Kickstarter - The Thread.

[Sky]

I can run emulators on the gaming PC, but console games are best enjoyed (at least to my way of thinking) sitting on the couch, using a controller, and the big screen.

We've solved that problem.

[Quinton]

I can run emulators on the gaming PC, but console games are best enjoyed (at least to my way of thinking) sitting on the couch, using a controller, and the big screen.

We've solved that problem.

Well yes and no.  My current gaming PC is a pretty large critter and somewhat noisy -- not something I want next to the TV.  I've looked into building smaller/quieter machines in the past but the options have not been really great.  I'm hoping with this steambox business we'll see some reasonable options for PCs that could live in the livingroom but not be big bulky PCs.

[Xuri]

I like my PC noisy. Then I don't have to listen to the annoying "ticking" sound that my wall-mounted panel heater/oven produces BOTH when it's heating up and when it's cooling off.

[Viin]

I got my Wally in the mail yesterday. Pretty slick.
(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1398285518/wally-the-iphone-wallet-reimagined)

[Falconeer]

How to win at Kickstarter, by Brian Fargo.

PCGN: I'm interested to learn how you arrived at the target you set for both of your Kickstarters. Why $900,000?

BF: Basically, we start off thinking, how can we create an experience that captures what we’re trying to do for the minimum amount of money. And it’s a combination of what we raise from Kickstarter, and you know, I’ve always been willing to pitch in a couple of extra dollars myself, and we also have some recurring revenue from our back catalogue that comes in. So we look at those three factors and decide what we can do. In reality it’s a little bit more than this $900,000, but it’s within that ballpark. We just sort of scope out a game that’s within that range. We hope that it goes higher but we can’t plan on it.

[JWIV]

My copy of Race to Adventure just came in today (missed the UPS guy yesterday). Hopefully, if the kids cooperate, I might give it a go tonight.

[Lantyssa]

Well yes and no.  My current gaming PC is a pretty large critter and somewhat noisy -- not something I want next to the TV.  I've looked into building smaller/quieter machines in the past but the options have not been really great.  I'm hoping with this steambox business we'll see some reasonable options for PCs that could live in the livingroom but not be big bulky PCs.

Get a board with heatpipes and over-sized slow fans for everything.  It'll be whisper quiet.

Some of those cute cube micro-atx boards would probably work for this, too, if you want small.

[Quinton]

Yeah, I know it's doable, but I've worked with small cases before and they're kind of a pain to deal with.  For something I'm building myself I've always ended up going with a mid-tower to suffer less and not have to fight with perfect component fit.  For an entertainment PC I'd prefer to buy something pre-built that has everything fit and tuned for that purpose, but hadn't found anything I like thus far.  So I'm hoping this excitement about steambox will result in more options in the space of "small, quiet, tasteful, but reasonably powerful". 

I am aware this is total #firstworldproblems territory.

[Lantyssa]

They are a pain.  That's why if I were making something for this purpose I wouldn't be looking at modding it in the future.  It'd be a build once and not have to deal with it later sort of thing.

[Nerf]

That little silver box in the bottom right of my TV stand is my home theater PC.  Lian Li case, mATX board.  It's running an i3 IIRC, has 8GB of ddr3 ram, and a GTX 460 or 470.  If I had gotten a black case instead of silver, it'd look even more like just another piece of home theater equiment - it's not that much bigger than my receiver (bottom middle).

I love this thing - saves me $20/mo in not having to pay the cable company for a DVR ($3/mo cablecard instead, with a Ceton 4tuner PCIE card), has almost 3Tb of storage, and with a logitech wireless controller I can play whatever games I feel like without having to leave the couch.

Build wasn't all that tight either, Lian Li makes some gorgeous cases that disappear into your entertainment center while being just as functional as a mid tower.

[ghost]

Your speakers don't look level.

[Nerf]

The whole picture is tilted a bit, although the left speaker is actually off plum by like 3/16".  I still haven't finished my whole gutting the condo to the studs and rebuilding it project yet, so haven't bothered fixing it - still have to redo some of that wall.  Maybe I'll snap some pictures with my snazzy new camera and update the remodeling thread.  Maybe I'll think about doing it, then :effort: will kick in and I'll put it off forever - make your bets now!

