Postal 3... first official screens... from Mike J of RWS

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Damien_Azreal
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Postal 3... first official screens... from Mike J of RWS

Post by Damien_Azreal »

Originally posted at 3DRealms by MikeJ himself. Three screens of the city of Postal 3.
Hey Guys,

Mike J from Running With Scissors. We released some screens of POSTAL 3 a couple days ago, and I figured id share em with you guys. Seein what you guys think!

Check em out here

http://www.postalnation.net/0501_articles/postal3.php

Thanks Guys
Game is built on the Source Engine and is taking place in a city named "Catharsis" after the Postal Dude's exploits in Postal 2.
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Post by Drakan »

Niiiiiiiiiiiice...
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Ra_Ra_Gazaa
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Post by Ra_Ra_Gazaa »

Looks good... But then the Postal series was never really about looks... Those screenshots don't tell us anything.

Despite the crappy bugs found within the initial release of Postal 2 (which, in my opinion, was more insulting than any of the in game content), I liked it as it was a vast improvement over the tedious original. However, Graphics wise, the difference from 2 to 3 seems to be nowhere near as vast.

How more offensive do you think 3 will be? How more offensive do you think it should be?

:phantasm:
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Gila
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Post by Gila »

screens look a bit "halflife2"-ish.

postal 2 was awesome. the addon for it (apocalypse weekend) was terrible though.

i hope they keep p*** on people and the shovel in this one.
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Post by Ra_Ra_Gazaa »

Gila wrote:screens look a bit "halflife2"-ish.

postal 2 was awesome. the addon for it (apocalypse weekend) was terrible though.

i hope they keep p*** on people and the shovel in this one.
Gila, have you tried Eternal Damnation? Is it any good?

:phantasm:
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Post by Damien_Azreal »

Well, since the game will be released on PC and 360 some changes will be made. As of right now... peeing on people may be taken out because of Microsoft probably wouldn't let it on their console.

As for the buggy release of Postal 2... I think the game was pretty damn well done considering it was made by six people with no official QA testing. Yes RWS is a very small company, at the time of Apocalypse Weekend they only had ten or so guys.
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Ra_Ra_Gazaa
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Post by Ra_Ra_Gazaa »

Damien_Azreal wrote: As for the buggy release of Postal 2... I think the game was pretty damn well done considering it was made by six people with no official QA testing. Yes RWS is a very small company, at the time of Apocalypse Weekend they only had ten or so guys.
I admire Running with Scissors for being a "small" company. But really, charging people who paid money for Postal 2, just to upgrade to Postal 2:Share The Pain is a cheek in my opinion.

:phantasm:
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Post by Ra_Ra_Gazaa »

leileilol wrote:
Damien_Azreal wrote:But really, charging people who paid money for Postal 2, just to upgrade to Postal 2:Share The Pain is a cheek in my opinion.
It's called an expansion pack. Obviously you are not aware of Blood's Plasma Pack or Cryptic Passage being the same kind of deal.
Apocalypse Weekend was Postal 2's expansion pack, whereas Postal 2:Share The Pain is the SAME GAME with multiplayer (which was apparently meant for the original release) and bug fixes and (it turns out) the ability to play a seemingly really cool mod called Eternal Damnation (which is pretty much Postal 2 with Zombies and lots of new melee weapons fit for any slasher film).

Since I was unlucky enough to purchase Postal 2, I am unable to play Eternal Damnation. I can upgrade to Share The Pain for an arguably small price of under $15 (which it pretty much was the last time I checked...), but it seems odd for the gamer to have to pay more to have their game "fixed" because of the game creator's mistakes.

Just checked the website again (the "store" at postal2.com) and it's under $10 now... Cheap, but it's not the price, it's the principle. It's like the version I bought is more or less obselete now (and seemingly has been from the get go) and it's a "two finger salute" if I don't like it. It would be fine if Share The Pain was an expansion pack, but it's not really... And RWS may be a "small" company, but they must be especially "small" since I haven't really encountered another company that have done this.

Anyway, what I've learned from all this is I won't be buying Postal 3 in a hurry. That's all.

:phantasm:
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Post by leileilol »

Damien_Azreal wrote:But really, charging people who paid money for Postal 2, just to upgrade to Postal 2:Share The Pain is a cheek in my opinion.
It's called an expansion pack. Obviously you are not aware of Blood's Plasma Pack or Cryptic Passage being the same kind of deal.
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Post by Kazashi »

It's called an expansion pack. Obviously you are not aware of Blood's Plasma Pack or Cryptic Passage being the same kind of deal.

Hmmm, maybe not entirely the same deal. Cryptic Passage and Plasma Pak could be picked up separately to Blood. The 1.21 patch could also be applied regardless of expansion packs. Share the Pain (if indeed not obtainable separately) sounds more like any of the various GOTY bundles where companies throw in extra stuff, obtainable elsewhere or not.
Last edited by Kazashi on Wed May 23, 2007 03:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by scar3crow »

Game is built on the Source Engine
Shoulda saved their money and got DP, or something at least not 10 years old that relies on middleware licenses and a few shaders here and there.

