jtr7 on 14/6/2013 at 12:00
Three is what we were told. If there were a fourth, it's not readily apparent in the vids. It's weak enough people who've supposedly seen better views of it than us keep calling it binary. It may as well be a dashboard "idiot light" to tell you when it's dangerous, instead of letting you see it grow dangerous first. Even the crappiest most compressed vids of the old light gem at 640x480 you can detect most of the 16 stages, so there shouldn't be a reason not to see 4 stages, yet I can barely see the difference between black and gray in the new vids, but mainly because the visuals are really distracting and chaotic, including the "mana"/health arc-lines and weapon select wobbling like they are on suspension for some stupid reason. Let me look when I want to, don't wave at me for attention. If you need to, you screwed up.
Vae on 14/6/2013 at 12:13
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
The light-gem has at least 4 states. How many did it have in the original?
As usual, you are incorrect.
Quote Posted by Briareos H
There are only three.
Indeed, it is a paltry trinary affair...and an insult to the 16 granular states of the original...With the extremely gimped 3-state joke, one will not be able to experience the sweet subtle continual feedback that is intrinsic to the THIEF Experience...The immersive value here, can not be understated.
Chade on 14/6/2013 at 12:23
Quote Posted by Zewp
As if in support of my argument that development budgets for AAA games are unnecessarily bloated, which is why we see such rampant casualization in attempts to appeal to wider markets
I'd wager most people here would agree with this, and it's been discussed many times over the years. Lots of genres have fallen victim to the inexorable march of production costs and pursuit of wider markets.
Quote Posted by Zewp
Thief could easily have been a niche title and still remained profitable.
I don't think the historical record supports this, although hopefully that may be starting to change. The indie market is a mature part of the gaming eco-system by now, so why don't we see more immersive sims being sold through it? Once you drop out of the AAA rat-race you'll instantly get a lot less people buying your game, so it has to be substantially cheaper to produce then a AAA game. I'd guess that immersive sims, even at their simplest, have just been too complicated and expensive to make for the smaller indie marketplace.
Needless to say, I look forward to the day this changes. The indie market seems to be getting bigger all the time, so fingers crossed!
Briareos H on 14/6/2013 at 12:33
I think the ecosystem today is mature enough to have at least one medium-sized attempt at a crowd-funded "immersive sim" (although being such should not really be goal in itself).
I'm just not sure anyone has had the starting capital and balls to try assembling a team and start working on it yet.
I really should start playing online poker more, or something.
jay pettitt on 14/6/2013 at 12:38
I'm sure there was just recently a 1st person immersive sim indie horror game that did quite well, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called.
Briareos H on 14/6/2013 at 12:43
It's a bit limited in scope to be truly an "immersive sim" since there are hardly any elements of simulation about it, but it's indeed a good example to follow.
Renault on 14/6/2013 at 13:09
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
We don't know this though, do we Vae? We saw focus be used to highlight a point, but that does not mean that its the only place it can be used.
Focus isn't actually used during the rope arrow part. But as soon as you choose the rope arrow, Garrett appears to get a new type of reticle, which closes/tightens up as soon as you're aiming at something that the rope arrow can attach to. Nothing's for sure, but that kind of indicates that only select certain points will be "rope-arrowable."
Zewp on 14/6/2013 at 13:40
Quote Posted by Chade
I don't think the historical record supports this, although hopefully that may be starting to change. The indie market is a mature part of the gaming eco-system by now, so why don't we see more immersive sims being sold through it? Once you drop out of the AAA rat-race you'll instantly get a lot less people buying your game, so it has to be substantially cheaper to produce then a AAA game. I'd guess that immersive sims, even at their simplest, have just been too complicated and expensive to make for the smaller indie marketplace.
Well, yeah, that's obviously what I'm getting at. Niche games are, after all, catering to niche markets. However, I wouldn't be too sure that these niche markets are exactly small either. I guess nobody will dispute that the cRPG genre is a pretty niche genre. However, look at the enormous success of cRPGs such as Wasteland 2, Tides of Numera and Project Eternity on crowdfunding sites. That indicates to me that there is a really large market for niche games out there just waiting to be filled.
New Horizon on 14/6/2013 at 13:41
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Yeah, but they also said this:
and that's utter bullshit. The light-gem has at least 4 states. How many did it have in the original?
Quite a few more than that. It was more of a gradient. I think our TDM lightgem uses at least 32 images to give the transitions a smooth flow.
