Dewar

Hmm, it looks like from the legal documents that Xenimax won half the cash for violation of one of these Trademarks. I guess maybe they used it in marketing somewhere? I can't recall any of this ever being mentioned by Oculus except in relation to Carmack working with ID. The Doom Name The Doom 3 Name The Doom II Name and Design The ID Name The Rage Name and Design The Skyrim Name The other half of the money is from Carmak copying some Xenimax files on the way out (dumb) and Palmer's failure to comply with an NDA (dumber) with a little side of copyright infringement. https://www.slideshare.net/secret/IKLD8poJzVhQ4X

There was mention of Xenimax perhaps trying to get an injunction to prevent further Rifts from being sold. That would effect us some, as a developer might not want to make a game for a piece of hardware that's not current being sold.

I assume because they were in a hurry to get it posted. The article also mentions that pictures were provided by Oculus, but they're just the Waypoint boilerplate.

Looks like I might have picked a bad time to by an Oculus Rift. Jury Awards ZeniMax $500 Million in Contentious Oculus Lawsuit https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/goku-huh

I just finally finished Nick's Dark Souls 1 run. Man, that's a heck of a moment.

Yup, I fiddled with that thing a bunch. I read a couple articles that talk about some people having eyes at different heights, so maybe that's what's up with me?

I have a 970. Sometimes I have a real problem getting the headset positioned right. It'll be correct for one eye, but strained for the other. I probably should go to an eye doctor at some point. I definitely didn't have problems reading the text before though, so it's directly related to the video settings I've chosen.

I'm lucky enough that I either listen to enough amateur podcasts or just have a tin ear, and I never noticed the sound quality problems. The quality of role-playing increases dramatically after the split, but I don't remember when the audio quality improves. My advice would be season 2, skip the faction game sections. While the system they're using has some bumps, everyone involved is a lot more comfortable on microphone and also has pretty good sound quality. It's self contained, really touching at parts, and funny at others. Then, if you like that, continue on to the Marielda miniseries that Twig was talking about. If you dig that world, go back to season one and suffer through I guess? I can't imagine going through season 3 without season 1 to back it up.

More free stuff packaged with Oculus Touch: Dead and Buried: Multiplayer shooting game with a really cool undead cowboy theme. I enjoyed my time with it, but I'm also really bad. The gun aiming doesn't quite line up with where I'd expect them to point given my hand position, and the reload action requires a flick of the wrist that I just can't seem to do right all the time. I really wish there was a reload button or something, because I found the rest of it pretty fun. Bullet Train: I know it's just a demo, but people were talking this up a bunch and I thought it was pretty crap myself. I don't think you can die, and half the fun of these things is dodging. Grabbing bullets out of the air and throwing them back is interesting, but when you have an infinite respawning assault rifle why would you bother? Toy Box: It's a silly fun toy, but the use of vibration when you touch one thing against another was so great I thought I was actually in the world for a second or two. Vive Lab: Maybe it's just the multiple layers of software (Oculus App, then Steam VR, then the game itself) that it takes to make this work, but I actually found the Vive lab to be somewhat janky. No matter where I stood, it felt like I was standing in the wrong place, things were a bunch taller or shorter than they should be, etc. Most of the sub games aren't that gripping either.

Oh I don't expect I'd last long in VR, but I at least want to try it that way. I'd buy the game now and hope for a mod, but Capcom are exactly the company that might release the VR version on PC as a separate game to purchase, rather than an update to the current game.

I played with it a little more this weekend and settled on VR High with SS turned to 75% and HMD scaling to 1.25. I was able to stay in the headset for several hours, while dog fighting in an asteroid field, and not feel sick at all. It's a little shimmery and some of the text can be hard to see, so I'll probably play around with the HMD scaling some. It's good to have a nice reliable baseline to experiment from though. It does make a GTX1080 very tempting though.

I tried to mess around with settings, and I ended up making myself sick I have it simply set to VR High right now, which I noticed ups the SS and not the HMD scaling, so I might fiddle with those settings again, but I'm a bit nervous to as every change seemed to make the frame rate worse. What I'm really looking for is better black levels in space and less jaggies, and I have a feeling that the Oculus is the limiter on both of those things. I've been looking at the ED profiler, but I don't really intend to play the game without VR at this point, so I'm trying to avoid adding another layer of complexity.

Thinking of planning some vacation so I can participate in Wizard Jam 5. Is the general pattern of Mid April going to hold?

I've heard a lot about RE7 and I'm really excited but, as a VR convert, I really want the VR version to come to PC. Rumor is it's a one-year exclusivity agreement, so I'll probably be playing it (and peeing my pants) this time next year I guess?

Man, I used to love Armored Core. Unfortunately as the games went on they kept pushing further into the twitch gameplay realm, and my reaction times got poorer. The last few I've tried have been so hectic and hard. Now I'm just left to wish for another Chromehounds.