Seriously, if youre going to bother licensing an engine, go with something like the Unreal Engine, they seem to actively be trying to ease content creation for their licensees (Kismet for example) and its also an actual progressing engine.

Iirc Postal2 was made on a form of the Unreal Engine, but it ran incredibly slow, and no other game I played that used that form of the engine did. Im thinking RWS just isnt that... efficient.
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Post by Damien_Azreal »

Postal 2 was built on the Unreal Warfare engine, it was pre-Unreal Engine 2.0 and was extremely buggy and unfinished.

And the Source engine is very top end as it supports HDR, motion blur, depth of field and DX10. That is the great thing about the Source engine is the ease of which it can be updated.

As for Unreal Engine 3.0... well, we have yet to see a game that full takes advantage of the engine. Sure we have Gears of War (360 only... at least until late this year/early next when the PC version is release) but the style is to different to judge.
And Rainbow Six: Vegas is out... but it doesn't use a full version of UE3, more so UE2.5.

Besides, RWS is very small and hence limited budget wise. The Source engine is more affordable and capable of what they were looking for. The Doom 3 Engine, Unreal Engine 3.0, CryEngine 2, and Jupitor EX engine are all very VERY expensive and out of RWS price range.
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Post by scar3crow »

And the Source engine is very top end as it supports HDR, motion blur, depth of field and DX10.
Those things aren't top end, those are standard fare. You can sum that up with the phrase post processing shaders, instead of making it look like a bunch of features its really just one. This is akin to saying "Our engine supports castles, houses, tunnels, giant backpacks and marketplaces" versus "It loads levels." The engine being made for my own game has post processing shaders. They are kind of cool, have their uses - but it is a decoration for the most part and I really don't see any of those things seriously benefiting Postal3 aside from screenshots.

Regarding the very top end remark, name something it does that is not a middleware license nor a post-processing shader? I could go into the whole debate about Source being based off of the Quake engine code (the original), but thats a whole other issue (ask someone who got their hands on the leaked Source code, hell, look at the console commands in HL2...). As far as I am concerned, Source is 10 year old technology with the money to put middleware behind it, and a good art team.
That is the great thing about the Source engine is the ease of which it can be updated.
Do you know how easy it is to update? Cause from what I can tell, these additions were made by Valve, not a licensee. Do you know how easy it is to update the original Quake engine that is open source and has been used much more thoroughly? I don't. We could ask LordHavoc who took it, created his own network protocol, added support for a third, implemented real time lighting with stencil shadows, bloom, and a whole lot more control over the machine code and extended the limits. That sounds pretty damn extensive to me.

I am not advocating an established company like RWS use DarkPlaces, but I am stating that Source is 90% PR.
As for Unreal Engine 3.0... well, we have yet to see a game that full takes advantage of the engine. Sure we have Gears of War (360 only... at least until late this year/early next when the PC version is release) but the style is to different to judge.
The style that you so obliquely refer to as a dismissal of an entire rendering technology and toolset is done by the texture art and the models. It has nothing to do with the engine. Heretic 2 looks nothing like Quake2, but it uses the exact same engine. You know why? Different textures.
Besides, RWS is very small and hence limited budget wise. The Source engine is more affordable and capable of what they were looking for. The Doom 3 Engine, Unreal Engine 3.0, CryEngine 2, and Jupitor EX engine are all very VERY expensive and out of RWS price range.
This is perhaps the only valid objection. Budget. Though it should be noted that most companies who license their engine, do so based upon the perceived value of the company licensing, and how much they think said company will get from the game sells itself. It isn't a strict number.

I would certainly hope Source is cheap though, all of its siblings, such as DarkPlaces, Quake2, TomazQuake and Qrack are free.

All of this aside, Source has not demonstrated itself as a licensee engine for developers. They are not pushing tools forward like Epic and Crytek are. Crytek can boast of an extremely rapid fire level development pipeline with a claim of "what you see is what you play", this isn't particularly impressive to me, but it is a lot faster than most methods. Epic has their Kismet system, which puts actual game scripting into the hands of the level designers. This would really benefit Postal2, as it would greatly boost the ease of creating those special scenarios and little quirks we know the Postal games for (and Build engine games as well).

I'm all about some Postal3, but I am not excited about the tech choice at all.
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Post by Damien_Azreal »

We get it... you don't like Source.

Whatever. I'm not going to try and defend RWS's decision to use the Source engine to you... you've already made up your mind about it. I don't care.

I'm happy about it as I like Source's look and feel.
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Post by scar3crow »

I didn't make up my mind about it, I researched it, as have others, and came to a real conclusion.

Yeah, I like Source's feel, right on par with Quake's (and yet not Quake2's).
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