Video Games Thread

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Talking of Outlast and Outlast 2 you might want to contribute to this Kickstarter before you get either one of them

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Have now done 5 textures for my asteroids. Have decided to do 5 separate asteroid models and have also decided that there are way too many gray asteroids out there in video games. The vast majority of developers are lazy buggers and just do one model and one texture and make it appear to be loads of different asteroids by changing the scale and rotating several instances of that one model.

Bollocks to that. I'm going to have 5 models and 5 textures for mine just to give it more variety and to make my game stand out more. The textures were VERY quick and easy to do, you can do one in just over a minute if you rush things. And these are created from scratch without the use of any photos or anything.

I'm on the bus so I'll edit them into this post later.

Back now, here you go:











Not sure I like the first one so I might replace it with another one. All 4K at 300dpi.

Please feel free to give me any feedback on this stuff!

Next on the list is the 5 asteroid models themselves with ZBrush, I'll probably have a go at that later tonight I reckon. And after I've done that I need to do the docking bay, Nakamura's Pride and the inside of The Raven cockpit which is going to be the opening screen when the game starts where you can access the menus and stuff on the ship's displays.

Then once I've done all that (and UV Unwrapped the bloody models and sorted out the rest of the textures which is a REAL pain in the arse that I've been avoiding lol) I can start working on the cutscene where you receive the distress signal in a scene in the cockpit (so a seamless transition between the opening screen and the start of the cutscene followed by a fade to black and a fade in to a scene where you're watching the ship trying to dock surrounded by bloomin great big asteroids and you get fired upon, damaging your ship beyond repair and leaving you stranded.

Then I'll have a few missions such as the obligatory keycards to open doors or lifts to different areas of the ship, finding the weapons control center so that you can turn those guns off, into engineering to switch off the one way forcefield that's going to prevent you from leaving and probably a few other bits and pieces that I haven't thought of yet lol

I don't think I'm doing too bad so far. I've got the name of the game, the name of the ship (which are one and the same), have built 12 (soon to be 17) models, have got the name of the protagonist (Commander Allan) and the name of the protagonist's ship computer (Edgar) and have got the basics of a plot which the player can pick up by reading infopads/logs etc.

All I need to do after I've done all that above is do a few more corridor models (for corridors with doors), a few room models, some more props, Commander Allan's model and the enemies' model. Then I can start throwing it all together. I reckon I should have the game finished before Halloween next year all going well.

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Blimey. 53 Touch titles are going to be available on launch day (6th December). And 7 of them are going to be available for free:

Unspoken
VR Sports Challenge
Dead & Buried
Medium
Quill
First Contact
Toybox

With an 8th free title, Robo Recall, coming from Epic early next year.

I'm going to hold off buying any Touch compatible games until closer to Christmas, both Steam and Oculus are bound to have some Christmas Sales going on.

Have continued my playthrough of Dead Secret last night, the game is excellent. Very spooky, great atmosphere and took me a few deaths to work out how to stop getting killed by the Witch coming up the stairs. Tried hiding in the wardrobe. Dead. Hiding under the bed. Dead. Hiding behind a chair. Dead. I won't reveal how I did it just in case you guys decide to buy it (the game can be played flat) but if you don't panic you'll see what to do. Very difficult not to panic in VR though lol. And every time I died I got freaked out by the Witch reaching out to grab me.

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I completed Dead Secret last night, an excellent game. Decent puzzles and nearly pooed my pants a few times whilst playing it lol. If you like scary games and puzzle games I highly recommend it, although I'm I'm guessing that you won't find it as scary playing it as a flat game. The atmosphere, sound and music are excellent, as is the timing of the jump scares and animation. Definitely worth picking up.

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Is it as good as Zombiu, which you swore was the scariest and most excellent game ever, and it turns out was a complete bucket of wank?

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Zombi was a free PS+ game a few months back and it was shite lol.

Finished Game of Thrones telltale game a week or so ago which was brilliant. Considering I've never seen the show I really enjoyed it.

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ZombiiU was a completely different game with the Wii U controller and before Ubisoft patched the difficulty out of it. It wasn't really a scary game, just a game with a ridiculous amount of stress and tension. It REALLY had you panicking at times.

