Murdoc

Have no interest in this but thought I'd check out the design... it looks like idle thumbs website. weird?

Wow, that is some serious Blendo Games vibe right there and I don't even have the sound on. Looks neat though and it's not as aesthetically pleasing as what Thirty Flights of Loving has done, but I dig it, we'll see how it goes. Slap stick is a hard sell to me these days though and comedy in games may be one of the toughest things to do.

Link doesn't work, but I will assume it has to do with juv's post. Well that's the great thing about kickstarter, it's a proof of concept testing ground. Concept sucks? doesn't get funded. But to be fair, they could have just re-evaluated what they were trying to do and had made it for less money.

... music. ... :|

A man can't have hobbies? Gordon's actually a gun nut on the weekends and hits up the range.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/76287/star-citizen-adds-kickstarter-as-crowdfunding-option So yeah.... I dunno the whole "we need 2 million to get 14 million" seems really weird to me. Did they ever specify what the "triggers additional investments" means? $16 mil for a space combat game seems a bit high too, but what do I know.... seems like a pretty large goal for relatively "indy" studio.

I get your point, but honestly the characters, writing and music really sold me on it, the gameplay being bad had nothing really to do with it... also I just watched giant bomb so that's probably why it was a non-issue to me. With better controls, I might play it myself which would make the experience better.

How so, Toblix? *** SF housing is unreal. I've only been here for 6 months and coming from Vancouver I didn't imagine it being as bad as it is. With that said, this is the best place I've ever lived, so far, if you enjoy the west coast. *** Coasts, Philosphy, Canadiana As far as phisosphy and way of life goes between the East and West coast, I'd hardly consider Alberta (Calgary) of the West Coast variaty. I have had the pleasure of living all across that great nation and as far as I can tell, Alberta is the Texas of Canada. You will find some amazing people there, but the status quo is nothing I'd even relate to West coast philosphy. From what I can tell in my experience (Lived in Canada my entire life until recently) is that the more North you go in Canada the more American "South" it gets. The East coast is fairly similiar to America as well as the West Coast, with, maybe, the exceptions of the Maritime provinces... no idea what's going on there. * I didn't read Miffy's post, but I agree completely.

barf.

Hm, alright, I see what you mean, I think I've made up my own definition for texel denisty, but because texel density is an issue with scale, but not exactly in the same way that was originally stated... I just lump those two problems together even though one is more of a technical issue and one is an art directional issue. The problem could be a number of things, not just developmental tunnel vision, which I'm sure you're more than aware of, so I don't think we can speculate on why it happens, it's just does. And as far as resolution goes, it'd be interested in knowing how many companies actually stick with pipeline guidelines over a number of years where source textures are being made at 2x the resolution or whatever would had been originally stated. Would it be smart to do and be that organized? Yep. Does the practice of doing that get neglected during development? Yep. *** Yeah I wished dishonored had a little more higher res textures and the lighting or maybe more specifically the materials give it a bit of a flat look. Lightmaps + not going hyper real/crank the dial to 11 specular and normal maps will most likely do that in Unreal... or it was a completely intended choice on the directional side, I can't say. I find Dishonored a little fragmented in art direction, but that's an entirely different topic. *** Art directional choice? Everyone keeps comparing the game to a painting and impressionistic. Well, that's painting, large broad strokes of colour with minute detail in certain areas to lead the eye. This is a broad statement, but I've seen two different types of art directors, ones that are more concerned with the broad picture and others more intent on the minutia. Next-gen for a lot of directors meant hyper-real, gears of war style details and they weren't so much concerned with the what the big picture looked like, which is why I think the early next gen games were artists learning to make this type of content and art directors getting that kind of quality out of their system and even GoW was more refined with every iteration working on their composition and colours throughout the series. Personally I thought RAGE was one the most beautiful games in recent history, it hit the broad strokes extremely well and at the same type felt detailed and rich with stuff, grit and colour. Here's the website from the art director, extremely talented dude; http://www.martiniere.com/ Will be interesting to see what happens in the next round when art directors get a million for fx to throw in the players face... might get a little ostentatious for the first years. Basically, we need some restraint, just because the tech can do it, doesn't mean they should.

You want to debate the intentions and executions of a game design whether they really loved the 80s to make the references or is it just pandering? Really? Well then, I honestly think it ends up being both. Tapping into the 20-30 year old nerd market is extremely easy and while that doesn't need to cross your mind to give homage to the 80s I think you're mistaking good execution (in your opinion) as love and not pandering. I just think those aren't mutually exclusive and you can roll with it being pandering and sincere or not. But yeah, I will be checking this out, but sadly and I'd rarely do this, but I'd like to check it out for $10 not $15... it's not the actual $5 that's makes a difference, it's the feeling of that a $15 game should give me and I know my attention span for these types of games will be low, so I'll wait for a steam sale.

