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 Duvall and I'm joined as always by my co-host, a man whose father would be proud to know he was meeting me. Oh, jeez. Tim Longo.
Boy, that one threw me. I was like, wow. Yeah. I mean, I know where it's coming from, but. I am the Ulekai, you know, so that's a whole thing. You know, I think we didn't talk about in all our prep for the show was like, oh yeah, we wanted to talk about the.
the event again, because last time we sort of talked about a bunch of, you know, on, on screen people, but didn't talk as much about the behind the scenes. Thank you for bringing it up. Yeah. We definitely were remiss in a couple. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so that was not meant to slight anyone. It was more just like we were just kind of riffing, and we didn't have anything written down. So there's people like Biostats and Mark Garcia behind the scenes, who always gets a shout-out on the show.
art image did a lot of work and was modding a lot of the time um I'm sure there will be others that I will literally forget this time as well. And I don't mean anything by it. I'm just getting old. That's all. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. We, I mean. You know, it's such a, it was such a grassroots effort and, and the, you know, the sort of like team, I guess I'll say, ranged from people who were both doing behind the scenes work and onscreen work.
and then they're you know and everybody wants to stream or or cares to or whatever um bio is doing so much work mark you know put the web page together you know did a bunch of artwork Canon even helped me. with my OBS stuff, you know, like, uh, set up the, and then you're streaming it. What, what are you doing? Yeah, exactly. Well, he, he actually made the artwork for my background as well. Oh, that's cool. The final fantasy, you know,
six artwork kind of thing for my, my, my frame, um, my borders and stuff. Um, he made that, um, uh, then tiltify, you know, like the, the team set, set up all the donation stuff through tiltify. And then there were like, You know, the outputs to that into OBS had to be built and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of, I mean, obviously they're all master streamers and do this.
the other day, so a lot of them. And then to your point too, every stream had modders, right, that were helping out. Mods that, not modders, but moderators. um calamity is usually modding for me and and i think bio is as well um but everyone's helping each other out so yeah we did we did it spouting out the the doing all the little commands and stuff too uh to shout out, you know, oh, and this is what we're doing it for. And this is the next.
you know milestone or whatever and they had a whole plan that i didn't like caught on to for a while i was like oh it's like every 500 bucks or something is a new thing, you know, and we were one of them, but there were others, you know, that I wasn't. Yeah. They had giveaways. So, and then there were other teams, there are other development teams that gave away keys for those. Obviously some of them streamed.
Yeah, so a big... And then the Video Game History Foundation's library is now launched. Correct, yeah. So if you haven't seen the news on that, I mean, during the stream, they played the awesome video kind of... from Phil and stuff. And then, and then. He was, you know, it was the week later that it was going to launch, but now it is launched and I know people are using it. I've seen some buzz about it. Articles, multiple articles. So look out for the digital library, magazines.
Going back. Oh, and somebody, who was it? I was on a stream at some point and someone said they had subscribed. I didn't know they did this. I don't think Phil talked about this or missed it. you can subscribe to These through them, I think to these older magazines and they have so many copies that I think they will send you. Oh, that's wild. They will like on a monthly basis, they'll send you like 1996, you know.
uh you know game or game next generation and yeah game fan was the one i was thinking of that no game fan yeah yeah um but whatever right so yeah yeah man talk about some memories uh so that's yeah i don't know what a what a cool Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty wild. Yeah. And again, so. And apologies if we've forgotten anybody this time.
because it was you know we were like i said we're and we're re-riffing because we do zero preparation for this show i didn't even mention to tim that we wanted to do this uh remembered uh when i started um so Yeah. So there we go. So we look forward to it next year. I know that they are already talking about it. I think tonight is their sort of postmortem meeting and all that stuff. uh thank all of you and uh i hope that uh i hope that it met all of your expectations because it's all of them.
