toblix

Sick!

So here's a sweet trailer showing off the latest version of the Unreal Engine: And here's an even sweeter developer walkthrough of the new amazing tech they've cooked up. It even has a twist, sort of: [media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MOvfn1p92_8 It's so great that this amazing engine is available to everyone, even developers who are interested in stuff besides murder simulators. Of course, there's also Unity and CryENGINE, the latter of which is probably similarly astounding.

Ah, ok.

No, but naturally, if you play with people who are into that aspect of it, you'll start feeling like you're not doing enough. I don't have that problem with Diablo 3, but it was one of the reasons I fell out of WoW pretty fast.

Yeah, I don't think accessibility is a problem at all, and it definitely doesn't have to be. Even though the game code and maths behind the scenes is super-advanced, it's always possible to encapsulate these into more user-friendly building blocks. Though I don't have any experience with these new game engines, I'm pretty sure it's trivial to make a sweet game today compared to what it was like five, ten or twenty years ago. Especially with the increasing competition on these sorts of development tools (Unity, CryENgeIn3e, etc.) the focus on user-friendliness is only going to increase. It won't be long before you can just voice-recog your cyber-unit to dev a sweet game.

I have a tab with this web site pinned in my browser, and regularly check it for new updates throughout the day.

Reading this sort of discussion seriously drains away any enthusiasm for the game. Like with WoW, the moment it becomes about maths, it goes from being fun to some sort of chore. Obviously, many people – maybe most people – prefer this way of playing; testing builds, finding optimal configurations and whatnot. It's totally valid, but it completely ruins the fun for me. It's also the reason I'm loath to play with strangers: I always feel guilty for not being the optimal guy.

I can't remember what it was exactly. They had this dumb Siri intro movie very atypical for Apple, in which they made a jab or two, and later it was something about the Android release names. It's not that bad, in and of itself, but it just compounds really quickly with their glib, borderline-douchey attitude about themselves and their product, and together with the cultists in the audience clapping for every little thing it gets real bad real fast.

Surely they'll be able to analyse logs and undo the illegitimate duplications?

Yeah, I didn't get that one the first time around. I watched the ending twice.

Racist. What does that entail, exactly, working on the artwork? Is it in the film itself, or marketing, or what? And if you worked on it, why haven't you seen it?

So I watched three films/movies this weekend, The Kingdom, Take Shelter and Caché. I liked all three – though the first one the least – and thought Caché in particular was great. Has anyone seen these? What did you think?

Agreed! I tend to hate CG faces, but that long stare, and that face – it didn't feel ridiculous at all, just chilling.

How is this not spam? The user doesn't say if he's affiliated with the kickstarter or not, but the post should be removed regardless.

Just finished it. I found it pretty boring, the story wasn't that interesting, and towards the end I was just looking to finish it. Also, it always annoys me when people go for low-fidelity pixel art, and then don't go all the way. If you build your game out of only huge pixels, everything should be fixed to the grid.

I would at least have a little discussion first. Thread policy is super-important.

Wow, do/did you work at Epic?

I went back and forth on where to post it. I think I decided on Idle Banter because it's more of a technical thing, maybe, or something, but primarily I reached the maximum amount of time I had set aside for deciding where to post. Now that I've thought more about it, I'm still not sure if posting it in Video Gaming would be correct. Would a post about physics middleware or foliage generators be at home there? How about asset creation and management, source control and project management systems? Payroll software? Where does the line go?!

It was really interesting to see how that the Magnificent 7 thing just took off instantly. It wasn't very long from I got the announcement mail until the first one was crossed out, and the next ones came soon after. Brilliant idea.

That was a pretty badly put together trailer. HOWEVER, it looks like a goddamn epic co-op experience. "I lost over seventy thousand people including the president because of Simmons!"

Or this.

I only watched the The Last of Us gameplay video, and yeah, it was super-brutal. It was sort of sad to see, since it indicates there will be a lot of this sort of fighting, which is the opposite of what I enjoy in games. As I'm sure everyone agrees, used sparingly, brutal, hard-to-watch violence definitely has a place in any medium, especially in that sort of desperate, scavenging every-man-for-himself setting, and can be a great, VISCERAL way of conveying that desperation, but it loses its effect really fast, and realistically there's a greater chance it'll be used as primary gameplay mechanic, rather than as a poignant way of describing the world and how desperation changes us. I still have hope it'll be more of a survival (horror?) thing, with focus on traversal and exploration, and Naughty Dog does that really well. Unfortunately they are also known for AAAA action shootfests.

Is there a huge group of people watching these things other than the live studio audience and all the nerds watching the live streams? I keep wondering who they're targeting. Do they show these things to their shareholders or investors or something? These are big companies with marketing and PR departments – there has to be a sensible explanation for why they keep doing these embarrassing/phony presentations. You don't see them in the trailers or other kinds of marketing; just/mostly these live things ... why?

Much of my fascination with Watch Dogs stems from my lack of knowledge about it. From the trailer it looks like there's this huge, detailed future city with all sorts of sweet stuff happening all the time, and since they haven't said anything about it, I imagine everything about it, and it feels like this incredible, fantastic game. Obviously as we get closer to release, actual technical details will be released, and we'll hear about various skills, different weapon types, unlockable areas, mission types, DLC vehicles or whatever, and it'll shrink and turn into a real, actual game that will run on an Xbox 360 or PS3.

It's not that surprising and, though a little depressing, this is the AAA big dollar show – there's still so much awesome indie stuff going on I'm not worried at all. I'm much more excited about Going Home, The Witness, Prison Architect or The Walking Dead games than I am about any of this E3 crap. Maybe except for SimCity.