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STEAM | October 2014 - Proper PC gamers buy a Wii U and Bayonetta 2

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I finally got my new PC today. My old one was not for gaming (or not much of it). It was a quad core AMD CPU (forgot the name of it), 4 GB RAM, and an ATI 5670 1 GB graphics card. Now I have an i5-4690k CPU, 8 GB RAM, and a Radeon R9 290X graphics card. Finally...I can actually play games now. Still getting used to everything and have more setting up to do but so far, so good.

I hope to upgrade my rig someday soon.

I'll see you when I get there.
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
I finally got my new PC today. My old one was not for gaming (or not much of it). It was a quad core AMD CPU (forgot the name of it), 4 GB RAM, and an ATI 5670 1 GB graphics card. Now I have an i5-4690k CPU, 8 GB RAM, and a Radeon R9 290X graphics card. Finally...I can actually play games now. Still getting used to everything and have more setting up to do but so far, so good.

getting a 4690k myself. hug it out bro

if my 970s ever arrive... If my rig isnt ready for evil within im throwing the mother of all hissy fits, youll see! :(
 
There are some insanely whiny gamers out there, but I don't think the 60fps conversation is a bad one to have. Especially with a game like TEW. I honestly wouldn't go near a pre-order of that with the way Beth has been handling information.

Yup. I'm excited for the game myself but Bethesda hasn't handled PR for it well at all. I'll wait for benchmarks.
 
I hope to upgrade my rig someday soon.

I'll see you when I get there.

getting a 4690k myself. hug it out bro

if my 970s ever arrive... If my rig isnt ready for evil within im throwing the mother of all hissy fits, youll see! :(

It's weird playing on PC since I'm so used to console & TV but I'll adjust. I'm not giving up consoles. This just gives me another option.

From what I've seen about those cards you should be safe. I still haven't made my mind up on TEW yet. Not that I don't think it will be good...I just have way too much in backlog to do.
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
There are some insanely whiny gamers out there, but I don't think the 60fps conversation is a bad one to have. Especially with a game like TEW. I honestly wouldn't go near a pre-order of that with the way Beth has been handling information.

this thread on the main page was not only fun, but a great indicator of what I mean. a 60 vs 30 conversation is fine,and very noticiable, but dont tell me its unplayable at 30

http://massiveburrito.com/test/60vs30.html

I easily got 11/11 even with my terrible eyesight, but can anyone honestly say any of those 30fps videos would be UNPLAYABLE?

edit: man that was fun, any more sites like that?
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
is MKX using UE4 or still on 3? cause that shit looks gorgeous
 
FF14 is known to be using an offshoot of crystal tools mixed with some luminous-like things, so I dunno where the UE3 stuff is coming from...

Both MT Framework and FFXIV engines use UE3 codes and starting effects as base, then they added their in house tools and add ons that is why they are heavily customised ones just like how Source engine is running on the base of quake 3 engine so do all COD engines (genral truth). Of course you won't get that straight confimration from the devs themselves, but you can look for detailed explanations of skilled programmers who cracked their codes and dissected their engines in 3D forums threads a long time ago (if they still exist).
 
John Vignocchi ‏@JohnVignocchi 14m14 minutes ago
“@TalesofDalton: Disney on Steam...fantastic! I will buy Tron again, but where's infinity?@JohnVignocchi?” JV: will be there shortly!

now that is clever. Will buy the shit out of all that stuff.
 

iosefe

Member
John Vignocchi ‏@JohnVignocchi 14m14 minutes ago
“@TalesofDalton: Disney on Steam...fantastic! I will buy Tron again, but where's infinity?@JohnVignocchi?” JV: will be there shortly!

now that is clever. Will buy the shit out of all that stuff.

i downloaded it from the disney site, it's decent, camera is a bit wonky in tight spaces

#hype
 
poor luminous

on the bright side, expect smoother development, and good potential for large open spaces

and even small spaces can benefit from UE4 tech:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/06/unreal-engine-4-5/?ncid=rss_truncated

https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-45-preview-notes


The new update will add a new approach for Screen-space Subsurface Scattering using the technic presented a year ago by Jorge Jimenez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6R6N4Vy0nE&feature=player_embedded#!
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-shows-off-next-gen-visuals/1100-6406090/

http://www.iryoku.com/stare-into-the-future

It will also add Ray Traced Distance Field Soft Shadows for more accurate glitch-free shadows and now Mobile games can handle dynamic shadows for movable directional lights.

