ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

Rič Stenton piše o lokacijama i predmetima iz stvarnog sveta koji su inspirisali lokacije i predmete u Dark Souls

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/13/the-real-dark-souls-starts-here-12-real-life-inspirations-for-lordran

Skandal u Koreji vezan za LoL. Bizarne stvari se dešavaju u domenu eSportova, a ovo je samo jedna od njih:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-13-korean-league-of-legends-scandal-exposed-after-attempted-suicide

Julian Gollop se pojavio na Kikstarteru sa igrom Chaos Reborn, koja je rimejk/ ekstrapolacija njegove originalne igre sa Spectruma, Chaos. Naravno, daćemo. Ipak je Gollop neko kome se veruje na neviđeno, ne bez razloga.

No, primetiti i da je trend na Kikstarteru postao da se najdonji tier na kome dobijaš igru sada formira na 20 dolara. Nekoć je bio 10 pa čak i pet. Razumem naravno da developeri ne žele sebe da potcenjuju, a mnogi od njih su se i pokazali kao dosta slabi u domenu budžetiranja, pa je ovo valjda kompenzacija u suprotnom smeru, ali mislim da bi MNOGO više ljudi dalo pare na neviđeno ako bi letvica bila postavljena niže...


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1206403106/chaos-reborn-from-the-creator-of-the-original-x-co

QuoteWizard Tactics with Bluff and Deception, Procedurally Generated Realms, Online Multiplayer, Co-op and a Huge Single Player Campaign

Inače, slušajući ovu epizodu Not a Game Podcast podkasta, sa neskrivenom namerom da se samozadovoljavam slušajući neodoljivi škocki naglasak božanske Keze MakDonald, saznao sam dve važne stvari. Prva je da je Keza MakDonald napisala knjigu o nastanku igre Limbo koja će uskoro izaći. Druga je da je Keza MakDonald usred procesa pisanja knjige o Demon's Souls i Dark Souls. S obzirom da je ta divna žena zaslužna što sam jednog lepog dana davne 2009. godine naručio kinesku verziju Demon's Souls i promenio sebi život, sa zadovoljstvom (i samozadovoljstvom) i ljubavlju (ma šta "ljubavlju", sa obožavanjem!) ću to pročitati kad se pojavi.

Ha, baš sam danas vraćajući se s posla slušao taj podkast i mislio na tebe. (Gosti su pored nje, možda će nekoga interesovati i Simon Parkin i Philippa Warr, osoba sa najboljim anglofonim imenom ikad.)

Moram doduše istaći da je njen škotski naglasak prilično blag, odnosno da je podjednako engleski koliko je škotski. A tu knjigu o DS planiram da kupim čim izađe, i poklonim je ljudima koji će umeti da je cene više nego ja.

Pa, čuo si da žena priča i japanski i francuski, dakle, poliglota, pored svih ostalih svojih divnih karakteristika. A moram priznati da je Pip takođe na slušanje izvanredno šarmantna i da sam uživao i u njenoj dikciji i senzibilitetu. Parkina često slušam na Jurogejmerovom podkastu pa je i sad bilo prijatno a i gazda Tom je dobar. Dobri su i bolji kvalitet zvuka imaju od C&C (u čijem se poslednjem podkastu pojavljuje i - Pip!). Doduše, C&C ima jedan od najbrutalnijih škotskih naglasaka u Chrisu Thurstenu pa je to priličan aset.

Ja sam baš pomislio kako Not a Game Podcast ima baš loš kvalitet, naviknut na C&C. A Jurogejmerov podast još nisam slušao! Postoji previše podkasta. 

Škotski naglasak u C&C je Graham Smith (a par puta im se pojavio i Rich Stanton, koji ima još jači akcenat). Ostali svi su Englezi, i imaju prilično mejnstrim (engleske) naglaske.
Ima deo u jednoj epizodi gde Graham spominje kako mu ljudi stalno traže da izgovori "murder" zbog toga kako to zvuči na njegovom škotskom. xD

Sad slušam Eurogamerov podkast, i očito je da nije rađen u kućnoj radinosti, kao što su i nekada PC Gamer UK odlazili do valjanih mikrofona da se snime.

U ostalim vestima, Quintin Smith tvituje maločas:

Quote
Massive adrenaline dump getting invaded in Dark Souls 2. Am now walking around the flat, shivering, rubbing hands together.

Da, pa, C&Cju baš i fale dobri mikrofoni, manje mi smeta ekstremno mali bitrejt... A Not a game podcast ima čistije snimke, i glasnije je miskovano, mnogo sam ga lakše slušao u prevozu.

I,da, Rič Stenton ima genijalan naglasak, a onda sam ja izmešao Grahama sa Chrisom, izvinjavam se obojici i tebi.

