Rather Infrequent Open Thread
So just for the record, the way I usually assemble content for the open threads is by finding interesting things in my Google Reader listings and emailing them to my Aiera email account. And…uh…yeah, it turns out that I’ve got a bit of a backlog going, so much so that I need to sort through it in order to help me prioritize the newsworthy content mixed in with it.
So…here we go!
Syndicate gameplay footage released.
Yeah, not a isometric tactical game. Still cool.
Honestly, I’m rather excited for this one. Starbreeze have crafted a gorgeous, and seemingly quite tense, game. And this trailer, in particular, pays some nice homages to the games that came before.
So…have you heard that Mass Effect 3 has multiplayer?
Because it totally does:
As trailers go, not the best.
Apparently, if you engage in the Galaxy at War multiplayer arena, it will have some minor impact on the single-player campaign. BioWare are being understandably cryptic about exactly what that effect will be, of course.
RPS Asks: What is your virtual talent?
I suppose this question will largely be interpreted as “what game are you best at?” but I actually have a more specific motivation for asking. While I was probably best at Speedball 2 or Quake III in terms of raw twitchy gaminess, my best developed skill from a game was definitely fleet commanding in Eve Online. It was a skill within the overall mastery of the game. I wasn’t the best pilot, or the best trader, or the best diplomat or best at Eve in any general sense, I was just really good at fleet commanding and running gangs. I’m a little sad that this skill is now languishing after years of work.
Anyway, it made me wonder whether you lot had any specific talents you’d like to share? Perhaps, unlike John, you are a particularly good healer? Or are you a brilliant WoW auction house ninja? Or something else more exotic?
Five things you might not know about Visual Studio.
I actually did know about the first one; it’s handy for finding and renaming variables called across multiple source files. The fifth one is something I can see myself using a fair bit in the future.
The Dark Meadow – more Unreal Engine goodness on iOS.
This game looks like a ton of fun, although I haven’t picked it up yet. I’ve got enough games in the queue for now. Still, I’ll pick it up at some point, and I expect I’ll enjoy it immensely.
So apparently the Skyrim manual leaked.
And with the leak, answers to such questions as “how do I cook?” became more clear. And just to sweeten the pot, the map was also leaked.
Former Ultima Online developer Raph Koster has a message for developers: take back control!
His GDC talk is the stuff to make our good friend Sanctimonia smile, methinks. It’s a stirring speech urging developers to take control — especially of social media — instead of allowing such things to control them.
And because it’s Raph Koster, the whole thing is framed as a fairy tale. Because that’s how he rolls.
Zynga is going to be listed on NASDAQ.
As Dr. McCoy once said: “Oh, joy.”
Yet more Skyrim goodness: a live-action trailer!
Live action?
Live action:
The game is going to look almost this good, to be fair.
You know, this game is getting a substantial bit of hype and media attention. And yet, it’s being managed well; I don’t feel we’re being inundated with it, unlike as was the case with…say…Halo 2.
Origin, EA’s digital download service, will add non-EA games next month.
This will position Origin as a more direct competitor for Impulse and Steam, although they’ll have to do a lot more if they want to actually cut significantly into Steam’s share of the digital distribution market.
Oh, yeah…tonight’s post brought to you by old, awesome things:
Yes, those are punch card instructions...
Honestly, I’m rather excited for this one. Starbreeze have crafted a gorgeous, and seemingly quite tense, game.
I know what you mean, but you really shouldn’t be.
As oldschool gamers, we can’t help but get thrilled, again and again, when we see a game that looks OMG JUST LIKE A BADASS MOVIE. So different from the games we grow up with.
But it’s all really par for the course these days. The younger generation already takes these things for granted.
Besides, the style is very similar to DX:HR.
I don’t know, Infini. I mean, okay, yes, I did come through the days when computers didn’t have hard drives and games were built in 2- or 4-colour pixel art. Maybe I appreciate and marvel at modern game graphics just a bit more than someone whose gaming career began with Halo.
My comment, however, was mostly about how Starbreeze — despite the shift in game mode (FPS vs. tactical) — seem to be trying quite hard to recapture as much of the spirit of the old series as they can.