Topic seemed to veer away from talking about textures... but anyway. From what I've seen of Dishonored, the texel density is fairly even in the environments, which really grounds the entire world in a believable place. It's just a shame though, because as consistent as it is, it seems a tad low res. Arkane in France used to work with the Source Engine and they were really big on texel denisty like Valve is... which is probably why there is a bit of similarity in the art constancy between their games. The lighting also looks a bit flat to me in a lot of places, but I suspect that's more of the technology(light maps) than by choice... so I'd be curious to see it in motion on the PC because that may cure my a lot of the issues I mentioned. *** We're going to get some god awful looking games in the new generation of consoles right out of the gate, just like we did when the ps3/360 were out. It's not such a huge leap in terms of production methods, but now that developers can afford higher res images, more FX, and complex shaders, I suspect more than a few devs will crank it to 11. The choices made on a game for the level of detail in textures usually comes from art direction or lack there of. Personally, I think it's the lack of direction on a project that creates a discontinuity between textures in any given game and most artists just resort to default "hyper real" using photo sources.

That sounds uninteresting, probably why I never saw the film then. Anyway though, this does look over the top and pretty neat.

I never saw Drive so I can't say of the comparison, but I like the 80s vibe (Was drive in the 80s?) and reminds me of parts from Scarface.

well..a balanced opinion about modern video games that are judged both on gameplay mechanics, presentation, and narration? Well yes, then I completely agree. Look, it'll probably end up being a neat game, but my instant reaction to what the tutorial implies the end product will be was disgust. If it goes there, so be it, I won't play it and life moves on, but I decided to share my opinion because that's what people do on a forum. Not much discussion is coming from it other than "don't like? don't play it" so I'll move on and comment on something else when it gets updated.

Did I miss the part where Patrick left or was he there silently the entire time? Or were they just voice clips cleverly spliced in? (doubtful)

Kickstarter is starting to be a night of the living dead scenario for the game industry. pass.

I was just trying to ruin first week sales of CLOP by directing you somewhere else. Now that it's over and a miserable failure in the market place, I fixed the link.

A lot of the reviews didn't seem bad, there are just a few that are really awful, but a few respected outlets gave it a decent score... so not sure why the impression is that it's being panned across the board.

Interesting camera perspective.

Got to play this for myself and if you've watched enough videos like I have, it already felt like I've played the game. It's cool, but normal seems impossible unless you just try to avoid everything at all costs and even then, I'm not sure how they expect you to beat the boss. Easy is fun, but almost too easy at times... so a little more balancing for a follow up would be amazing.

I will say, after spending some time in their desert, they have done a good job at making it feel less empty and more varied... it is still a desert. At some point I went through a phase portal and was stuck for at least 45 minutes shooting 3 massive goos that spawned smaller goos. I was stunning and knocking back so I could last nearly indefinitely but just wasn't doing enough damage to them.... I eventually emerged 3 levels higher and now just destroying anything in the desert... so I've hit a bit of a lull. I may need to switch weapons just to make it interesting. Also the transmuter can officially be the new shitty wizard, because that piece of shit raccoon sucks. If I put in 3 pretty decent gems I should get 1 really kick ass gem. instead, I get one shit gem.

Well, I played the tutorial to learn how to play the game, I cannot un-play it and was giving my opinion and reaction to the content that I saw. Don't like my opinion? You can skip reading it. : P If it's the direction the entire game will be going, sandbox or not, I probably won't support that game and just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject, that's all. I love introversion and I've enjoyed all their releases so I'm a bit surprised to find an strong dislike towards presentation in this... but this is also the first alpha version of theirs that I did play, so maybe Defcon and Darwinia were also as rough on presentation... who knows. Game play is still neat though.

Well, I hate this fucking game.* * It's alpha and I really hope some things seriously change because as far as mechanics and gameplay go, I love the hell out of it. It's totally Dwarf Fortress-like and tons of fun. I don't like the art, both styles, but I can live with it. What really makes me feel strongly about hating this fucking game is the presentation in the tutorial and I'm concerned that they are going to be heading in that direction for the final game, because its awful. Are they trying to make a statement about Prisons? Criminals? Society? Etc... Maybe they are, maybe they aren't; either way, they aren't doing a very good job at handling tone. The juxtaposition of gameplay and "narrative" might be an attempt at making us think about the actions we're doing in the game and such... ex: "Oh, I'm having so much fun playing Dwarf Fortress-like, but here's some needlessly shocking bullshit that will make you understand WHAT you're actually doing here." It's not subtle, it's not subversive, it's a needless point to make(I guess that isn't true, I mean if they want to make it, by all means go for it), it's not my cup of tea nor do I want it. Remember the level in Startopia where you had to run a space prison, it was god damn great and I really think the tone of this game could learn a lot from that. The juxtaposition between both art styles is from a visual stand point is ugly. I'm really focused on visuals in games, so I judge things a bit too harshly, but I can put up with the little marshmellow people or I can put up with poor comic book art; I can't do both. Especially when the poor comic book art is meant to be overtly in your face and shocking for the sake of it. At least at this point in development, if they actually have a message or point to make, I'd like to see it executed better because I may be able to tolerate it more... but for now, it's really, really, dumb. Give me the gameplay without the presentation or narrative the alpha eludes to wanting to accomplish and I'd love the hell out of it, but for now, I really dislike the direction the tutorial implies the game will go.

Giant Bomb is starting to become the bizarro world crew of Idle Thumbs ala that Seinfeld Episode.