Mada ipak u gejming svetu medalja za naj škotski akcenat mora ići Rabu Florenceu. Podsetimo se samo Consolevanie:

consolevania S4 Episode 1 - Wave 1

(od 1:13)

Jeste, a i kolega mu je bio odličan:

videogaiden 2-06 - god hand review

E sad samo da padne neki popust, i kupujem:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03/18/simcity-offline-mode-today/

Obsidian su objavili da su se za potrebe publikovanja Pillars of Eternity udružili sa Paradoxom. Naravno, Paradox su divni ljudi koji prave divne igre i verujem da će ovo partnerstvo biti na polzu svih nas, no, verujem da će biti ljudi koji će isticati da nikakav izdavač nije bio deo originalnog kikstarter piča i da će se škrgutati zub'ma. Evo detalja:


http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65751-pillars-of-eternity-%E2%80%93-partnership-faq-for-backers/

Quote
Obsidian and Paradox Interactive have announced that they'll be working together to bring Pillars of Eternity to the masses, with Obsidian handling 100% of the development while Paradox assumes responsibility for all the marketing and distribution responsibilities.

We've put together this handy dandy FAQ to answer any questions you may already have, and we'll continuously update the FAQ to incorporate the questions you've thought of that we haven't.

Pillars of Eternity is still on track to be the amazing cRPG you asked for and backed, and we're forever grateful to you all.

Send us those questions and we'll do our best to answer them.

-Obsidian and Paradox Interactive

What is this partnership about?
Simply put, Paradox is assuming responsibility for the marketing and distribution of Pillars of Eternity. What this means is that Obsidian can now devote all of their time and resources to the development of Pillars of Eternity and make the game the best it can be.

Why Paradox?
Paradox has its roots in PC gaming and is known for publishing and developing some very niche titles. Like you, they're fans of RPGs from the Infinity Engine days and have been around almost as long. Heck, some of them are even backers! If anyone can appreciate the passion and dedication of this project, it is certainly Paradox.

I donated money so Obsidian could take on this project solo, why take on a partner?
By handing off duties not related to development, Obsidian can focus on making the game that much better. We truly believe this is for the good of the game and, by extension, for the good of the community.

Does Obsidian still own the IP for Pillars of Eternity?
Absolutely, no changes here.

If Obsidian now has a partner, will they be assisting in the development of Pillars of Eternity?
Obsidian is still fully in charge of development and will continue to be so all the way through launch and beyond.

With Paradox on board, is more money being given to the project?
Pillars of Eternity is still being funded solely by the donations given by the community and the scope hasn't changed, with Obsidian still 100% in charge of development and every single penny raised by the community going toward development.

I'm supposed to receive a backer reward, has anything changed?
Nothing has changed on this front. If you were promised an item, whether it be digital or physical, rest assured that you will still receive it. For those that get to help design aspects of the game, you'll also still get to participate and should have already been contacted by Obsidian. To ensure your submission, please visit https://eternity.obsidian.net/.

Will Pillars of Eternity still be released this year? 
As communicated previously, we're confident that Pillars of Eternity will be wrapped up by year's end. The partnership has no influence over our projected launch date.

VR hedsetovi postaju popularni. Okjulus Rift je bio nezavistan projekat koji je pokrenuo lavinu, a sada su i Sony i Microsoft uleteli u razvoj za sve pare.

Naravno, meni je teško da poverujem da će VR kaciga na glavi ikada postati mejnstrim igrački aksesoar, ali možda bude neko simpatićno slepo crevo evolucije hardvera...

Evo, apropo priče o tome da je grafika u Dark Souls II slabija od originala - ispada da u stvari i jeste 

From Software responds to Dark Souls II graphics downgrade concerns

QuoteThe developer of Dark Souls has at last responded to concerns about the visuals offered by the game's retail release.
Consumers last week launched a campaign aimed at both developer From Software and publisher Namco Bandai, alleging that the graphics on offer in the shipped retail version of the game are significantly different from preview material being circulated as recently as a few weeks before launch.
"Throughout the game development process, a game is constantly being balanced not only in game playability, but also in the realm of resource management," From told MCV.
"A developer is always challenged with creating the most rewarding gaming experience while delivering continuity in graphical quality, gameplay dynamics, and balance within the game. The final version of Dark Souls II displays the culmination of this delicate balance and we're very proud of the positive media and fan reception for the game."
Dark Souls II currently has a Metacritic average of 92 per cent on Xbox 360 and is the highest scoring current-gen game since Grand Thet Auto V.

Dok mnoge velike igračke kompanije upisuju minuse na kraju fiskalne godine, Mojang je u 2013. ubeležio profit od skoro dvesta milijuna funti:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-19-minecraft-dev-mojang-made-200m-last-year

Minecraft, dakle, je igra bez DLC-a, bez mikrotransakcija, bez pretplate i zarađuje više od skoro svega što postoji u industriji.

Julian Gollop igra radnu verziju Chaos Reborn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeXVF5sXcHQ

Podsećam da Kikstarter traje još 26 dana. Ja sam izvršio dužnost, a vi?

Ne znam da li ste kačili, The Forest deluje obećavajuće.

The Forest Trailer 3

Ken Levin na GDC-u pojasnio svoju ambiciju vezanu za stvaranje igara sa reigrivim* narativima:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/21/gdc-ken-levine-on-the-future-of-storytelling











*a kako biste vi preveli to?

Kristan Rid piše divnu retrospektivu za Demon's Souls:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-23-demons-souls-retrospective

Možda važnije, kako mu sada u profilu piše da je "dad" a ja ne znam da se Keza Mak Donald (koju pominje u tekstu, mada ne po imenu, samo veli "girlfriend") porađala - zaključujem da njih dvoje nisu zajedno jer je on našao drugu, kojoj je napravio dete. To možda znači da je Keza sada slobodna i da joj je potrebna uteha. Važna informacija.

