And that's exactly what I'm doing.
I'm showing up its major flaw by it: Unoriginal.

It's not just the classes that seem carbon copied from other mods. Now before you guys pick up the pitchforks, it's very hard to be original in the modern world and some level of "inspiring" is quite a healthy process.


Still, things Neotokyo was inspired from:
Artstyle:
From the Dropships to the Ghost over the "Spiderbots" everywhere. It's all Ghost in the Shell. Most of the stuff is "just" modeled after Ghost in the Shell Scenes and Objects.

Maps:
A variety of different games, for example the Shrine Level is nearly a 1:1 Copy from No One Lives Forever 2.

Weapons:
Weapon Handling, including the need to control your bursts, crouch for accuracy and shoot through walls are 1:1 from Counter-Strike. Weapons themselves are slightly modified actual weapons.

Stealth:
Taken 1:1 from other mods like "The Hidden" and "Dystopia". It has even got the same quirks as Stealth in Dystopia does, namely the Bloodsplatters causing your Stealth to be worthless.

Visionmodes:
Strongly inspired by Dystopia's Thermal Vision.

Ghostlink:
Dystopia's Tac Scanner or Soundwave Triangulator come pretty close to this.

Classes:
Well, could be from Dystopia or a countless amount of other games (I'd say its from Tribes :p). Still its nothing original either.

Add the amount of flaws NT currently suffers from, like the completely non informative weapon selection menu and maps that by the way they play were seemingly never playtested with more than 5 players on each team.

So... is there anything left in Neotokyo? Basically everything is taken from somewhere else. Like I said earlier in this thread, it looks good and sounds good, but wildly taking things from here and there like you're in some "pimp my mod" supermarket doesn't make a good entertaining mod. 
NT is great for those that want a new Counter-Strike but it brings nothing new to the table.

/edit:
Ahh yes, it IS Sci-Fi Counter-Strike. But don't let the creators hear that as their hatred for Counter-Strike is legendary. :D

Well, I've finally found the purpose for Neotokyo.
Install it, take the Soundtrack from Neotokyo and put it into Dystopia. Then delete Neotokyo. This way you'll get gadgets done right, good and fastpaced gameplay with the awesome music of Neotokyo (no offense to Bioxeed but that's just not everyones thing).

You can't really compare "old" anime with "new" anime by taking well done old Animes and pitting them against crappy new Anime. If you want to compare you'll have to take Animes of the same caliber. Pit them against works like Mushi-shi and suddenly the old style gets a severe beating.

Everytime someone suggests Elfenlied on a "recommended" Anime List, I die a little. Stop with the Anime Rickroll already. Countless unsuspecting people have been lured to watch this Anime by such suggestions. Can you really live with that burden?
On a more serious note... I feel it is needed to issue a fair warning towards Elfenlied. It's disgusting. One whole piece of pure fanservice, gorefilled, disgusting crap. It managed to throw Gantz of the Throne of the realm of "worst ever".

Most of that Drama went on in their IRC Channel during their "Release Party".
Despite the Drama, I've played the Mod and from a graphical point of view it's really beautiful although cluttered at times. Gameplay wise I can't fend the feeling of playing a slightly faster Counter-Strike with some new models and maps plus some Gimmicks. This might very well be the players fault. Although the knockout rounds and the weapon handling don't particularly help to prevent that impression.
There are some things that irritated me. For example, you have no way of knowing what a weapon will actually do unless you've picked it up and used it. When you select your weapons, you get a collection of images with some big japanese letters on it. It wasn't until I found the Highres image of the weapon screen somewhere else (here) that I saw the small bars informing you about the weapons performance. Ingame its just too damn small to see.
The second problem is that the maps are more complicated than they need to be. Right from the Start you'll often have 6-7 Paths you can take and its not obvious which ones lead into Dead Ends. Well something to do while you wait those 4 minutes after you died from an enemy you had no way of seeing.

And boy do they have attitude issues.
From massbanning Dystopia Players from their IRC Channel just because they are Dystopia Players, to holding back the .fgds (needed for mapping) with the held up finger "we don't want custom maps. They suck". Up to the pissing contest they're having.

