Hello and welcome back to Dev Game Club, a weekly podcast in which two veteran game developers look at games from the past. to discuss their relevance and impact today. I'm Brett Duvill, and I'm joined as always by my co-host, a man who's facing a diamond priority situation at one of our outposts, Tim Longo. And that outpost is defeatinggames.com. Nice. How's that for a segue? I'll just go straight into the segue into what we're going to talk about first.
which is, of course, the charity event that was put on by the Discord this past weekend. Really came off without a hitch, as far as I can tell. A couple minor things along the way of just keeping the website up to date or whatever, but truly minor, no big deal stuff. They were in there moderating, helping each other. Lifting all boats, they crushed their goals. All good. All good stuff. Yeah, it was incredible. I mean, you know, being a tiny part of it.
The team that I kind of just was seeing on the sidelines did such a great job pulling things together. It was very smooth. I feel like things are both expanding and improving from last year. I don't know if they plan to keep trying to do this. They probably don't know either. You know, just a great, great effort.
to crush the goal. I think, you know, Calamity's dad helped quite a bit in that, but not to call it on him, but he donated a bit, but quite a bit, but yeah, a lot of great donors, everyone pitched in. i was just kind of humbled to be you know even just streaming with everybody um And a lot of, for anyone who watched or maybe, you know, obviously the VODs are out there if you want to watch the VODs. And I think Lost Lake is even going to collect those and put them on the site. We've downloaded.
our videos so people can catch up on stuff later i really recommend it i mean one of my Last year was wonderful, of course, too, and also exceeded expectations for them, I think. And this year, beating last year. But one thing that surprised me this year that I, you know, for me being pulled every which way, I just didn't pay enough attention to, but until it was happening, but the variety of streamers that they got this year was.
They obviously had the complement of people directly from the community, the Discord community and people that we know. I've even done some of the extra podcast episodes in our stream. But then there were some guest streamers, you know, who I don't think are that involved in the community, but maybe they are and I'm missing them. No, no, I think in a lot of cases they joined.
very close to the event in order to be able to get access to some of the planning channels and things like that more than anything else. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I'm thinking of, for instance, robots, but spacer and noises and people like that, you know, that were very contrasting into the other stuff that we were doing.
robot spacer specifically you know he he went through some really deep and that's i i don't i haven't watched his stuff before but i'm assuming he does that's kind of his thing um he did some great sierra online history and you know played mystery house and and uh um and
Enchanted Specters was the other one, but, or Scepters. And I just really appreciated his thorough kind of historian. And I think the other surprising thing to me... was that it kind of was such a cohesive sort of, for me at least, it was such a cohesive package as far as...
theme and what they were benefiting with the Video Game History Foundation because I felt like Every stream had something sort of to offer that topic, you know, and there were people were playing, you know, games of various eras and. Some games are really hard to get, some people probably haven't seen streamed at all before, or very little. Including your own. Yeah, I think it might be safe to say I was the only one streaming Trespasser that day. Probably, you know, nearly ever. It's got to be.
Yeah, it's probably not never, but I imagine it's a single-digit kind of situation. Probably, probably, yeah. Well, I'm going to change that. Oh, boy. Yeah, and I don't know. I just feel like, yeah, I was just really... You know, we even got developers coming on playing the games that they're working on right now. You know what I mean? And I don't know if you watched the Tower Song one. Omega. Yeah, I was lurking in there a bit. Entertainment.
But, like, we were seeing the first version from 20-plus years ago that he did when he was in high school, or no, pre-high school, 12 years old or something, and now the modern version. Like, that's just such a... really interesting and special way to So I don't know. There were two people playing the same game. Well, the remake of the game and the original game sort of...
Split screen, more or less. I mean, one was smaller than the other, but it was basically, it looked to the upper right and you can see the old game. Look at the lower left, you can see the newer game, much higher res as well. So it's made sense to do it that way. Yeah, that was super cool because they could talk about the differences and they were kind of in the same area.
Yeah, they tried to have the save games kind of correlate to where they were both going. And they were both made in RPG Maker, I think he said, just different versions. so it was like a really interesting kind of like case study or something um uh and you know plug for tower song of course but but uh and then kerbal We had a literal, you know, like... aerospace engineer who is also a streamer and playing Kerbal like the way it's supposed to be played, I think.
successfully launching without an explosion. There were some snafus, I think, that caused some fun. But the Kerbals did make it to the equivalent of Mars. But it was just like he was explaining what he was doing. And that was solved. I think his name is Andy. But at Salton, if you're looking for him. So it was just such a variety. And I really give kudos. for finding that and then of course you have the caons of the world
you know, um, doing these speed runs. Kyle and error with his, uh, I think four hits going for the true. Yeah. Yeah. I watched the whole, I actually watched almost. Almost everything. Yeah. Except when I was asleep. But I did. I probably overdid it because I was on too much. But we had a Might and Magic with Ageless Run. And of course, Lost Lake did. I don't even know how to describe what he did in Minecraft, but he did a speed run with bed.
I'm still not even sure what was going on there, but it's sort of like, oh, he fears nothing in Minecraft. Going into the nether and, you know. that way so yeah he had a whole he had a whole ton of beds and he was basically throwing it at the the ender dragon's face i believe um is basically i don't know what was it yeah he was putting a bed on the nest and then I think the dragon was hitting the bed with its attack or something and then it was blowing up
Oh, yeah, maybe. It was some trick, I think. I believe it was also specific to that version because I've heard that. That's 1.16.1 or something. I think somebody had written an email or commented in the discord about that specific version for speed running, like that. That's the one they use to speed run on. So because, because of that. Yeah.
because of the height stuff he was talking about probably too but yeah yeah yeah and it was just really obviously he was playing you know because we we were playing and and i know he's he's on the and he showed off actually the the community server some too on the cast on the stream But I thought it was a really interesting, good example for anyone who listened to the series for the podcast because he...
you know he we talked about seeds and he has a seed that he was playing over and over again for the speed run you know and it never even occurred to me when we were talking about seeds that there is an additional purpose like that where you actually want to
replay you know yeah it's like a saved state of the world and you want to replay that world and know where everything is because it's a seed so it's always going to be in the same place so i just didn't even i didn't even think of that you know um application so Yeah, it was a really wonderful event. And then watching K-On! do what he does, also always humbling. And then thanks to Belmont for... I kept saying that...