Ovo ja zovem investigative journalismom.

Videli ste da fejsbuk kupuje Okjulus Rift za dvije milijarde dolara?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/25/facebook-to-acquire-oculus-vr-for-2-billion



Naravno, oni tvrde da će sve biti u redu:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/26/oculus-on-joining-facebook-making-rift-cheaper-and-fan-fears


Meni je, jasno, perverzno da to znači da će sad Džon Karmak biti zaposlen u Fejsbuku    Setimo se da je tvitovao Notchu da je njegova odluka da napusti id i bude ful tajm zaposleni u Okjulusu bila delom nadahnuta Notchovim radom. E, pa, Notch sad veli da ga boli kuras da Minecraftu da podršku za Okjulus Rift. Bizarno zatvoren krug:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/25/notch-minecraft-on-oculus-canceled-facebook-creeps-me-out?abthid=53325696981469a542000065

QuoteIan Bogost spoke at Critical Proximity, the pre-GDC conference for game critics. In his talk, he explained why games criticism isn't useful or improving games, improving games criticism, or making you feel good.

http://critical-proximity.com/2014/03/16/what-games-need/

Veoma lep zajednički intervju u kome se obilato raspravlja o filozofiji i tehnologiji stealth igara. Sa jedne strane je indi selebriti Mike Bithell (Thomas was alone, a sada pravi stealth igru Volume) a sa druge Jordan Amarro, jedan od dizajnera na Metal Gear Solid 5. Veoma zanimljivo štivo:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-23-stealth-vs-stealth

Izvanredan tekst Sajmona Parkina (putem RPSovog Sunday papers) o tome kako izgleda kada bedrum koderi sa svojim indi igrama zarade milijune preko noći:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/the-guilt-of-the-video-game-millionaires.html

Džim Kroford je autor browser senzacije Frog Fractions od pre dve godine or sou. Trenutno je u poslednjim satima kikstarter kampanje za FF2 (već je dobio dovoljno novca da je napravi) a nedavno je održao predavanje o dizajnu igara i misteriji koju on treba da kanališe. Transkript je ovde:


http://postproductdev.com/2014/04/07/jim-crawford-on-making-games-more-mysterious/

