Unreal Engine 4

Trading JRPGS for Indies

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I guess I didn’t have much energy to post yesterday… I blame NieR’s musical score for lulling me to sleep. I did wake up this morning with some fine energy, made a good breakfast and did a few things around the house. Oh, and of course there was some 4K gaming shenanigans. 😛 But I gave the Japanese RPG games a rest, and focused on playing some Unreal Engine Indie Games like Overload, and BPM: Bullets Per Minute.

I still suck at it, but I did at least get an achievement for getting out of the first two levels! It’s an FPS Roguelike where you can only shoot to the beat of the music, all the while traversing a dungeon that changes each time you die, which makes the gameplay much less stale at least.

On this particular playthough I happened to find a bank! Handy for stashing extra coinage when I don’t have a use for it. As an added bonus if you find the bank again after you die you’ll be able to retrieve your coins. That came in handy this evening for buying some pricey powerups that can’t easily be obtained within one dungeon romp. As much as I keep dying it’s oddly addicting to play.

My (slightly) EPIC Gaming Day

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I was going to do a livestream tonight, but ran into a nasty crash. After further diagnosis I found out my webcam was the culprit, at least when used in junction with my streamdeck and OBS. By the time I finished troubleshooting it was too late for me to want to stream, but that didn’t stop us from playing a little BL3. I also did a little achievement hunting earlier in AMID EVIL for the fun of it. I finished a level without killing anyone and found the hidden EVIL difficulty. It was a little challenging corralling the enemies around the map without killing myself or accidentally triggering friendly fire, but after some trial and error I managed to traverse all the hurdles without getting stuck in any thin corridors with an entire army of douchecanoes.

Blackroom, a new FPS by John Romero and Adrian Carmack

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Yep… He’s back in action, but this time he has Adrian Carmack at his side. Two of the former ID Software clan are building a new game called Blackroom, which is supposed to be a throwback to classic FPS gaming but with the epic awesomeness of Unreal Engine 4, and hopefully won’t secretly be Daikatana 2.

John Romero and Adrian Carmack, two of id Software’s founders, have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new FPS, Blackroom. They are asking for $700,000.

The campaign page describes Blackroom as “a visceral, varied and violent shooter that harkens back to classic FPS play with a mixture of exploration, speed, and intense, weaponized combat,” and promises “unique multiplayer maps and robust modding support for the community to make diabolical creations of their own design.”

 

Sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun, John Romero even released a new DOOM wad to give people an idea of what’s going on. I’m hoping with Adrian on board all the funding won’t go to John Romero’s fabulous hair. But in all seriousness, it’s nice to see people revisiting their roots in the gaming world. The new Carmageadon is great, the new Descent is still in it’s early stages but is looking really nice, and Obduction isn’t out yet so I can’t really say much about it. If anything I hope Blackroom has less drama than certain other kickstarters, and old Daikatana itself.

Obduction for Linux? Yes please!

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The Unreal Engine is getting Linux support (as of version 4.1) which means companies and groups who choose to develop with it will be able to make their games available to not just Windows and Mac users, but to the Linux platform as well. Cyan is developing Obduction under Unreal Engine 4 so it would only make sense for a couple people to ask about it. Cyan answered via Kickstarter today… sorta.

Linux support

Epic has announced that the Unreal 4 engine will have Linux support. We would love to support Linux and we are currently evaluating what it means for the scope and cost of development.

I hope they go through with it (especially since it would mean more copies sold to pure Linux users). Gaming under Linux is in still a young idea that’s still getting better, and I’d like to see Linux someday with a nice library like Windows has of equal RPG/MMO/FPS instead of the FPS’s being outnumbered by RPG’s and simulators. There needs to be more versatility, and with companies like Valve, Unreal and Croteam already switching to OpenGL that’ll set an excellent course for the future of Linux! Now if only the neckbeards could cooperate better…