jay pettitt

On the off chance that you like stealth games, with rpg elements, set in a richly detailed medieval universe, and mice, there's always ghost of a tale.

oh so apparently it's public knowledge (it says so at the end of the trailer) that it's using something called 'the void engine', which is Zeni-Max proprietary thing using id tech.

I'd love to see more steam and clockwork tech in Thief type games. The stompy steam bot is one of my favourite things in TDM. The only thing I'd add is that switching engines is, I'd guess, probably non-trivial in terms of staff training/skills/experience and office work-flow and systems and tech support and all that. tbh I was a little surprised that Arkane moved away from Valve's Source Engine following Dark Messiah and The Crossing. Anyway - I've no idea what they're using - but Unreal would be guess #1.

Coo, excited! Not least because Paul Weir is handling the audio, complete with proceduraly generated vocal tracts. God and I'd love to try it on one of those new fangled 3D headset thingamybobs.

People's desire to pay $60 early? Err, no. The desire of which you speak is not what you think it is. Whether or not you're conscious of it, the motivation behind 90% of your purchasing decisions boils down to anxiety avoidance, and the job of sales persons and marketing departments is to engineer anxiety. Calling it 'desire' is sticking lipstick on a pig. Desirable products are those that you're anxious to possess. So no, that a transaction happens is not sufficient to say the transaction was good in and of itself. The transaction should also need to be basically fair. The fairness of pre-orders is decidedly questionable.

That argument works just as well for cigarettes and slimming pills. So I think you gotta be careful because 'hyped' is synonymous with anxiety and the pleasure is maybe not always so much happy pleasure but temporary (until the next thing on the hype train comes along) relief from the anxiety the hype induces. To be sure, when a games company or a slimming pills company invests in creating a 'group' or a 'community' (or any other form of marketing) what they're actually doing is investing in a mechanism that first creates, and then leverages social anxiety into purchasing decisions. It's fear that you'll be excluded from something that others in the group will be doing that drives your purchasing decision - not that getting the game a day early is somehow better for you. Because people buy stuff, doesn't mean you're doing good works. The whole point of marketing is to distort markets - and marketing does that by twisting the way people make choices. So the argument that 'people choose to do something ergo it's good' is at least partly bogus and shouldn't entirely abdicate anyone from behaving in a way that is vaguely moral. It's not obvious to me that trying to get someone excited enough to part with $60 before the opportunity to make an informed decision about said purchasing decision even exists is entirely moral.

So when I played Mirror's Edge, what I really really wanted was some sneaking and stealth mechanics to give me another way of avoiding the combat ~ some basic leaning around corners and line of sight stuff would have been nice. Turning Mirror's Edge into a brawler, if that's the way it's going, doesn't really appeal. So yeah, I'm a bit sad and not much interested if that's the direction.

Snippets! Some graffiti reads 'The Crown Killer is Watching' (30s). At the end of the trailer, the assassination target (The Duke, I'm guessing) appeals to Emily 'Think before you strike, you'll become the assassin we claimed you were...' So there's a bit of a plot thing there. The dishonour in the game comes from anti-royalist propaganda, orchestrated by nobility(?) or some such.

Goin by the number of legs and wings, I don't think those are birds.

Is that genuine? Some of the info seems wrong - not least that there was no reveal in 2014.

Err, Crows? Where? Mostly I see Seagulls There's graffiti to read. Some of it reads 'Death to the Duke' and 'Howlers come at night'...

So I don't suppose the bow and arrow would be a fit, but it might be worth getting in touch. Once you've reskinned away the pseudo historical set dressing, TDM may have some systems that would be of interest.

It's edgy and tense when it wants to be, I've been busted a few time already. I don't know how long the game is, but I don't think I'm far in.