QuoteJim Crawford, the game designer who made Frog Fractions, is one of my favorite indie game developers. He recently posted a talk about game design that I think contains a lot of really important insights for user engagement and user experience. His subject was how to create mysterious games in a world of instant walkthroughs and constant spoiler alerts; I think his suggestions can be applied much more broadly, as we try to create products that our users will truly enjoy for a long time.
The transcript is my own, as are any stray errors I may have introduced into the text. Some of the talk refers to slides that he showed in his presentation, which can be viewed by watching the original, which I have linked to.
—
Hi, I'm Jim Crawford. I was lead guy behind Frog Fractions, and I'm here to tell you about how you can make your game more mysterious, and also about why you would want to bother.
When I started playing video games in the 1980s, everyone I knew played the same games. And when we weren't playing those games, mostly because we were in school at the time, we were talking about them. We would talk about jumping over the flagpole in Super Mario Bros. and finding the chocolate factory level. If you beat Metroid fast enough, Samus would be naked at the end. Not only could you shoot the dog in Duck Hunt, it was the most gruesome thing you'd ever seen, blood, bones, and fur flying everywhere.
We all knew that every one of these rumors was crazy. But then there was the rumor that in Super Mario Bros., you could break through the wall at the end of level 1-2, and find an alternate version of the warp zone that took you to a weird looping underwater level. At first we assumed that was crazy too, until the next day, when someone had actually managed to do it and was able to show us.
Seeing one of these rumors turn out to be demonstrably true lent credence to all the rest of them. This was the cultural context that every game existed in in the 1980′s: Playing a video game meant entering an unknowable world operating on confusing rules, where anything could happen. This mindset lent an enormous amount of void and mystery to every video game, with no developer effort whatsoever. And it started before you even put in the cartridge.
The ultimate mysterious game is the unplayed game. Nowadays, we're inundated with information about every game long before release, and after release, anything you're still wondering, you can look up in the strategy guide. And why wouldn't you? Sure, you could just sit there and wonder, but why would you bother when you can just know?
Even if you're cognizant of the long-term pleasure of wondering, it's hard to deny yourself the instantaneous pleasure of finding out right now. This is one of the reasons why adventure games are a niche genre now. They're built entirely around sitting and wondering what you're supposed to be doing. And these days, it takes uncommon strength of will to not just look up the answers after you've been stuck for a few minutes.
So, in light of this, how do we get the mystery back? Make the player ask questions.
H.P. Lovecraft wrote his best works in the immediate wake of relativity and quantum mechanics turning the world of science on its head. Now, he was pretty hit-and-miss, but when he was on his game, he did an amazing job evoking a world in human terms that is fundamentally beyond human comprehension. You can't describe a world like that. You have to hint at it. And Lovecraft usually did a good job walking the line between leaving the door shut and opening it entirely.
The best example of this from Lovecraft's canon is probably "The Colour Out of Space," which documents the scientific investigation of a meteorite and its effects on the farmland that it crashes into.
(This talk is going to be full of mysterious media you should consume, so, I guess, start writing those down.)
In games especially, questions can be much more mundane than that. What's behind the locked door? What lies beyond those mountains? How do I lower the drawbridge? Hey, I got fireworks that time — how do I do that again?
You need to be careful that you don't provide answers that are worse than leaving the question unanswered. Think about how you felt after seeing a magic show versus how you felt after you found out how the trick was done. Magic tricks imply bad secrets, by design. This is how they stay secret. If the secret was awesome then you would get a thrill from telling your friends about it, rather than a groan.
A bad worldbuilding example from Lovecraft's canon might be "The Mound." (Maybe don't write that one down.) The setup of "The Mound" is excellent, full of thrilling questions. The guy who went into the cave came back with mirrored internal organs? That's weird! But when the answers start coming in they're all disappointing. Turns out they have a guy down there whose job it is to reverse your internal organs. Oh.
There's an active volcano in the background of Battlezone. You can't go there, it's purely visual flavor. But there was a persistent rumor amongst players that if you drove toward it for long enough then you could leave behind the enemy tanks, drive up the side of the volcano and into the caldera, and explore the castle that you found there. Sometimes it's enough to just add a few lines and dot particles on a vector display to hint at a cool thing and let the audience fill in the gaps.
There's always the temptation to go to the extreme and provide no answers, only questions, but people will see through this. When you watch a show like Lost, which throws out question after question, steadfastly refusing to provide answers to any of them, it feels empty. By the second season, what the writers constructed felt transparently like the façade of a mystery, rather than feeling like an actual mystery.
After a while, the audience realizes that they're being played, and that there are no hidden rules to puzzle out. They'll realize it faster with your work than they did with Lost, by the way, because they've already been bitten by that dog once.
There's an adage amongst storytellers: "Show, don't tell." With games, you should go a step further: Don't even show! Let the audience find the answer. Put interesting things in your game — you were going to do that anyway, right? — and then don't call attention to them. A cool thing that can be missed makes the world feel more like a real place and less like a clockwork puzzle constructed purely for the benefit of the player. And don't worry about people missing your cool thing, because players will tell each other about what they've found.
Lately there's been a big push toward making narrative-driven games finishable by everyone, and if you want to push games toward being a storytelling medium, then yes, every story has to have an ending that feels like the end of the story, rather than a screen that says, "You suck. Try again." But that doesn't mean that everybody has to see everything.
Historically, games have excluded by definition. They're built around the concept of separating the worthy from the unworthy, locking the best content behind progressively more difficult skill tests. This is why Mass Effect fans were up-in-arms about the idea of "Narrative Mode," which allowed you, if you weren't interested in the combat sequences, to skip them the same way you might skip a cut scene that doesn't interest you.
"We've spent thousands of hours honing these thumbs, and now you're just going to give the 'You win!' screen to anybody who puts the disc in the drive? Screw you, buddy! Also, the new X-Com is coming to consoles? Sign my internet petition!"
Putting content in your game that not everybody sees creates pockets of people who feel like an in-crowd, the seed of a community that feels closer to each other and to the work. And stumbling on an unexpected secret makes the world feel more like a real space and less like a crafted amusement park ride.
In the tabletop RPG Legend of the Five Rings, there's a sourcebook called "Merchant's Guide to Rokugan." If you open it up, there's a couple pages of merchant's guide in there, and then it actually turns out to be a manual for the underground network of agents trying to overthrow the government. Which is a legitimately awesome secret unless you really were interested in roleplaying a merchant. Those players hated it.
The creator's mistake was trying to lure in a target audience that was even more hard-core and nerdy than the average tabletop player, then yanking the carpet out from under them when they took the bait. It felt mean-spirited. That's why I didn't call this talk "Unified Scalable Architectures for Content-Addressable Systems." There would definitely be people showing up who were really into content-addressable systems, and they would be angry and disappointed.
(By the way, I looked up the phrase, and content-addressable basically just means you can search it.)
Now, if you take my advice and trust the player, it's very possible to make your work so obscure and arcane that players will give up before finding any of the cool parts. This is why you need an advocate. This is Brandon Sheffield, who was my advocate for Frog Fractions. Nearly all the press I got can be traced back to a couple of tweets Brandon made shortly before I officially released the game.
For some reason, when the creator of a work says, "I can't tell it why it's awesome, you just have to trust me," it's a lot less plausible than when somebody who's not the creator says it, even if they're being paid to. Once your advocate has done his job, he can retire, and fan momentum can take over.
For many games, the advocate takes the form of a PR department. But traditional PR is a terrible medium for spreading weird secrets. Your advocate does not have to be a person. At the climax of the Nintendo product-placement vehicle "The Wizard," the eponymous wizard discovered that in Super Mario Bros. 3, you can find a warp whistle by ducking on a white block and slipping into the background.
This doesn't ruin the puzzle because it's not really a puzzle at all, it's an Easter egg. That there was this unexpected hidden passageway buried in the mechanics of the game led you to wonder, "What else is hiding in there?" And if you want to stretch my already-shaky metaphor even further, the advocate for the last third of Portal was the first two-thirds of Portal.
