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Archived News:
A
post on Steam from Frozenbyte addresses the amount of gameplay in Trine
3: The Artifacts of Power, their just-released platformer sequel (thanks
DSOGaming). They explain that they did not reduce the game's length to
increase the demand for DLC, but rather suffered a bit at the ambition of
creating a fully 3D game which caused them to burn through their development
budget much faster than expected. They say they do not actually have and DLC
plans, in spite of what they call a "cliffhanger ending," and admit that the
negative reaction to the game's length has put the future of the series in
doubt, saying: "The future of the series is now in question, as the feedback,
user reviews and poor media attention has caught us by surprise." They do
offer assurances, however, that they will continue to support this release, expressing
confidence that issues users have encountered will be ironed out shortly. Here's
part of the post: Back in late 2012, we set out to do Trine 3 in full 3D
- bigger, badder, better. We took a big risk with the 3D gameplay implementation
- it was to be a massive improvement over the previous games in several areas.
We have always been ambitious and this time our ambition may have gotten the
better of us.
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power has ended up costing nearly triple that of Trine
2 – over 5.4 million USD. We have squeezed everything we could into the game,
there's nothing left on the table. We initially had a much longer story written
and more levels planned, but to create what we envisioned, it would have taken
at least triple the money, probably up to 15 million USD, which we didn’t
realize until too late, and which we didn’t have.
So we did not intentionally make the game “short” as many have said in order to
make money off of future DLC or whatever. We tried to make something too
ambitious, and it ended up financially impossible. What we sold on Early Access
was the “realistic” vision and what we promised is what we have delivered, in
our opinion. The finished Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power game might not be as
long as we hoped initially, but something we are very proud of nonetheless, and
generally around 6-7 hours is what we think new players will spend with the game
on average. We're aware that some players have completed the game in less than
that, 4-5 hours for example, and we accept that. I'm sure you can speedrun it
much faster too, but so you could in previous Trine games and in most other
games too.
The Dota 2
Website warns us to prepare for The Majors, unveiling a series of four major
Dota 2 tournaments to be conducted using Valve's MOBA over the course of
next year that will culminate with next year's installment in The International
series. Here's the plan: This fall, a new tradition comes to the world of
professional Dota. The Majors are a series of four seasonal marquee tournaments
culminating in The International. The first Major will be occuring in Europe
this November and we’ll have more details on ticketing soon.
Ahead of this Major, there will be Open Qualifiers from October 6-9, and
Regional Qualifiers from October 10-13. Any team may participate in an Open
Qualifier, and two teams from each region will be among those invited to
participate in the Regional Qualifiers. The Regional Qualifiers will then
determine several of the teams to be invited to battle at the Major. Direct
invitations to the Major and the Regional Qualifiers will be announced on
October 5th.
If your team would like to be considered for an invitation to either the
Regional Qualifiers or the Major directly, head over to the registration site
for more information. Any team that makes changes to its roster after September
5th 2015 at 12:00AM PDT cannot be directly invited to the Regional Qualifiers or
Major, and must compete in the Open Qualifiers.
Digital Extremes and n-Space announce an early access "head start" program for
Sword Coast Legends, their upcoming Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG. They will
hold three headstart sessions for preorder customers before the game is
officially released, and we won't try to work through the semantics of that, as
selling someone a game and letting them play it seems to qualify as a release.
Whatever it's called, this will allow players into the game as early as
September 11th, depending on which version they preordered. Here's word:
Independent developers, n-Space and Digital Extremes, announced today
that their upcoming Sword Coast Legends™, a party-based RPG set in the Dungeons
& Dragons (D&D) Forgotten Realms universe from Wizards of the Coast, will offer
Head Start Access for PC, Mac and Linux players. Starting September 11th,
players can try Sword Coast Legends™, prior to the game's release on September
29th.
"We at n-Space have always intended for our pre-order customers to have a chance
to try out the game prior to its September 29th release," said Dan Tudge,
President of n-Space and Director for Sword Coast Legends. "To that end, we are
announcing the details of Sword Coast Legends’ Head Start access program."
