Game News The Golden Baby Flaps Its Wings: Grimoire Demo Released!

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

everybody but me seems to know

That's your problem. This thread and Cleve overall, are not about knowledge. They are about faith.

Amen.
I have to admit it is a new mindset for me to debug by sacrificing 3 goats, a raven and a STL implementation, on the night the stars are properly aligned. But bugs ar ebugs, heh. If you can understand them, they are not bugs anymore dammit.
But it seems Cleve got it all under control and we will soon have a new demo with a release runtime and no crash.

Don't let this discourage you. The world needs more shovelware. If I ever seen COLD FEAR on sale for $4 at K-MART gaffer taped to a copy of MICKEY&PLUTO FUN ACTIVITIES SET I will most certainly buy it.

 

[Moribund]

All right, my final word on the subject as this is getting ridiculous.

If you think programming is about knowledge you haven't done much thinking at all. Middleware, all in one APIs like game engines, and even 3D acceleration in general seem to have crippled people's minds.

When I see someone say "I have a bug. Let me research the problem." I have to facepalm. That's the mindset of a chimp using tools that they would never in a million years be able to emulate on their own, let alone better. When I made a ray tracing renderer, people looked at me like I was a fucking moon man (this was back when the only reference to such a thing was a math book). However, really, it took less effort to do that than to fuck around and learn my first 3D engine. And oh wait there's always one more little problem (problems that somehow never get introduced in my own code).

Same nowadays will all kinds of programming. So I do understand it, but that mentality basically short circuits the use of your brain pan and instills helplessness, and also makes you into an accusatory nitwit when you see people ACTUALLY DOING STUFF NOT JUST USING STUFF OTHER PEOPLE DID. Which is why it's unbelievable MIND BLOWING to people what Cleve's trying to do, but paradozically so much more time than they can conceive of something taking. Even "programmers" look and say "Well the writing is done, and the GUI is there why isn't the game done?". A game uses a bunch of tools and displays some content, in their brians, with a few lame scripts a child could do to handle the AI and all that.

 

[EG]

everybody but me seems to know

That's your problem. This thread and Cleve overall, are not about knowledge. They are about faith.

Amen.
I have to admit it is a new mindset for me to debug by sacrificing 3 goats, a raven and a STL implementation, on the night the stars are properly aligned. But bugs ar ebugs, heh. If you can understand them, they are not bugs anymore dammit.
But it seems Cleve got it all under control and we will soon have a new demo with a release runtime and no crash.

You have learned much.

Meditate on what you have learned today.

[Level Up!]

 

[Tramboi]

You have learned much.

Meditate on what you have learned today.

[Level Up!]

Yes, for instance, I learned that Moribund is not so young because raytracers have been around since the 70s and were all the rage in the 80s (DKBTrace).
That's cool, because some of my work have been about global illumination, precomputed radiance transfer computation via raytracing and PRT compression through spherical harmonics and other non-disclosable techniques. We could have some things to discuss in fact.

And I agree most programmers are just bundling libs and integrating components, but there is a budget and time pressure for a lot of people. Even Cleve is using the STL and Fastgraph in his game.

 

[EG]

Why didn't you roll your own containers, Cleve?

We could have avoided, not only this discussion, but the bugs as well!

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

"Cold Fear" is quite a good survival horror game. What did you do on it Tranboi?

 

[Tramboi]

The PS2 port and optimizations, and lots of misc code, the on-screen distorting rain effect, some collision code, some gameplay code (the harpoon and arrows sticking in the enemies for instance) , some animation code, some data pipeline code...
You end up doing a lot of diverse things in a small to medium studio.
It's been quite a long time now. Makes me a bit nostalgic, even if it was not a great game. Glad you liked it (for what it was (TM))

 

[curry]

everybody but me seems to know

That's your problem. This thread and Cleve overall, are not about knowledge. They are about faith.

Amen.
I have to admit it is a new mindset for me to debug by sacrificing 3 goats, a raven and a STL implementation, on the night the stars are properly aligned. But bugs ar ebugs, heh. If you can understand them, they are not bugs anymore dammit.
But it seems Cleve got it all under control and we will soon have a new demo with a release runtime and no crash.

Don't let this discourage you. The world needs more shovelware. If I ever seen COLD FEAR on sale for $4 at K-MART gaffer taped to a copy of MICKEY&PLUTO FUN ACTIVITIES SET I will most certainly buy it.

I have no idea what you just said

 

[EG]

everybody but me seems to know

That's your problem. This thread and Cleve overall, are not about knowledge. They are about faith.

