Game News Torment: Tides of Numenera announced for PS4 and Xbox One, gets new trailer

[MrBuzzKill]

For everyone in this thread asking "Why...", "Why...", "Why...", "why..." etc
Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

 

[Psquit]

Do console tards play turn base rpgs on their consoles?

 

[Latro]

RE: Philosophy question.

I pick the fastest option by default so I can have lunch.

 

[a mod]

King's Quest III was not rendering the whole scene to implement reflection - it was rendering the very few movable units and drawing that on top of a static, precreated, and almost certainly hand-drawn, "default background reflection". You can do essentially the same thing for any 3D game with a stationary camera as long as most objects (walls, stairs, pictures, tables, etc.) are mostly stationary from one frame to the next -- just render the static reflection once, and then every frame render and superimpose (2D/post-rasterization/cheap operation) only the moving objects that fall within the "mirror's field of view" on top of that static pre-rendered reflection (with the possible added complication of needing a Z buffer or using multiple non-overlapping 2D pre-rendered layers if the static stuff isn't strictly behind {from the mirror's perspective} the moving stuff, and with the down-side that that may not compute all of your lighting correctly - though you could probably fake that too to some extent - lighting is all fakery anyways so computing it "correctly" is never really an option).

Or you can just be a lazy-ass programmer and render the whole scene.

The key here is that the angle you view the mirror from is always the same. That's not the case in a 3d or 2.5d game.

 

[Jaesun]

Do console tards play turn base rpgs on their consoles?

http://www.ign.com/games/valkyria-chronicles/ps3-950634

 

[l3loodAngel]

For everyone in this thread asking "Why...", "Why...", "Why...", "why..." etc
Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

The game fan song to developers:

 

[Kev Inkline]

https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=15950&p=174354#p174354
Well, lying isn't necessarily saying 2x2=5, kids. Lying is also deliberately withholding critically important information that could significantly change the attitude of the audience.

Yes, as known from the freshman philospophy intro, omission is also a moral action. Like failing to push the fat guy in front of the incoming train.

 

[Viata]

Do console tards play turn base rpgs on their consoles?

Yes, but if I use jrpg players as example, most of them want new jrpg to be action rpg(like Kingdom Hearts) as turn-based is "too old for new games". But still, turn based for them is like Wizardry or, in games like FF, in a side view instead of first person. Turn-based battles like Numenera, for example, you usually see in Japanese tactics games and hardly in JRPG.

 

[worldsmith]

You should try game development by the way

FYI, my first published game (of the royalty garnering variety) was ~25 years ago. My current endeavor is an RPG (along with most of the development tools I intend to use to create it - at the moment I'm coding my compiler which compiles my language which makes all other languages look like the shit that they are ).

maybe more mirrors will come into our way

Actually I am a lot more interested in gameplay than gimmicks. They refer to these as "functional" mirrors, but per my definition, they are not (at least not in the games I know about):

• purely cosmetic?: "gimmick" (though one could argue they enhance atmosphere/immersion or other intangibles)
• allows player/PC (but not AIs/NPCs) to adjust their tactics (like bouncing a grenade around a corner because the player can see the reflection of the enemy in a mirror)?: "exploit"
• also allows AIs/NPCs to do the same?: "functional"

There are other areas where being functional (in my sense of the word) is probably more impactful than mirrors - e.g., light (enemies knowing you are coming because they can see indirect light from your torch), shadows (they may see your shadow even if you have no line of sight on them and can not see theirs due to where the light sources are) and sounds (busting down a door rather than using some lock picking should attract a lot of attention, as should fighting and various other noisy actions - on the plus side if there are guards bearing down on your position you may get some audible warning of that). The one place I could see mirrors having major (common) impact is if a game allowed you to use a hand-held mirror to peek around corners. (Otherwise you are pretty much depending on mirrors just happening to be in ideal locations and orientations which is highly unlikely and therefore rarely happens and rarely has a chance to impact gameplay.)

The key here is that the angle you view the mirror from is always the same. That's not the case in a 3d or 2.5d game.

You can do essentially the same thing for any 3D game with a stationary camera

The camera need only be stationary on a per-scene basis. An RPG could use the "move from scene to scene" paradigm rather than continuous camera movement over the whole game world. And the described optimization would only require scenes that had mirrors in them to be handled that way, so you could still do most of the game with continuous camera movement if desired.

Another option (which allows panning over the whole game world with the camera) is to render the game world using some form of parallel projection (e.g. isometric). The projection-correct reflection in this case is invariant with respect to pan position. (In a parallel projection the angle at which the non-point camera views the game world is in general different than the angle at which the player views objects on the screen -- the camera's viewing angle remains fixed and uniform while the player's viewing angle varies over the screen and is constantly changing as the world is panned.)