The best way to compare is to compare apples to apples:

When I see this in Thief (using the latest version of UE3 that is heavily modified and can be counted among the best versions):

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/50987989622074338/82FD42842D746D29C7452ADE7745C0D1939C8349/.

(Oh BTW, in Thief and in the same stance of the pic the shadows are flickering when you look carefully when you are playing unlike what you will get with UE4 next update)

Then seeing this in UE4 (made by one person btw):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAwWuSAjKvs&list=UUjpFOf-YWpois6WVG6hqXNQ

You can really expect a bright future for UE4.
 

Servizio

I don't really need a tag, but I figured I'd get one to make people jealous. Is it working?
Didn't realize the AMD codes were up for redemption--very pleasantly surprised to see that they count as preorder subs too.

Now I need a 'Rag time gal' taunt for the Scout.

Hello my honey, hello my baby~
 
Both MT Framework and FFXIV engines use UE3 codes and starting effects as base, then they added their in house tools and add ons that is why they are heavily customised ones just like how Source engine is running on the base of quake 3 engine so do all COD engines (genral truth). Of course you won't get that straight confimration from the devs themselves, but you can look for detailed explanations of skilled programmers who cracked their codes and dissected their engines in 3D forums threads a long time ago (if they still exist).

So you're telling us that both the MT Framework and FFXIV engines are copyright infringements of the UE3 source code, and that Epic never sued Capcom or Square Enix?
 

Phawx

Member
Posting this in the October Steam Thread and the Styx OT thread.

Our review for Styx: Master of Shadows is live now, you can find it here:

http://www.brainlazy.com/article/reviews/styx-master-shadows-pc-review

The Good Stuff

The level design is superb. Not just in terms of usability, which we’ll get to in the Gameplay section, but in terms of visual detail. The levels are positively crowded with nooks and crannies to explore and enjoy. Early in the game you’re treated to such sprawling eye candy as a massive, crowded sky city, departing airships, and the obligatory dank gothic sewers. If there is even one usage of a skybox in this game, I didn’t notice it. Everything has the look of being reachable if you just try hard enough.
Character models and lip sync aren’t exactly groundbreaking, but I’ve often found player models to be the weakness of the Unreal Engine, so no surprise there. That said, I was really pleased with the creativity in character design. Styx himself is precisely what you’d picture a goblin assassin to be, and the character actually goes through some significant visual changes across the events of the game. There are humans, orcs, and elves in the setting, and each looks enough like their classic namesake to be recognizable while still having a suitably original feel to them. Work has even been done to make enemies recognizable at a distance, vital when you’re trying to avoid wasting precious throwing knives on enemies immune to them.

With a few exceptions, the gameplay of Styx is extremely good. I particularly admire the level design. In a game that gives extreme flexibility regarding how you achieve your goals, the levels do a fine job of facilitating each. For stealth there are plenty of dark corners, low passages, and high ledges. For exploration there are endless crevices to hide collectibles and consumables. And for combat you’ll find plenty of ambush points and traps to spring.

Styx is an assassination game. In that way it is quite unlike the Thief Series, which tends to frown upon killing. (I suppose one might unavoidably compare it to Assassin’s Creed, but really there isn’t much common ground in my opinion.) You play as a pint-sized creature, which right from the start has its plusses and minuses. On the plus side, you can hide under tables and crawl easily through vents. (The architects of the game loved vents.) On the minus side, you’re not really a match for the people you’re up against. Seriously. The combat in the game is an absolute last resort. You can’t take on crowds, so much so that the only non-assassination combat in the game is called “dueling”. You defeat people in duels by parrying their attacks enough times to create an opening for a kill. This more or less guarantees that they’ll get at least one hit off on you. Ideally, you’ll be doing your killing through alternate means, and there is no shortage of those.

The main method of kill is to sneak up behind someone. Holding the attack button for about five long seconds will do a muffled kill, which makes almost no noise. If you’re in a hurry, or there’s no one nearby to alert, you can just let go of the button and your victim will scream before dying. As you earn skill points (for primary and secondary objectives) you’ll unlock additional kill methods ranging from the indispensable (killing from around corners and from above) to the almost useless (I don’t know if I was able to perform a single hanging kill).

