PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Shhh. Deep breaths. In, hold it, HOLD IT, and out. Ah. Now you’ll feel like me. It might be because it’s Friday and I’m a bit tired, but I felt myself relaxing watching Crytek’s CryEngine 3 demonstration. I love graphics, because without them games are all words and stuff and you can’t shoot a word in the face, so I’m predisposed to start drooling over meaningless advances in tech and their associated sizzle videos. But this one, with the waves and the bizarre music, was like a tessellated pillow. I drifted away, barely noticing the noble fish thing until I realised the video has stopped playing half an hour ago. When I rewatched it: WTF? So: what the hell is that fish thing?(more…)

Our work is complete, here at Castle Shotgun, when we receive the latest news from simulation impresarios Excalibur. This week’s transmission informs us of the unlikely-sounding Stone Quarry Simulator, in which you can use digging machines and/or explosives to drag the hard bits from the guts of the world. Excalibur implore us to “Embark on exciting excavations where only the most enterprising engineer will become king of the quarry!” King of the quarry. That sounds awesome. And I am also betting it’s not an actual feature of the game. If it is, then I will very pleased indeed.

It also features what seems to be the theme tune from an American teen-drama, as you can see in the trailer below.(more…)

Has anybody seen a brown and white Protestant Work Ethic, about this big? He answers to the name of Scamp. I was walking him in the park yesterday morning when the little so-and-so ran off. I’ve contemplated searching for him, and I was going to print-off some ‘LOST’ posters, and stick them up round the area, but – well – I just don’t seem to have got round to it yet. Right now, I’m not even sure I can summon-up the gumption to tell you about the delights of Combat Mission: Battle For Normandy – Commonwealth Forces and Accu-Feel. (more…)

If you own top-down Freelancer-esque (ish) game Space Pirates and Zombies and were about to carve an ice-statue that signifies your inner turmoil at the lack of the game’s Bounty Hunter faction… stop! Put down the chainsaw and step away from your copy of Ice Sculpting the Modern Way. You’d have never have forgiven yourself and the art world would have mocked you mercilessly if they knew you’d started that without checking RPS, because I’m about to tell you about the free SP&Z’s Bounty Hunter expansion pack. Save that ice swan for some other internal strife.(more…)

The first footage of Kalypso’s Omerta – City Of Gangsters can be seen below. Kalypso report that it’s “a strategy game focusing on the activities of organized crime in Atlantic City in the 1920s”, and it’s looking like an improved version of the engine they used for the recent Tropico games. The boss manages his criminal resources and has a familiar real-time strategic overview of what’s going on in his city. However, we can expect it to be quite different when it comes to gunplay. Kalypso explain a bit more: “The turn-based combat in Omerta – City of Gangsters focuses on the tactical command of “The Boss” and his henchmen. Cover and stealth are essential parts of any shootout in the game.”

Sounds intriguing. It’s set for release at the end of 2012.(more…)

Epic’s Cliffy “Cliffy B” Bleszinski B just told a huge crowd of developers at 2012′s GDC that when starting up a developer, forget Xbox Live, PSN, iOS, Android and Windows phones, and instead to make games for PC. Condemning the way Microsoft and Sony treat indies, and dismissing mobile gaming, the Unreal developer said that the PC was the only place to start.

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The Game: Achievement Unlocked 2 Genre: Metagame Game Platform: Browser (Flash) The Scoop: The original Achievement Unlocked worked both as a (mildly) scathing commentary on our modern obsession with earning merit badges over gameplay, but also as an actual game. The sequel loses the origi...

According to a report by Forbes, Valve Software co-founder Gabe Newell is worth an estimated $1.5 billion. Forbes consulted a variety of analysts and investment bankers to arrive at an approximation of Valve's enterprise value, $3 billion. Because Newell owns over 50 percent of Valve, divide by two and now you know why Newell can afford to randomly buy lunch for Half-Life fans...

Civilization 5's "Gods & Kings" expansion is looking to satisfy the demand for more depth in the strategy, following the game's launch just under a year and a half ago.

One of the top three changes made due to community feedback, according to Lead Designer Ed Beach, is that the AI opponent no longer holds grudges that last millennia. He also noted that diehard Civilization 4 players complained there was a lack of depth in the gameplay, which is why religion, diplomacy and combat were added or overhauled. Finally, the combat tech tree doesn't have awkward dead ends anymore. Crossbows can now become gatling gunners, which then become machine gunners.