So another way you can solve this problem is simply by making your game self-evidently awesome. I'll wait.
Adam Cadre calls the Portal-style reveal the "false ceiling." In the Portal example, GLaDOS passive-aggressively insulting you registers as a 10/10 on the scale of emotional range, because that's the strongest emotion that the work has exhibited so far. But then you turn a corner on the plot and your emotional response literally goes off the chart because suddenly the stakes are much higher than what you've calibrated for. I very much had the false ceiling in mind when I built Frog Fractions, and one of its biggest strengths is that it's short enough that you never have time to recalibrate.
Mystery works better when you share it, so you want to encourage the community to engage with one another. This can take the form of multiplayer, or something as simple as players asynchronously trading items, but what you ultimately want is for the players to share stories. My favorite way to get the community to engage with one another is to give them puzzles that are too hard to realistically solve on your own.
Some examples of this:
• The Secret World. Most of this game is a grind, like every other MMO. But there are some quests labeled "investigations," and that word is actually apt. You're puzzling out difficult clues, much more difficult than in traditional adventure or puzzle games, and you're doing real-world research, and it demands enough domain-specific knowledge that it can only be reasonably done as a group.
• The stars in Braid. First, you have to discover that the secret stars even exist. Then, you bring together a community of like-minded geniuses who love solving engineering problems for its own sake. After they solve it, you collect a reward.
• Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are both tuned to require the player to puzzle out obscure mechanics and to discover obscure exploits. And while you could just read a FAQ, the best way to experience this kind of game is at launch, by being one of the community members doing the discovering.
• The final puzzles in Fez. I'm pretty sure that the monolith puzzle was designed to be impossible, barring some future release of information, but the community solved it anyway.
• Adom. This roguelike was in active development in the late '90s and early 2000s. Since the entire game was constantly being revised, the community never knew whether a plot branch was currently a dead end, or if it was just that nobody knew how to advance. It's notable that Adom is closed-source, which makes it one of the only traditional roguelikes to leave the possibility space truly unknown, barring direct investigation of the executable.
By the way, you know you've done a good job if people are curious enough to disassemble your binary to investigate the mysteries you've left for them.
• In NetHack, which is probably the most mysterious open source game in existence, there is a hallucination mechanic which works by replacing nouns in the game with other nouns, some of which appeared nowhere else in the game. So the kobold stalking you might show up as a dragon, or it might show up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
I read a Usenet thread in the late '90s in which one player described discovering this mechanic, and other players jumped in with their own experiences, listing the monsters they'd encountered. After about half a dozen posts of one example each, one person cut and pasted the whole list of possible monsters right out of the source code. And poof! the conversation was over. No more discussion. From that poster's perspective, the point of the thread was to find the truth, and he just jumped right to it. This is the opposite of mystery: delineating the absolute definite boundary of what is possible.
If people care about your game, this will eventually happen. All your secrets will eventually become known. But very often, you see games jumping right to the definite. Don't give the players an encyclopedia when you can let the community write the encyclopedia. Don't show the players a map when you can let them draw the map.
It's common to have players unlock encyclopedia entries or collect map pieces, and this is effective in creating compulsion to collect, if that's what you're going for. But even something as simple as giving the players a percentage complete number gives them an absolute sense of where the fun stops. Would Super Mario 64 have been a better game if nobody knew for sure how many stars there were to collect? I don't know. But I do know that it would have been a more mysterious game.
Here's a shot of the Skyrim stats screen. I can't think of a more anticlimactic way to reveal that your high fantasy game has robots in it.
(picture shows a line that reads, "Automatons Killed: 0)
Here's what they should have done, obviously.
(picture shows a line that reads, "[Spoiler Warning] Automatons Killed: 0)
If you want players to feel like they're exploring a real space, then you have to let them just exist in the space. Leave questions about where the world ends unanswered or incompletely answered. Leave the edges of the possibility space fuzzy and obscure. "There are at least 120 stars."
It's worth pointing out specifically that having an abstract visual style is a very powerful way of not answering every question. Text-heavy games and games with pixel art get this for free. Pokémon benefited a lot from being a black-and-white Game Boy game. Even modern Pokémon games have a very abstracted art style. Similarly, Minecraft does an excellent job evoking a mysterious world while letting your imagination fill in the gaps, both in the art style and in the game mechanics.
Sidebar: Here's an informative exercise that I recommend you try at home. (Don't look too low on this slide, by the way, or you'll find spoilers for the rest of the talk.) Go over each bullet point I cover and ask yourself, "What did Minecraft do here?" Almost every case, Minecraft addresses in an effective and innovative way.
• Make players ask questions.
• Don't answer every question. Be abstract.
• Trust players to look for the answers. Exclusion is a strength.
• Find an advocate, so that you don't need to trust players.
• Make some puzzles only solvable by the community as a whole. Encourage community discussion.
• Make use of the false ceiling.
• Take advantage of glitches, if you can get away with it.
• Make your solutions hard to discuss, if you can get away with it.
• Finally, and most importantly, make games for children.
Minecraft and Pokémon also bring us to the elephant in the room: If you really want to evoke a sense of mystery in your games, make games for children. It's not a coincidence that the anecdotes I opened with were all from my childhood. In the same way that teenagers are physiologically more capable of love and of pouring their whole lives into esoteric hobbies, children are physiologically more capable of wonder and awe. If you ever feel like today's games have gotten stale and uninteresting, talk to your niece about Minecraft some time. Ask her about Herobrine. Or, read up on Herobrine first, just in case she doesn't know, and you get to be the one to tell her the legend.
These are the far lands. (picture of a Minecraft landscape with irregular holes in the terrain) This is what happens to the Minecraft level generator at distances where 32-bit floats can no longer precisely store the coordinates involved. How cool is that? You've traveled so far from home that the rules of reality themselves start to break down. Glitches like this open the door just a crack, giving you a glimpse into the inner workings of the universe. The Minus World in Super Mario Bros. is another good example of a glitch like this, especially if you play the Famicom version of the game. Similarly, Metroid has some very weird levels that you can explore by using glitches that warp you through walls.
Mall Monster, released in 2003, is a stealth horror game. I played this game only once, but I still remember one moment vividly. During a tense chase scene right as the monster was about to maybe catch me, or maybe not, the game started to stutter. It jumped back several frames in the simulation prior, and repeated them. The stutter threw an already-tense situation into confusion, and drew it out temporally, building drama. Was the game glitching out, or was that a feature? I may never find out — I haven't played that game in ten years. But that moment has stuck in my head.
So am I saying you should deliberately ship your game with glitches? ...Maybe? Probably not, but glitches provide an enormous advantage in that when the player perceives a glitch, all her genre savvy goes right out the window. Players know nowadays that you're always going to be fair, every path always leads to a reward, and you won't put them into a fight if they don't have a weapon yet. But if glitches are involved, all bets are off.
I'm putting this idea last, because it feels a little bit like violating the Geneva Convention, but it shows you how far you can go if you really want to cram mystery down the throats of people who are intent on spoiling it for themselves. One of the things I liked about Fez is that the map is so topologically confusing, it made strategy guides very difficult to write. I don't know if this was a deliberate aspect of the design, or just a happy side effect, but it's basically impossible to depict the map intuitively in two dimensions.
The lesson here is that you can design puzzles that are logistically difficult to spoil. You can do this via randomization — roguelikes are effectively impossible to spoil — or by a simpler trick, using glyphs rather than words. If you don't know what this symbol is called, it's pretty hard to search the internet to figure out what it means.
So, to sum up:
• Make players ask questions.
• Don't answer every question. Be abstract.
• Trust players to look for the answers. Exclusion is a strength.
• Find an advocate, so that you don't need to trust players.
• Make some puzzles only solvable by the community as a whole. Encourage community discussion.
• Make use of the false ceiling.
• Take advantage of glitches, if you can get away with it.
• Make your solutions hard to discuss, if you can get away with it.
• Finally, and most importantly, make games for children.
Thank you.