There's the way I play video games and it bears no resemblance to the way K-On! plays video games. His thing about playing his NES quest is anybody can beat these games. I'm like, that's not... actually true um i could not do i'm already at a point where i would not be able to do that um You know, even if I had the time, which I certainly don't, but if I just.
My hands can't do that anymore. So I know there's a lot of muscle memory involved and presumably one could train one's muscles to do that. But there's, it's been a long time since I've done anything. quite as difficult as that kind of very specific sort of timing. you know, knowing all the patterns of all the whatever's, you know, bosses and things. It's yeah, that's not, that's not me. That's just not going to ever happen for me. It's fine. It's fine. I've made my peace with it.
Yeah, I think, I feel like he's trying to promote the, to your point, it's a time thing, because I think if you put time into it, anyone can do it, I think is maybe his point, but it does take time. But, I mean, on the stream, Spelunky came up. Not that that's a memorization thing, but you do play that every day. I do. And you know how good I am at it? I know. Not. I'm not good at it. It's ridiculous how bad I am. Same thing with Kyle, watching Kyle play Hollow Knight, which is...
I've gotten a good chunk into twice now. I'm actually wondering if my cloud save is still there. I watched him play that game, and I know he played... I don't know if it was, he played for the best ending. So he did extra stuff. The true ending. But there's some sections where I'm like, oh no, I'm not going to finish this game. There's no way.
game look at where what he's doing right now but like the saw blaze or whatever so maybe i don't have to do those sections but anyway we digress um i did miss mystery dip so i have to go i have to go and watch the bot on that that was too early for me But yeah, that was like 6 a.m. for you or 5 a.m. or something. Yeah. Just quite early. And yeah, thanks to Belmont, of course, for hosting us and our nonsense.
a clever, clever suggestion. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. I mean, I could have gone for quite a while. I had a lot of memories and it was, they were all kind of pouring out and there were some that I had thought of beforehand and then just. never really had a point to bring them up, you know? And so it was, yeah, it was cool. I mean,
Yeah, I don't even know where to begin with that because if I get started, I'll just keep going. Right, right. I mean, I definitely had a lot of things where I was like, I forgot to mention XYZ or, you know, this person or like. I didn't mention... You know, Andrew and Chris and, you know, just or just a lot of people who are on the team or, you know, some some of whom are no longer with us. I can think of like three people who were on.
either starfighter or geni starfighter who unfortunately are no longer with us there might be more but there's three that i know of off the top of my head and i know just a lot a lot of memories came flooding back and plus i had the notebooks or the notebook So it actually brought back the whole process of like, oh, yeah, this is where we were at this point in the process. And I can remember these specific meetings and how they were run.
Tim, Darren used to have like a clock that he put on. I was like, we're going to spend 10 minutes doing this. And then we're going to spend 10 minutes doing that. And then five minutes of this. And then at the end, we have to do this, you know, for a half hour meeting or whatever. And it was like highly regular. Stuff like that. Oh, hello. Unless that's you, Tim. Is that you flapping your raptor head face? No, June just showed up. Hoping you didn't hear that.
You know, we've got to hear from June. June's going to announce and represent. Anyway, it was really, really fun to kind of go back over that stuff and think about some of the highs and lows. It actually looked better and played better than I remembered. But of course, whenever we play things that we played... that we made rather you know we see be something very different and watching somebody actually just going in and enjoying it and not
focusing on it because i'll just follow an enemy and be like look at that guy jitter all over the place he looks terrible um you know and he's just going in parts he's all just going and shooting like oh yeah i guess you shouldn't just follow them around um or whatever but Yeah, so. It made me, it made me actually, I don't know the last time I played it, to be honest, but it made me want to go back and at least play some, because it's been a while. Yeah, I played it around 20... I played...
Jedi Starfighter around 2013 or 14 or something like that. There was a year where I was... going through my PlayStation two library. I was like, Oh, what the heck? I haven't put this in since it came out. Um, you know, and, and played that and, uh, and star fighter and, uh, Yeah, anyway, it was fun to see and fun to see somebody coming to it with fresh eyes as well. Thank you, Belmont. We don't really get to see that very often. No, it was a really good idea. And not just selfishly.
event. Speaking of your notebooks, I mean, there's a place you could donate those. Yeah, we already discussed legal issues. I mean, I probably didn't even have them. I have to go in and cross out all the places where I say Tim Longo is a big duty head as well. No, you don't. I give you permission. They don't own me. Anyway, yeah, I, you know, thinking about if there is a next year and if they ask us or me to stream again, one thing that I still regret for both years now.
And I thought I actually was going to get further interest faster, to be honest, because it's not that long of a game. But it is a bit of a beast of a thing to play. I would like to set a goal for myself to play something that I actually could finish with.
defeat um but it's gonna mean i'll have to pick something that i have to play and practice a lot ahead of time like calamity did with his whole nonsense which i didn't i had forgotten that he had done streams of that mentioned so he had many hours against that which was a good choice but I need to I'm thinking about it I don't know what that would be you know Clearly it's Valheim. There must be an ending to that game. Oh, yeah. Wow. I wonder what a speedrun for Valheim is.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's possible because the combat is such that if you're really... It's like Dark Souls. It's like a... What's the thing that Kyle does? The souls level SL1? Yeah, soul level. Like an SL1 run. You could probably do that where you just have to be really... good at dodging. Basically, I would think you'd have to take all the boxes. without armor, so.
