I totally forgot to post this last week...

The Star Wars: Republic Commando PC demo is online and can be downloaded here (Gamespot). Despite no longer being employed at LucasArts, working on that game was a labor of love and I'm really proud of the work we did on it. So I'd dig hearing what ya'll think about it!

Oh, and if you missed the Penny Arcade comic a few days back, check it out.

Yeah, played it last week. I was very impressed with the demo. It was fun to play, and I'll be buying the game.

Only one thing bugged me (and I know this wasn't something you had anything to do with), which was that the HUD was overbearing and took up too much screen real-estate. It made things look far too cluttered and console-y even on my high rez PC screen, and I felt like I was constantly having to peer through a peephole to see the action.

I liked the context-sensitive squad commands. I was also very impressed with the large library of audio responses to my commands, which kept things fresh and non-repetitive. Not to mention the quality of the voice-acting... certain past LucasArts games have been a bit garage-y in their voice acting and cutscenes, this one was very professional.

The level design was well-executed, but that actual level seemed to be little more than a collection of corridors. I'm hoping that the level they chose for the demo was deliberately one of the more sedate ones, and that there's more spectacular environments to come later in the game.

I do plan on picking this up soon, as I did have a lot of fun seeing at E3 and also at your office Loren (thanks again).

However, one irritating thing I am noticing, it doesn't allow widescreen resolutions. Every attempt to edit the system.ini including replacing all the "suggested" mode resolutions results in the game backing down to 640x480. Kinda a shame to see a modern game not support widescreen, when most do these days. I've been gaming on the HDTV a lot now that I have one.

May have been an Unreal engine limitation. Not sure on that one. That is sort of annoying though ain't it.

I'm guessing it might have been a design decision due to the HUD. The Unreal engine supports any resolution that you throw at it normally and can maintain proper aspect ratio. The UT2K4 Mac edition actually has all the Apple widescreen resolutions in game, so there isn't even the need to muck with the ini files.

Oh, and if you ever work on an Unreal project again in the future, make sure to let them know they can remove the "Warfare" references. Was kinda funny to see some ini files with that name in them still.

That reminds me, any luck on the job hunt yet?

I played the xbox demo on KOTOR II , I thought it was pretty cool and was a bit confused when It ended. I guess I got into it and forgot I was playing a demo.

Okay, I just played through the first few levels of Republic Commando. I picked up Republic Commando and Brothers In Arms at the same time, and I've played through a significant chunk of both games.

They're both very similar in the concept: Squad combat, where you control a handful of other team members. But the difference between the two, in terms of enjoyment, is night and day.

Republic Commando is just downright awesome. Once I turned off the "helmet" feature, I felt like I could see the playfield again. The HUD still gets in the way a little bit, but you get used to it.

The maps and missions in Republic Commando are very cool, even the first few levels are a lot more fun than the downloadable demo. The environments are detailed and engrossing, and the game engine is just beautiful. Loren, is that an in-house engine? Some of the cinematic stuff at the beginning was just breathtaking.

The squad features in Brothers In Arms are cool, you get a bit more control over your squad than you do in R.C. But the problem, and I really don't see a reason for this, is that the level load times in Brothers In Arms are abysmal. And there's no quicksave, and each time you restore a checkpoint, you have to wait anywhere from 1-3 minutes for a complete level re-load. Argh.

Republic Commando, on the other hand, looks just as good or better, and has nearly instantaneous level loads, and completely instantaneous quicksaves and quickloads. How did you do that?!?! That's utterly amazing.

unreal engine
'nuff said

Okay, now I'm stuck.

I'm fighting my way through a series of hangar bays, with wave after wave of separatist droids coming in. I have to destroy the force field regulators for each hangar bay. The section I'm on is titled "Overwhelming Odds".

I've made it through hangars A, B, and C, and I'm now on hangar D.

I've fought my way to the back of the hangar and sliced the console. A giant elevator comes down, and there's a walker on that elevator. My instructions are to use that walker to destroy the force field regulator.

My entire team is running around beneath the legs of this walker with me. More droids are coming. But the ladder to enter the walker doesn't respond to my "Use" command. It had an icon on it indicating I was supposed to use it, but nothing is happening. The droids eventually overpower us.

How do you climb into the walker as instructed? Loren, do you know?

Yeah, I had a peek at an online walkthrough, and it seems as though I'm supposed to be able to just use that walker, but it's just not working.

It'd be really sad if I had to cheatcode my way past a bug in order to continue the game.

Ah. Got through it. Restored from the prior checkpoint, and the thing I was supposed to "use" magically worked. SIGH.

Sorry for the delay in replying, haven't been on the board for over a week! I'm glad you're digging the game man, it means a lot to hear end users really into it. I still haven't ahd time to do a full play through, amazingly enough. It's sitting here next to me staring at me! Glad you liked the opening sequence too... that was my baby. =] What really sucks is all the sounds they had to cut to fit in memory... it was a whole different experience with all the explosions and stuff in there.

Anyhow, if you get stuck again let me know and i'll look in the strategy guide they gave us... hahah.

Yup, the opening sequences were something special. I really like it when games are doing cinematic stuff in-engine rather than resorting to movie files.

As a quick aside, just to offer closure on one of the things I mentioned earlier, the recent 1.03 patch to Brothers In Arms fixed my problem with slow level-load and checkpoint-load times, it's now playable.

So now I'm progressing through three shooter games at the same time:

- Republic Commando
- Brothers in Arms
- Doom 3 Expansion: Resurrection of Evil

I'm enjoying them all. Republic Commando is the most impressive to me, it's the most cinematic and engrossing of the three. The amount of work that went into all of the environments and assets is just staggering. The voice acting alone is impressive, there's so much of it and all very high caliber.

Brothers in Arms is good too, now that the loading-time problem is solved, but I simply have more fun directing my squad in RC than I do in BIA. And all the levels of BIA are starting to look the same to me. I'm really sick of ducking behind the same hedgerow over and over again.

The Doom 3 expansion is a lot of fun, mostly because it's not all "imp closets" like the original game was. But it's just an expansion pack, extra levels using a bunch of existing texture assets and such. So although it's fun, it doesn't impress me as having been a huge amount of work by a large team. It feels more like just a very well-done set of extra levels.

One thing I do need to say, though, is that the animations of one of the new monsters in Doom3-ROE are just amazing. There's a new kind of imp-like creature that throws green fireballs instead of orange ones. It appears to have been modeled to imitate Giger's Alien, and they've done an amazing job. It moves fluidly and convincingly, and genuinely scares me while fascinating me with its beauty. I find myself deliberately chasing them in circles around a column, just so I can watch the undulating tail animation. If you haven't seen this one yet, Loren, check it out.