HTC takes a swing at Oculus! Rocket League introduces Dropshot, Serious Fusion is headed to Linux, and Ryzen 5 brings the pain. Then Entropy faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.
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Colour key: Venn Mike Pedro
Good?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/5zs6mk/slug/df0kfw1
- I’m genuinely mixed on this one.
- Then again this is just the beginning of the unintended side effects.
- However, it looks like someone claiming to be from Steam is looking into it.
- Looks like VALVe wants to keep the refunded reviews valid.
- Which is exactly one of the things which is ripe for abuse, as I mentioned last week.
- Makes you wonder how long this was an issue.
- I’m convinced VALVe isn’t interested in making their review system better, just less bad and harder for people to game.
Dropshots
http://www.rocketleague.com/news/dropshot-new-game-mode-march-22/
- This is aimed at players who believe they can fly.
- Golden goal shower?
- Why do you keep trying to introduce new game modes?
- Soccar was only a mode in Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars and they’re trying to bring some of that back to RL.
- It’s not like footy has fallen out of favour since it was introduced in 1863.
- As someone who can fly, I’m looking forward to trying it out.
Speaking of
http://www.rocketleague.com/news/changes-coming-with-competitive-season-4/
- They killed Neo Tokyo \:D/
- But they’re bringing it back in a future update...
- “Your MMR (and your Skill Tier) are now only based on your Skill value itself”
- Will this stop the game from placing me in a match where I’m down by 5 with a minute left?
- Nope, that’s just how standard works. Play Comp if you don’t want that happening.
- New, wider set of skill tiers and less divisions.
- Give me the Vulkan render already!
- That said, I would not mind an updated replay of the original.
- The recent updates to Talos give me great hope for this. Croteam has their Vulkan on lockdown.
Mankind DLC
http://store.steampowered.com/app/413370/
- I can’t WAIT… until they get the base game in a playable state.
- Yeah, I’m going to need to be able to play the base game at more than 40FPS if the stars align before this bit of DLC gets any play time from me.
- I was tempted to buy the Season Pass direct from Feral for $30, but given the state of the base game… that’s a NOPE
HD Mount
http://steamcommunity.com/games/mb_warband/announcements/detail/563352991951545574
- Nice that they remembered Linux but I could never get into it.
- Same here, and I’ve tried several different times.
- Steam keeps emailing me that it’s on sale, but I’m yet to drink the coolaid.
- That said, it’s nice to see them roll console work back onto the PC
Ballz
http://steamcommunity.com/games/polyball/announcements/detail/233464319223233633
- Remember Spectraball?
- That game looked a hell of a lot better 4 years ago than this one does.
- Also, did you just admit you let the Mac version rot and didn’t pay it any attention until your Early Access monies started dipping?
- Oh, no. My bad, your numbers dipped in July 2015.
- You’re currently sitting at an average of 0.3 concurrent players over the past 30 days: http://steamcharts.com/app/368180
- Is this your last gasp?
Empires
http://store.steampowered.com/app/17740
- War Thunder Source?
- Mod…?
Heroes of Free?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/509560/
- It doesn’t look like complete wank and it’s free?
- Complete being the key qualifier in that sentence.
- Wait, no paid DLC?!11! …what’s this world coming to?
- Time to play VENN, READS, THE EULA!
- “You may not reverse engineer, disassemble or decompile, or attempt to reverse engineer or derive source code from, all or any portion of the Software”
- That’s legal in the States, Brad.
- “In rare instances, some users may experience seizures when exposed to certain light patterns or flashing lights.”
- Not exactly something I would bury in the EULA.
- That’s just the standard health warning, though.
- Yeah, that’s maybe the kinda thing you should show in-game if you really think it could be an issue.
- Collection and Use of User Personal Details
- (iv) marketing and offering Spellbook Studio products and services to you.