Well, good luck coming up with that. Yeah, I'll think about that one. I think it's going to, yeah. I don't know if we've got that kind of time. But you know, if you do more power to you, so, but, uh, yeah. All right. Well, let's put a pin in that until I guess next year, if they do it again next year, um, it is, uh, I guess I'll say it is always humbling to think of, uh,
having people kind of form around this podcast that we did, you know, and have been doing now for nine years in, let's see, it's eight years and 11 months right now. I think it's. February 26th, I think is when our first episode dropped in. Really? 2014. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. I'd have to go and look for sure, but I think that's right. Or rather 2016.
Anyway, let us move on to our next game. We actually had some requests for this one over the years, and we had not picked it up largely because... It was a little bit unknown to us. Like we didn't play it much. And we can kind of talk about why, I think, in a little bit. It was a bigger success in Europe, which is a blind spot for us. uh for sure there's some there's some games that hit well in europe that for whatever reason just don't get the didn't
didn't get the critical discourse here. I think that that has been changing over the last... you know, long, long while now, but, but back in the nineties, you know, in early aughts and stuff, it was. Sometimes difficult for those for European made games to kind of cross over. This one came up in connection with Minecraft, oddly, because we were talking a little bit about the technical uses of voxels.
And one of them, you know, cause I was like, yeah, I know there was a thing where people were using them back in the nineties, but I don't remember why. And we looked, I looked it up and we talked about it in one of the episodes. It was for terrain rendering. because traditional terrain rendering doesn't support, you know, sort of overhangs and, you know, sort of cliffs that don't have like a straight vertical face or like slanting face.
But that overhang in some way, or like if you were to have bridges or something like that, natural land bridges and things like that, you can represent that with a height map. And so you'd have to use... models and then you know that gets into a whole different cost etc um but there was a period of time and you had mentioned delta force
And I don't remember if we mentioned the game we're playing, which is Outkast. So I had no memory of what Outkast was because I don't think I ever even played a demo. You had a little bit of experience with it, maybe? Yeah, when it came out, I don't remember if I purchased it or not or if I borrowed it from somebody. But I played the opening and probably a little bit into the first section, which is ironic.
And I have a vague memory, you know, just a, we'll talk about it, but just such a weird game. are very interesting but i think at the time it might they might have been too interesting for me like they kind of threw me off i was like yeah i don't know what is this you know it was just such a such an interesting And I'll talk about it in a second, kind of putting in context for the rest.
And so, yeah, I fell off of it. But it's definitely a time capsule situation of some kind. I don't know. Yeah, for sure. Well, speaking of which, I mean, we should set it a little bit in its time. We have played, by my count, five games from this year, which was 1999. We played Shenmue. uh system shock 2 which was actually our inaugural game uh legacy of kane soul reaver which we played in that first or second year as well i think uh planescape torment uh and homeworlds which we just played
I don't know, six months ago or earlier last year, I guess. I guess almost a year ago now. Those are some games that we've played. I might have missed one because sometimes we, depending on when we did them relative to the last time we got a drop from Johnny Pocket. of our timeline, sometimes things slip through the cracks. So I apologize if I've missed it. I wonder if he knows how much you use that time.
I do. Every time we start a new game, I'm like, well, what came out this year? And then I get one. I'm like, I go find that game when we talk to it. I'm like, okay, so here's a list of games that came out this year. It's in the show notes. So I cross-reference with my show notes. This time you were going to take the honors on that and kind of give us a sense of maybe not exactly all 1999 games, but just kind of a sense of what the market was like at this time.
Yeah, and as – so I'll talk about Infograms in a second, but – But one thing that occurred to me while I was playing it was because it is such an artifact. of game development in so many ways because of the choices it made. And we talked like it, it, it a little bit reminds me of the conversations we had because we played civilization and popular. And there was that sort of like...
There was that fork, not fork in the road, but there was this sort of like destiny was being created at that time, right? And there still are populists. populist type games those kind of god games but really civilization is where it kind of that track went ultimately, right? And there was these experiments, especially in the 90s, being done in all these different genres.
Some of them won out and some of them didn't, you know, for various reasons. So that's why I think this game is even more of an artifact because we have a hard... time thinking of other voxel-based games. Not only that, but this is like an action adventure voxel-based game. Delta Force was a shooter, which is in some ways, I think, you know, you can see it making simpler sense, you know, because you're just running around shooting things.
I don't think they had vehicles, but anyway. So I was really interested as I was playing, like, wait a second. So if I put this in 1999, what other action adventure? third-person-y type things were out there. So, you know, as you know from these games we've played on the podcast before, you know, Ocarina of Time was out and winning awards. Multiple Tomb Raider games.
And that was another fork in the road we discussed, right? It's sort of like the Tomb Raider approach to action-adventure third-person games and then the Nintendo approach. with Mario 64 and Ocarina. So some really like... And which ones kind of ended up, you know, the controls of the tank controls of Tomb Raider are not as much a thing anymore. So those were its contemporaries.
Right, but of course, and this was on the PC, right, which is another distinguishing factor. Right, exactly. It would have been keyboard and mouse primarily, if not solely. I'm not sure because the... We're playing the 1.1 remaster because that's what's available. So I'm not sure if the original had any kind of controller support. My suspicion is no in 1990. Well, I feel like the version we're playing, even when it tells you how to do things, it's telling you keyboard commands.
it's not actually translated to some of the text and tutorials. It's not even pretending that you're playing on a controller. But anyway, I just wanted to kind of point out some of the games that are out at the same time as this game, which doesn't really fit in at all, I feel like, with these other games. And we'll talk about it as we are playing it and a little bit this episode. It is very much trying to do various things at once.
which was also kind of a, I think a bit of a staple at the time where, and we've played various games over the podcast where there was like, A lot of weird merging of genres trying to be all put together. Anachronox is one that comes to mind randomly. Kind of gives me a similar vibe. but is doing different things. That was the name of it, right? Anacronox? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Anacronox. You know, but even Metal Gear Solid was out here in that time too. So it was just a really weird...
time for third-person action adventure games. And then you throw this one in there as well. You can see the influences, but you can also see what maybe probably ended up working and what ended up resonating with people and then what didn't and what isn't. picked up today, but I have been at least so far appreciating.
how much is going on in the game and how I think I thought of it, in fact, even on GOG, it's categorized as a shooter, I think inappropriately, but I've been surprised at how much is going on. quests and dialogue trees and and um world structure and stuff so we'll get all into that in future episodes but um but yeah that's the contemporaries and then on infogram That was, though many of you may or may not have heard of them or remember them, they were one of the bigger players at the time.