[Furiously]

Too much mud too...

[Sky]

Absolutely a shit drywall job. 

[Merusk]

That's what happens when you let a cockeyed dog have a mud knife.

[Trippy]

Anti-gravity device

From the FAQ:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A fundamental change of the magnitude that you propose would critically impact huge swathes of known physics.

Fortunately or unfortunately gravitational phenomena is ubiquitous.  So if our venerated 300 year mass-based gravity theory is not working as evidenced by the flat rotation curves of galaxies and the fact of cosmic acceleration, the theorist-experimentalist such as I, has a formidable problem.  Fortunately the old turtle, one-step-at-a-time act carried out for 30 years has pretty much solved the problem.  This long-term effort has produced the notion of "stopped wind".  You are going to have to spend some time figuring what I mean by this term.

At the beginning of the 20th when the discovery of atomic phenomena was not jiving with the theories that everyone  knew,  the concept of "time dilation" was brought forth on the scene. It turned out that this concept allowed for extraordinary prediction.  If try thinking about what I mean by "stopped wind", I believe you will be far better off than knowing about the words or concepts of MOND, dark matter and dark energy.  The idea are stop gap solutions.  They do not solve the problem in a lasting way of what actually gravitationally binds mass to other mass.

[HaemishM]

Sounds rock solid to me! 

[Sky]

My fiancee would definitely back the concept of 'stopped wind'.

If you know what I mean.

[Sky]

They removed the ability to browse comments by page.

 

[Fabricated]

Another pixel-art indie sidescroller kickstarter.

Chasm

Basically a semi-procedural metroidvania game. Notable however because they actually have a full-on playable demo you can try.

It's not bad. The demo doesn't show a whole hell of a lot outside of the basic gameplay but I'd pay ~$15 for a completed version if they do more with it.

It's not "truly" procedural imo since the rooms are all hand-made; they're just pieced together randomly by the CPU as you go down. Loot is random as well; you can find standard/magic quality items in the demo and magic items have other stat bonuses and so forth. It's the same batch of indie pixel-art shit that's all over Kickstarter but you can actually evaluate what you're possibly buying.

[Ragnoros]

Is pixel-art a thing now? Why not just have like, actual good art, e.g. Bastion?

[Kail]

Is pixel-art a thing now? Why not just have like, actual good art, e.g. Bastion?

It's a style thing, like cel shading.  If you're aiming at a retro audience, you want to hit that retro vibe.  Quality 2d graphics like Bastion's are really rare in core gamer titles (even most side scrolling platform games nowadays are 3d, like New Super Mario Bros.), the more common place you see them is in casual games like Bejewelled or Farmville, which is not a comparison you want people to make if you're aiming for the core gamer market.

[Ingmar]

It's also a way to not have to pay an artist.

[Kail]

That's a bit extreme IMO.  The quantity of art may be different (depending on how retro you want to go) but you still need a skilled artist in there unless you're trying to look like VVVVVV or something.  Chasm specifically definitely has someone who knows their shit handling the graphics.

There's certainly a ton of developers who think "retro" is a license to half-ass, but it's not a universal truth.  Something like A.N.N.E. is on a whole different level than something like Fuzzie World.

[Fabricated]

I don't have a problem with pixel art; it is super fake-retro shit anymore (see: Fez) but it's not easy to do WELL.

I kinda have a hard time deciding if I like pixel-art better than the Vanillaware type of art. The backgrounds/large characters in Vanillaware stuff look awesome but it all kinda looks like an adobe flash game where everything looks like a paper doll with multiple poorly animated pieces sliding all over eachother... but if the art is done right you can scale it up almost infinitely and it looks good. Pixel art you either increase the amount of stuff you can view or it just becomes a gigantic blocky mess when upscaled (filters only do so much).

[Margalis]

I'm not a fan of faux-retro pixel art. Sprite art and pixel art are two different things.

One of the cool things about sprite art, and by that I mean art that uses actual sprites, is how it forces you to re-use parts and construct characters and animations in a very scientific fashion. It's very different from just drawing something in low res. The vast majority of 8 or 16-bit style games wouldn't actually work on those systems and don't even really look like they are from those systems.