So it has a distinct late 90s vibe. It's (refreshingly) free of contemporary videogame isms: there's no batman vision mode or way-markers to show you what to do and where to go, instead there is creative problem solving using simulated systems and map geography. It's somewhat sparse and has limited polish/fidelity/technical finesse; a bit like an internal prototype, except that it is robust and a complete game - it's a finished product, not an alpha. The visual / audio / design style is consistent throughout so you just swing with the sparseness - it doesn't grate. The level of technical fidelity is reminiscent of an N64 game - though there is a hint of post processing that gives a little edge of slickness to the visuals. It isn't, but if it was a late internal build of that long lost Looking Glass Studio's N64 game that never was, you'd not be entirely shocked. Everything you learned while playing Thief, System Shock and Deus Ex will stand you in good stead. There's mantling and leaning and free movement and readables and stealth based on audio and shadow. It's a 451 game. It's got cyberpunk narrative themes like Deus Ex, but it's a scalpel rather than a swiss army knife game. Mechanics are quite similar to Thief, but a bit more pared back - there's no sword fighting. It's got a linear mission structure. It's good. It has nice music.

It's German.

Sie sollte meine Aussprache gehört haben

If ever Looking Glass prototyped a hybrid Deus Ex / Thief game for the N64, and they probably did, this might have been it. https://youtu.be/llginnqhMBI I've played throught the first couple of missions so far. It's good.

Is that really computationally expensive? I can see it being an issue from the point of view of needing to program, test and implement it - but surely the difference between checking 4 points and checking one randomised point isn't gonna make anyone's PC overheat. Among other things, one is less than four. It seems like a pretty good idea tbh. A possibly cheaper and alltogether gamier solution might be to have just one target for the centre of the player and another target on the front of the AI's head. If AI can see the player target... you're likely rumbled. If Player can see the AI target... fudge a small chance you get rumbled.

I suppose it sorta depends on the form of the debate. Scientific debate, for example, happens at a slow pace with everything put down in writing and properly referenced so you can check the veracity of what's being said. But mostly, it's just not what debate is for. Debate is a spectator sport. The point is not to change the mind of your opponent ~ it could happen, but folk are often opinionated so good luck with that. The point is to show other people that your opponent is wrong (or if time is short, that your opponent is smelly or has a lurgy or is bad tempered or is in some other way not a person to want to be associated with). It'd be nice if it weren't so, but actually the point is to win. It's nice to be open to changing your mind of course, but generally speaking folk are at least fairly convinced of their position by the time they start debating it. I suppose an analogy is a court of criminal law. Your legal defence team will argue your defence to the hilt, even if the evidence is laughable and it's obvious you're guilty of heinous crimes. And the system kinda breaks down if they don't. The point ain't to get the defence team to concede. The point is to sway the jury.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-Vaio-VPCZ21V9E-B-Z-series-Core-i7-Laptop-256GB-SSD-8GB-Power-Media-Dock-/131267012803?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item1e901fa8c3 Ultra portable by day. TDM beast by night. Ask someone who knows about that sort of thing what the driver situation is like though. I've got an old style Vaio Z and it's a bit proprietary.

Being brain sick to the extent that your mind compels you to actually end yourself probably wasn't quite his own terms, but hey...

The clever game design/fun bit of using water arrows to combat zombies and steam powered bots in Thief was that it ate into your stash of water arrows, which were in demand for other things besides, like stealth. Stealth tools, and water arrows especially, are currency - if you have lots you are powerful and feel safe, if you have few you are weak - there's a nifty economy thing going on where you choose (or get forced into choosing) what to spend your currency on. A sword power-up doesn't do that and I suspect would mostly serve to devalue undeads. Not sure what the stealth focussed mechanic is of an anointed sword of zombie slaying. Unless you got splattered in luminescent green zombie blood or something. But then it stops being a neat, easy to implement, backwards compatible mechanic. It's not a bad idea to be sure and there may be fun to be had hacking 'n' slashing zombies in a novelty mission or two - but I'm not sure how it quite fits into TDM's stealth aspirations and if it's quite core mechanic material. Holy moss arrow zombie traps perhaps?

Not enough to pull the phony entries it seems. tbh I think TDM should maybe consider making some kind of statement about not supporting plagiarism in Amazon/EM's contest.

Me thinks they're just making job titles up now.

So Oculus VR and facebook have basically said that the deal means the hardware gets subsidised. "We don’t have to make a big margin on the hardware, and you guys do right now… we [Facebook] are a software platform company." And there was me thinking Valve was giving Oculus a bunk up (and lets be honest, Oculus only had quirky demo hardware before Valve came along) because Valve were interested in Steam being the go-to VR software platform.