We talked about this in pre-show. They did have a lot of acquisitions. But also, as of today, they have merged at some point with Atari. Yeah, I think they purchased the brand and some of the assets and things like that. Yeah, and they used that brand at some point in the early aughts, like the GT interactive stuff that they had acquired.
put that under the Atari umbrella, but it was PC. It was very weird. So it is definitely one of the weirdest companies slash publishers in... gaming at least on the pc especially gaming history because it's got such a weird they had micro pros for a while they had hasbro interactive stuff So everything from some Unreal published, you know, Unreal games to some of the Tycoon games, Roller Coaster Tycoon is an example.
Um, and then, you know, uh, the, the GT interactive stuff and then a bunch of weird Atari and they still technically exist and they have a bunch of IPs and some of the, um, some of the, um. companies are still around but large and you know and you probably from time to time like even even this morning I read about a new Atari watch that is asteroids that you can play. Yeah. The clock, it's a digital round, you know, smartwatch, I guess. I don't know. and the ship is in the middle of the face.
And then the asteroids are going around, but I think you can shoot them. By turning the knob, like you turn the knob and the ship spins and then you can shoot. But I feel like every year Atari currently has that light. that weird hat that had, that had speakers in it. You remember that? No. Yeah, no. Anyway, so, so they still exist, but Infogram was originally a European, I believe French. you know, had games out that I was playing and loved, like I said.
You know, Masters of Orion, I think was even in that sort of space for them. And then Accolade. So it's just a very weird, we're not going to go through the whole. structure or history you should look them up if you're really interested in that stuff but it is a very confusing journey but they were a big player at the time And did a lot of acquisitions as well. So that's who published this.
It was developed by Appeal, which was basically I think three of the people who are listed in the introductory credits, maybe the first three that come up. are the founders, right? And I don't have their names in front of me. And I was looking them up earlier, but I ran out of time and I didn't take any notes. specifically about that. So I don't have it in front of me. Yes, right. Probably Robert and wasn't it? Something like that. Yeah. So our apologies for not getting there.
Their names write and pronounce properly and all that stuff. I'm butchering that. I apologize. I didn't mention this in pre-show, and we should talk about it as we go. Lenny or Lenny Moore is the composer that was listed, and I... Oh, yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, we should come back to that in another episode so I can focus on it a little bit more. In fact, I'll make a little note of it here. Yeah, it's very Star Wars-y, I think, of the era. I think it actually elevates the game.
One thing I will put a pin in as something also to discuss is the other game that kind of came to mind. in my sort of surprise at what's in this game was Beyond Good and Evil. Yeah. You know, which is a few years later, but also French, but also has that sense of like, you're not really sure of what's going to be in this game. And, you know, like you said, because it presents with.
I mean, they're not really dialogue trees so much as dialogue options, but there might be trees later that I just haven't seen yet. It does just kind of present as like, oh, I didn't like, you know, my recollection of the screenshot, like you said, is like, it's a dude in the middle of the screen and he's shooting into the distance, right? I mean, that's what I remember. And there's terrain all around.
And that's what I remember of the marketing, right? And so the idea was an adventure and that the guy spoke even. Never had any idea. Yeah, yeah. The opening cinematic is nine minutes long. And it covers a lot of ground. It's hitting like every theme in the 80s and 90s sci-fi theme, I feel like. Yeah. Checks every box, including the protagonist and how problematic he is and, and the stereotypical, um, and one liners, you know. pulp right pulp melodramatic sci-fi
So it's definitely, I mean, his name is Cutter Slade. Cutter Slade. Yeah. So, you know, it's just satire. I don't know. They're doing something. It feels like it's meant to be. you know playing play playful with it like yeah we know that this is corny you know like you know and we're gonna just go all the way in i will say though like you know what kind of action hero drinks Hard liquor spirits from a Collins glass. What is that? I don't, I mean, I barely know what you just said.
I'm just pointing out that he has this tall glass and then he's got scotch and I'm like, you don't drink scotch that way. That's a highball glass. What are you doing? Anyway. I was pulled right out of the realism in that very moment. The glass is prominently displayed in the cutscene. It is, yeah. So I had a long time to think about it. Yeah, so we're basically set into very, very dire circumstances. It kind of reminded me of...
What is that space movie where they have to drill into the asteroid? where it's the Armageddon Armageddon yeah where it's like you know it's like it's that kind of like over the top ridiculous premise the world's going to be he definitely does yeah like the world's going to be destroyed in 25 days So we need you to do this, you know, and you're the only one available. Oh, and by the way, apparently we didn't vet the other people on the team because one of them...
Maybe it's your ex-wife slash ex-girlfriend slash ex-something, but we don't know because they just kind of like... brush on past it like we don't have time for this you've got to be at the you've got to be on the the launch pad or whatever you know now um so and he's just constantly coming with the
He's at one point they're like, and this is kind of the level of humor, you know, like you're going there to bring the scientists and guard them. And he's like, I don't run an escort service. And it's like. okay cutter yeah easy buddy uh yeah i wrote that note down too yeah yeah yeah i mean i i agree with you i think they are leaning into what they're doing i think they're it's intentional but you how sometimes those intentions don't hold up for me as well as they could.
um but later but yeah i mean it has it has all the problems that like an 80s schwarzenegger movie has you know or you know or stallone or whatever so um you know take that as read uh And it's just as campy as well. There's a point at which... um they've just gone from like this comically evil like scientist who developed some part of this device that they that opened the rift between universes because super strings question mark. Um, and, uh,
And then they go to like the scene with the military brass and there's literally snare drums playing like that, that, that, that, that, that, that, like very a team, you know, whatever. I'm just like, They're hitting all the notes in terms of their pop culture origins here, for sure. There's even some... Ming the Merciless vibes with the zoo, I guess his name is. I got that kind of vibe too. And you mentioned an influence earlier as well in terms of the story.
