A bunch of my friends are mostly console gamers, so they'll be playing Portal on Xbox 360. I'm wondering whether our custom maps will work in the 360 version. Does anyone know the answer to this?

If they do work, how do the console kids get the map to their consoles? Will they have to download the files via the internets and then transfer them to the 360 with a home network? Or is there some way to make them available on Xbox Live?

I severly doubt that Xbox players will be able to play third-party maps (IE, our stuff). Which is part of the reason why I can't believe anyone would buy Orange Box on Xbox since maps are a huge part of why I wanted Portal, but I digress.

There is always the possibility that Valve will go to the community and pick the cream of the crop to release a map pack through Xbox Live, but that is purely speculation.

My experience with FPS games on console are that they have to dumb down some things for the conversion.

For instance Unreal tournament is fast-paced double jumping shoot while flipping action, but when ported to Xbox in the form of Unreal Championship, there was little to no jumping. Same maps, but it wasn't the same.

I believe the reason for this is quite simply the controls. Consoles cram all player movement to the players thumbs, you have one thumb controling your aim, another controling movement. While that sounds fine, keep in mind that the one controling aim also needs to control jumping by moving to another button.

PC allows us to use a seperate finger for all these actions.

In terms of portal, this will be fine for most puzzles. But I'd wager you will see the challenges easier, and wont see very many if any fast paced fling maps on the XBox

I'm not too familair with xbox, so if they have a keyboard or directional pad as opposed to the classic controller then maybe its possible

Rofl! Your friends actually play Console games, let alone Console FPS?

Please slap them and tell them how stupid they are and tell them to build a real gaming machine. The top xbox 360 model is like 300 bucks and all it can do is play stock games that suck to begin with? What a WASTE OF MONEY!

Tell them to play real games. Kthx.

EDIT: Portal for the Xbox has auto aim enabled by default and cannot be disabled.

Now that's not fair. I dont think anyone should get flamed over what they use to play games. If they are into consoles, thats cool. I'm not much of a fan for console fps', but the upside consoles will always beat pc's on is that they are good for playing side by side with a friend. I've been to my share of lan parties, and everyone huddles over their computer w/ their headphones where there is little to no talking, everyone has their own screen. When I kill someone, I wanna turn and laugh at them, followed by spending a good 30 seconds of smacking eachother around yelling things like "you suck" "no you do" time and again.

ahhh.. memories..

Quote:
I've been to my share of lan parties, and everyone huddles over their computer w/ their headphones where there is little to no talking, everyone has their own screen. When I kill someone, I wanna turn and laugh at them, followed by spending a good 30 seconds of smacking eachother around yelling things like "you suck" "no you do" time and again.

ahhh.. memories..

that was so well put.

I don't think consoles are a waste. In fact, there are lots of games I prefer to play sitting on a couch with a controller. Fighting games, for instance, or racing games, all the GTA games, Zelda, Prince of Persia, Metroid, and so on.

Shooters are obviously better with a keyboard and mouse. And PC is the way to play RTS games and RPGs.

In the case of the Orange Box, it was a no-brainer. Not only is it a pack full of shooters (mouselook FTW), but I preordered from Steam for $45 (it's $60 on Xbox) and had it all downloaded and ready to go at 12:01 launch day. Didn't even have to leave the house.

agreed, zelda, tetris, dr. mario... only on console

supersmash.

supersmash bros is a fun game, but its too clicky, meaning I never spent my free time playing it, and couldn't play my brothers cause thats all they'd do, they'd pick their favorite guy and use 2-3 moves and my controller coulda been unplugged and I wouldn't have noticed

Portal on PC vs 360: As stated above, available on steam for quick downloading, as well as keyboard/mouse combo making shooting easier. Nail in the coffin of the 360 is the fact that any extra content (i.e. what you guys are cranking out) will be on the Xbox Live for $$$. Noooo thanks.

LAN Parties: If the LAN Parties you go to have everyone huddled around their own computer and not enjoying it, then you're at the wrong LAN party. Not sure how else to say that. You can have some great times, but they don't look like that.