Xbox One dobija podršku za DirectX 12 a majkrosoft tvrdi da će ovo maltene duplirati grafičke performanse te da će igre sad da idu u ful 1080p definiciji, što bi konzolu dovelo na istu ravan sa za sada percipirano moćnijim Playstation 4. Meni, dakako zvuči malo ludački ideja da će prost apdejt pregršti API-ja da hardverski učinak udupla po snazi jer mi se to SVAKAKO nije dogodilo kada sam sa DX9 prešao na DX11 na svom PC-ju, tako da mislim da Microsoft ovde malo zamazuju oči prostom narodu i koriste bazvrdove da bi pokazali da su konkurentni, ali opet, nije da ja išta znam o ičemu tu:


https://games.yahoo.com/news/game-changing-double-xbox-one-performance-220009671.html


Neki ljudi se u komentarima slažu sa mnom

QuoteNo, it won't. Journalists, please, inform yourself about how these consoles work before you type up such inaccurate sensationalist headlines.

The guy making these bogus claims is all over the place. First he says double the performance. Then, when pressed for details, he says "like another GPU". Then, when further pressed for details, he mentions that it's Xbox One's CPU not having very good multithread optimization, and most of the data being processed on one core while the others are idle.

This may be true, but even if you gain 5 more cores being utilized effectively (don't forget 2 cores are always locked away for the OS and Kinect), you still are not getting "another GPU" or anywhere near 100% more power. You'll be able to keep up with physics, aid in rendering so you'll see improved framerates, run better lighting simulations, etc... but not 100% better. The system will still be bound by its GPU and low bandwidth memory. ESRAM is still a bottleneck because there is only 32mb of it, and the frame buffer has to reside in that space as well so you still have to keep the vast majority of your textures and other data in the much slower main RAM. This is why you're seeing so many games come out at less than 1080p resolution. While DX12 will help frame rates improve, you won't see every game running at 1080p 60fps once DX12 releases.

Najnovija epizoda Simpsonsa je u špicu stavila omaž/ parodiju na Minecraft:


The Simpsons Minecraft Intro


Markus Persson je tronut:

QuoteI STILL feel a bit like it's just this small game I made at home. It's so weird to have all these things happen. <3

Edit: Mada se naravno valja setiti da je Persson majstor pritvornog PR-a gde se uvek pravi da je mali, naivan, da ništa ne zna, a eto, oko njega se događaju velike stvari. Prosto je teško zamisliti da su Grening i kompanija napravili ovo a da njemu nisu ništa rekli unapred.