Oh, yeah. It also gave me John Carter of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs' feel to it as well. Obviously, it's called Outkast, right? Yeah. the whole string theory thing and they figure out a way to go between dimensions and of course it doesn't work out and so now they have to close the rift well you know all that kind of stuff but as soon as you wake up in the game after the cutscene in real time in the real time engine, you know, he is a strange.
and all that kind of stuff. And he's John Carter of Mars, right? Trying to figure out their culture. I don't think they explain why they can speak English yet, or if they ever do, or maybe I missed it, but talking to them. But they obviously have all these different nouns and proper nouns for things. that you don't understand. In fact, they have a lexicon in the UI and the actual, your AI assistant HUD thing tells you when one is added, but as you get these terms from this alien world.
They're added to your lexicon. So you can refer to them because there's no way you're going to keep track of it. Yeah, I mean, it's proper noun soup. I mean, it reminded me, I don't know if you saw the David Lynch RIP, by the way, David Lynch Dune in the 80s.
I did back then but when I went to the movie theater they were handing out a you know double-sided glossary of terms for that movie you know of like well when they say this what they mean what they're talking about is that because i mean because i didn't see it probably opening weekend i think they realized like
People are not connecting. They don't know what's going on because there's so much proper noun, you know, junk, you know, sci-fi, you know, mishmash, you know, stuff that's really easy to parody. I honestly have found that to be the biggest barrier right now for me is that
Yeah. You don't have any, none of this means, none of this means anything to me. And so, um, you know, at one point I was writing down the terms and I'm like, you know what? I can't, I just can't, I have here, here's a, here's a few. feyron shamaz croak shamars yad ulakai etc talanzar modazar i'm like i was just writing these things down and like
what is any of this? And then it's like, well, and I'm like, well, what's the difference between Talenzar and Modazar, which I guess are places. And they're like, well, they're both ruined in wastelands. And I'm like, why are you? why why can't you can't you just say that the east wasteland and the west wasteland that's all i really need um so yeah it's uh
World-building. Yeah, in terms of world-building. They're trying to make their world. Yeah. I mean, that's a common... uh you know thing with science fiction going back even to the like golden age of science fiction of like the 50s or whatever of like you have to make up a bunch of terms you know to describe
the things that are going on and you kind of uncover and get immersed into that space over the course of even just a few pages in the case of a short story. I mean, how much they give you depends, but it became. You know, it comes easy to parody, you know, at a certain point where it's like, well, every other word is a word I don't know, you know, and doesn't mean anything to me.
And it makes it very hard to be able to grab on and know what to do with all of that. Well, rest assured, if you go into your interface, there's a lexicon where you can go through and read each of those things. I mean, it's a forerunner of things. you know, the Mass Effect is the one I was thinking of. I mean, it's... That's also present in something like civilization, but that's much more mechanics.
Well, it focuses also on mechanics in the case of something like Civilization. Yeah, I do appreciate games that have it. Because as you know, as we all know, if you listen to the podcast, I like... lore and world building and I want to know all this stuff and I appreciate that they have the lexicon in the game too. I think the trick is often...
basically you're onboarding to it. I think in this case, an outcast case, because of, I guess, the device they're using as far as waking up already in John Carter style. which is actually an interesting example to all of this is my memory, though I haven't read one of those in a long time. But I'm actually thinking of...
Yeah, there's another series that's coming to mind blanking on. But anyway, the onboarding of that in this game. Stephen Donaldson or something like that. No, it's actually an Octavia Butler. Oh, oh, oh, oh. A series, yeah. It might have been a short story or a series of short stories, but she has some stuff that takes place on other planets, right? And she's basically having to... dole out to you their culture.
Basically, right. And that's what's happening in this game. But the problem is they just go right in. All the way in. Yeah, they don't ease you into it. The first person you're talking to is hurling things at you. Yeah, I mean, half the words he says in his first line are like... Yeah. It's just a, it's just a, it's a lot. It's an easing, easing you in problem, but over time, you know, you probably learn some of that stuff.
And I don't want to dwell on this too much, but I do need to mention that one of the challenges for anyone who might play this game that I think we have to call out. There's a lot of othering of other non... Western cultures, I guess I'll say, and exoticism of them. And so a lot of the words and names that Brett just said are...
You know, which to be honest, Star Wars is not innocent of either of taking, you know, word from other cultures and making them sound alien. In fact, even the visual representations of some of the alien characters. are wearing garb and things that are othering of other cultures that is not good. So, you know, Making an alien planet doesn't mean that you should be doing that with your characters because those are not alien places.
your world so anyway you know it's like it's a common problem It's still a common problem, but it's definitely one of this era where... that was a way for people to make something feel alien to a Western audience. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's,
Yeah, it's definitely a product of its time in that way. And of course, it's also a product of, like I said, that earlier... you know science fiction you know that you know the people coming up with this stuff would have read right you know of which did the same thing you know so it it's building on a tradition of that before we really kind of do any better you know dune does the same stuff oh yeah dune yeah way way into that um Yeah, there's probably some Dune in this as well.
uh in that in that way i hadn't really thought about dune as an influence but i'm sure it's i'm sure it's one of them but the the john carter one is particularly apt all the uh such and such of mars kind of books um Which are fun adventure stories, but yeah, they have the same sorts of problems. And if they're building on that, they might end up in some of the same places.
Something to be aware of, but it is what it is and was what it was at the time. Something I hope we continue to do better with. Yeah, yeah. I just want, again, we don't have to dwell on it, but we should point it out. Yeah, so let's, I mean, we're already 45 minutes, but let's talk about the tone. We've talked about that crazy cinematic. We've talked a little bit about more adventures. Maybe we should talk a little bit about...
