Forbin

I've played a bit of spacebase, and I think it just needs more systems and gates to make it a full game. I haven't played a lot of games like dwarf fortress, but I find it's not that fun to sit and wait for the AI to do things I want them to do. I can't enjoy the idle banter and internal monologue of the NPCs when I have to jack it up to 8x to make progress. It's got a ton of potential, but it's one of those things that just requires a ton of components that a vertical slice or a prototype that isn't heavily scripted are hard to accomplish. I think it's amazing for 2 weeks, good job.

Black Lake looked visually stunning for a game made in that amount of time, but the gameplay seemed lacking. I think it's a fair question to ask "how can we make this a full game" and the answer right now seems to be "we'll make it short". I really liked the idea of making it more Alice in Wonderland and having areas of the forest have their own stories branching out. I think it needs a classic game mechanic, I just don't know what that is. Maybe stealthyness or push-block puzzles, hopefully not combat. It just needs to be something more than running around an environment. Autonomous delivered for me, but I feel like there's something missing with the goals. Mining isn't that interesting or understandable, and it seems very easy to get knocked off that path. Multiplayer was a good idea, you could definitely work in some LOMA mechanics. And while I liked the first person perspective, I kinda feel like the player's participation in the environment isn't 100% necessary. It might be more interesting to get an overview, and focus more on building bots from an isometric viewpoint. Also I don't get the minecraft vibe they're going for, the world is random but it feels like the environment is too prefabricated for that discovery aspect to kick. I guess it just loses open world characteristics by being in a maze.

Someone posted this fan art on reddit a couple days ago. I think the one by irrational is going to do it's job. Other than the tie he's wearing, nothing looks off to me. That fan pic would be terrible at communicating what the game is to the market they want to hit.

New trailer looks pretty decent

I picked it up during the steam sale last weekend and have been playing it a bit. I feel like it's way to easy to kill dudes, but maybe that's because the checkpointing is done so well and I don't feel punished when I fail. But I am just plowing through rooms which seem to be elaborate puzzles if you're playing non-lethal. I do want to play stealthily, but I never seem to be able to bring myself to commit to it, when it's so convenient to remove people. I'm not all the way through, and I presume their is a twist later that may make me feel worse about the atrocities I'm committing. But there seems to be nothing in character of the enemy units that seems worth preserving. Also given they start off with a genocide, I don't care at all about cleaning their house. I do try to avoid dogs though, I don't want their blood on my hands.

You can still run the traditional Half-Life Server style server. Also don't be afraid of playing against people, their match making system is actually pretty good.

I agree. I don't want people to get the impression that I think this is a bad idea at all, I'm actually really excited to see they've opened the doors to us.

Yeah if you hire creative and capable people, there's a fairly good chance that it's going to be successful even if things get crazy. I was thinking more about the opportunity to test people who show leadership potential. While I imagine most of the people that would make strong project leads would also be able to present a compelling pitch the public, there's still a chance that we're overlooking someone that can really drive a project because some other pitch was flashier. But I agree it could also go the other way, someone who seems like they wouldn't be capable may get the chance to prove themselves because the public didn't have the same perception that Tim or other senior staff may have.

I agree, but I think the key difference is that it's being directed by a senior artist with a lot of experience. A lot of those games are programmer driven crazyness, where they try to capture the experience of development into game form and fail. It's the reason why i was pessimistic about hack n' slash. I hope he pulls it off, but you're right it's terribly ambitious.I do think it's going to be interesting to go through the whole experience publicly, but I think the pure democratization of voting will have an effect on the processes. Tim mentioned he's used it in the past to test out people who want to lead game teams, and given that he's no longer part of the decision, I can't see that being directly replaced. The public is focused on what games it wants made, and someone who may be in the prime position to be given a chance to lead may not have gotten it because someone else's game had a better pitch. It's a cool experiment though, and it might help me build support for something similar at my studio.