Also, in defense of consoles, they do offer a unique style of play: split-screen. Allowing four people to play together on one machine is something PCs stopped trying a long time ago. (Scorched Earth, anyone?) Now, I'm no big fan of it, but it is worth pointing out.

You can plug a USB keyboard into your Xbox and it will work. I guarantee it. So do XBOX.

One thing though - would a mouse? Then you would own everyone on CONSOLE FPS :O

But on the note of its harder to FPS on Xbox, its totally true. Which is why I can't believe shadowrun went global internet play. -.-

Some FPS like Bioshock are not too bad for Xbox 360. Mainly the reason I buy an fps on xbox 360 is because I can't run it.

But 00ber comp00ter for <Holiday Name Here> for me, so there wont be much of that.

Only console worth buying is the Wii.

A friend of mine asked me if it was worth buying the Orange box... so of couse I gave the obvious responce - "Unless youve already bought it, buy it!"

And then he announced that he has an xbox...I then told him if he bought it for that he'd be wasting his money, and should buy it for his PC instead. but he was insistant that he'd get it for xbox not PC.

poor fool...

youme wrote:
A friend of mine asked me if it was worth buying the Orange box... so of couse I gave the obvious responce - "Unless youve already bought it, buy it!"

And then he announced that he has an xbox...I then told him if he bought it for that he'd be wasting his money, and should buy it for his PC instead. but he was insistant that he'd get it for xbox not PC.

poor fool...

Shoulda brought up the fact that only 16 players in TF2, no custom maps, just same old thing for EVER!!

Also if he got it for PC (assuming he diddn't have hl2 for PC) he coulda got the Orange box 10$ cheaper AND SOOOOOO many mods.

I did, I did, but still, he would not change his mind.

I think he can't actually use his PC for games either due to its age or it not actually being his, one of the two, so I then said get a new pc.

I know lots of people that like XBOX 360 over PC any day. People that play console FPS can get unfairly good at them. The same way that people who play nothing but PC FPS can get ridiculously skilled. There is nothing wrong with the 360, I wish I had one. To say that anyone who plays console games is stupid and that their system sucks is ignorant. A 360 + a couple controllers + a couple games the user really likes is under 700$. If you want to buy a gaming class computer whether you build it yourself or not is automatically going to put you over $1500 + plus upgrades every 5 or 6 months if you want to remain top of the line. Its a personal preference. I find when I don't play any games on my computer for a while that it feels foreign for a while to use it again, imagine having that feeling all the time while trying to play PC FPS. While I do agree that no console shooter could ever compare to the quality of game play you get with a keyboard and mouse it does not mean that consoles are useless.

Actually, with hardware as cheap as it is right now you can put together a decent gaming rig for something like $1000, but you're goddamn right about the upgrades. I put together my current system about a year ago for a bit less than one grand, and it has served me faithfully. (Brief specs: Core 2 Duo E6300 overclocked to 3.15GHz, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7600 GTO mildly overclocked.) It runs Ep2 and Portal decently well, but I know it won't handle Crysis and will probably struggle with Spore.

I'm looking to upgrade the video card when the price/performance ratio hits the sweet spot for about $200, maybe $250. And about a year after that I'll probably have to build a new system in order to play the latest PC games.

By contrast, with the Xbox 360 you drop $450 on a system and an extra controller and your infrastructure investment is done for the entire lifetime of the console, probably 4-6 years.

Still and all, nothing beats the feeling of playing a brand-new game on a hot-rod PC with all the settings cranked up.

Pshhhhhhhhh.

Ur guys comps are like sooo expensive. I got my comp like last year, and it only costed like 700$ and it was built. I havn't upgraded this PC one time. No new parts at ALL. And I still get over 100 fps on css and about 40+ fps on tf2 which isn't even laggy at all.

Also on Xbox 360 dosen't it actually cost money to play online?

you guys are so lucky! everything is much cheaper in the US.