Producer Dennis Shirk echoed Beach, saying the religion, espionage and combat mechanics were the focus of change. Specific changes affect certain naval units, which now have "melee" abilities that allow them to invade cities after significant bombardment. There's also more flexibility in stacking units, though don't expect the classic "stack of doom" to return. Finally, espionage is handled through one screen with no actual units on the board, streamlining the process of cost and consequence.

The expansion includes 27 new units, 13 new buildings and nine new Wonders, which Firaxis didn't describe further at this event. The expansion is expected to launch in late spring, sometime "before the kids get out of school." Study comes first, kids!

Hopefully you remember the awesome little lo-fi survival platformer, Under The Garden. We wrote about it here, and both myself and Quinns had a fun time playing it. So anyway, it seems that beautiful gem of a game is getting a rather more high-fidelity remake, this time called Under The Ocean. Developer Paul “The Farmer Gnome” Greasley has dropped us a line to show off his early work on the game in a video, which you can see below. They’re only a few weeks into the project and I am ready hugely excited about what they can accomplish with it. If they can capture the gentle, clever exploration feel of Under The Garden in the same way here, they’ll definitely be on to something. Go take a look.(more…)

Perpetuum, the offbeat sandbox robot MMO that we’ve been playing since January, is going through a bit of a strange time, and things aren’t looking so rosy for our exploding robots.

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Did you hear? Maxis are doing the Sim City thing again. As Sim City 2000 was one of the games that made me, I’ve been cautiously vibrating with excitement ever since the news of the new Sim City first started spreading, but now I’m left with questions like “Is the new Sim City going to do anything clever with the internet”, “Will it have any modding support?” and “just how do those curvy roads work?”. But no longer, as Maxis took to the stage at GDC to spill at least some of the beans regarding the tech that’s powering Sim City: The New One, the brand new Glass Box engine, and here’s the grisly details: (more…)

If you were lucky enough to be following RPS’s Twitter account last night, you’d have seen the live reporting of the 2012 IGF awards in full, glorious detail, as they happened, live. It was amazing. But some people weren’t dedicated enough to be awake. Bad people. For them, I list the winners below.

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Yesterday, we went to a GDC appointment with "Epic Games China" to see a game called Mercenary Ops. Built in Unreal Engine 3 and filled with Gears of War-esque gameplay, it was revealed as the first project from "Epic Games China." As it turns out, that's not quite true. "Mercenary Ops is being developed by Ying Pei Games, which was formerly Epic Games China. However, as with our many development and publishing partners, they are utilizing Unreal Engine technology," Epic Games' US reps told The Verge.

More bizarre? "Ying Pei" in Mandarin means "Epic," making "Ying Pei Games" the equivalent of ... "Epic Games." According to Epic Games (the American one), "We do own a minority stake in Ying Pei Games and we do work with them as with our other Unreal Engine developers, but Epic Games is not developing Mercenary Ops."

Additionally, EpicGamesChina.com directs to the Ying Pei website, and we were told by reps yesterday that the studio is a "subsidiary" of Epic Games US. The game's publisher, "Delkans," is brand new to North American publishing and has two mystery owners from the tech sector, making this whole story all the stranger.

Hopefully you remember FoldIt, the protein manipulating game that instantly solved years-old biological puzzles. It’s probably the most well known example of a crowd-sourced citizen science project that had immediately remarkable success. It’s in this same field that Phylo exists – a game designed to sequence genomes, while the player is enjoying some fairly familiar match-3-style colour matching. I spoke to designer Jerome Waldispuhl, Assistant Professor at the School of Computer Science McGill University, Montreal, to find out how it is that fun can be recycled into progress. This is gaming literally changing the world, perhaps even saving lives.

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I’ll admit, I only downloaded Whoopservatory because of the silly name. I couldn’t resist. But I’m entirely happy I did, as it’s an excellent way to spend the 20-ish minutes it takes to explore the abandoned laboratory of Dr Magnusson, Half-Life 2 Ep2′s grumpy counter-part to Dr Kleiner. Magnusson has made, ooh, bad things happen at an isolated observatory and Freeman has been sent to show them Crime (left fist) and Punishment (right fist). Fittingly, for someone so inept at human interaction as Magnusson, the central twist of this map is that it’s co-operative, but with yourself.(more…)

Delicately enigmatic online shootery buildery co-opery thing Love is just a slightly bit less enigmatic now, waving in new users to its impressionistic world via a demo. The one-man MMO show has just welcomed an expansion, Dark Matter Spreads Over Fair Land, where the world you’re on is a slowly corrupting via a powerful artifact. As Eskil Steenberg puts it: “Bad things happen”. The demo is actually the full client, so all you need to do is download it and select ‘demo’. You don’t even need to sign up. If this is your first time playing, you might want to watch the tutorial video below.(more…)