I have nothing to do with it. I make the podcast. That's my job. Oh, I wonder if I'm supposed to be in a meeting right now. I don't think you're, no, no. I think it's for all the people who ran it, not for randos who came in and streamed dinosaur games. I'm proud to be the only one to stream that game in the last month. Good for you. Really, I'm very proud of you. Let's return to our game discussion already in progress. We were off last week. My apologies. I was under the weather.
and not in kind of any fit shape to even go and dig up an interview and listen to it. I was just not feeling well. We postponed and now we are returning to Outkast from 1999. And we are playing through GOG, which gives us the sort of 2014 question mark.
And it's not exactly a remake as it's... sort of a remaster sort of like you know just modern kind of a weird a weird space yeah i read a little bit about it i think it's literally branded outcast 1.1 like i don't even think it's a patch i think they just Call it that, which is, I guess, a little bit on brand with the... But I think what all they were trying to do was to make it run on modern Windows.
Oh, okay. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I don't even, I don't think the art is different or anything like that. I don't think any assets are the same. I think it's just the higher resolution voxels primarily is like the big. You know, they could they could support that they that they would have not tried for at the time. Right. Would be my guess. Yeah. Anyway, that's it is definitely interesting.
It has been, I was thinking a little bit about the Voxel stuff, but we'll get back to that if we need to. We did talk a lot about that last time. I do have a very specific voxel question later or whenever. Oh, I mean, if you want to do it now, we can try to do it now, and I will try to help? Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, maybe it's too specific, but the voxel stuff still, even though I've... still primarily in the in the well technically second but the first kind of main hub um shamazar
Shamazar or something like that. Yeah, Shalazar maybe. Anyway, I still, you know, it's funny because So it's interesting. We'll get into this a little bit later, too, because its world structure is pretty unique for the time. It's been sort of lauded as one of the early open world games, and I can kind of see why.
But even if you just take one of the levels, quote unquote, you know, the one that we're in now, which is basically circular, it's like a big open circle. And they do some interesting gating on how you get to the center and stuff, which is kind of fun. And I think pretty well designed for the time. But it's interesting because I find myself... I don't know, how do I put it? I've accepted the voxel.
Because you're running back and forth so much, and you're running on top of these voxels, and they're there. I couldn't, other than Minecraft, which is, again, we've talked about is using voxels in a completely different way. I couldn't tell you the last time I played a voxel. Right. So it's very weird and different looking than anything.
you know, we would normally, that I would normally play. But, you know, when you play for a couple hours, it just kind of, you know, like anything, it just kind of like, you just kind of give into it and accept it. And it's a really like interesting feeling to me because, because. They're so crunchy or something. I don't know, like the audio is really good for the footsteps.
you see you know it's not like you see every blade of grass or every you know, every rock or anything, but I think it's the whole, like your mind fills in the blanks, you know, concept. And I just really love... how different the game feels because of these voxels. Like they've even created tree stumps out of the voxels at times, these little tree stumps that they're actually tell one of the NPCs talks to you about.
sort of like how deforestation happened and all this kind of stuff. So it's really, I don't know. It's just, it's such a unique, this game is weird in lots of ways, but then you throw the voxels in there as well. And it really is just kind of a gem of a thing. I don't even know. Like talk about history. Yeah. The thing that throws me with the voxels so far is that I haven't seen a lot here.
more traditional methods so it's just like it's just strange like it's just a strange choice um and i mean it might be that we'll get to later areas and it'll be like oh well there's a huge terrain overhang or whatever so like that clearly couldn't be done you know the other way and you know i think there is also something to say about like Maybe a further draw distance.
That was my question. That's one of my questions. That wasn't the question, but that was one of mine is that sometimes when you get up high and you're looking over this whole level. that's it was pretty impressive yeah yeah i mean that that was that sort of thing i was talking about how you could resample the you know you could regrid basically um
You know, and that it's a memory, it's less memory intensive than if you had to have multiple levels of detail. And it might be cheaper than re-polygonizing. terrain i have to really think about that because we actually did some experiments like this with with starfighter funny enough i don't know if you're you actually i don't even think you were on the project voxels not with voxels but with terrain Rendering. Yeah. Well, basically like.
updating the terrain uh fidelity on the basis of like camera distance right and um i i believe steve ash was doing some of that RIP. That's my recollection. And it was really early. I mean, Steve Ash alone, he was only on it for like the first year. So like it tells you everything you need to know before he left to go work on something in another studio. But that was one that.
