Driftmoon Adventure RPG

E_net4 13 years ago

Achron still sounds either like a paradox-prone game or just a game with quite a loose concept of time. Nevertheless, I hope they're enjoying it.

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Grim Reaper 13 years ago

E_net4 said:
Achron still sounds either like a paradox-prone game or just a game with quite a loose concept of time. Nevertheless, I hope they're enjoying it.

They've actually demonstrated how the engine handles paradoxes (e.g. sending units back in time to destroy the factory that made them before they were constructed). The result was a sort of phasing-in-and-out of the two possible situations, IIRC (factory remaining built or being destroyed). The phasing continued until the event where the units were sent back in time dropped off the controllable slice of time.

And here's the video: http://www.achrongame.com/site/achron-and-the-grandfather-paradox.php

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Amarth 13 years ago

Early few reviews don't seem to be favoring the game though. The only thing keeping it slightly good is apparently the multiplayer.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/achron

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MageKing17 13 years ago

OMGWTFBBQ! Achron is out? Awesome! Even if it sucks, I'll still be playing it.

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Narvius 13 years ago

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014889/Evoking-Emotions-and-Achieving-Success
This is a very interesting podcast, with much talk about game design (basing on Amnesia). Even Ville might want to sneak a peek

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Narvius 13 years ago

www.goblincamp.com

I heard about this project some significant amount of time ago (probably around a year?). I remembered it today. I'm happy to see it's still going. I tried it, but had little time. Seems a solid game already, though.

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Pete 13 years ago

What if you want to play Deus Ex: Human Revolutions but simply do not have the money?

http://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-unreal-revolution

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Grim Reaper 13 years ago

In case you didn't know, you can have Portal free of charge (again) if you get it before the 20th.

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Endymion 13 years ago

A Valley Without Wind beta is live.

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ville 13 years ago

Those guys sure do different kinds of games. I wonder if the procedurally generated content feels lively enough to play for long?

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Narvius 13 years ago

Well, procedurally-generated content is a big thing for indies right now, so we'll find out over the next few years. At one point we'll have Introversion's Subversion (which pretty much generates everything - find the now-defunct devlog and watch some of the city-generation videos with commentary, it's pretty interesting - and lays a few handcrafted things on top of it), currently we have Dwarf Fortress, which despite it's iconic inaccessibility is probably one the longest-lived experiences available, and surely more contestants will follow in the near future.

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MageKing17 13 years ago

Narvius said:
procedurally-generated content is a big thing for indies right now

Procedurally-generated content has been a big thing for a long time... or have you never heard of Elite?

For more examples, see every Roguelike ever, and at least half of all games for, e.g., programming contests, where the programmer can't be arsed to create content, and so procedurally generates some.

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Narvius 13 years ago

I didn't imply it started to be recently.

And of course I have heard of Elite.

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ville 13 years ago

One thing I've been thinking about is player generated content. The idea is that as a part of your single player game you built a base or something, and the game would send your base to the server. Then other players could play a single player game where your base would be one of the game locations.

A variation of the idea that I had was to make a bank robbing game, and you'd have to store the loot in your own bank that you could customize with traps and mechanisms. The player's banks would actually be the levels in the game.

I bet there are a lot of problems with the idea, but it's interesting nonetheless.

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Narvius 13 years ago

The latter actually sounds pretty awesome. Try to sell that idea to the Introversion guys. ;P They'd probably love it.
But yes, there are problems. A manifestation of them is called Sporn.

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Anonymous1157 13 years ago

I was going to say Spore after reading Ville's post, but, uh, Narvius put it more politely. Spore calls it massively singleplayer gaming (MSO as opposed to an MMO).

And yes, there are problems. There is a physics game whose name escapes me, which, until recently, was filled with user-submitted levels called "Kill Justin Beiber" featuring a stick figure and some explosives. Those are moderated away now.

Wait a minute, the bank-robbing idea sounds like it would make a GREAT Facebook game. In fact, it sounds like almost EVERY Facebook game. Do you have any idea how many morons actually play those things? Millions. Charge a dollar for the privilege to play and you could be a millionaire tomorrow.

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Narvius 13 years ago

On an unrelated note - every time I see someone mistype "ie" as "ei" I have this little twitch in my left eye and suddenly feel the urge to sacrifice some people to Cthulhu.

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MageKing17 13 years ago

Narvius said:
On an unrelated note - every time I see someone mistype "ie" as "ei" I have this little twitch in my left eye and suddenly feel the urge to sacrifice some people to Cthulhu.

I know exactly what you mean!

On a related note, I've always found procedurally-generated content more interesting than MSO user-generated content. Not that I didn't like Spore; unlike certain people, I actually found it quite enjoyable (in fact, the only reason I haven't played recently is that it doesn't get along with my new computer, and I expect some more hardware upgrades to fix that). It's just that I played pretty much solely with Maxis stuff and my own creations, because user-generated content is... well... let's just say Sturgeon's Law applies.

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ville 13 years ago

Exactly what I meant. In theory it would work, but it would need to be moderated. And it would require some amount of ready content anyway. But still, I've always found the other player's corpses in Nethack the most interesting ones to find. What killed him? It's real, at least in a sense, someone really killed that player. I've been thinking about something like that for Notrium 2. Remains to be seen though.