Since darkness makes you less detectable, you’ll be spending a lot of time extinguishing light sources… which makes things a lot more difficult to see. To combat this, and also highlight interactive elements, the game lets you use “amber vision”, named for the substance that fuels it. Amber also allows you to create my personal favorite game mechanic, the clone. Styx can vomit up scrawny duplicates of himself, then control them. These little buggers can flip switches, poison food and water (so can you), and unfasten hanging hazards to crush enemies. Later they can get seriously tricked out, gaining the ability to detonate as a smoke bomb, booby trap chests and even go invisible. Of course your clones aren’t the only ones who can go invisible, as that’s the final amber-powered ability you have. Amber itself, aside from being crucial to the plot, comes in vials of which you can carry only two initially, so invisibility (which doesn’t restore your amber) needs to be used sparingly unless you’re particularly good at finding fresh vials of the stuff hanging from guards or sitting on shelves.

Using these abilities you can either slash-and-slice your way through the level, leaving no one alive (my favorite method), spare the lives of the whole level (useful for the “mercy” insignia for each mission) or some combination of the two. You can even beat a level without raising any alarms at all. In almost all situations there are paths that will let you avoid confrontation, or methods to kill even those enemies immune to your weapons. And naturally certain levels will take away certain skills, making stealth the only option if you, say, don’t have your dagger.


The Bad Stuff

The platforming of the game is slippery. Styx can drop off an edge and catch it on the way down. This is a vital skill for both navigation and evasion, but to do it you need to slowly walk off the edge. I could NOT get this to happen reliably, and thus spent a lot of time loading after falling off a ledge I’d meant to dangle from. There is an “anchor point” mechanic that lets you climb walls by jumping from point to point. This works great. What doesn’t work great is jumping from points to ledges. I can’t count the number of times Styx decided only to jump half as far as usual, or to grind himself across a wall instead of jumping toward a ledge. Some enemies were a bit overpowered, too. Holy crap, those roabies… I really feel that between the roabies and the orcs, having human guards possibly become their targets instead of just me would have made more sense dramatically and gamemplay-wise. Imagine getting a group of guards to wander into a crowd of mutant death beetles… If only. The in game map isn't terribly helpful, in that it's just that, a map. Not a map system. It's clever in that it requires you to keep your bearings and identify landmarks, but it's irritating in that I wasn't good at doing the bearings part. Fortunately the objective pointers do the job well enough.

Also, there’s at least one escort mission. Enough with the escort missions, developers. Seriously.

Again, you can find the full review here if you want to read a bit more:

http://www.brainlazy.com/article/reviews/styx-master-shadows-pc-review
 
Both MT Framework and FFXIV engines use UE3 codes and starting effects as base, then they added their in house tools and add ons that is why they are heavily customised ones just like how Source engine is running on the base of quake 3 engine so do all COD engines (genral truth). Of course you won't get that straight confimration from the devs themselves, but you can look for detailed explanations of skilled programmers who cracked their codes and dissected their engines in 3D forums threads a long time ago (if they still exist).
I was with you until the Quake 3 thing. It was my understanding that Source is based off of GoldSrc, which had pieces of the Quake and Quake 2 engines. (And was around before the Q3 engine) :/

So they just scrapped their weird custom base from GoldSrc and built off of idtech 3 instead? I don't buy it.
 
So you're telling us that both the MT Framework and FFXIV engines are copyright infringements of the UE3 source code, and that Epic never sued Capcom or Square Enix?

They didn't use it in an illegal way, they just got the base code from Epic and then they added they built their entire engine adding their own stuff. Stuff like that doesn't need to get the headlines of newspapers. BTW, did you know that when Epic cancelled SVOGI that they deemed ressource hungry, then they saw Fable GI and they liked it, so they asked Lionhead to get their GI code and implement by default in UE4. Things like that are sth internal and happen normally without needing any big fuss so you won't find any written news talking about how Epic integrated GI in UE4 except that in one of their live twitch, one user asked about that matter and the Epic employer answered him live quickly about what they did. So please don't over daramtise things like that.

I was with you until the Quake 3 thing. It was my understanding that Source is based off of GoldSrc, which had pieces of the Quake and Quake 2 engines. (And was around before the Q3 engine) :/

So they just scrapped their weird custom base from GoldSrc and built off of idtech 3 instead? I don't buy it.

My bad, I meant the goldsource engine was based on quake engines then the source engine was based on goldsource engine. The first source engine version that got stolen ws different though (some aspects were better like rain and lighting and some others were worse and got improved, sth is sure though is that the HL2 using the first source engine had a little different story elements that got scrapped, oh and yes I tested that first source engine btw,
I lost it withi my old PC getting its HDD broken :'(
 

Coldsun

Banned
Both MT Framework and FFXIV engines use UE3 codes and starting effects as base, then they added their in house tools and add ons that is why they are heavily customised ones just like how Source engine is running on the base of quake 3 engine so do all COD engines (genral truth). Of course you won't get that straight confimration from the devs themselves, but you can look for detailed explanations of skilled programmers who cracked their codes and dissected their engines in 3D forums threads a long time ago (if they still exist).