I remember it just being a real thing at the time of like, how are you going to deal with drain games are getting bigger and more spacious. we have these CDs now that can, you know, take tons and put tons of stuff on them. Like, how do you do it? You know, and, but it's not, it's not infinite. And like, you have to be able to get all that data in somehow. Right. Which was.
you know, transfer speeds were still very slow, right? And like things have to be compact and fit into RAM and things like that. So it's like there are a whole host of problems with all of that that, you know, were not things I typically dealt with myself. So I'm just kind of like... you know, remembering being on kind of near it. And so like different means of like, well, store it compactly, but generate it.
at load time, you know, but that can't be too slow. It's just like, and I think voxels were one solution to that problem. Then, you know, like I said last time, we're like a pretty well researched and understood thing. That, you know, we were just mining the old graphics research to find things. The other one I mentioned and couldn't remember the name of was Metaballs. which are the, there's surfaces that they, that are, they're very blobby looking because they're just mathematical.
representations and like when you get to like metaball sources next to each other their functions join and like you get this like and they kind of like glob together it's very weird way of looking at the world. This is a rendering technique you're saying? Yeah, it's a rendering technique. Or a rasterization technique, I guess. Yeah, you know, you wouldn't. Like I said, that was something that I think they...
They used a bit for spore to make those creatures. Oh, right, right, right, right. Which has that kind of look. And I mean, I think they used a hybrid, definitely a very hybrid approach. I feel like I heard them talk about that at one point, that that was a thing that they were looking at for like how to define the creatures in such a way that they could really put the legs anywhere, you know, and.
One of the things that they need something procedural like that. Yeah, exactly. You know, so, yeah. So it's just, it's just an artifact of all of that. And then having hardware that. you know whatever 25 years later it's like well we can render way more you know than uh than they could at the time and so they get kind of this benefit of I don't know, just more detail for...
Not a lot of work. I mean, all the work was like having enough... richness in the data to begin with they probably do just looking at thinking about it now i'm like they probably do some weird kind of noise function that's like sine waves over it to raise point
stalagmite kind of feel of like there's things pushing up out of the ground kind of in places. And I wonder if they did that like as a separate... step you know when so they have like basically high field kind of data uh like broad voxel data and then like oh and let's you know, disturb it in this way, you know, kind of procedurally, which you could also do, I guess, with, with a voxel representation. I don't know how they would have done that.
Yeah, I think more and more questions keep coming to me before I even ask the one I wanted to. So how does... Do you know? Is it one for one? Do they have a separate collision? I mean, the thing of it is, is that you could do either, I would think, right? I mean, I would think it would be one-to-one just for memory reasons. They would not want to have a second voxelized area, although they could just do it locally to the player.
But they can get that kind of fidelity, I mean, because the height map is... pretty smooth you know what i mean and i yeah i use i use the terrain for cover so often in combat right you know and it's and it's the the the collision seems very very connected. Yeah. I mean, I think they would be using it. They would be using whatever voxel representation is loaded for that chunk that it's colliding with. So it would be, it would match pretty close.
Well, the thing I think as you were talking, I was kind of forming a little bit better description of what I was talking about earlier. There's sort of more of the feeling side of it. I think what I'm realizing, to your point, I'm on like, well, you could do this with other techniques at the time. Why are they using voxels? And I don't know if this is the reason, of course.
I don't know if we'll, I haven't sought out a guest yet for this, but maybe we'll get one, but maybe we can find out. But I guess what I'm saying is aesthetically the game. feels so different because of voxels. Whether they could have done this with regular polygonal techniques or what have you, height map polygons.
sure but because they made this choice it changes the feel like to your you know like we didn't we were still trying to well we they everybody was trying to figure out like how can you feel how can you look make a grassy surface look like it has grass without having a lot of whatever alpha or you know at the time at least cards you know we had to fake it in a lot of different ways there wasn't like procedural fur shaders or something to make it look like grass
But the funny thing about the voxels is like the green areas, if they're colored green, it kind of has a grassy feel. And then you put the sound on top. And it, you know, kind of, I buy it. You know, it's like I squint. Like I said, my mind fills in the gaps. And I wouldn't get that from just a flat polygonal height map. You know what I mean? You'd have to have some sort of.
grass effects on top of it to make that effect. And so I just like the way that the voxels... poke out a little bit, you know, because it gives us this volume aesthetically that makes it look unlike any other game, any other, you know, action adventure game of its time.