- The term “User Personal Details” means information relating to your personal Account details, including (but not limited to) your email address, profile name or other online identification, device type identification, unique device IDs (if available), preferences and settings, friend’s lists, block lists, and language selection, any dates the foregoing data is modified, and any other information relating to your Account.
- Remember kids, if you’re not paying for it you are the product.
News:
Ryzen 5
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-Announces-Ryzen-5-Series-CPUs
- Pushing out the quad cores at over 160 is a bold move.
- The only reason the Athlon 860K sold as well as it did was because it was around 60-80 wet stinkies.
- And there’s also debate regarding whether those quad cores are in one CCX or split across two like the 6 and 8 core variants.
- This is relevant because of how the “Infinity Fabric”, pretentious bullshit name if you ask me for the core interconnect lanes, handles threaded loads.
- If it’s in a single CCX those issues will probably be mitigated and if that turns out to be the reason for poor gaming performance, the 1400’s will probably sell like hotcakes.
- Of course, this is AMD we’re talking about, something tells me they pulled a Bulldozer (read stupid) and have those quad cores split into two modules like they used to.
- I think they are confirmed to be 2X2.
- Because AMD is stupid and AMD never learns.
- AMD is the Ubisoft of processor manufacturers
- 1600 is like 1100T w/ hyperthreading and a slightly lower TDP
HTC
https://uploadvr.com/htc-oculus-exclusives-hampering-developers/
- Honestly if you are funding the development for a platform I don’t see the problem with it being an exclusive.
- It’s not like tools don’t exist to remove any locks.
- HTC + VALVe hate exclusives
The Other Distance
https://openmw.org/2017/distant-terrain/
- Freakin’ finally!
New Lutrpis
https://github.com/lutris/lutris/releases/tag/v0.4.6
- It’s never lupus.
- Whatever it was that killed Lutris, didn’t last long either.
Weekly godot update, end is really the important part (from Foxy)
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-30-new-progress-report-and-gdc
- A new exporter to WebAssembly + WebGL2 is in the works.
- Simplified export by allowing the creation of Export Presets.
- Makes automating exports from command line easier.
Keen 1.0 (sent in by RTheren)
https://davidgow.net/keen/omnispeak.html
Liberation Circuit 1.0
https://github.com/linleyh/liberation-circuit/releases/tag/v1.0
- RTS/coding game
CHAIRQUISITION:
Game: Entropy
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/255500/
Devel: Artplant
Engine: Unity
Price: 9.99
Wazzat: Entropy is an open-universe science fiction MMO with a strong focus on freeform gameplay and large-scale space combat. Explore a hostile galaxy filled with over a hundred solar systems, each completely explorable, where you can hunt, trade, mine and salvage in order to survive.
Makes with the working
V-
- No real gripes since it manages to hold a solid 60 for the most part.
- Perdo will flesh that out.
P-
- The game has this nasty habit of freezing for about half a second when there’s anything more than the skybox on screen.
M-
- Runs great at UHD, used the resolution of the primary monitor by default
- PRESS ANY KEY FOR WHY?!?
- Periodic stutters, maybe loading? Who knows. #unity
Total-
Shiny / Sounds
V-
- After seeing the initial character creation screen I really thought I was in for a bit of treat.
- It looks… well done.
- Hell, most of the game looks well done.
- Not that it would win any awards for “best looking” but it’s a bit of alright for an indie title.
- Then again it should since there is not a whole lot to look at.
- I would comment on the voice acting but it seems they ran out of money for it mid-sentence.
- I guess there is a soundtrack, if you count a 7 second sample looped a soundtrack.
P-
- The graphics do a passable job.
- The sounds… Well if there were sounds, because I sure as hell can’t say for sure if there were, they were completely unremarkable.
- Also, if you’re not a native english speaker like me, run your text through a Jordan… spellchecker.
- I decided to play a drinking game of spot the mistake while I recorded the video you’re looking at right now, I would have been properly sauced after 30 minutes were I not drinking tea.