Just what we're presented to. I mean, I really only played the tutorial because I didn't expect a nine minute cut scene for one thing. And it also, because there's a lot more adventure there than I thought. I actually was spending a lot of time just kind of walking around and exploring the world
of the little, you know, starting place, which is not very large because I was like, oh, this is way, this is not what I expected. Like it's deeper than, yeah, way deeper than I expected. So. You know, the thing that I noticed first... was that there were more verbs. You can talk to people. There's an inventory that is more complicated than Doom, say. It's crafting.
There's, I guess you haven't seen yet. I have not seen, but I've seen that I've been picking up resources and I think it kind of tells me. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that that's coming. I haven't really done anything with it at all, but I've picked up... green crystals or blue crystals and red crystals and, you know, yeah. Yeah. And things like that. So there's that.
And then they also, you know, basically this, you know, the first person you speak to who talks about how you're the person of the prophecy or whatever.
um again lore uh and like the chosen one kind of narratives that we love so love so well uh you you he basically says well go find my son and he'll he'll teach you he'll test you on some things before i let you out into the wider world and like okay um There are no identifiers to differentiate these characters who, for reasonable technical constraints of the time, basically all look more or less the same.
It's kind of hard to know which one. So I ended up talking to a bunch of characters and learning things and, you know. The last one I found was Jan, I think his name is, is the son. And by that time, at a certain point, I've been like, you know what, I'm just going to kind of wander around a bit and see what else there is here.
I found that, oh, okay, there's a thing over there that I can't get to unless I can jump. And that's how I discovered I could jump, which I liked. I was like, oh, I didn't know I could jump in this game. Yeah, I hadn't tried it. I hadn't tried all the buttons yet. I have been trying to play with controller because I prefer that. But when I was when I first started playing, I was playing with a keyboard. I have no idea what the jump button is, probably spacebar, but I didn't.
Because I have this weird split keyboard, it's not comfortable actually to play keyboard and mouse and hit the space bar because the space bar is on my right hand, which is on the mouse. Um, so I hadn't tried that cause I, uh, yeah, it's a whole, it's a whole thing. Um, but when I got onto the controller, I was like, oh, okay, I can do that. There's some swimming and I figured out how to swim down and up. And.
The only thing I hadn't discovered was crouching or sneaking, I guess. It's kind of a crawling thing. Crawling, yeah. They call it crawling. Yeah. And that's way more verbs to traverse the world than I expected based on the materials I had. you know, that I had remembered. What was your, your experience? Yeah, I mean, we also forgot to mention there is technically, and they advertise it as such, there is a first-person mode.
Oh, I did that as well for the shooting contest. Yeah. Because you can't see the laser sight unless you're in first person. Oh, no, I can see it in third. Oh, you could? Okay, I just didn't notice it when I was in third. Yeah. Well, at least on my version, I can see it. Yeah, the little opening area is pretty cool because it's a great introduction. It is, and I find this, you find this out of the next section, the next level even more so.
They're leaning into this concept. And I assume, and I would hope that it's the case and appreciate that it's the case that. you know, in this John Carter way, you're kind of thrust into this, this alien world and you don't know anything. Your kind of heads up display doesn't know anything either. And so the fact that they don't mark your quest.
give or you know your your your quests on the map yeah where even though you have all this digital you know kind of capability so to your point with the son it's like go see my son they don't give you any indication of whether you're who that is or where he where they are and then in the next one it's even a bigger space with more npcs and you literally have to talk to people and kind of like narrow down who it is that like someone says oh they're north
That's great. That's great direction. Give me the Morrowind vibes there as well. Yeah, exactly. So it's very much like you've got to find your way. We're not going to just place it on the map. The map is actually, the mini map is actually quite cool. It's a vector. vector graphics and I think rendered really neatly and you can change the size and it fits into the HUD quite well. So the HUD aesthetic I really like too, and the UI in general.
I think that's really cohesive. But I really kind of like, I both love and hate those, you know, like I don't know where to go, but also having to sleuth it out yourself is kind of nice. But luckily in this first section... It's a very small area, but they give you a little bit of everything so you can try everything out. And then if you talk to some of the other NPCs, you can actually learn a lot of history and lore about each of the levels you're going to go to. So there's three like...
people kind of meditating in one of the rooms. And each of them tell you about all the different regions. And so basically, by the time you leave... using this sort of teleporter thing. Yeah, very Stargate. That's a good pull. I was trying to remember what it was that it reminded me of. Yeah, I mean, they kind of got everything in here. They really do.
By the time you leave the area, if you've talked to everybody and done everything, I do think you have a pretty good understanding of things. Of course, keeping track of it and remembering it all. not possible but they at least tried to kind of get i think it's a good opening and it's
The voxels are cool. The snow, it's a snowy area. It feels like the audio design's great. Yeah, it feels like it's crunching under your feet. Crunching, but of course, snow and voxels kind of goes together because it's... You know, it's kind of got that same volume feel to it. So I don't know. It is. The difference here with the voxels is, of course, in modern days, playing this with it, again, a remaster that was done in 2014.
They can basically crank up the voxel resolution really, really high. One of the benefits of using voxels is that you can actually... You can do that like dynamically, dynamically change like the resolution of your voxel grid. So, I mean, I don't mean necessarily that they'll do it dynamically based on performance, although you can. I don't know if they do that. But it does mean that basically, I think in the settings...
For this remaster, you can go in and be like, well, what voxel density do you want? And you could turn it down. So if you turned it way down, you'd probably get something more akin to the 99. sort of look, you know, and it would probably look a little more blocky and blobby. But I'll have to flow with that. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So it's.
Yeah, it's another benefit of voxels because, you know, because it's a grid, you can just kind of change the resolution of the grid. I mean, it's a 3D grid, but you can just kind of change that resolution. Right. And even dynamically and depending on how you are. determining whether or not a space is filled it could be just evaluating a function for example like a height map but not actually a height map but like a curve
you know, like, oh, this, this, you know, this slope is this curve, you know, you can evaluate at every point and say, well, would there be a voxel there or not? And then if you change the grid size, you just reevaluate and put a voxel or not, you know, and based on how it does on this test. So one of those benefits of a voxel, um,
voxelization, I guess you'd say. It's sort of like rasterization, but voxels. Yeah, I think it's a really... It's fascinating because I think it was a really good idea to suggest this game after Minecraft. Sorry. Because I feel like I don't think I would have ever considered these two games in the same space. Do you know what I mean? Right, yeah. Because they're using voxels so differently. Yeah.