From a gameplay perspective though, if mirrors are to impact gameplay meaningfully, the only correct content in the mirror is that which is visible from the PC's perspective, not the camera's. And in that case it's not nearly as important that the mirror be rendered as such (which for non-first-person games may just look wrong to most players anyways) as it is that the player can see what the PC can see, which might better be done by showing what the PC sees in its true (or perceived) location in the game world (maybe with some indication that the mirror is allowing it to be seen) rather than squishing what the PC sees into a rendered mirror viewed off-angle by the player/camera and hoping there's enough pixels there for the player to make out what the PC can easily see. (A handheld mirror might only consist of a handful of pixels when rendered from an overhead perspective. And even with a larger mirror the difference between the PC's and player's/camera's viewing angles could wreak havoc on the player's understanding of where the objects seen in the mirror are actually located in the game world.) If there are multiple PCs, there is then no "one true way" for the mirror to be rendered (though of course one can just arbitrarily decide what will be rendered in that case), but rendering what the PCs can see in its true location in the game world still works fine (i.e. with no added arbitrariness and no "nightmare mirror UI").

 

[DosBuster]

Mirrors in games will become more prevalent as soon as ray tracing becomes a viable solution for rendering. I have seen mirrors in recent games such as Uncharted 4 and such, and in games like Portal where you're not rendering anything too complex you can get away with re-rendering the whole scene.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I wonder why there hasn't been as much whining about Larian also making console version.

 

[a mod]

FYI, my first published game (of the royalty garnering variety) was ~25 years ago. My current endeavor is an RPG (along with most of the development tools I intend to use to create it - at the moment I'm coding my compiler which compiles my language which makes all other languages look like the shit that they are ).


Actually I am a lot more interested in gameplay than gimmicks. They refer to these as "functional" mirrors, but per my definition, they are not (at least not in the games I know about):

• purely cosmetic?: "gimmick" (though one could argue they enhance atmosphere/immersion or other intangibles)
• allows player/PC (but not AIs/NPCs) to adjust their tactics (like bouncing a grenade around a corner because the player can see the reflection of the enemy in a mirror)?: "exploit"
• also allows AIs/NPCs to do the same?: "functional"

There are other areas where being functional (in my sense of the word) is probably more impactful than mirrors - e.g., light (enemies knowing you are coming because they can see indirect light from your torch), shadows (they may see your shadow even if you have no line of sight on them and can not see theirs due to where the light sources are) and sounds (busting down a door rather than using some lock picking should attract a lot of attention, as should fighting and various other noisy actions - on the plus side if there are guards bearing down on your position you may get some audible warning of that). The one place I could see mirrors having major (common) impact is if a game allowed you to use a hand-held mirror to peek around corners. (Otherwise you are pretty much depending on mirrors just happening to be in ideal locations and orientations which is highly unlikely and therefore rarely happens and rarely has a chance to impact gameplay.)





The camera need only be stationary on a per-scene basis. An RPG could use the "move from scene to scene" paradigm rather than continuous camera movement over the whole game world. And the described optimization would only require scenes that had mirrors in them to be handled that way, so you could still do most of the game with continuous camera movement if desired.

Another option (which allows panning over the whole game world with the camera) is to render the game world using some form of parallel projection (e.g. isometric). The projection-correct reflection in this case is invariant with respect to pan position. (In a parallel projection the angle at which the non-point camera views the game world is in general different than the angle at which the player views objects on the screen -- the camera's viewing angle remains fixed and uniform while the player's viewing angle varies over the screen and is constantly changing as the world is panned.)

From a gameplay perspective though, if mirrors are to impact gameplay meaningfully, the only correct content in the mirror is that which is visible from the PC's perspective, not the camera's. And in that case it's not nearly as important that the mirror be rendered as such (which for non-first-person games may just look wrong to most players anyways) as it is that the player can see what the PC can see, which might better be done by showing what the PC sees in its true (or perceived) location in the game world (maybe with some indication that the mirror is allowing it to be seen) rather than squishing what the PC sees into a rendered mirror viewed off-angle by the player/camera and hoping there's enough pixels there for the player to make out what the PC can easily see. (A handheld mirror might only consist of a handful of pixels when rendered from an overhead perspective. And even with a larger mirror the difference between the PC's and player's/camera's viewing angles could wreak havoc on the player's understanding of where the objects seen in the mirror are actually located in the game world.) If there are multiple PCs, there is then no "one true way" for the mirror to be rendered (though of course one can just arbitrarily decide what will be rendered in that case), but rendering what the PCs can see in its true location in the game world still works fine (i.e. with no added arbitrariness and no "nightmare mirror UI").

Or you can just render the scene at a reduced resolution. You can even save the result and only update it with any dynamic objects, just shifting the UV coordinates on the image to show the right area from different vantages,

Anyway for RPG it should not be a big deal to do mirrors regardless. You hardly render that much stuff at one time, it's not like some open world FPS where you have high poly stuff up close and then miles of objects further away. So you might as well make a portal and just render it all twice....

 

[ArchAngel]

I wonder why there hasn't been as much whining about Larian also making console version.

