[shaq]

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

oh not at all. i found your value of 16 to be perfect. it looked much more realistic that way. i wished the game would allow for more dynamic icicle shattering = real physics. it's alright that they shatter a lot when you open
an icy door, but if you punch them, they should shatter a lot less due to the pressure that concentrates only on a tiny spot...oh well...

I'm sure you could do some scripting and make that happen. lol

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

lol wouldn't it be funnier that way? i'd also vouch for a freezing feature in the game. imagine using the water gun to water the walkway, it would freeze over and the enemy slips and shatters to a million pieces

but to come back to the particle value. the first time i beat the game, i played it unmodified and i didn't even recognize the particles. may be i had advanced physics disabled, but i only saw them for the first time in the video you posted.

How does that water cannon work anyway? If they are already frozen it must be hot water that comes out and melts them. Maybe that is boiling water that makes the sound when you have the water cannon in your hand. lol So it wouldn't freeze the ground unfortunately. I beat the game before the patch came out and it was missing a lot of the effects that were in the benchmark last year. There weren't any blue sparks and a lot less water was in the game. I believe only on the walls and none dripping from the ceiling and none from any of the pipes. Also the locker doors weren't movable and none of the extra cans and barrels. I don't think you could even knock the barrels and shovels off of the wall. So it is much better now than before.

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

actually i think the animations are already sufficient for that. they can walk and run. they take also cover if i remember correctly, so all's good. someone has just to modify the spawn numbers and they should charge automatically.

Each enemy has a different strategy. One of them does somersaults and keeps going for cover. Most of the others chase after you. One of us needs to see if we can add more enemies at least to add more tension to the game. It should be definitely possible to decrease the players health to make it harder and maybe less damage per shot.

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

of course! i'm a huge fan of it! actually, it was that mod that raised my awareness for high-res textures and also my disappointment in the original game, because it didn't contain any. i also think that this mod is one of the few redeeming things about the game that would make people play it even today. i know it did that for me.

is your windows 7 still timebombed, or is there already a patch?
that's the only thing that keeps me from upgrading. i read that it was benched to be quite a notch faster than vista, so it should be great for gaming, especially for such power hogs as cryostasis

Did you get CM10? I downloaded all 10+GB of it the last two days. lol There is a beta3 patch on top of the 9GB base file. I don't see why you need 64-bit Windows though as I only see it use up to 450MB so far. I already preordered it for $50 so I just use the RC. I got it since I only have XP and Windows 7 has DX10 and 11 so I had to get it. And $50 is crazy cheap for an OS.

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

you wanna tell me that you don't have the RC of batman yet?

i do think the water in cryostasis is a two-edged sword. standing in a room with melting ice and seeing the water dripping from the ceiling looks just fantastic. on the other hand, the water of the water gun, or any concentrated stream of water for that matter looks just unrealistic. it's even more obvious in the video that you posted, where you can see how the water shoots in batches through the open hatches. i haven't played the game unpatched so i don't know if they patched the open hatches in, but it is possible, seeing how big the patch is and how many files are being updated. those can't be all scripts. they can't weigh in that heavily.

There is an RC of Batman? Where? Where? It's still a month away, but Wolfenstein will be out next week. I have to get that one. And don't get me started on next year. About 20-30 really good games are scheduled to come out. lol It will be almost as good as 2004 was for gaming.

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

possible! although variable handling should be hardcoded directly into the executable. that doesn't mean that it's not possible to hack it, but considering how weak the effects look reality-wise, i don't think it would be worth the effort.

I actually like the water though. Have you tried it at 20,000 through the whole game? I am halfway through and I am liking it. There may be a hard limit to the overall number of particle effects and it could be determined by the engine itself. Did you try lowering everything else before you upped the water value? It might make a difference.