In fact this is a game that would translate really well to VR and motion controls, although if they did bring this game to VR they would probably give it a bloody teleport mechanic and ruin it

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Loads of people have got their Touch controllers early and the review embargo ended at 4 this afternoon. Everyone is saying that the Touch controllers make the Rift the best VR solution out there and that they're the best motion controllers. No surprise to me tbh.

Loads of free software with Touch too including Medium, Dead & Buried, Unspoken and VR Sports Challenge although those last two are for pre-orders only. I would have quite happily paid good money for those first three, but not too keen on VR Sports Challenge because the sports are too USA-centric. They would have been better off having the same sports as Wii Sports tbh.

Not getting mine until tomorrow, although I've checked the DPD app on my phone and they haven't received it in Leicester yet which is a bit of a bugger. I might not end up getting it until Wednesday I reckon.

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Just checked DPD again and it's on its way to Enfield and I should be getting it tomorrow!

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Fucking hell, these Touch controllers are amazing. The finger tracking is cool and it doesn't take you long to completely forget that you're holding a couple of controllers. All of the hands-on reports and reviews are absolutely spot on - they just feel like an extension of your hands. Amazing.

I've just spent 70 quid on the Touch games bundle - you get The Climb, I Expect You To Die, Superhot, Space Pirate Trainer, Kingspray Graffiti and Ripcoil. I'm not particularly interested in Kingspray Graffiti but I was planning on getting the others at some point so I thought I'd take advantage of the offer.

I'll worry about paying for it later  That's what credit cards are for lol

Just had a quick mess around with Medium which is a sculpting program and it's pretty cool. It's pretty much a poor man's ZBrush in VR. I'll post a pic of my first masterpiece once I find out where Medium has saved it!

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Fuck me ragged with a wire brush!!! The Climb is amazing. And bad news for me is that this is a score based game, I have a habit of playing score based games over and over and over and over and over and over again because I get obsessed with beating my top bloody score

I'm currently 85th on the Leaderboard on the first mountain, I probably won't get anywhere near the top 20 but I'd be happy with a top 50 score. I'm not very good with heights either so this game is a bit stressful for me lol. My legs started to wobble at one point lmfao

There's plenty of content and plenty of replay value too. I didn't think that this game would suit the Touch controllers but it works quite well. I haven't quite got the hang of jumping from one handhold to another one a good distance away, I might have to have a look at the tutorial again I think.

The game looks beautiful too, no surprise given the engine and the developer (the CryEngine and Crytek!).

As well as your bog standard climbing a mountain just cos it's there mode there's also a feature where you can race people to beat their scores and you see ghost hands of which route they climbing and how fast they're going.

I also tried Dead & Buried but I came across a REALLY annoying bug that kept on respawning me about a foot in the air which meant that I couldn't take cover behind stuff so I got pwned like a mofo lol

I'll have another go on that tomorrow I think.

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Superhot has also been getting rave reviews by everyone so I'm going to have to try that tomorrow at some point too.

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Here's my very first effort with Medium. I was just messing around with the swirl tool for a few minutes. I'll do something proper later on:

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Got my code for VR Sports Challenge and The Unspoken today. Only tried The Unspoken so far and it's awesome. Went through the tutorials and then jumped straight into a couple of Ranked mches and got seriously pwned lmfao

Going to have a fair few practice matches against the AI before I do that again lol

Have been having problems with SteamVR which is a pain in the arse, you would have thought that Valve would have been better prepared for Oculus Touch tbh.

I've decided to go for Touch controls for both of my games now, it will mean that I'll have to scrap the idea of the alien enemies jumping on your chest and have the game in proper first person mode (so that the player model is just a couple of arms) rather than third person mode with a camera slapped on the character's head. It means that you won't be able to look down and see your legs and body but the hand presence should add a bit of immersion. Means that you can punch and grab things, push buttons and flick switches with your pointy finger and bung your thumbprint on scanners and stuff.

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Looks like Crytek are continuing to go down the toilet. They've just closed down a load of their offices in various countries and haven't paid their staff in months.

You would have thought that they were doing better considering the cash they got from the Amazon/Lumberyard deal, the moneyhat they got from Sony for Robinson The Journey and their sales of The Climb.

Perhaps we'll end up seeing Facebook buying them..?

Not sure what happens to a company's debts when they get bought out though. Do they get written off, do the current owners use that money to pay off the debts or does the purchasing company inherit the debt..? No idea how these things work.