Posts by dkm

  • Origin return policy...wait, what?

    Quote from Puddy

    24 hours after launching the game, you say?


    Sounds like a great way for people to beat SP-games for free lmao. Perhaps I would exploit this system too if it weren't for the fact that I hate Origin.


    For sure...

    Also, I'm pretty sure EA would use that as their new metacritic. "I'm sorry guys but the rate of return for your game was too high. There'll be no follow up on your game. Shame, it was a nice studio you had, bye now"

  • Gone Home

    Quote from Sentura

    You know that most works of art, even some classified as bad at least provide a moral to a story, right? Like a hidden message that's supposed to make you understand at least something about why you were listening/reading the first place, right? The narrative in this game has none. Saying it shouldn't be deep is obnoxious, every story needs a moral to function, otherwise it's pointless. I think we can agree that the narrative in this game is the main focus, right? So we're focusing on something that is pointless.


    This is my frustration, spelled out. A slice of life is mundane, that's why people don't tell stories as slices of life, but rather as epics with suspense and idealized characters. They're role models of virtue for people. Everyone already lives their own slice of life, and while a change of perspective is nice, when that happens, it too does carry a moral usually - in this case, it does not.


    I'm not sure how to respond to that. First of all, every story doesn't *need* a morale to be compelling or to just function. Some of my favourite movies are about people and characters.But also, saying this one doesn't have a morale is just plain wrong. It's personally the 1st time I play a game treating of

    Quote

    homosexuality as openly as this, and as subtly as this. It reflects the struggle of a young woman coming of age and how hard it is to get accepted when you're different. It's a love story, a darker story (the hinted abuse of the father by the uncle), the hinted extra-marital affair of the mom and the struggle of a family man. And in this feminist/anti-feminist climate, I appreciated to play a game that didn't try too hard but got it right.


    I mean if all those are not contemporary themes, I don't know what is.But I understand that you might feel cheated, it's not really a "game" per say, but it's definitely an experience anchored in the reality of our time...I also feel it's a tad expensive, but I sure don't regret my buy. Now back to shooting teens in the head in cod

  • Gone Home

    Quote from Sentura

    I finished it. I didn't like it. The story and narrative felt shallow and contemporary rather than meaningful and interesting. Everything got overshadowed by just one of the family members really, the rest were mundanely revealed by the end. Like Mazy said, this is probably "mature" for american standards, but it is really not putting anything on the table than providing a look into contemporary society from a perspective of a single family. I wish I could say it would be on par with American Beauty in that sense, but sadly it isn't. It provides no insights into human nature or anything else than a shoddy narrative without moral.


    I wish I could get my money back.


    Wait, why does it HAVE to put anything to the table? Why would it have to give insights about human nature?It's a slice of life, you follow the maturing of girl going from childhood to womanhood with whatever that entails. But more than that, it's all the backstory with the rest of the family that was interesting, putting the pieces together, getting to understand and know people that you haven't even met.It never tried to throw me truths in the face like so many games do, it never tried to be more than was it is and it never tried to teach me big life lessons. But if you went playing it expecting to find a redefinition of your beliefs in humanity, well then, you played it wrong.

  • Wolfenstein Returns?

    Yeah, I hope we'll have a better texture fidelity than Rage (especially on nextgen since there is so much more disk space). We've already done a lot of things with the engine, but yeah, materials are a bit of a bitch


    The spec isn't baked in the mega (it has its own) except on some cases when the environments are huge (ie. wasteland in Rage). We don't have gloss, and the way different materials differ from each others pretty much only relies on the strength of the spec and the strength of the cubemaps.

    But I sure hope that's something Carmack (or someone) is going to work on in the future, because it's my personal biggest gripe with megatextures

  • Wolfenstein Returns?

    Quote from Thrik

    So, how about them megatextures?


    Both a blessing and a curse

    Blessing is that everything's unique, you can use how many textures or materials you want with the size you want and stamping is shit loads of buckets of fun (no more decals!!)

    The curse part is that it takes a while to bake them (you pretty much need a cloud), the materials are all the same (metal=wood with more spec), they're ginormous and still lacking resolution

  • Wolfenstein Returns?

    Quote from blackdog

    I remember it was clearly said, after id's acquisition, that id Tech 5 would not be licensed outside Zenimax-partners studios. Even if not, I'm not sure how many companies would embrace this kind of tech, seems too demanding/slow to work with compared to others. I mean, 20 mins to load a map/environment? (By the info id released with the SDK for modders.)


    That's not really true. It's clunky yes, it's kind of a weird engine to get into (just look at the normal maps ), there are a lot of layers of crap to deal with and it *can* be slow if you have a wrong setup but it's not that bad overall.

    Starting a map takes 20-30s for me after the initial run (which can take maybe 5 min the first time to build the virtual materials) and baking also *can* take a long time but with a proper cloud setup, it usually takes 20min to 1h depending on the size of the maps. When it comes to scripting, a lot can be done at run time -- and if it needs a triggers compile, it doesn't take more than a few seconds.


    But I wouldn't advise using that engine to make a mod if you're alone in your apartment


    Quote

    Visually appealing but very scripted, even poorly at some points (like with the robodog)


    That, I agree totally and I've been fighting for aaages to get rid of that. I hope this level suffered from the 'demo syndrome' and that we'll get rid of it eventually

  • Xbox One

    It's great for indies on paper, but doesn't it also mean that we'll start seeing thousands and thousands of mediocre titles like on Iphones and whatnot?

    It was already pretty messy on the xbla (towards the end at least), I wonder how the visibility for 'good' titles is gonna be like...