Amen.
I have to admit it is a new mindset for me to debug by sacrificing 3 goats, a raven and a STL implementation, on the night the stars are properly aligned. But bugs ar ebugs, heh. If you can understand them, they are not bugs anymore dammit.
But it seems Cleve got it all under control and we will soon have a new demo with a release runtime and no crash.

Don't let this discourage you. The world needs more shovelware. If I ever seen COLD FEAR on sale for $4 at K-MART gaffer taped to a copy of MICKEY&PLUTO FUN ACTIVITIES SET I will most certainly buy it.

I have no idea what you just said

"You do pointless, seldom enjoyable things."

It's Cleve and Moribund's version of the timeless classic, "neener-neener."

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Why didn't you roll your own containers, Cleve?

We could have avoided, not only this discussion, but the bugs as well!

That's a brilliant idea. But first I will build my own computer and a machine language entered with punch cards. It is the only way to make sure I have complete control over the entire subsystem.

 

[EG]

Why didn't you roll your own containers, Cleve?

We could have avoided, not only this discussion, but the bugs as well!

That's a brilliant idea. But first I will build my own computer and a machine language entered with punch cards. It is the only way to make sure I have complete control over the entire subsystem.

Ah, so I guess you'll just have to suffer flaws in others' work.

 

[Moribund]

It's highly recommendable but I wouldn't do it at this point when you are just about to release a game.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

"Cold Fear" was not a perfect game but it had soul. It's one of my favourite survival-horror game with "Silent Hill 2", "Martian Gothic" or the first "Resident Evil" and "Alone in the Darkness".

J'ai vu aussi que le dernier jeu auquel tu as participé a été distribué par Focus. Je me demande si tu as connu le grand frère de mon ex qui travaillait également là, Alexis Fischer, un super gars. Cela-dit, il a quitté Focus il y'a deux ans pour aller travailler à Shangaï dans une autre boîte de jeux vidéo où d'ailleurs il est payé une misère. En tout cas, ne laisse pas les trolls t'atteindre, je ne connais pas les autres jeux sur lesquels tu as travaillé mais "Cold Fear" est un louis d'or recouvert de mousse, il m'a beaucoup touché. Et cela aussi, malgré les bugs actuels, "Grimoire" a l'air d'être une tuerie phénoménale. Je ne comprends pas pourquoi Cleve Blakemore n'essaie pas de collaborer avec des gens de bonne volonté qui essaient de faire en sorte que son Grand Oeuvre soit parfait. Bah, on dira que c'est le RPG Codex.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

(I know it's not "Alone in the Darkness" but "Alone in the Dark" but I prefer to call it that way).

 

[Tramboi]

"Cold Fear" was not a perfect game but it had soul. It's one of my favourite survival-horror game with "Silent Hill 2", "Martian Gothic" or the first "Resident Evil" and "Alone in the Darkness".

There was a quite original ambiance yes, and some twists on the survival horror formula

(Je te réponds en MP)

 

[Infinitron]

Updated OP.

 

[UnknownBro]

Wrong fucking post goddamn it.

 

[groke]

The game plays fine, as one would expect from Wizardry grade quality level. UI is clean and fun to use. I like the idea of central inventory as it remedies inventory management mambo for the party. Portraits are cool. Having said that, main graphics window is not so good. The graphics is flat, there is no proper representation of white light, no background to foreground distinction. Creature art and tile set definitely needs lot of polishing. I get it you want to have some basics blocked in, before going for final look. Color curve is crude like done by five year old children in sketchbook. It hurts eyes and is missing subtlety ( fine gradients and proper day light representation ).

---INSERT TWO MONTH GAP DURING WHICH THE DEMO IS NOT CHANGED AT ALL---

I gave the demo another swing. I'm not sure, if I'm imagining things. I'm pleasantly surprised by the graphics. Everything is more polished, softer, natural looking and plastic. Color curve has more gradients and nice highlights and everything meshes well. I like those little details, like rust on a gate, mold on wood ( Aqueduct ), small waves on the water, clouds are more defined, shadows for creatures and humanoids ( Green Hand Gang? ). More distinction in the tiles, some parts muted, other highlighted in a way creating better quality of visual experience. It could go a bit higher ( even finer gradients, little tiny highlights here and there...hue hue : ) ), but it is an improvement and makes me want to play the game and I like it more, like feeling excitement, when I play.

Jesus fuck, some people on this forum are the scary kind of crazy.