[jerf]

I thought crates were actually on their way out a few years back. Then cover-based shooters became popular. For those who don't know, a "cover-based shooter" is a shooting game in which the game explicitly has a concept of taking cover, such that your character can actually duck behind things and has explicit support for popping up and shooting things. As opposed to simply ducking behind a wall in Doom or something, which has always been good strategy but never actually been part of the engine.

Sadly, there are only two forms of cover level designers seem to be able to work into games now: crates, and in a true sign of giving up, completely unmotivated chest-high walls, which apparently on the battlefields of the past, present, and future are just sort of treated like a basic decoration tool, like an "arch" or "window". ("Hey, hon, I cleared a space in the backyard, what should we do with it?" "Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of having a white picket fence, a dog, and a small maze of chesthigh walls in the backyard. Grab a shovel.") Now we're back to a TTC of approximately "whenever the first firefight" occurs, so, yeah, few seconds tops.

[electromagnetic]

> I thought crates were actually on their way out a few years back.

Ironically I think crates went out faster IRL than in game. I haven't seen crates in forever, barrels yes but not a true crate. Most things now are placed on a pallet and shrink wrapped like crazy. They'll stack a couple of these on top of each other and they remain intact.

The strange thing in games is that crates manage to get themselves into places where it just doesn't make sense. Like in Kingpin, they managed to get down an alley way with a small area for the buildings back doors. It was like some hobo was wheeling crates around the city with a dolly cart.

[rdl]

On (working) military bases, and some industrial sites, you will still see plenty of crates (often reusable), pallets with built-up storage things for liquids or special purpose parts, and 10', 20', and 40' containers. Plus, barrels. I was surprised just how much bases in Iraq and Afghanistan looked like video game levels.

[electromagnetic]

I was going to add how I thought Half-Life given its military bases is probably the only major shooter of its era that actually had a reason for all the crates and barrels. I think the circus you end up in (if I'm remembering the original game and not an expansion or total conversion) is actually the only other place I saw a genuine crate. Incidentally it was filled with food for the animals and not headcrabs.

My problem with most shooters is that the crates are placed randomly. At least in Half-Life the crates were more often than not in a storage room/area/rack than piled in the middle of a room or in an obscure corridor.

Fallout 3 resolved the box problem too, in that most items were actually found on shelves. Something I hadn't seen since the days of isometric RPG's where tables actually found their heyday.