RTS game from around 1998. It was top-down, 3D terrain and units, and the units/buildings were chubby creatures/plants rather than tanks/humans. I only played the demo once and it seemed moderately interesting.

That does sound somewhat like

.

I also remember a game where you built a space-station out of simple platforms, and you built turrets (maybe buildings too?) on those platforms, and units, and you could move the whole station around against the enemies' space-station. Your units would then proceed to jump from your station's platforms to the enemies' and it was pretty cool. For some reason, I associate the game name with something like "Life and death" but that probably wasn't it.

Any help?

Life and Death triggers the game Afterlife in my mind. But I don't think its the game you're looking for (still an awesome game :D) /edit: After further reading the Wiki Article, no that's not it.

I'm looking for a game myself, the only things I can remember is that it was an RPG and you somehow had to fish the best armor in the game out of a small lake.

It's not really the money in Germany, otherwise the Internet would have a much stronger footing. It's actually a generation conflict of young versus old.

Oh hey, awesome! Exactly the same shit's going down in Germany right now. We're still fighting it, though, as it's clearly against our constitution!

That.
They don't care either though, they've been trying to shoot down games for some while and thanks to the Censorship Infrastructure they're forcing through they finally have the weapons they want. From banning development to prohibiting import of games. Some german politicians even dream (nightmare in my books) of an European only Net based upon Whitelists.
Most favorite saying of german politicians "The Internet must not be free of laws" - as if it is. The discussion about these things comes under the camouflage of protecting young people and children and uses the "do not argue" problem child pornography as means to introduce censorship. What's even more funny is that they openly admit they don't care what the people think. There was a petition with a record sum of people signing it. They effectively arranged things so the dialog spawned from that petition about the law would be held AFTER the law has passed - aka too late.

Nostalgia goggles.

You roll a 1. Critical Failure.
http://www.nemmelheim.de/turrican/news/duke/

3D Graphics age.
2D Graphics ripen.

If I look at old 2D Games, they still look beautiful. But old 3D Games, oh my god, my eyes, they're burning. 3D just doesn't age that well while 2D has a rather timeless appeal.

The amounts of flames and insults I have received are just as funny. One even went through the trouble of stalking me and spamming my e-mail. NIIIICE. You succeeded in forcing me to abandon another e-mail account.
I'm not saying those comments like you quoted are "fine". They're not. Those ARE insults, no doubt. I'm saying that the comments you and others attacked, Paul, they were totally fine. It's easy to say "that was a joke" now but they weren't, and the mess it created pretty much proves it. 

Anyways, I'm seeing clearly now, this is beyond hope, it has progressed too far. I was willing to point out that both sides were making mistakes. Yes, both sides. But seemingly, the mistakes are only made by one side aren't they? It's the evil gamers. Well like I've said, enjoy the glitter of the glory while you fall. End of line.

The footnotes are kind of silly -- anyone who doesn't know at least 90% of the references doesn't know anything about games. Do you really have to explain that Sega and Nintendo had a console war? I don't even think my 12-year-old brother doesn't know that, and he wasn't alive at the time.

The implication that indie game developers take criticism as a personal attack is also off -- I think indie game developers take *personal attacks* as personal attacks, and they happen often. If you make a game that will be downloaded by more than 1000 people or so, you will get personally attacked for making it, it's unavoidable. But that doesn't mean it's acceptable. And saying you are hurt by those types of comments isn't remotely comparable to what Derek Smart does.

Oh, and as haowan said, there's already a thread for this:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6121.0

Selective Amnesia is a beautiful thing, isn't it, Paul?
http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/05/06/spewer#comments
And I'm sorry, but the way those replies to two perfectly normal comments were made were quite a bit "Derek Smart" Style.

But whatever, close this thread.

Wanna be a legend?

The following text was written in response to recent developments in the Indiegaming Scene. Read it, or don't read it. It's your choice really. I hope to get a healthy and friendly discussion going however.

You've come to the right place. Take a seat, join hands with our community and you too can be part of the growing Indiegaming Movement.