Because they were not selling their game based on old school marketing.
Also not making a spiritual successor to a beloved game.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Because they were not selling their game based on old school marketing.

Not entirely fair. They did use the magic words 'Ultima 7 inspired/spiritual successor', which sucked me to to backing it without hesitation.

Also not making a spiritual successor to a belowed game.

Sorry, ULTIMA7!!! Curses, ArchAngel, your edit spoiled my joke.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I wonder why there hasn't been as much whining about Larian also making console version.

Because they were not selling their game based on old school marketing.

Consoles exist since the 1970s. Sounds oldschool to me to make a console version.

Also not making a spiritual successor to a beloved game.

Also wrong.

 

[ArchAngel]

Those old school console games were even more retarded.

 

[a mod]

Eh, larians has never been much incline to begin with. I never had any interest in them. I did have a little in this at first but it quickly went away, and at this point it looks like inxile in general has become pretty shitty but maybe this will be proved wrong.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

I'm not against a console port if it's on 3DS.

 

[prodigydancer]

I wonder why there hasn't been as much whining about Larian also making console version.

It remains to be seen how exactly it'll affect D:OS2. Larian's been suspiciously quiet lately which is never a good sign. They also promised a lot in their KS pitch (much like inXile did with TToN) and there's no such thing as too much money. Should TToN succeed despite Fargo's shenanigans, what's to stop Swen from following suit?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I wonder why there hasn't been as much whining about Larian also making console version.

There are many specific reasons, but what it ultimately comes down to, I think, is that Larian were a lot more honest throughout the whole process. In their very first KS pitch video, you can see that couch co-op with controllers was a major goal, which suggested the possibility of console version to anyone with a working brain. They also let their product stand on their own as opposed to trying to prop it up with nostalgia for older games and didn't constantly bring up their commitment to "old-school PC design sensibilities" or whatever. Finally, it was clear from the release of D:OS that they focused exclusively on the PC version, and didn't start planning for console versions till after that was out.

For InXile, on the other hand, it seems more and more likely that all the KS promises and declarations were just marketing for the gullible, and Fargo would rather work on Skyrim or Mass Effect if he could.

It remains to be seen how exactly it'll affect D:OS2. Larian's been suspiciously quiet lately which is never a good sign. They also promised a lot in their KS pitch (much like inXile did with TToN) and there's no such thing as too much money. Should TToN succeed despite Fargo's shenanigans, what's to stop Swen from following suit?

I think it's the reverse actually, the fact that a console port of D:OS2 was not promised out of the gate (which would've certainly helped the KS) means that D:OS was not a huge success on consoles and that PC remains their lead platform.

 

[Infinitron]

I think it's the reverse actually, the fact that a console port of D:OS2 was not promised out of the gate (which would've certainly helped the KS) means that D:OS was not a huge success on consoles and that PC remains their lead platform.

The D:OS 2 Kickstarter happened before the release of D:OS for consoles.

 

[Lurker King]

What if the fat guy is a filthy rich philanthropist who donates huge amounts to charities, helping save innumerable lives?

Your moral intuitions will vary according to the moral relevant properties of the case, including the properties of people affected by your actions. The fat guy could be Einstein, or your father, etc., and this case you are justified to not push him. You can keep making changes to make the scenario more difficult, though.

 

[Fenix]

The fat guy could be Einstein

All such reasoning is wrong. When you reason like that - measuring which life is more valuable, you fall into a trap, where kids are the most valuable as "future", so you SHOULD push that fat guy on rails.
When somebody start to measure life like that, for example in that part about medical clinic and medical ethics,
the very first thing I remember is that Nazis made soap from Jews.
It is absolutely the same satanic inhuman approach to human life.
interesting and scary is that I see it today in news from Europe e.g. where they killed and butchered the giraffe in zoo and people came to watch it with children, or when that girl from Sweden ate her own horse. I instantly understand in such moment that we are absolutely different.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I think it's the reverse actually, the fact that a console port of D:OS2 was not promised out of the gate (which would've certainly helped the KS) means that D:OS was not a huge success on consoles and that PC remains their lead platform.

The D:OS 2 Kickstarter happened before the release of D:OS for consoles.

I stand corrected, though it doesn't detract from my point. We haven't heard anything at all about the prospective D:OS2 console version, and unlike InXile, Larian could afford to announce it without much backlash. More likely than not, they're not very satisfied with their console experiment, and were not confident enough in it to include the possibility in D:OS2's KS campaign to begin with. If they really wanted to, they could've delayed the KS until after the console launch to gauge its success. Seems to me that console ports remain an afterthought to them.

 

[Infinitron]

We haven't heard anything at all about the prospective D:OS2 console version, and unlike InXile, Larian could afford to announce it without much backlash. More likely than not, they're not very satisfied with their console experiment

Heh, okay, I'll remember you said that. There's going to be a big Divinity: Original Sin 2 announcement this week, btw, so I might not need to remember it for long.