Nauka potvrđuje ono što i sami znamo: prosečni igrač ne postaje agresivan nakon igranja nasilne igre nego nakon igranja igre koja je preteška, nefer, gde su kontrole teške itd.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/08/study-reveals-real-reason-behind-gaming-aggression

Novi trejler za Hotline Miami 2 izgleda divno


Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - Dial Tone

Ovo ispod je gejmplej za igru Cult County, horor naslov iz prvog lica koji se događa negde u američkim zabitima. Igra je trenutno u fazi prikupljanja para putem kikstartera a razlog što sam se ja za nju zainteresovao (i pledžovao novac) je što su njeni autori Renegade Kid, poznati po uspešnim DS igrama iz prvog lica kao što su Dementium i The Moon, ali i po DS i PC hitu Mutant Mudds. Kikstarteru možete pristupiti ovde.




http://youtu.be/5VTDF9it_Jg

Sajmon Parkin intervjuiše Kođija Igarašija, čoveka koji je nedavno napustio Konami da bi se bavio nezavisnim razvojem igara. Naravno, čovek je poznat po tom ešto je bio pomoćnik dorektora jedne od najboljih Konamijevh igara - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a kasnije je bio producent većine važnijih Castlevania naslova.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-03-unfinished-symphony-castlevanias-keeper-speaks

A na istom sajtu Uesli Jin Pul intervjuiše Džulijana Golopa, apropo njegove kikstarter kampanje za Chaos Reborn:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-09-what-xcom-creator-julian-gollop-did-next

Chaos Reborn ima još nedelju dana do kraja kampanje i nekih 40K dolara da dobaci do gola. Ja sam svoj doprinos dao, a ko voli prefinjenu poteznu taktičku igru (pa još ako je igrao original na Spektrumu...), može da sledi moj primer ovde:


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1206403106/chaos-reborn-from-the-creator-of-the-original-x-co


Dok ovde može da skine protitip/ demo za Chaos Reborn i da ga slobodno instalira i igra:

http://www.chaos-reborn.com/prototype-game-play-guide

Novi trejler za Mikamijev budući horor-hit, The Evil Within:

The Evil Within - Gameplay Trailer - Eurogamer


Mislim da se svi nadamo da će posle odumiranja Dead Spacea, igre poput Alien Isolation i The Evil Within povratiti dostojanstvo horor AAA igrama, da ih ne pojedu sasvim indi hitovi, Outlastovi i Slender Manovi.

the evil within, gledajući samo ovaj trailer, kao da je u sebi "sljubio" sve ono najbolje i najpopularnije što nam je horror survival do sada ponudio (silent hill, dead space, alan wake, resident evil i malo evil dead-a) te se nadam da neće ostati samo na nivou proste eksploatacije navedenih naslova i da će ponuditi i nešto "svoga".

itekako je vrijeme za još jedan pošteni horror survival. zaslužili smo ga.

Mikami je ipak čovek koji stoji iza prvog i četvrtog Residen Evil, dakle iza dva najvažnija, računam da zna šta radi.

Stvarno obećava. Samo se nadam da se neće previše oslanjati na RE4, taj mi nikako nije leg'o. Skoro sam odigrao Resident Evil remake na nekom emulatoru, da li je bio gamecube  jbm li ga, kakva igretina !!!

Ooooh, divno, Firaxis najavio svoju narednu igru, koja će biti nastavak/ spinoff Civilizationa, ali sa ozbiljnim oslanjanjem na njihov neumrli biser Alpha Centauri. Zove se Civilization: Beyond Earth i izlazi ove godine. Ridžojs!!!!!!!!!!


http://www.gameinformer.com/games/civilization_beyond_earth/b/pc/archive/2014/04/12/civilization-beyond-earth-announced-here-s-everything-you-want-to-know.aspx

QuoteMy first reaction when I heard that the next Civilization game takes players to an alien world is probably not so different than other strategy fans. "Why not just call it Alpha Centauri?" I muttered to myself. It was also the first question I asked co-lead designer Dave McDonough (who is teamed up with Will Miller) and lead producer Lena Brenk.

"There is a lot of inspiration from Alpha Centauri in this game," McDonough says. "We even have a couple of people who worked on that game still on the team and helping us make the game. It's not Alpha Centauri 2. It's not a sequel. It's a whole new imagining of what civilization in the future, civilization in space could be. There are many homages and nods and winks to Alpha Centauri. And there's a huge creative and spiritual debt we owe to the groundwork that game laid, but this is a whole new idea." It also helps to now that the Alpha Centauri property is still owned by EA. "The heart of Alpha Centauri lives at Firaxis, though," Miller says.

Beyond Earth presents an opportunity for Firaxis to throw off the shackles of human history and give players the chance to sculpt their own destinies. Civilization games typically have a set endpoint at humanities modern age, but Beyond Earth has given Firaxis the opportunity and the challenge of creating a greater sense of freedom.

"There's no modern age arrival point at which time you can crown a winner, so we could decide what it means to win," McDonough says. "We decided to make it the next great leap, the next great turning point in the story of the human race. You get to decide what that is." The five different victory conditions that represent that next major event in human history are tied to the new technology web. At the start of the game, players will choose leaders and factions (no longer bundled with one another) and choose colonists and equipment to settle the land. Once descending from orbit, the technology web allows players to move in a number of directions.