He's an avid gamer, been for some time and has most likely experienced the rise and fall of the SEGA Empire (1). Shared a good laugh when ATARI (2) got burned by market gambling and lost their magic along the way. He regrets the end of 3DFX (3). He knows about Derek Smart (4), is imaginary friends with the marketing guys from John Romero (5) and dreams about living like Richard Garriot (6). He has listened to Peter Molyneux (7) - and shares his visions. He's a gamer and he's hellbound for Gaming.

Let's talk about Indiegaming, Indiegamers and Indiegamedevelopers for a while. At the root, they share a common word. That common word is "Indiegame". Indiegame actually consists of two words, independent( and game. Independent describes the way of Development and Publishing, namely without major financial backing by established and well known companies. This allows for a freedom of choice in Development. Well, that sounded easy. The word shares something with all great things though, it's actually not that simple. I've started by using three words;

Indiegaming, the mindset of indiegaming.
Indiegamers, those that play the Indiegame.
Indiegamedevelopers, those that make the Indiegame.

Think of them as the three sides of a Triangle.


As you can see, the bond between those three sides is made out of respect. For Indiegaming to work and retain its perfect balance it needs mutual respect. If one of the sides feels more respect towards one aspect than to another, the Triangle becomes skewed. This skewed Triangle however invites all sorts of problems and severely hurts Indiegaming as a whole. It's a rather abstract image, but I'll get to it right away.

He's disappointed with games. "Quick, hit a button to evade your avatar's death!", the game shouts at him, the screen blurs, his gamepad rumbles and a flashing "Hit B" on the Screen are all signs of the closeby apocalypse.. He just shrugs and sighs. I want the golden age of gaming back, he thinks to himself and glances a nostalgic look towards his trustworthy Joypad. "We had some awesome times, didn't we?", he murmurs and tips a finger against his nose. Up. Up. Down. Down. Left. Right. Left. Right. B. A.(9) "Creepy, why do I still know those things but can't remember the last time I enjoyed a game?"

An aspiring Indiegamer often approaches the matter with a certain expectation. Be it that Years of gaming have burned him out and modern games just can't give it to him like they used to. Or that he just wants to broaden his horizon, maybe even something as simple yet genuine as getting great games for small money or royalty free. Indiegaming on the flipside is a mindset, its like a promise. There are a couple of guys that can create games without others telling them how to do things. They're only limited by their own imagination and surely being gamers themselves, they aspire to make the games as enjoyable as possible. And last but not least, there's the side of the Indiedevelopers, they most likely enjoy the freedom they've got and seek the discussion with fellow programmers, as well as gaining a bit of fame from the gamers as well.
All of a sudden its not that simple anymore. We suddenly have an unhealthy clash of mismatching interests. Indiegaming is knees deep in an identity crisis, just who exactly is indie (10)? Indiegamers have a boat full of expectations, they want a little bit of this and a little bit of that and for christs sake, none of them wants the same as his neighbour. And Developers have become more interested in gaining fame than living the mindset. Suddenly the delicate balance of respect begins to tumble and shift.

"You know how much I loved that part about Kefka (11)? How he was a total madman and still pulled it off? Or, haha, yeah the creepy atmosphere in Undying (12), it's still unsurpassed. The perfect game, it needs those things again!"

In the beginning, those shifts in balance are looking like a good thing. Who doesn't like a bit of fame and celebration? Well and a bit more than bit surely can't hurt. And who doesn't love to meet the makers of their favorite games? It all becomes one big family and for a deceiving while, things are looking great. That's until personal interests manifest themselves. And again it's another injection of mismatching interests. The Gamers, not being Developers themself can't provide the detailled amount of feedback the Developer has gotten used to. And on top of that, he suddenly attempts to subconsciously blackmail the Developer into decisions.
Remember how being independent is about being free? Suddenly the Developer doesn't feel that free anymore as gamers are telling him to do this or that. The Gamers on the flipside have played a lot of games and came with great expectations, only to find out that Indiegaming can't give them what they crave either. And Indiegaming? It's too busy striking deals with the devil to sell its soul. One piece goes to Steam, another piece goes to XBox-Live. Oh and another piece goes to the guys from Direct2Drive. And... oh... yes. Identity Crisis, it's still smack in the middle of it.
So what happens to the beautiful perfect harmony of the Triangle? We'll see about that.