I do feel that in general retro has become a lazy crutch and workaround for lack of funds and talent. If you don't have the money for complex 3d characters there are 20 different art styles you could adopt. Unfortunately the "indie games" space is often times just as bound by convention as AAA games.

[Phred]

I'm not a fan of faux-retro pixel art. Sprite art and pixel art are two different things.

One of the cool things about sprite art, and by that I mean art that uses actual sprites, is how it forces you to re-use parts and construct characters and animations in a very scientific fashion. It's very different from just drawing something in low res. The vast majority of 8 or 16-bit style games wouldn't actually work on those systems and don't even really look like they are from those systems.

I do feel that in general retro has become a lazy crutch and workaround for lack of funds and talent. If you don't have the money for complex 3d characters there are 20 different art styles you could adopt. Unfortunately the "indie games" space is often times just as bound by convention as AAA games.

Wow. All this time I assumed that the clunky art style featured in games like Minecraft was because the programmer couldn't affort an artist. No one told me it was an actual Style.

[Kail]

Wow. All this time I assumed that the clunky art style featured in games like Minecraft was because the programmer couldn't affort an artist. No one told me it was an actual Style.

Well, again, there's varying shades of these things.  I personally don't think Minecraft is particularly well done, AFAIK visually it's supposed to be a tribute to Infiniminer or something but it's not actually particularly interesting to me from the point of view of the craft involved.  I'm not claiming that all pixel art is somehow immune to all criticism forever because it's supposed to be like that and you plebs just don't get it, or anything.

I just don't think it's fair to automatically conflate all pixel art or retro or whatever with "unskilled," either, there are some people out there who are quite good at it, some games where it works really well.  It's not some magical pill that will make your game look better; if you can't draw and you decide to do your game in retro style as a result, you won't magically gain an understanding of color theory or composition or anything, any more than filming your movie through a blur filter would hide your weakness as a cinematographer.  It generally won't cover up the fact that you don't know what you're doing.

[Sky]

I do feel that in general retro has become a lazy crutch and workaround for lack of funds and talent. If you don't have the money for complex 3d characters there are 20 different art styles you could adopt. Unfortunately the "indie games" space is often times just as bound by convention as AAA games.

3d put graphics back /at least/ a decade for rpg and strategy games, which were heavily 2d animated. Then we went from beautifully drawn art to blocky shit with low res textures that persisted for years. I'm pretty sad 2d went away so abruptly, for I believe it takes more (artistic) talent to produce 2d art, if maybe less technical talent. And I'd rather hire artists than split the budget between modellers and artists.

[Lucas]

TUG ("The Untitled Game". $215,000 goal):

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nerdkingdom/tug-1 (the six minutes-long presentation video explains the design approach a bit more in detail)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/05/01/mmo-sandbox-tug-launches-its-kickstarter/

TUG sits at the crossroads where survival sandbox and multiplayer RPG’s meet, offering both elegant simplicity and a world of complex secrets for those who desire to seek them out. From freezing snow capped mountains to dark dreary caves, TUG offers a massive procedurally-generated world to explore, full of mystery and danger -- but what makes TUG truly unique is its ability to help us learn what you as players enjoy about the game, and to use your interactions to make an amazing world even better.

The project draws inspiration from fun, accessible games we love such as Minecraft, Fable, Animal Crossing, and Zelda, as well as games that feature deeply complex worlds, including Eve Online, Monster Hunter, and Dwarf Fortress.

[Sky]

So early and pie-in-the-me.

But the ability to run private servers is a step in the right direction. I really hope they pull it off, it's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

[schild]

lol that's not getting made how they want.

At least they're asking for a pile of money instead of like... the $30,000 Star Command asked for.

[Reborne]

So early and pie-in-the-me.

I don't know how often you use that line but it's the first time I've seen it and it made me laugh.

I really like the look of what is being shown in TUG.
Even a partial success will give me something to mess around with.
If the part that works in modding, that could be entertaining for quite some time.

[Fabricated]

Jesus, take a drink every time an idiot tries to revive a property that everyone kinda forgot about:

http://shadowoftheeternals.com/

So yeah, a "spiritual successor" to Eternal Darkness done by Denis Dyack, the former president of Silicon Knights.

[HaemishM]

I would totally be behind that if he hadn't shown himself to be a colossal dick over the Unreal Engine lawsuit and that X-Men game.