The Source engine info is definitely pulled from some posterior. Source is an improved GoldSrc which was primarily built from the Quake 1 engine and then had a few augmentations provided by the Quake2 engine. Quake 3? Not for Source. The q3 engine is as you mentioned the basis for most of the COD series though.
 
I was with you until the Quake 3 thing. It was my understanding that Source is based off of GoldSrc, which had pieces of the Quake and Quake 2 engines. (And was around before the Q3 engine) :/

So they just scrapped their weird custom base from GoldSrc and built off of idtech 3 instead? I don't buy it.

Yep, the Source engine is a fork of GoldSrc, which is itself based on the Quake engine (and small pieces of Id Tech 2 I think).

They didn't use it in an illegal way, they just got the base code from Epic and then they added they built their entire engine adding their own stuff.

I'm almost sure what you describe here is illegal, except if they have some agreement with Epic, but then I don't understand why they wouldn't admit it.

Edit: from the UE FAQ: Can I copy and paste the Unreal Engine code into my own project or engine?
If you use any Unreal Engine code in your product (even just a little), then your entire product is governed by the EULA, and royalties are due.
 

Levyne

Banned
Seems like a good a time as any to remind people that The Last Remnant is pretty rad, yo
3AQmK.gif


QDG7azU.png


But if UE4 is anywhere near as versatile and flexible as UE3, then this seems like a smart move for SE. I'm not really well versed on the technicalities, though.
 

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t1412698413z1.png
 
The Source engine info is definitely pulled from some posterior. Source is an improved GoldSrc which was primarily built from the Quake 1 engine and then had a few augmentations provided by the Quake2 engine. Quake 3? Not for Source. The q3 engine is as you mentioned the basis for most of the COD series though.

Yes I didn't phrase it well , I was referring to quake 3 being used by COD engines, not source, I forgot to add goldsource as the first engine being based on old quake engines then came source engine.
 
Seems like a good a time as any to remind people that The Last Remnant is pretty rad, yo
3AQmK.gif


QDG7azU.png


But if UE4 is anywhere near as versatile and flexible as UE3, then this seems like a smart move for SE. I'm not really well versed on the technicalities, though.

UE4 is even more verstaile than UE3 and Unity, any skileld non professional dev can add create his own plugins, tools, add-ons materials (for free or paid) and contribute to its amelioration. UE4 went a long way of improvements in a short time hence we have now UE4.5 after few months (UE3 took 7 years to reach 3.5 version and now UE3 won't get any update or new features or support from Epic, also confirmed in twicth please don't ask for me links, watch live wtitchs each Thursday if you want).
 
Yes I didn't phrase it well , I was referring to quake 3 being used by COD engines, not source, I forgot to add goldsource as the first engine being based on old quake engines then came source engine.
You sure?
Both MT Framework and FFXIV engines use UE3 codes and starting effects as base, then they added their in house tools and add ons that is why they are heavily customised ones just like how Source engine is running on the base of quake 3 engine so do all COD engines (genral truth). Of course you won't get that straight confimration from the devs themselves, but you can look for detailed explanations of skilled programmers who cracked their codes and dissected their engines in 3D forums threads a long time ago (if they still exist).
We should just drop this line of conversation altogether, tbh.
 
BTW, did you know that when Epic cancelled SVOGI that they deemed ressource hungry, then they saw Fable GI and they liked it, so they asked Lionhead to get their GI code and implement by default in UE4. Things like that are sth internal and happen normally without needing any big fuss so you won't find any written news talking about how Epic integrated GI in UE4 except that in one of their live twitch, one user asked about that matter and the Epic employer answered him live quickly about what they did. So please don't over daramtise things like that.

BTW, there were written news about this, for example:

http://www.lionhead.com/blog/2014/april/17/dynamic-global-illumination-in-fable-legends/

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ney_lays_out_the_case_for_Unreal_Engine_4.php
 

You see ? I am not making up stories, but it has hard to find details of such details written, (you can read that only in the last paragraph where they thanked Epic for integrating it).

Someone created some kind of cel shader that may work well with Borderlands UE4: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?7164-A-different-kind-of-cel-shader
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
looking to buy a DrDogg, anyone know where one can look? cant find any in the usual places
 
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