Running list of laws and executive orders that Trump has signed. Interesting to keep track of. There's some pretty silly stuff, and some scary stuff. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/all-the-laws-and-executive-orders-trump-has-signed-so-far

Touch controllers arrived yesterday: Rec Room: I've already seen a lot of this on Giant Bomb, and it was pretty much what I expected. It's fun to play around with but I dunno how much time I'll spend in it. The only thing I'd add is that frisbees fly way to far, and everything else doesn't fly far enough. RipCoil: This was free with any Oculus store purchase, so I didn't think it would be that good. Turns out it's a pretty awesome Windjammers-type disk throwing game. I would have played a ton of it if I didn't have to wait so long for a match. Medium: I made a bad chair, I'll post a picture when I'm back at home. There's a lot of really cool stuff with making different layers and moving them separately that Tiltbrush lacks. It feels like it's missing a more freeform mode. I'd love to be able to take a tool or my fist and interact with the clay with physics, but I understand that would be pretty tough to model.

Tried out some more VR stuff. Farlands: When i first saw this, I thought it was pretty much just fluff, but it's been one of the more enjoyable experiences so far. It has a Super Mario Maker style unlock each day thing going, which turns it into a bunch of bite size pieces that are just perfect. Also, the most "real" looking and feeling thing I've played so far. The Foo Show: I balked when I found out the Firewatch episode was 20 minutes long, It turns out that I actually rewound a bit so I could play around in the fire tower some more. I never thought that looking at the back of things you're not supposed to see could be so much fun. I can't wait until new episodes come out, Subnautica: While I like the game a lot, the poor performance and texture pop-in was super apparent in VR. It didn't make me sick, but it pretty much ruined the experience. Hopefully this will iron out as early access continues, because swimming around in the ocean in VR seems like it could be really cool. Keep Talking and No One Explodes: It's a great game, but I didn't feel like VR added that much. Obduction: In theory, this seems like a great game to play in VR, especially because I dropped off right when I was getting to the really alien stuff. Moving from hot spot to hot spot feels very Myst like as well, but I had problems interacting with control panels where the vision dot didn't seem to be activating the right things, or I had to hover just above or below the object to get it to activate. That fiddliness was dissapointing so I gave up after 5 minutes. I might try again later when I have more patience. SteamVR Big Screen: Not sure what else to call this, but I played a little bit of Darkest Dungeon on the large 2D screen in SteamVR. I was surprised how cool it was to play a game on the fake big screen. i wouldn't want to play everything in there, but for pixely or cartoony things, it seems like a fun alternative and you don't notice the decrease in resolution too much.

They've had auto-parry on the whole time. In Episode 5 Drew reveals that he's never even trying to block, and when the game goes into a block stance it's automatic and he's just hitting the attack button. I don't mind it personally, I'm getting what I came for. The parts when Drew would have to repeatedly try an area in the other Metal Gear games were the least fun bits for me. I like when he's cheery (and dreamy.)

5 days early for a $5 subscription, not bad I guess. Better than how much Forza was charging for their early access anyway.

Considering that the Oculus touch didn't come out that long ago, I wouldn't expect a new Oculus headset for a while yet. A new Vive seems possible, but I don't think that Valve has iterated on any of their other hardware (Steam controler, Steam link) since release. That seems to match up with the corporate culture of "work on whatever you want to work on" which translates to "get bored with a toy, then walk away." All this is just supposition though, who knows really. Edit: Apparently Gabe mentioned in an AMA that other manufacturers will be able to put out Steam VR headsets, so that's probably the most likely vector for another new headset soon.

That's awesome. I'm sensing an idea for Wizard Jam.

The problem with DLC in these games is that the folks that are most interested buy the game and play it at launch, then miss the later content. I'm almost done getting 100% achievements in ME2. There have been some struggles, in particular Kasumi's mission was a really hard way to start, but things have gotten easier as I've gotten more research done. The DLC has been all right so far, but I wouldn't call it ground-breaking. Hopefully I can get my insanity run of ME3 done before Andromeda comes out.

During my week off, i finally got a rabbit's foot and completed the community center. I did it in my second winter, and it felt like it maybe went a season too long, and that's including the fact I took a six month break in the middle of my first fall.

Well, all the talk of VR and friends playing again pulled me back in and, for the first time since right after launch, I've been having a ton of fun. I've been dabbling around in a bunch of different professions in my Imperial Courier and Keelback, saving up to eventually get a Clipper. I finally understand most of the new systems added to the game since 1.0, but there's still one thing I'm confused about, player run factions. My friend and I discovered the group we've been running missions for is actually a player run faction, but we don't understand what that actually means in game terms. Are we just wasting our time, or is there some advantage there?