Some of it is based on my memory of this game and Delta Force and stuff. But then we talk about those sort of forks in the road and how...
Some people in this era were trying to use voxels to prove that they were a good way to do terrain or whatever. And as we know, terrain won out in other ways. In fact, playing... jedi starfighter was a you know was an interesting kind of counter example uh at the same time of how and you got you even mentioned right like we wanted to do more pat pat circ wanted to do more yeah in the next one so we didn't just use height included models because you couldn't do some of the more special stuff.
but that ended up winning out essentially. But then the weird thing about the fork in the road is it kind of comes back around in the form of Minecraft. where voxels come back into the picture, but in a completely different way. Right, yeah. And to use it for simulation.
as well as rendering, is the kind of masterstroke there that I think makes a big deal. I mean, here is purely for rasterization, or purely for, you know, determining where to put pixels on the screen, you know, and that's... that was kind of what voxel engines were for you know in the 90s and and why it was a technique you know um you know it also has some relationships with ray tracing if i'm remembering right back to
back to my grad school studies back when I was three, that, you know, there was some stuff there in terms of basically some algorithms that work. Similarly in both, I'm thinking of something called marching cubes and stuff like that. So anyway, there's a lot of sort of understanding of this kind of technology in rendering. at the time and using it in different ways for representing the world. And it was one of several models. You know, the other one is...
You know, those sort of blobs, I forget what that's called. I'll have to look it up. but these blobs where it's like, it's basically described by a function. Like, so a sphere, you know, this is actually how spore kind of worked, you know, it was like this different sort of approach, right? Is like, you're describing what, you know. It's called like Morph something. God, it's going to drive me crazy. I'll remember it at 2 in the morning and wake up and be like, ah!
So I have that to look forward to. It's going to happen. But anyway, so it's just one of several technologies that people were experimenting with at the time because You know, in the 90s when 3D graphics was becoming, late 90s when 3D graphics was becoming a thing, it's like, well, there's a lot of research about 3D graphics.
that we can rely on because a lot of theory and non-real-time work had been done. But now because of advances in hardware, right, it was becoming possible to do things in real time. So people were looking back on all those old kind of... all that old kind of research. So the interesting time in games and. It's also very, yeah, I mean, going back to kind of its connection to Minecraft, I guess a little bit too, and we talked about modern survival games, it's also kind of such a weird...
Something I think about so much because I play these games. And you started playing, it sounds like, the Moria game too. I did, yeah. Which I have to say, it fits more my style and interest. in play because it has enough fictional layer. Yeah. It's got a linearity to it almost. Yeah, and a little bit of linearity as well. It's like, oh, there's clear goals and I know what I should be doing and why. It's neat, yeah. And I would say it keeps getting better too.
But, you know, that one's a really interesting one to the point of just voxels in general, I think, and some of the examples of what you were just talking about. techniques that people were trying to experiment with and then you brought in the simulation aspect for minecraft it's such a weird world for that for the survival genre because any of any of them that has crafting or mining in it Like the Moria game was built in Unreal, which isn't obviously built for that.
And so it's this weird hybrid of like, you know, I don't know, obviously you'd have to probably explain how they're doing some of the mining stuff, but it's, you know, it's not. procedural it's like there's a place you can mine only that place you can't mine everywhere And when you mine into the... granite or the rock, it kind of deforms.
But it's taking the polygons and kind of... Yeah, it's probably doing tessellation on the cards, right? So that's probably... I mean, that's enabled by hardware. But it reminds me a little bit of something like... red faction you know which had the right environmental destruction right which was similar like you can only do it in certain places and i think you had different tools to do it kind of in different ways but they're basically doing
Something sort of akin to constructive solid geometry to determine what the shape should be and then sort of re-polygonizing it, if I can totally make up a word, but turning that into polygons on the curves. Basically evaluating the curve, right, to come up with what the polygons are from that constructive solid geometry.
Yeah. And that's another technique, right? I mean, that was the technique that was used for Tron. I can go on about this stuff forever. Because Tron is constructive slow geometry. At least not for the wireframe, but for like the bikes and stuff like that, where it's, you know, they're literally just.
evaluating a surface and they're rendering all the points on the surface and then they're doing the lighting based on how the light would interact with that point on the surface because they know what you know the um
tangent would be in the normal and all of that stuff and they're you know all of this stuff all that math goes back a long ways that's none of that is new so yeah yeah well and and it's just so funny because yes there were definitely the copycats for minecraft and not to bring this back because we're talking about outcasts, but... And there were some that were using voxels in literal terms and, and, you know, but not many, but ones like Valheim or enshrouded or Moria Valheim.
It was built in Unity. Right. And the entire terrain can be mined, but they have kind of a combination of, of models within. So they have some, but it's also seed based. So it's like, it's procedurally generated. And there is obviously a bedrock kind of concept where you can only go so deep, but it's the same tessellation kind of thing.
And Shrouded is the same way. Like, and Shrouded is also kind of linear in a way, or it's open world, but it has like a story. But you can only, when you, interestingly, I don't know, I think their engine might be custom. When you mine something, the next day or the next time you load into the world, it will be rebuilt, except for in your town. So it's like they found different, you know, everyone's trying to find these different limitations to do.
things, but with Minecraft because it's simulated through the voxels. Like nobody's really achieved that per se because they're doing it in these engines that weren't meant for it, I guess. Right. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And shrouded does have its own, its own engine called the holistic engine. Well, their mining is not holistic. I will say that. I believe it regrows after the next set, you know, when you come back.
after the next session. And to your point, the Moria game is UE4. So that's an unknown engine. So it's like covering the gamut and... Everyone wants to make that kind of game. They're using the engine they're going to use, but they're finding different ways to solve that problem. It's just fascinating. Yeah, it really is. Anyway, we will discuss additional fascinating topics next week. But for now, let's turn quickly to an email. We have one. It goes back to a game we played a while back.
