I hope everyone is having a good weekend. I woke up to the sound of a random rooster, had a good brunch type sandwich, trimmed the claws, updated dedicated servers then fixed them afterwards, edited some video footage and played a couple games. I don’t have anything slated to release this week. I have some projects in the pipeline, and depending on how things are scheduled I’m not sure when I’ll be able to roll the next one out. I have more Revengeance, Phantom Pain, Quake Champions and more that either need to be edited, require more video or require final polishing.
I’m looking forward to experimenting with some newer codec options they added to Shotcut recently, apparently you can now use your GPU encoder (assuming you have a newer graphics card with the latest drivers) for both AMD and NVidia GPU’s. When I get to a certain point I’ll have to see how well these stack up to libx264 and libx265. I originally planned to start encoding in H.265 for the additional compression, but I need to know how all of these codecs stack up against each other for my own education and amusement. :v:
I haven’t played Quake Champions in quite some time, they’ve made great improvements since the early beta stages. I can tell they’ve optimized it quite a bit, no random lag spikes. No freezes while opening my ungodly collection of free loot boxes. I had a good time, even though I was stuck in third place at the end of each round I played. I was soooo close to staying at the top too. I blame fatigue and lack of multiplayer FPS’s outside of Gmod… My schedule has made me quite the introverted gamer.
Remember that you can still pick this up for free until the 19th, you just have to play one round. :zorak:
I remember Quake, excellent FPS of the time with excellent graphics of the time, then glQuake happened and it became even better. Now thanks to Novum we have vkQuake! A totally vulkanized version based off of the QuakeSpasm sourceport. Someone made a video showcasing the OpenGL (QuakeSpasm) version vs the Vulkan version.
The Vulkan version sports a nice performance increase (not that you really need it for Quake in this day and age, but still very nice. 😛 ) and it has a nice sharper look to it. I may have to retire Darkplaces and switch to this version, which can be downloaded here.
Appearances seem to be in line with Discord and other similar chat services. If you have your own Steam Group you can make separate text and voice channels (which is a bit broken at the moment of writing). Have an image you want to share? You can upload pictures in both a private chat or within a group. Also, much like Discord you don’t even need the Steam client open to enter a chat. Making it actually possible to use Steam chats on a mobile device.
The buddies screen has an area where you can drag and drop your friends (and even group chats) for easy access, and you can move them around to suit your needs. Another interesting feature they’ve added groups friends together in your list if they’re all playing the same game title, which I guess could make it easier to find a friend playing a multiplayer game and formulating evil plans on how to pester them. :zorak:
I’m not sure if I’ll make much use of these features, but this change was much overdue. So far my only complaints are how big it is, would be nice to scale it down to a minimalist setting like Discord offers. Of course for me Mumble is king. :v:
Remember when Devolver Digital had a hilarious E3 presentation last year? In case you didn’t here it is:
Why am I linking the first one? Because it kinda sorta ties into this years presentation… kinda. That and it’s still as funny as I remember it.
I think my favorite thing to take away from it was their Lootboxcoin, impressive that they made fun of both lootboxes and cryptocurrency at the same time. I am kinda bummed that they didn’t show anything for Serious Sam 4 though… oh well.
It’s times like these I’m really glad I built my PC gaming arsenal for whenever I’m feeling under the weather. I’ve pretty much been stuck in bed since yesterday. Not feeling well enough to play I got my controller collection out and played a few games in bed. Practiced a bit in MGS2’s VR missions, tried to play Carmageddon Max Damage but ran into some memory allocation errors (will research at another date), then I checked out Quake Champions. They added bots recently, and the ability to make your own custom lobby. Then I checked out Overload, had to adjust the controls, but had fun checking it out. I didn’t play much, but I can tell it’s a spiritual successor to the old Descent games.
At some point I’m going to have to try to sleep. I kinda slept for 22 hours and now I feel restless. :rick: Time to get out the industrial candy to sort this problem… :happy:
E3 is in session, and already I’ve seen some cool games and concepts that I’m already looking forward to getting my hands on. I’ve decided to compile a list from today’s findings. featuring flashy trailers!
Having played The New Order and Colossus I was filled with extreme hype when I saw them mention Wolfenstein: Youngblood. It features what I’m guessing are the daughters of B.J Blaskowitz, two specifically to represent a coop mode. My only concern being if it’ll be coop only or if it’ll feature a single player campaign like all the other games. I’d also like the idea of a local coop, for playing with someone on the couch. 😛 As another small note I wonder how long it’ll take before someone gets their knickers in a twist over these two characters for having knickers.
Skyrim is one of the most ported games in existence. You can play it on XBox360, PS3, PC Thrice, XBoxOne, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and now Amazon Alexa. No word for how mod support will be rolled out, but I imagine telling Alexa to buy things over Creation Club should be easy peasy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TXuDkGesIc
Available right now for free, some fun looking DLC for Prey that rolls out three new modes: Story Mode, New Game+ Mode, and Survival Mode which looks like it has some elements of Prop Hunt in it. Looks like it could be fun, I’ve been meaning to get back into Prey… Curse my many distractions. :v:
I loved DOOM2016, and when they announced they were going to make a sequel I was pretty hyped. The trailer seems to be set in what I think might be New Jersey. :trollface:
Then there’s Fallout 76. This one I have mixed feelings about; mainly due to the online play. I’m wondering if it will be mainly PvP, or if it will let you just play PvE with friends. They show quite a bit of gameplay, and it does look like fun. But it also looks like it could be a big trollfest if not executed properly.
Then after watching Bethesda’s presentation I ventured to my RSS feeds and found this potential cherry waiting to be plucked:
A new Devil May Cry game, something I’ve been anticipating for awhile now. It follows Dante and Nero, ready to kick all kinds of demon ass with some new friends and even new equipment. I can’t say I like Nero’s Justin Bieber look (I almost mistook him for DmC Dante), but Dante looked pretty swank with facial hair. Though looks aside the gameplay looks like it’ll be hella fun. I can’t wait to fuck some shit up with the mechanical arm.
This is another one I have mixed feelings about. While I had fun playing Tomb Raider, and Rise Of The Tomb Raider, it still didn’t feel like a Tomb Raider game to me… maybe more like Skyrim meets Tomb Raider. They do say though that this will be the game where she becomes the legendary badass heroine she is known the world over for. As usual the graphics do easily impress, and the gameplay looks more or less like the previous two games. I do look forward to it, I just hope for a less whiny Lara this time around. I forgave it in the reboot since this was supposed to be her origin story, but in ROTT there were certain points where it was too annoying for me. Also, Microsoft had better not pull that timed exclusive bullshit again. It didn’t make sense to do that with a game that has been on multiple platforms since the dawn of fucking time. :zorak:
Then of course the lovely Ori is back in Ori and the will of the wisps. Much like its predecessor it features the same graphics with some newer tweaks, and looks to have the same emotional pull as the first game.