"I'm not a pirate you know but recently, I think games well, I don't know. They surely don't want me to buy them, they put all sorts of draconic Antimeasures (13) in them and if any game does that, I'm entitled to download it... I think, well I don't know. But not titles I like, I promise to buy them!"

The balance between the three sides starts to twist and turn, the Triangle tries to adapt to the sudden confusion. It breaks. Even worse, it mutates. It changes into something else. Suddenly, there are a couple of new sides to our former Triangle. There are gamers that have completely lost their bond of respect towards the Developers. It was torn, broken. Then there is a sudden new side, it's the In-Crowd. The In-Crowd appeared halfway between Indiegaming and the Developers. And well, there are the neutral ones as well.
The Triangle is dead, instead its a complete mess. The Developers will find the In-Crowd quite willing to praise them and celebrate them. It's here that legends and personality cults are born. Its here that Independent develops an attitude and matching behavior for that attitude. On the other side of the former Triangle, we suddenly have gamers that have lost all respect for the Developers. Suddenly its much easier for them to find excuses for Software Piracy as the biggest defense against Piracy is mutual respect. The broken bonds usually fester for a while, growing more and more extreme.

Indiegaming has reached the beginning of this very point. In the last few weeks there has been an increase in personality cult and celebration of Indie Developers. There's also been an increase in hostile comments towards the other side, the disconnected gamers feel the need to comment on games and judge them based on their own expectations, with no respect to provide a leeway for small failures. Developers on the other hand take every ounce of criticism that doesn't end in praise for them as a personal attack, in that they mimic the behavior of Derek Smart. The Endproduct is a mess. Lack of respect on all sides. "Go Away" Attitudes and open hostility.

"Why should I go? Man I love Indiegaming. Its cool. I just don't get why this guy has to be a Rockstar or something, ye know?"

So you want to be a legend, that's the rather daring opening sentence for this lengthy rant. Think about the repercussions. And the next time you flame a gamer or a developer, think twice. And whenever you read an opinion about you or one of your products, don't take it as a personal attack.
All sides need to keep in mind that they can't exist without one another. For this to work, for Indiegaming to gain footing, all sides need to lower their own expectations again and find a way towards their mutual interests again. Back to the roots, so to speak. It's okay to give that guy some fame, he's earned it. It's also okay to show some respect towards the gamers. The current situation is an amalgamation of this and all sides haven't exactly shown a mature approach to the situation. Gamers have been too demanding, Developers too Rockstar-like, Indiegaming to unindie.

Gamers, do you want to be seen like immature brats?
Developers, do you want to be famous - like Derek Smart?
Indiegaming, do you want to be Indie as fuck or not?

It's the current lack of respect that spawns all those arguements.

With this, I end this lengthy rant with a few final comments:
Forgive the insane amount of mistakes, I'm not a native english speaker. Although I tried my best.
The quotes are fictional by the way, used to spice up the text a bit here and there.
Personally, I'm a writer and a painter. I have also developed some things in the past, most namely however simply scripting, administration and building of a NWN Onlineserver. Call me jack of all trades if you want to. I have seen all sides of this matter, several times already.

Regards,
a bloody comment terrorist
____________

Appendix:
1. Sega used to be a major console manufacturer in direct competition with Nintendo. A couple of failures led to a shift towards Software Engineering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega

2. Atari were the bigwigs back in the days. There's plenty of interesting information concerning this area. You might want to search for a Documentation from the Discovery Channel, called "The History of Video Games". It's rather interesting. The Wiki Article helps as well of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games

3. 3DFX used to be a brand for graphic cards. 3DFX made several major miscalculations, most notably when they decided against the switch to 32Bit Color Depth. Despite 32Bit not offering a visual improvement back in those days, the decision was fatal for 3DFX and lead to their end.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx

