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Archived News:
The Respawn Twitter account
has
tweeted "no
news on that" to a couple of questions about whether the PC beta for Titanfall
will open to all at any point. The beta is available to all on Xbox One, but
only those who previously registered are currently being admitted to the beta of
the Windows edition of EA's mech shooter. Testing is
currently
expected to run through Wednesday at 9:00 pm EST.
A post on Dear
Esther and Unity from Robert Briscoe describes the reasons he is working on
porting Dear Esther to Unity from the Source Engine, even though the game
was first released almost exactly two years ago (thanks nin via
Joystiq). This involved unexpected middleware costs, difficult ports, and
concerns about the ability to support the game going forward. Here's how things
came to a head:
When the PS3 port collapsed, I realised that with
my knowledge of Unity, there was an opportunity to not only safeguard the
future of Dear Esther, but to also clean up the Linux and Mac ports and
reach a wider range of other platforms. Best of all, we’d be able to keep
everything in-house, at low cost, with no more licensing or communication
barriers, no more support woes and no more scouring for experienced Source
Engine developers to help us.
A new Inside Unreal -
Visual Effects trailer Part 3 explains some of the wizardry behind the
recent Infiltrator demonstration of the Unreal Engine 4. Word is: "Epic's
Francois Antoine and Zak Parrish give a behind-the-scenes look into the
Infiltrator real-time demonstration to show how artists can build a 3D volume
texture explosion using Unreal Engine 4 technology."
Harmonix unveils Chroma, revealing their next project is unexpectedly a
free-to-play PC first-person shooter from the developers of Rock Band, the console rhythm
series, though Chroma apparently continues the studio's tradition of music-based
games.
Ars Technica reports Harmonix is recruiting Counter-Strike Global
Offensive developer Hidden Path Entertainment to help with the shooter
mechanics of the Unreal-engine game. "We know music, we know game mechanics, we
know our player base and what feels good as far as songs," John Drake of
Harmonix told Ars. "But we know we shouldn’t build a shooter from the ground up.
That would be a very cocky move." They offer
a trailer and the following explanation of how music plays into all this:
Harmonix's hard-earned musical knowledge still
comes into play in the game, of course. “Music is essential to all the
elements of the game," Drake told Ars during the demo. That means everything
from capturing certain points on the map to shooting your weapon will
generate music, playing samples and songs that match with your team's
musical genre and style (the laser light-show coming from certain weapons
will match the waveform of those samples as well). It also means that the
maps themselves will morph and change in time with the music, with walls and
plateaus rising up during particularly intense parts of the song, for
instance.
"If you understand the shape of the song, you can play the game better, just
like knowing where spawn points are on a shooter map, or knowing where
people can camp out and snipe,” Drake said. "Knowing the song you’re playing
along to lets you understand what’s gonna happen as the map evolves."
The biggest musical twist on the shooter genre, though, comes through in the
way players can gain bonuses for matching their inputs to the rhythm. You
can jump at any time, for instance, but jumping in time to the music, right
on the downbeat, gives an extra boost of height to reach certain platforms.
Reloading is similarly faster when you click the reload button in time with
the music, and the limited dashing ability is tied to the once-per-measure
downbeats.
Activision announces TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE DARK SPARK, a new
installment in the third-person action/adventure series that ties in with
Transformers: Age of Extinction, Michael Bay's upcoming action film sequel.
The game is coming this June to Windows PCs, current and previous generation
consoles, and 3DS, and
this trailer accompanies the announcement. Here's word:
Serving as a follow-up to both the upcoming
TRANSFORMERS live-action film and Activision’s TRANSFORMERS: WAR FOR
CYBERTRON and TRANSFORMERS: FALL OF CYBERTRON titles, TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF
THE DARK SPARK jumps worlds and factions as it weaves the tale of the hunt
for an ancient relic as powerful as the Matrix of Leadership – the Dark
Spark. Players will be able to switch between the heroes of the noble
AUTOBOTS and the nefarious DECEPTICONS throughout the single-player
campaign. Similar to High Moon Studios’ CYBERTRON entries in the highly
regarded series, gameplay features nimble, fast-paced running-and-gunning
combat paired with traversal and vehicle action across open battlefields for
large-scale, dynamic conflicts.
Players will also see the return of the fan-favourite multiplayer mode,
Escalation, which delivers wave-based, survival-style gameplay for up to
four players online cooperatively. It features new, upgradeable defence
systems, recognisable adversaries from the lore, and an expanded roster of
playable characters from past and present. Additionally, an exciting new
levelling system transforms single-player and multiplayer into one unified,
persistent character development path. Experience earned in any part of the
game unlocks potent awards and tactical loadout choices – including new
characters, stronger weapons, special abilities and consumable bonuses – for
use throughout the entire game.
An overnight
Tweet from Respawn Entertainment tells those who registered for the PC
Titanfall beta to look for their beta access in their Origin accounts: "If
you registered for PC while registration was open, check My Games Library in
Origin for beta. If it's not there it will be shortly." There were indications
yesterday that the PC beta for the mech shooter might open to all like the Xbox
One beta has, but
another tweet
clarifies that this is not yet the case, saying: "Not open, we're getting access
to all who registered," a
little later
stating things might take a while: "It may take a couple more hours to get
the PC beta out to everyone who registered. Please be patient, Origin is going
as fast as they can."
The latest GfK Chart-track results are online, revealing the bestselling games
in the U.K. last week. The LEGO Movie Videogame is the top debut on the
full-price PC chart, though this only managed to reach 13th place. The movie
tie-in did a lot better on the
all platforms/all prices chart, where it debuts at number one, and that
chart has another (sort of) new entry, as Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy
XIII debuts at number three. Here's
the write-up of the new
results:
'The Lego Movie Videogame’ kicks ‘FIFA 14’ (-3%)
off the top of the All Formats Chart to become the 6th different Lego game
to reach No1, the last one being ‘Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes’ back in
W29 2012.
Launched to coincide with the release of the film, Warner’s title sells
15,000 more units this week than the price-promoted ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’
(+23%), which just holds on to No2 ahead of newcomer ‘Lightning Returns:
Final Fantasy XXIII’ at No3. ‘FIFA 14’ has to settle for 4th place, ahead of
even more price-promoted titles: ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (+47%) at No5 and
‘Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag’ (+47%) at No8. There are two Lego games in
the Top 10 this week with ‘Lego Marvel Super Heroes’ (+16%) dropping one
place to No6 (joined by a new DS version).
‘Battlefield 4’ (+4%) remains EA’s 2nd best selling title this week, a
non-mover at No7, while the Top 10 is rounded off with the seemingly
ever-present ‘Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition’ (-4%) at No9 and ‘Fable
Anniversary’ (-56%) at No10. 1/8th of the Top 40 is made up of Lego titles
with 5 different Lego games charting this week (the others being: ‘Lego
Batman 2’ at No19, ‘Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga’ at No 22 and ‘Lego
The Lord of the Rings at No27).
Happy President's Day to those who are celebrating in the U.S., which would
basically consist of being off from work, as we don't recall ever hearing of a
President's Day party. Well, we heard of a few back in the Clinton days, but
those were private parties. Anyway, Frans has made considerable progress towards
restoring all of our functionality here. I don't have a concrete ETA for the
return of the forums, etc., but things are moving right along.
RIP:
John Henson, son of Muppets founder, dies at 48. Thanks
Boing Boing.
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