M-
- The opening story bit had me hooked. AI abandoning humanity and whatnot.
- Character creation looks great too. Then you never see yourself again.
- Then the game happens…
- Wing Commander 3, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, and the X-series all sprang to mind
- First person view, but no cockpit? Reeeeeeeaaaaaaly…?
Total-
Control
V-
- Press J to exit.
- Yeah, it took me a bit to figure out how to exit the game since Esc DOES NOT WORK.
- Would it have killed you to explain some of the keyboard shortcuts during the tutorial?
- Good thing Alt+F4 worked out since this game would have received the first ever -1 Chair.
- Outside of that fusterclick everything controls like your standard space shooter.
- Gerbil for navigation and throttle and keyboard for everything else.
- Mind you, “everything else” requires looking in the menu for the controls since the tutorial can only be arsed to give you the basics.
P-
M-
- Once you figure them out, they work…
- WHY WASD?!?
- Mouse aiming works… but it’s kinda weird and takes a hand away from the keyboard where you could be using it to manage your systems
- No key I could find to set throttle to 0% or 100%
- Kinda newtonian physics… C key cuts your engines, but if the engines are on, they cancel your momentum somehow
- How does one roll in this game? I never figured it out, it just kinda auto-rolls…
- Clipping is arbitrary, and can make things kinda confusing sometimes.
Total-
FUN
V-
- Ever get about an hour into a game and start thinking “hey, am I missing something here?”
- I mean, it’s been 113 minutes and I’ve done a whopping 1 thing that that was not Press F and wait.
- I’m getting ahead of myself, alright.
- You start off learning the flight and weapon basics, right.
- Then you nope a few baddies (this is about 30 min later after you have traveled around in a void of nothing) and head back to the hanger.
- Then they send you on a multi-part fetch quest that in real time involves 10+ minutes of staring at your screen.
- At the end of this quest (grabbing the last bit) you get jumped and noped with a quickness.
- That’s were I decided I had put more time into the game than the developers did.
- Game, yeah, this is no ‘game’ son.
- This is, at best, a framework for an MMORPG that has been abandoned since April of last year and not surprisingly the playerbase abandoned it long, long ago.
- I’m almost positive that the three of us were the only ones to play it this week.
- Pushing it out as a finished piece of kit is beyond comprehension.
- BTW entropy only has ONE achievement… yeah, one.
- Surprisingly it’s not for refunding it within the first ten minutes of gameplay.
P-
- The biggest sin a video game can commit is being boring.
- Every critic worth their chops will tell you that.
- Entropy is completely fucking boring.
- I could expand on that, but I’d rather tell you all about the stuff they didn’t finish and claim you can do:
- Salvage – If there are no players to shoot each other or NPC ships, there is no salvage.
- Crafting – Unfinished. According to the devs and other players on the Steam forum, the crafting system was unfinished and put on hold while they fixed or “fine-tuned” other areas. It still is.
- The combat… so fucking boring.
- There are active, unfixed exploits which let you get unlimited credits.
- The “mods” are the main source of new exploits getting introduced.
- I almost considered replacing Legends of Aethereus as the most spectacular failure done in the Unity Engine with Entropy.
- But I can’t. Legends of Aethereus was as I mentioned an absolutely spectacular failure.
- Entropy is boring, broken, unfinished, dead, and have I mentioned it’s boring?
M-
- This game should have been an easy 4 chairs. SHOULD
- I grew up on Wing Commander, and X-Wing, clear sources of inspiration here
- This game implements the same elements, doesn’t integrate them, and then just walks away like “all done”
- Combat was completely MEH, stupid AI
- Gravity engines take forever to charge, then get you there slowly
- At first I thought: gives a nice impression of space and distance
- It quickly became: “another 2 minute wait to get to my destination? Blerf.”
- Trying to dock at stations is confusing, follow the green dots.
- Maybe forgivable if EA, but it’s not EA… nor is it even remotely finished.
Total-
Final –
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