Head Start will have three planned sessions, he adds. The first is scheduled for
the weekend of September 11th through 13th and will be available only to members
of the Design Council – those that pre-ordered one of the Limited Edition
Collector’s or Campaign Collector’s packs. The second will run September 18th
through 20th, and will be open to all pre-order customers. These first two
sessions will focus on the Dungeon Master modes of Campaign Creation and Dungeon
Crawl. In order to avoid spoilers, the Story Campaign will not be available at
this time. The third session will run September 24th through the game’s release
on September 29th and will once again feature the Dungeon Master modes for all
pre-order customers while Design Council members will also have access to the
Story Campaign. PC, Mac and Linux cross-platform play will be supported.
In each of these sessions, players will mingle with n-Space, Digital Extremes
and Wizards of the Coast team members. To be included in the Head Start program,
players must have linked their game purchase to an account on SwordCoast.com.
Access details will be sent to the associated email account starting the week of
September 11th.
Continue here to read the full story.
We can't take credit for the headline, a
Steam Community Group Announcement is where it is revealed that "the
graphical fidelity has risen" for Risen 3: Titan Lords, Piranha Bytes'
RPG sequel (thanks
Rock, Paper, Shotgun). The game's visual improvements are confined to the
64-bit version of the game, but they note that those restricted to the 32-bit
client can upgrade for free if they get a new operating system. Here's word:
Risen 3: Titan Lords: The graphical fidelity has Risen
...now that we have your attention with our terrible pun, today we'd like to
announce that, courtesy of a free automatic update for those who already have
the game in their library, we're bringing a slew of visual enhancements to Risen
3: Titan Lords for players running the game on a 64-bit Operating System -
- Improved texture resolution for items, objects, foliage, terrain, particle
effects, characters, monsters and other in-game models.
- Improved draw distance & viewing ranges
- Larger caches leading to smoother frame-rates & less LOD streaming
- The introduction of new state of the art post-process effects such as bokeh
depth of field and HDR bloom
- Addition of a new physically based, more visually realistic cloud rendering
technique that adds even more spectacular skies and sunsets to the dynamic
day-night cycles.
For those of you yet to own Risen 3: Titan Lords, fear not: if you're running on
a 64-bit OS then you'll automatically receive the 64-bit version of the game
upon purchase. Due to the fact that the above improvements are only possible
through the extra bandwidth switching to 64-bit affords us, those of you running
on a 32-bit OS & purchasing the game will receive the original 32-bit version,
which will of course update automatically should you ever move to a 64-bit OS at
a future point.
In addition any DLCs that you have previously purchased (or may purchase in
future) will obviously also function in the 64-bit version and all save games &
previously obtained Steam achievements will also transfer from the 32-bit
version to 64-bit version.
Steam Spy — Your target audience doesn’t exist. Thanks
Slashdot via Ant.
"I get it. It makes for a good headline 'The rise of MOBA'. 'The fall of
core gamer'. 'The rise of China'. And it’s usually an interesting read,
filled with data. Data that’s both well-described and convincing, because if
MOBA are on the rise and core gamers are no longer the majority, it makes
sense to apply this knowledge somehow, right?
And of course you should, but don’t target any new market or new audience
just because you’ve suddenly realized it exists. Dota 2 audience exists,
there are around 55 million gamers that have tried it and 9.5 million gamers
have played it in the last two weeks.
Does it mean they’re enjoying MOBA? Yes.
Does it mean they will even take a peek at yours? Nope, they’re too busy.
And same goes for the lucrative Chinese mobile market, by the way."
- Consortium: The Tower Prophecy on
OnlySP.
- Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns – Stronghold on
MMO Reporter.
Walking the Gunnar-man this morning we learned Otis, one of his doggie buddies,
had passed on. Otis had been in a little chariot after his rear legs became
paralyzed after a broken spine, and after he suffered a further setback of
another break his family had to let him go. It was a very cheery encounter with
his owner anyway, as she was effusive in her praise for Gunnar, as while Otis
found every other larger dog terrifying, he completely loved Gunnar both before
and after his mishap, and they were always excited to see each other. All in all
it was both heartbreaking and heartwarming, as it was sad to learn about Otis,
but it always makes me very proud of Gunnar's good nature to hear how he's made
friends with even the most antisocial dogs. And on the brighter side, Otis'
family has a new puppy who is too young to meet yet, but will no doubt soon be
added to Gunnar's list of pals.
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