The video game called F.E.A.R: First Encounter Assault Recon gets a bum rap, even though everyone knows it rules. The bum rap is that everyone thinks it's just the AI and the guyshoot that rule in F.E.A.R: First Encounter Assault Recon, when actually a ton else about F.E.A.R: First Encounter Assault Recon also rules.
i was going to just comment on joe's post (good as always) but as usual when a comment gets past three paragraphs, i became filled with doubt before i finished it and investigated and discovered my convictions were false
minor F.E.A.R. spoilers below
(gravis did a comment on my FEAR post so long he made it a post, and now I'm doing that with that post, and this ends up being about all kinds of things)
Half-Life 2 (and maybe 1, but I don't think so?) had a trigger type called trigger_look, which was like a regular trigger, but it only executed if you were both standing in the trigger and looking at the specified entity. They used it heavily for Gman stuff - in HL2, if you walk backwards into an area you're supposed to see the Gman in, and then turn around, that's when he straightens his tie and walks away, he only does it if you're looking.
I remember thinking this was incredibly cool at the time, and it was, not for the ability to do that check necessarily, but for exposing it to level designers as a trigger type - a coder at Valve saw the problem of "player isn't looking when the cool thing happens" and provided LDs (who were the ones making all the scripted sequences) with an easy way to say "wait til the player's looking, then do it". It's a level of facilitation by code of LD that, these days, you're surprised (and often pathetically grateful) when you see it.
A fabulous thread of interesting bits about F.E.A.R., Half-Life, and FPS design in general. Love it.