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E_net4 13 years ago

This is an interesting subject. Although I'm pointed at procedurally-generated content in Inner Cosmo, I'll have no choice but to allow user-generated content to make it interesting (and perhaps add some hard-coded content of my own). Then again, this leads to the Massive Singleplayer experience, which can be partially fixed with a multiplayer capability after having done a significant amount of progress. It still won't prevent disturbing content from showing up.

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MageKing17 13 years ago

ville said:
Exactly what I meant. In theory it would work, but it would need to be moderated. And it would require some amount of ready content anyway. But still, I've always found the other player's corpses in Nethack the most interesting ones to find. What killed him? It's real, at least in a sense, someone really killed that player. I've been thinking about something like that for Notrium 2. Remains to be seen though.

Nethack's "ghost files" definitely add a sense of intrigue to the game ("Holy crap! I recognize this place... this is where my last character died!"), but that's hardly the same thing as allowing players to design buildings, enemies, creatures, equipment, or whatever, and then throwing it into another player's game without asking whether they want that specific content first.

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Endymion 13 years ago

Awesome. SpaceChem and some other game got added to the Frozen Synapse "bundle"

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MageKing17 13 years ago

Yes, "that other game" (TRAUMA) being added finally allowed me to justify getting the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, and adding SpaceChem just further reinforces that decision. Bizarrely, TRAUMA is listed as a "Humble freebie" included in the bundle, while SpaceChem is listed alongside Frozen Synapse. Go figure.

Also, this Humble Bundle has earned $861,168.35 and counting (it goes up as I watch).

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Narvius 13 years ago

Oh. I didn't follow the HIBs very closely. The previous one had both Shadowgrounds games. The first one of these is a real gem, basically Alien Swarm without co-op (which sounds pretty crappy, but it's really well-executed). The second one got sucky reviews, but I didn't play it. Whereas this bundle doesn't really catch my eye, because I just can't play Frozen Synapse and I already have SpaceChem (which still counts as one of the best indies of '11 for me).

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Amarth 13 years ago

Guess I'll get it for SpaceChem then. I already have Trine and Frozen Synapse (thank you MK!). I still don't see the appeal, but people keep calling it awesome, so...

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MageKing17 13 years ago

Narvius said:
Oh. I didn't follow the HIBs very closely. The previous one had both Shadowgrounds games. The first one of these is a real gem, basically Alien Swarm without co-op (which sounds pretty crappy, but it's really well-executed). The second one got sucky reviews, but I didn't play it. Whereas this bundle doesn't really catch my eye, because I just can't play Frozen Synapse and I already have SpaceChem (which still counts as one of the best indies of '11 for me).

Why can't you play Frozen Synapse? Is that literal (computer won't run it) or metaphorical (just can't wrap your brain around simultaneous turn-based tactics)?

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Narvius 13 years ago

I dislike the core mechanics, simply enough.

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Kario 13 years ago

Damn, my xbox broke now I can't play Half-life 2 anymore, my favorite game, on it.

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E_net4 13 years ago

Not trying to make your day worse, but having Half-Life 2 on the Xbox is not a good idea. The PC is the best platform for Valve's games (and, how many people say, FPS games in general).

Has anyone played the Portal 2 DLC yet? My desktop computer can't even keep up with Steam any more, it totally needs a format before I can play it.

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Grim Reaper 13 years ago

E_net4 said:
Has anyone played the Portal 2 DLC yet?

I have. Is fun. :3

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Anonymous1157 13 years ago

Speaking of Steam, has anyone noticed that it starts like a rocket after the latest couple of updates? It used to freeze if I did anything else while it was starting, but now it comes up about as fast as opening a text file in Notepad. And it's running off of an external drive, too!

... Also, Kario, if you describe your Xbox's symptoms, I may be able to offer you a solution. Not that I don't agree that one should play Source engine games on a PC (I'd be the first to say it if E didn't beat me to it), but the Xbox is actually a pretty good console. It's a shame that Microsoft dropped Live support for it, but hey, they EVENTUALLY dropped Windows Update support for Windows 98. (I don't even know when it happened, but it really pisses me off.)

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Venom31 13 years ago

Anonymous1157 said:
Speaking of Steam, has anyone noticed that it starts like a rocket after the latest couple of updates? It used to freeze if I did anything else while it was starting, but now it comes up about as fast as opening a text file in Notepad. And it's running off of an external drive, too!

That must be due to the competitiveness - Origin did beat Steam in speed right from the box...

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Anonymous1157 13 years ago

... Oh, so it takes them some damned competition to fix a broken platform that people have been complaining about for years? Thanks, Valve. Thanks a lot.

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E_net4 13 years ago

I haven't noticed any performance improvements at all. But then again, it's probably just the desktop computer insisting for a retirement.

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Anonymous1157 13 years ago

I turned off Superfetch just to make sure and got the same result. Yup, Valve did something right with Steam for a change. Maybe you should do that reformat you were thinking about.

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The new gaming thread

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