oh, and in the first sentence, it's unclear whether you're saying the mod is done by Sierra, or Half-Life is done by Sierra, or both. Personally, I'm thinking it's just Half-Life that's done by Sierra, as I don't see anything about Day of Defeat on their website. But the grammar of the sentence makes it pretty unclear.

I used to go do user testing at the Sierra building sometimes -- it was cool. I still get invited to go do it at Microsoft a lot -- I think they have a hard time finding girls to go test Xbox games...


Mikey

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've therefore moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Congrats!

Good work, Pete! About time we saw you in the EG!

Eek! I went on holiday last week (should have announced it in my jounal, I know) so I didn't notice this until today.

(actually I was around that day... That'll teach me to be lazy about checking my email.)

Anyway... I have several changes to make before it goes through so don't submit it yet! (changelog will be posted here)



(I don't much like bubbly... give me real any day! )

The edited version is A1026280.

Just remembered... a new version of DoD is coming out in shops next Tuesday (6th May, mod version is earlier) so it might be a good idea to delay submission until I've played it a bit.

Right, changes made:

1. Replaced HL credits with DoD credits, with Activision, mentioning the retail version.

2. Changed the section about flag-capture gameplay to make it more comprehensive.

3. Added more info on para gameplay, hopefully accurate for 1.0, and moved the wave respawn bit to the first part of the section.

4. Restructured the gameplay section to be more logical.

5. Added usage info on pistols.

6. Deleted the bit about Axis skins having no spades, because it's wrong.

7: Added "support weapons" to the weapon section intro and put them in with "Other Automatic Weapons", now after MGs.

8: Added section on system requirements (do you want a credit, Mikey?).

9. Tweaked the statement about uniqueness of machine guns - the M249 doesn't really count.

10. Made various other changes and corrections, mostly to (hopefully!) bring it up to date for DoD 1.0 (most info from the official website, especially the FAQ which is on the forum).

I'd still like this entry to be postponed for about two weeks to give me a chance to play the new version and see what it's like.