As revealed by The Big K, Molyneux – creator of games like Magic Carpet, Syndicate, Black & White, The Movies, and Fable – is leaving Microsoft-owned Lionhead to join a start-up company. The former Bullfrogger, who was head of Microsoft Studios in Europe, said: “It is with mixed emotions that I made the decision to leave Microsoft and Lionhead Studios, the company that I co-founded in 1997, at the conclusion of development of Fable: The Journey… However, I felt the time was right to pursue a new independent venture.” He will also act as a creative consultant on Fable’s arm-waving variant for the Kinect.

Molyneux joins a new Guildford-based company, 22 Cans, which Molyneux has described as “something really amazing, scary and brave”. This new company was founded by Lionhead’s former chief technical officer Tim Rance, whose credits include Populous, Black & White, and Fable. They probably plan to make games.

It’s not like Gears of War developer Epic Games to do anything quietly: they’ve announced games by chainsawing their way onto stage. But there’s a lack of fireworks and farming equipment in the unveiling of Mercenary Ops, a new third-person shooter coming out in Summer exclusively on the PC. There’s not even a balloon. It’s a Gears of War-ish cover-based shooter made by Epic Games China, with the teams apparently fighting for control Lowallistan on the Duckandshoot Peninsula, in the world of Crouchtopia. Thirty seconds of trailer is below.(more…)

Industry PC gaming advocacy group, The PC Gaming Alliance, reports a sunny outlook for PC gaming in 2011. No surprise there, of course, especially with continued excitement over free-to-play, and the multi-billion dollar IPOs raised by Zynga and Nexon for their F2P businesses, but that’s not the whole story: “While much of the growth in 2011 came from the growing F2P space, there were also some notable big budget game launches that enjoyed very strong sales, driven by the growing acceptance of digital distribution. These included the large subscription online games Rift, from Trion World Network, and Star Wars: The Old Republic from Electronic Arts… Sports games led by soccer titles from Electronic Arts and Konami also showed surprisingly strong sales on the PC.” More below.(more…)

Ryan Creighton makes sure to acknowledge precisely how average he is, but it's not a self-deprecating point. Creighton, the man behind Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure and dad of the designer, then 5-year-old Cassie, led a panel at GDC titled "Ponycorns: Catching Lightning in a Jar," which focused on tips for building a brand and marketing a product as an indie developer.

For an "average" developer, Creighton makes some exemplary points.

For example, build a game-specific blog or website and publish the story behind any game's development; personalize the process and make is easy for people to give you money, Creighton suggested and we completely agreed with.

Even though Creighton offered some wonderful tips for emerging developers, he also pointed out that there isn't a guarantee for success, at least not in the traditional sense.

Creighton's studio, Untold Entertainment, is in the hole at least $6,233, but it's raised more than $3,000 for Cassie's college fund, Creighton said. He didn't make Ponycorn to get rich -- luckily -- but had clear reasons: Creighton believes kids should learn to code, that there should be more women in the games industry, and he wanted to spend more time with his children by involving them in the family business. In these areas, it appears he succeeded.

Creighton works on Untold contract projects and develops games for under-funded, lackluster Canadian television spin-offs to support his family, he told Joystiq after his presentation. Creighton had hoped to develop original titles for Untold full-time, but "it's been a rough three years," he said. He then turned to a circle of developers waiting to ask him questions and offered another piece of advice: "Here's a hot tip, fellas. Don't start your own company in the middle of a global economic collapse."

Creighton is currently developing Spellirium, a "trashpunk" graphic-adventure, world-puzzle title for Mac, PC and mobile devices, which he is, of course, blogging about.

There's a whole group of folks at Epic Games China and they're working hard on the first big title from Epic Games' eastern subsidiary. The game, Mercenary Ops, is a ... somewhat derivative third-person shooter built in Unreal Engine 3, which uses cover, blind fire, and active reloading mechanics (from the Gears of War franchise) as main gameplay concepts. Given the "mercenary dudes" setting, the combination of Gears gameplay and bro'd out characters gives it a Gears of War meets Call of Duty feeling, as we discovered during a brief hands-on session today at GDC 2012. So ... yeah, perfectly competent, but not the most original.