RE: Control rebinding (hope this is the right episode thread). I see two options that platform holders could take that would fix the issue outright. 1) make it a TCR that controls must be able to be rebound. That would be a pain for the reasons that were mentioned in the cast, but you could outline a set of requirements that allowed similar bindings without having to deal with complex rebindings. 2) have a rebinding at the system level for accessibility purposes. This (in theory with a fresh console generation) would be much easier to accomplish, and could be a much more robust implementation. It could get really crazy and have simulation for anolog -> digital or digital -> analog inputs. They could also add a few APIs that return the graphic for the impulse you're requesting, so that it could make QTE style interface prompts even accurate. But all they really need to do is the bare minimum and it'd make a different for a whole lot of people, and save developers a lot of time.

I'm not super ready for more minecraft, but if we're looking for something fresh are people interested in doing some Feed The Beast? It's like Tekkit, but updated and with mod author support. http://feed-the-beast.com/

We picked up a Wii U today for the office and busted out Nintendo Land. The multiplayer games are actually a lot of fun. I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon, and I seriously doubt i'll even think about buying one for myself. But it's a great thing to have in the office. There's a Microsoft Surface (table) downstairs in our reception that pretty much serves the same novelty factor.

Absolutely. There's nothing like escorting a convoy in the X-wing games, breaking off to fight off a enemy ships, and then after an intense dogfight turning around to see your convoy extremely far away, and facing another incoming wave of fighters.I think the secret is to not make the player hate the object they need to escort. If you're dealt with an AI that makes untrustworthy decisions it ends up frustrating. But if done well, it can be exactly what's needed to raise player investment in an encounter and give them an opportunity to be a hero.

5 year leases :/ We have to sign one of those soon for our new office. It's hard to plan for how big or small you may be in that amount of time.

Space Base has my vote. Good luck guys, those 2 weeks are going to be a crazy grind.

It's always funny when people vote on games that haven't been released yet. But I was going through that Spike TV list and I noticed that Diablo 3. I had totally forgotten that existed.

2012 has been a bit of a lull for me. I don't care about Blops2 or Halo, and it seems like nothing else is coming out. I've been playing mostly back catalog games, and small indie titles. Also Minecraft, hours and hours of Minecraft. The only thing I've played with enough regularity that was actually released this year was Counter-Strike:Global Offensive.

I don't think they were in an alternate universe, just outside the milky way galaxy. It sounds like they were summoned back, and at the end of ME2 it's implied that the main fleet is almost in our galaxy.

Honestly, you could make it real time without that much trouble if you focused on that happening at the lower levels, and batch syncs at the higher levels. But right now, I'd settle for the game loading without instantly crashing. I don't know what's changed, if it's some server error that's being returned on the socket that's causing a crash to home screen, but I can't launch this game any more. I played quite a bit before it started happening, and now I can't play at all. Apparently there are more mechanics than just chipping away single blocks at a time, but if it did continue at this rate, I was wondering how long we could project till it's open. Given that the cube has ~ 100 mil cubes on it's outmost layer, and that it took about a day for people to chip that away, can anyone predict how many layers there are or how long it'll take to clear them? That would also assume a consistent level of player activity, and server stability, both of which will just not happen. EDIT: Seems like it's better this morning, no crashes so far.

So what would be a good training hero?

He was widely considered as the guy I picked at the last second. He looked big and clunky and the least likely to require finesse to play properly. The team I was playing on had two players who said they were completely new other than myself, and one guy that was extremely upset about this fact before the match started. But the other team was apparently full of terribles, and the good guy on our team absolutely dominated. I stayed alive like a good boy, only dying at the end when the other team gave up and and rushed a lane to get some kills. But I still can't figure out how you're supposed to throw that bomb.

I did not know that.

I played my first game today, and it took me an entire round to figure out how to buy things out of the shop. And I'm still fairly confused by the whole tech tree that lies behind the suggested items. I picked the alchemist, and blew myself up like 5 times. We somehow won, so it was a good environment to learn, but I totally would have ruined the game for a team that needed me.

Yeah, the mech suits really upset the percieved awesomeness of the aliens IMO. To get an onos you have to do a lot of personal economy conserving, and play pretty well. Whereas the Marines can get exo suits built for them by the commander.

camo is amazingly fun. Makes being a skulk feel less hectic and more predatory.