The similarities to DX:HR are there as well, certainly, although its worth noting that the DX series and the Syndicate series did kind of occupy the same thematic space…or, at the very least, there was some overlap there.
Now here’s something for the Open Thread.
(delete if this is a double post)
WtFD: It’s a double, or would have been…but I’m keeping this one because I like the formatting.
Well, yes and no.
You could say that Deus Ex subverts the classic cyberpunk setting, in that the megacorporations are really just fronts for The Conspiracy, and are fully in league with a no less powerful and corrupt government.
By the way, I tried to post a link here about a possible Icewind Dale 3 being released, but it seems it didn’t go through.
Found it.
I’m highly skeptical about a new IWD trully, it feels like it’s just a Feargus comment being blown out in propertion, like when people where like “WILL OBSIDIAN DO A CHRONO TRIGGER GAME????” when he said he loved Chrono Trigger and would like to do a game like it 😛
He basically said that he’d love to do a Icewind Dale III and he’s sorta brushing the possibilities with the IP holders… but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen. In the same interviews he also said taht doing an Ultima game would be his dream game – but we all know how likely that is to happen as well 😛
I don’t know…I am one of those who could see Obsidian doing a new Icewind Dale game, especially given their powerful in-house engine. Onyx is brilliant, and would work well as an Infinity Engine successor.
Still, it’s all speculation, and (as Sergorn notes) there is a tendency on the Internet to take Mr. Urqhart’s (sp.?) statements and blow them the hell out of proportion. The only statement of his worth taking to the bank is that Obsidian are working on something concerning a property (as yet unknown) they were quite excited to be able to get their hands on. The rest is just idle talk, however awesome it might be.
I could see Obsidian doing a new Icewind Dale game down the road, sure – I mean that’s certainly more likely than an Ultima game :P. But it’s unlikely to be happening at this point in time – if they were actually working on a IWD3… Feargus wouldn’t have been rambling about how he’d love to do a new Icewind Dale if they were actually doing it.
So I would assume the “IP they couldn’t refuse” is likely something they haven’t mentionned in Interview before 😛
I’d love to know what it is though, they don’t have any announced game at this point, and I assume they’d at least have a couple of projects they are working on.
And and as for Syndicate, while this feel like a slap in the face regarding the old games, I personally thing a game in any case should be judged as a game first, and as part of an IP second.
As game, this new Syndicate sure looks interesting.
Anyone know where I can find the Ultima VI font in TTF format? Maybe it doesn’t exist, but it’d be nice as I’d like to use it in my project.
Damn, I’m an idiot. I meant Ultima VII. Ultima VI’s font was all DOS-style if I remember correctly. Ultima VII had the crazy yellow old English font which, though a bit hard to read, was nice.
You’re not the only one looking for it, but at present you’re basically out of luck.
If it exists, it’ll be in those Mythic archives that Joe & others have backups of. And in that case, it’ll bd found by chance, if at all.
Why is it that people who want something often have not the means to access it, yet those who have it possess neither need nor want of it. Argh…
Perhaps the uber-skilled FEARYOURSELF could reverse engineer whatever goofy format they used to store those pixels. Of course then there’s the problem of vectorizing each character programmatically (tears for anyone who does it manually!) and adjusting the spacing or whatever TTF uses.
All in all, I’d say I’m out of luck. I found an Ultima font pack and am using the “Avatar” font derived from the title for the time being. I’ll probably use some free (as in legal for commercial use) font that looks decent in the end.
To steal a page from that bloke’s book, while I can’t say what I’m doing it does involve using fonts pretty extensively. Once I have that feature working I’ll move on to audio rather than text so those with tongues may use them.
I feel much the same way about the font used in…actually, in the site logo here, for the word “Ultima”.
It graced the Ultima 9 box and title screen first, and was also featured in some Ultima Online releases. And frankly, I think it’s a darn attractive font. Joe (from the Origin Museum) is evidently aware of a font file for it, though I think the last time we spoke of it, it was a case of “we’re not sure where it is, and it’s not in a format that’s useful”.
The issue here is kind of what you allude to in your opening paragraph, but in another sense it’s a case of “there are people who want and have the means to access what is sought, but they lack (perhaps very sorely) the time needed to search through archive after archive to find it.”