Perhaps more interesting, the game isn't being published by EGC's American parent company, but instead a brand new North American publisher named Delkans. And what in the world is Delkans? That's a good question -- one that company reps weren't willing to supply an answer for when repeatedly asked during our meeting today. Apparently the publisher is made up of folks from the tech industry, though that's all we could pull out of reps.

Mercenary Ops is planned for a summer 2012 launch in North America and Europe, with Asian markets potentially following (Delkans isn't talking solid plans just yet).

In the always imaginative word of indie gaming, it’s ever-increasingly the case that finding out anything about a game before you play is to take away from the experience. But then you could argue the same is true of most things in life. Which is why I like to break into maternity wards and start telling babies all the spoilers I can think of. “Puberty sucks!” I will shout, as the angry midwives drag me backward from the room. “They lie to you about cell structure in GCSE biology!” I cry as I’m thrown through the doors. But here’s the fascinating thing about Antichamber: even as the developer told me what the game was doing to mess with my brain while I was playing it, it still succeeded in messing with my brain.

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Tim Schafer has taught game developers how to dream…how to dream about having piles of cash to work on projects that they reckon people crave enough to pledge some of Earth’s rapidly dwindling stockpile of money for. The latest veteran to pitch to the public is Christian Allen of Serellan. Admittedly I didn’t know the name but it turns out Mr Allen has worked on more Ghost Recon games than I’ve actually played, as well as being lead designer on Halo: Reach. But what does he want from you? MONEY MONEY MONEY. And why? So that he can make a hardcore tactical shooter. And why am I covering this? Read on.

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Hardware makers Roccat were so excited about this that they ran a countdown with the sarcastic slogan: “Isn’t PC Gaming Dead?” Now in my view, only nuclear war or Waitrose’s Butter Chicken deserve a numerically decreasing build-up. Roccat’s reveal can’t match the horror of an atom being split, or the happy ping of a microwave delivering mock Indian tastiness, but it is neat: Power-Grid turns your smart phone into a PC gaming peripheral. It’s definitely not the system enlivening advance they claimed, not least because the PC is wholly healthy, but it will allow you to use your iThing and Google whatsit as a control centre and resource monitor, as well as further few phone-based tricks as well. Let’s enliven PC gaming in three… two… one… ping! Mmm, butter chicken.(more…)

"Dadliest Catch." Octodad 2 is now called "Octodad: Dadliest Catch." Go gather up your family in front of the warm glow of the computer. A title like that is worth sharing.

Developer Young Horses informed us that the saga of a floppy octopus trying to pass as a loving human dad will continue in 2013, on Mac, PC, and Linux. One more time: Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Yep, still funny.

The Game: Hero Core Genre: Monochromatic Non-Linear Shooter Platform: PC The Scoop: Hero Core by Daniel Remar might have the visual style of an old Game Boy game, but it was developed with modern gaming sensibilities in mind. Gamers jetpack around an asteroid base, collecting more and mo...

A shocking missive landed on my desk this morning. Written by a ‘concerned gamer’, it informed me that “people are starting to wonder about you guys”. The reason given was that we haven’t taken a look at Tomes of Mephistopheles, a first-person dungeon crawler with randomly generated, Daggerfallesque environments to explore and bombs that can blow holes through walls to create new passages. Although the game is at an early stage of development, currently in alpha, what I have just described is clearly something that I would be interested in. So, as I watched the developer diary below, I started to wonder about myself as well. What kind of a monster am I?

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Things you will need to play IGF award winning rogue-like Desktop Dungeons for free between March 5-10: a browser, Unity, the finger strength of a champion boulderer, ten minutes per game, and, if you’re being picky, a central nervous system, oxygen, the unknowable spark of life that brought us all unto this earth, pants, etc. But mostly it’s a browser and the time. It’s been a while since Alec got hooked on the treat-sized charms of the rogue-like, and I’m frankly still amazed it has the beta tag. It has remained resolutely beta-ed up, with access given to those who’ve pre-ordered. If you were unsure if propping up development was for you, then unless you played the free version that’s been lying dormant for a few years, you can finally test the waters.(more…)

If you are Pvt. Leonard ‘Gomer Pyle’ Lawrence, then StarCraft Master is Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, shouting GG sarcastically into your face to prepare for the horrors of Vietnam StarCraft II multiplayer. Masters is a mod that’s just gone live on Battle.net with 30 challenges carefully curated to mimic strategies you’ll use when you click that terrifying button that takes you online. You may not like it, but the more you hate it the more you will learn micro-mangement skills and build queues. Do you Larvae understand?(more…)