4. Derek Smart is a more or less famous game developer. He's known for creating the Battlecruiser Series. However, he has become legendary for his rather aggresive approach towards criticism and to this date, Derek Smart would always be right smack in the middle of a discussion about his games and openly attack people that didn't like them.
http://follies.werewolves.org/

5. John Romero became the figurehead for the Development of Daikatana. Big Promises and a rather aggresive advertisement, coupled with a huge number of cancelled releasedates, engineshifts et cetera led to Daikatana turning into a meme. The name John Romero became a Synonyme for Gamedevelopers acting like Rockstars.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/index.html

6. Richard Garriot is a well known Game Developer that is most notable for his creation of the Ultima Series. He's also a man that has managed to achieve many of his dreams, including actually going to space. He's also known for having taken part in his own onlinegames, often by the acronym of Lord British or General British.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott

7. Peter Molyneux is another well known Developer and one to have a great deal of imagination and visions about his games. Sadly, he also has the reputation of "Bubble Speech" or "Hot Air Presentations". He tends to talk himself into a sort of autopilot where he promises all sorts of features that rarely make it into his games. Still, quite the visionary and a great man to listen to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux

8. http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=independent&search=search

9. Up. Up. Down, etc is the fabled Konami Code. Used by Konami in a wide range of games, this has turned into another meme and now represents a golden era of gaming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code

10. 12:38, the discussion about whether "Pixeljunk Eden" should have been nominated or not.
http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/03/24/igs-09-the-indie-game-maker-rant

11. Kefka is the main villain in the sixth installment of the Final Fantasy Series by Squaresoft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Final_Fantasy_VI#Kefka

12. Undying is a Horror First Person Shooter about a Family Curse, best known for the inspirations drawn from Author Clive Barker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Barker%27s_Undying

13. DRM, Digital Rights Management. A quite controversial topic amongst gamers and companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

I really liked the basic idea of this and the gameplay was quite creepy too. I didn't like enemies too much however, I found it too hard to dodge them because I had really no idea how big and high they were so basically everytime I ran across an enemy, I died despite my best attempts to dodge him somehow. Personally I'd prefer stationy environmental hazards instead of moving invisible blocks of random deaths.

Actually I've got another idea concerning enemies. I know we all hate QuickButton Events but in this game they might actually work. Suggestion as following: You (the player) get too close to an enemy, basically you're dead but the game gives you the chance to survive this by letting you hit a randomly chosen key. So if the game shows up z you've got to hit z really fast. If you pull it off, the enemy gets stunned and you can walk past safely. If you lose, well you were dead to begin with. This might infuse some panicking Key Hammering on the player side. Which is a good thing in a horror based scenario imho.

But Kudos for the gameplay idea, its great.

Due to your actions you have lost 250 Piety Points.
You know, the sole reason Ctulhu wants to wipe this Planet is because it has a serious furry infestation.

Congratulations to Bigpants for the Landslide.
I'm a bit sad there were only a total of 20 votes, most of them probably even by the writers themself. Interest sure wasn't high in this competition.

For me? Romancing SaGa III for the SNES.
It had all the trademarks of a great RPG, superb atmosphere, beautiful music and graphics, decent dialogues and somehow still managed to crashland in a very disturbing way. Now I know, there are lots of RS3 Fanbois out there so keep in mind it's simply my opinion.
But here are the things that killed the game for me:

Level Scaling
Gosh, so yeah, the Boss is currently too tough because your character developed in the wrong direction. Okay, let's level a bit. Wait what? Now that ****er is 3 times as strong? Let's level some more. OH dear, now he is 10 times stronger... The game punished you for playing the game. It was quite easy when you avoid unnecesary fights and collect as few exp as possible but once you linger for just a tiny moment the whole Level Scaling completely kicks your ass.

Non-linear Nature
I generally have no problem with open RPGs but RS3 did it in a way that was frustrating and annoying. Having to pick options with zero information on either sucks, especially if the wrong choice lead to a deadend of too strong enemies - which you couldn't recover from because the Level Scaling is there, live and kicking.
The whole game turned into Trial and Error. And speaking about non linear, it basically meant you had to talk to every NPC, check every single damned tile and for good measure, do that three or four times because of oddly placed Triggers. Doh.