wavey

Valve have posted a couple of roundtable discussions with VR game developers - I thought they were really quite interesting, but (disclaimer!) I'm a software developer who's dabbled in games so pretty much predisposed to find this interesting anyway, your mileage may vary. 

http://steamcommunity.com/games/250820/announcements/detail/666902171294700021

Spare keys for Wasteland 2 and I am Bread - PM me if you want one.

26 minutes ago, MarkN said:

Play isn't the whole answer because playing covers toys (action men) and instruments and probably many other things that aren't games.

 

You have to participate in a game at some level - whether it's just making a decision (heads or tails), or pressing buttons, pushing sticks etc. But there has to be more than that, otherwise turning your telly on each night to watch EastEnders is a game.

 

There has to be something that stops turning the pages of a book from being a game, and the only thing that fits the bill for me is some measure of how well you performed. Reading Moby Dick becomes a game the moment you race someone to finish it fastest. A quiz about Moby Dick is also a game, as is trying to throw Moby Dick in the bin.

 

Almost anything can be turned into a game however unpromising it seems at first. Until you've looked to see which one comes out first the game of Pooh Sticks is just dropping twigs in a river.

 

 

Is a job interview a game? You participate by playing the version of yourself you think will impress the interviewer the most, and the measure of how well you performed is in the resulting offer, salary, etc.

Is Facebook a game? Twitter? Rllmuk? They all have ways to measure how well you perform, with likes, retweets, etc.

7 minutes ago, Sng said:

if I'm approaching this one the right way, which I think I am, I am completely stuck - Any pointers? I'm assuming you need to pair the sun with the one of the same colour but I just can't see how that's possible?

 

 

Hidden Content

 

Some increasingly specific hints...

Thank you! Redeemed 69WT9...

Interesting - but negative - review by Tom Chick here: http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2016/01/29/the-witness-is-a-puzzle-wrapped-in-a-puzzle-inside-a-puzzle/

That the game is basically just a series of puzzles - I'm fine with that, and I don't think I was expecting much more. I'd disagree that the game is just teaching you rules though, I think it's doing something more impressive than that - it's letting you induce what the rules might be. For example, I loved the bit in the treehouses when, about twenty puzzles in to a new concept being introduced,

you suddenly have to re-evaluate what you thought the rule was in the first place.

As the puzzles get more and more complex, it's remarkable to think there's not one explicit instruction in the game about how to actually solve any of them.

I assumed the yellow line was running out of juice and spent ages retracing the route of the cable around that area to see if I could do previous puzzles with shorter lines or something. Dickhead.

My gf glanced up from her book and told me what was actually going on. Then it took 10 seconds to solve it.

I did exactly the same thing, but it was

the audio log near the first puzzle in the sequence

that tipped me off.

Without spoiling the location, there's apparently a map somewhere on the island that shows you where all the tutorial grids are. I think it's normal that you spend some of the first few hours looking blankly at grids with indecipherable icons on.

Ah! Have found the map now, and I'm a lot happier about things - it has reduced the aimless wandering a lot.

I actually really like the lack of direction. If I get stuck I just wander off and check out something else.

I mean, I'm not asking for a big Crazy Taxi-style overhead arrow pointing to the next puzzle, but... hmm, actually let me rephrase that. All I'm asking for is a big Crazy Taxi-style overhead arrow.

Enjoying this so far, about 100 puzzles in and activated the first

two laser tower things.

I get that it's all about exploration (and it does look gorgeous, obviously) but I wish there was more guidance of a good order to do things in. I spent a lot of time wandering aimlessly, never quite sure if I was in a place too early or not.

Can I ask as a general question - are new concepts always introduced with a series of tutorial puzzles next to each other, like at the start? (I mean concepts internal to the puzzles, new symbols and such.) So far I've been ignoring the single puzzles with tetris / star / other shapes in on that basis.

I have a copy of Divine Divinity, free to a good home: https://www.gog.com/redeem/3QJ43F36C24AD5A2CZ

Can I have nuclear dawn please!

Sent!

Spare Chime key here too, PM me if you'd like it (from this bundle)

Have you done it wavey, if not I'll do it.

Yes, bought it, just waiting to send ta.

Can someone do me a massive favour and gift me XCOM The Bureau while its £3 today? My son is after it and I'll happily pay a fiver via PayPal but I can't login at work as I changed my password to something impossible to remember and can't reset it or login until I get home tonight when the offer will be expired. Steam username is choddo

I will (£3 will be fine though)

(edit - have sent a friend request, or PM me your email address)

Can you download games on GOG Galaxy without installing? It's a right pain in the arse to use. I just want to have the games stored on an external hard drive so I can install them quickly in future without having to download them.

You can - on the game page with the "install" button, click More -> Get backup & extras, and there you can click on the file listed under "Game backup copy". By default this will download to <your gog games folder>/!Downloads/<game name>/ but I think you can configure that to be somewhere else.

But if you're finding GOG Galaxy annoying, you can download the installers straight from the website if that's easier.

I've got one... but then again, it is my own...

And it's on itch.io now, anyway. For free!

Oh man, I hope you weren't stung out of any dev payments, I know they've been having issues for a while.

This part of the story was actually quite shocking:

Lisa Morrison, head of developer relations at Bad Juju, told Gamasutra she just found out about the bankruptcy on Friday morning, via Twitter.

via Twitter ffs!

If anyone has any games on Desura (likely via bundles?) it would be a good idea to grab them soon and back them up:

Desura's parent company has filed for bankruptcy

(it's probably right over my head, I know nothing about programming)

If you can get past how it looks and learn the dozen or so commands available, I think you'll be absolutely fine. Being assembly language, each command does one simple thing, and the manual does a reasonable (if terse) job of explaining them. And there are enough strange concepts and restrictions in here that make the puzzles feel closer to something like SpaceChem than any programming I'm familiar with - the forced parallel processing, no RAM, only one real variable available per mini program, the only maths available is adding and subtraction, etc.

I love the idea (and the aesthetic) but, yeah, what you said is bit of a bummer. Hopefully the dev(s) have noticed it and will deal with it.

It's looking promising - there have been new builds pushed daily, and a couple of them have specifically improved the default data sets to catch more bugs, so fingers crossed this will be less of an issue.

Core War that tyagi mentioned looks intriguing, will have to give that a go.