As players get further from the center starting point, they'll encounter technologies in one of three affinities. Purity technologies help humanity make their new home closer to Earth in its heydey. Harmony options adapt settlers rather than the terrain for a symbiotic existence. Supremacy disregards the land and focuses on humanity's independence from its environment, often involving a move toward a machine-like existence.

Each of these affinities has a related victory condition. Purity players achieve a "promised land" victory by building a warpgate to bring humans from Earth to settle the new land. Supremacy players will achieve their "emancipation" goal by building that same warpgate. Instead of bringing humans through, forces will return to earth to free humans from their fleshy mortality.

Harmony players will be focused on the new planet. "Transcendence" will allow them to awaken a superorganism slumbering deep in the planet.

The other two victories are a traditional military conquest (achieved by wiping out all opposing civilizations) and "first contact," which involves finding evidence of alien life, building a device, and making contact. "You can go in any direction or all of them depending on what you find on the ground, the kind of playstyle you like, the neighbors around you, and the victory condition you're going for," McDonough says. "The web is much more customizable, so that by the end of the game, the technology that you have really represents who you've grown up to be."

The different affinities and technologies will have cosmetic impact on your civilization. Your leader and your units will adapt to your decisions. "It's the engine of the game, visually," Brenk says.



"It's also important to note that you're not going to get all the technologies in a single game," McDonough explains. "The clash between your technological limits will drive a lot of the in-game play. The web design allows you to play the game in a discovery-oriented mode."

In addition to the drastic changes to victory conditions, players will encounter a stronger narrative thread in each of their games. Mankind is leaving Earth following something called "the great mistake." "A messed up Earth wouldn't be reason enough for us to leave," Miller says. He goes on to tell a story of the inevitable photograph that will be taken of a life-sustaining world somewhere out in space. It's that hopefulness and challenge that sets mankind on its new journey.
Once on the planet, quests will help players define their civilization's identity, giving players tasks (including chains of quests) that will help tell a story. Players will also have access to technology that gives them control over part of the planet's orbit. These creations can impact the terrain below, aid with terraforming, enhance tiles, rile up alien wildlife, or initiate strikes against enemies. Much like ocean-faring vessels in previous Civilization games, orbital units can be destroyed and interfered with.

Despite all these changes, Beyond Earth will still feel familiar to franchise fans. "Cities, territories, improving terrain, getting technologies, building military units, those are things that every Civ player will recognize and are at the heart of this game, too," McDonough says. "But all the flesh that lives on those bones has been totally redesigned. All of it was designed holistically to live on the bones of a Civ game, but be a whole new experience."

Civilization: Beyond Earth will arrive in 2014 for PC.

Црна Пустиња стварно изгледа импресивно


Black Desert (KR) - Closed Beta 2 combat preview on Vimeo


http://youtu.be/1pKJkMWyioo


и креирање ликова...као што неко паметно рече...оде бре сав буџет на ово


http://youtu.be/6kvoausvOL8

Izgleda.

A za nas, pusije, koji nemamo smelosti da se upustimo u igranje MMO igara, igra Below dolazi sa najvećim preporukama sa PAX-a. U pitanju je roguelike akcioni dungeoncrawler koga opisuju kao The Legend of Zelda sreće Dark Souls što je dovoljno da se poštenom čoveku malo digne, a autori su Capy, ljudi iza Superbrothers, Super Time Force i majestičnog Clash of Heroes. Puno očekujem od ove igre.


BELOW - Come in from the Storm

Juče javili da je otkazan CCP-ov World of Darkness MMO, i da je ogranak iz Atlante otpušten. 

Evo kako će zvučati muzika u Pillars of Eternity:

http://youtu.be/NFYv7JhV5Lc

A na Kikstarteru ima vrlo detaljan i zanimljiv post o tome kako ona nastaje:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/811993

Detaljne statistike vezane za Steam, koje igre su najposedovanije, koje su najigranije itd:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/

Kad smo kod toga, kad je ono beše obično prolećna raspordaja na Stimu?

Nisam siguran da postoji iole precizniji termin. Prošle godine je bila u Maju, pretprošle u Martu...

Deus ex film se i dalje priprema, scenario se ponovo dopisuje, još se ne zna kad će ući u preprodukciju, ali je ideja da će lik Adama Jensena da bude produbljen bla bla bla

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/21/deus-ex-human-revolution-film-adaptation-is-still-alive

Durante -ovi Dark Souls II graficki tvikovi za PC. Jos koji dan i tu je.

pcgamer.com/2014/04/21/dark-souls-2-pc-tweaking-guide/

Meni je upravo stigao Steam key za Dark Souls II koji sam priorderovao pre mesec dana, tako da je igra na PC-ju i zvanično izašla.

Grafika naravno ne čini igru ali je lepo videti skrinšotove koje su u igri na konzoli pravili sami igrači a ne izdavač, i koji su okačeni na ovaj topik na NeoGafu, bez obrade i budženja. Igra je naravno inFamous: Second Son, ekskluziva za PS4 i jedna od prvih igara koje ću igrati kad pazarim PS4:

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 24-04-2014, 09:59:03
Meni je upravo stigao Steam key za Dark Souls II koji sam priorderovao pre mesec dana, tako da je igra na PC-ju i zvanično izašla.

Hvala Meho, jos samo da docekam da stignem kuci.