So the game is not super fresh, but the question was an interesting one. So I thought it was worth taking it. It's at, it was sent to, of course, the dev game club at gmail.com. So you go ahead, sir. All right. Some belated heroes comments from Claudio. Claudio? Claudio, probably. Claudio. Sorry if I butchered that. Hi, Brett and Tim. My name is Claudio. I've been listening to the podcast for a long time. It's one of my favorite shows.
That's nice to hear. And I really appreciate the unique perspective you bring. And it's been really cool to discover or rediscover some of the classics you've covered and what lessons we can gain by looking back at them. Sorry if this email comes a bit late, but I wanted to share some thoughts I've had when I listened to the episodes where you covered Heroes of My Magic.
I must admit that I haven't played the first game in the series. I came across the third one in high school when a group of friends... My friends were playing in and it was really popular game in Romania at the time. And as far as I can tell, it achieved kind of a cult status around much of Eastern Europe. I heard there still is an active Russian modding community. with lots of custom campaigns created. And it doesn't seem to have gotten the kind of popularity in the West.
My explanation for this is that we didn't use to get home consoles at that time. So PC games were a lot more popular. And Heroes, due to its turn-based gameplay, can be played on... any potato computer. I was just wondering if you're aware of any... being unexpectedly more popular in certain parts of the world. Yeah. And lastly, sorry that the first game didn't really click for you and you had a hard time with it. I think with the second one and especially the third, they really...
stride and probably refine the more rougher edges. Thanks for the great podcast and looking forward to seeing what games come up next. Yeah, I mean, I thought that that was an interesting question in terms of like surprising, you know, games that did surprisingly well elsewhere. Skyrim did so well in the West. I did not expect it to connect in Japan, but it's my only, I mean, it was a,
you know, four, four is game or whatever. Infamitsu, whatever that rating is, it was the, you know, the max, you know, and I think we were only maybe the second. western game to achieve that you know and it was like whoa like i was just really surprised at the time um you know that and that was kind of like a big a big deal to me um so that that's one where i Yeah, because the conventional wisdom going back... you know, to my LucasArts days had been like
Yeah, we have a hard time breaking in over there. You know, like... I was really surprised that some games that I really liked just did, did not connect in Japan. I'm thinking of like early insomniac games and things like that, where I was like, yeah, this is great. And then. They just didn't like them, you know, in Japan. I was like, I don't understand why not. Um, So then to have one that hit really well there, you know, I was like, oh, that's really...
you know, that's really humbling and cool, you know, and that's kind of like one of those things that I look back on really fondly. So that's, that's one for me. How about you? Do you have any, like, surprising. I didn't know that was really big in wherever. I guess it's four critics zero to ten. Yeah, so four tens we had. Yeah, four tens. It's the ten I was thinking. Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely should be better at knowing some of this stuff. There's a video game history.
more information about it. Alternatively, the one that comes to mind that I think we talked a little bit about is how popular Metroid is outside of it. um is i believe the case like it does well enough i think but i think the reason remember we talked about that on the on the series one of the reasons that they wanted to do metroid prime was because was because they knew that that IP resonated. And so it obviously impacted the genre.
That's one that kind of randomly comes to mind. I think the other one that I usually use that blew up really big, it obviously was a big franchise in general, but I think it was... A whole other level in South Korea was StarCraft. Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. That's not something we worked on, but yeah, for sure. Starcraft. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sorry. No, no, nothing that I worked on that I can think of. I was just looking up. I was misremembering Skyrim was actually the first.
non-japanese game to receive a perfect score from famitsu um so uh and there there have only been three so uh in in the course of whatever number of years it is so yeah like 20 27 years or something like that so
It's just remarkable to me to think of that. I think the thing I was thinking of is that there are three major... awards in the u.s um dice gdc and the game game awards um which have changed names multiple times but those are kind of the the big three and skyrim did you know got all three of those and i thought we were the first that we were actually the second of that and i think um Uncharted 2 maybe was the first one to get all three of them in a single year.
that was another kind of like, I mean, Skyrim won a lot of stuff, but the one that I always think of as like the Famitsu was like, that was a big deal to me, you know, knowing, knowing how rare it was to do that. Well, especially knowing that the Western game had not. Well, thanks. Yeah. Nothing, nothing particular stands out, you know, really, really big in the UAE or anything like that. No. Well, I don't. Again, not that I know of. I probably should be better at knowing.
All right. Well, thank you for the question. Generally speaking, we try to keep to the games that we've played recently, but that was a case of a question that I thought was actually really good. Thanks for writing in, by the way. Especially if you're a listener. From Romania. really really cool anyway
We get your emails again at devgameclub at gmail.com. We also love to read your reviews on the air when we get them. We don't advertise this podcast in any way, shape, or form. So, you know, you reaching out and doing a review helps us reach new listeners. you can find us on the web at devgameclub.com and you can find my co-host twitching sometimes often with a raptor head at twitch.tv slash
Tim Longo Jr. with the J-R at the end. I hope you wear that every stream from now on. If I play Trespasser, I might. People listening may not know, but yeah. The raptor mask while playing Tres- I think any game that has dinosaurs you should Oh, yeah? Okay. Maybe I'll avoid them then. After Chester. We also, as you know, we've indicated multiple times, we've got a fan-run Discord.
There is a link in the show notes. And, of course, I think they're probably already starting thinking about whether they want to do this again next year. Yeah, I think they might be regretting it, too. A lot of work. It's a lot of work, but we appreciate them. Our intro and outro music was written and performed by Kirk Hamilton, commissioned by a friend of the cast, Aaron Evers, and our logo, the merch store, our Discord, all by Mark Garcia.
Have fun keeping track of the alien language soup this week and good night. Good night.