Yeah, no, I think that's definitely true. And I definitely, you know... feel that when I play it as well, you know, that the ground has this kind of And it's not even so much that I feel like it's grassy per se, but the chunkiness. the irregularity of it is. Yeah. It's not a polygon. Yeah. You know, it's, it's got depth to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Like, I think that that is, um, that is definitely a strength and I, I'm not.
Like, part of me just wants to, and I meant to do this, but it's like just dial the settings down as low as they go to see like, well, what would it look like if you had a 2014 bottom-of-the-line PC? 2014 version um like what would the min spec look like in 2014 for this instead of like the ultra blown out whatever that i've got um I'm really curious to know what that would look like and whether it would feel the same or if it would feel really strange.
I should probably, well, I don't know. It might be hard to find screenshots at this point of what it looked like back in 1999. But, you know, I'm sure they're out there. I think this is a beloved game more than we realize, especially in Europe. Yeah, in Europe especially. So my question, which is a very specific one, which you may not be able to answer, but... What is going on with stairs? Stairs are polygonal models.
Okay, so I thought so too. However, look at them more closely when you play because I feel like it's some weird combination. No, but to be specific, what I mean by stairs are the stairs that are really embedded.
the terrain there's of course there's of course the very clear polygonal stairs that are like you can tell are part of a model but then sometimes it's almost like they're blended like the Vertical aspects of the stairs are voxels, but the flat steps you know the flat um the horizontal are polygons so can you combine the two or does i don't know there's some of the stairs are very odd and break my brain
Yeah, I'd have to look at it pretty specifically. I mean, I don't think that there's in principle anything like I don't I think you could. Could you make the voxels and leave openings and then put polygons in those openings? Do you know what I mean? I guess you could just put the polygons on top of the boxes. Yeah. I mean, I think that, that they're putting them on top for sure. And I suspect there's possibly like bleed through there. Um, or.
Or like collision bleed through or something that it's making it feel weird to you. But I haven't noticed. I don't know precisely what you're talking about. Okay. Yeah. So I'm just trying to imagine, and I don't, yeah, I don't have a good answer for you, but I mean, I'm sure that they, I'm sure that they voxel, the voxels are carved out there. Yeah. You know, so that there's space to put the stair, you know, like you would actually like if you were going to build a wooden staircase.
you know on tower stone i guess um you would dig a trough a trough you know to put it in right um you know and i think that that that's effectively what they're they've done with their voxels um in those spaces Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I look at it. I mean, I obsess over these silly things and, you know, it's kind of seems silly to talk about stairs, but I use it as an example of the sort of artifact of the game being an artifact.
time capsule and my impression when i look at certain stairs especially the ones that are like on the brown brownish terrain if you look at them next time you play the rise looks like voxels but the run of the stair looks like polygons or the sides of the stairs look like boxes.
I think it's called Rise and Run for stairs. But anyway, just a weird little detail. It could totally be. I mean, it could be that they made the models only with... uh you know part of part of it made right i mean that they just didn't do the the the parts that were the run or the whichever it is that you're missing it's very possible and i just haven't really noticed it because i'm not I'm usually looking at where I'm trying to get and paying attention. And maybe we can.
shift over to other things but like I'm often paying attention to where are the enemies right now? So that I, cause I'm ignoring them a lot. So it's for me, like I'm actually like you, I've kind of accepted the world and the world is just the world. It's alien and strange. And like, maybe that's part of why I can accept it pretty easily is like, it's not meant to represent.
any environment i could ever really see right i mean um you know short of a special effects kind of thing um you know so just another fictional creation Um, but I couldn't go here. Right. I couldn't go and visit a place that looks like this probably. Um, so I'm, you know, unless, or your parts of Europe like this, I don't know. I don't think so. Um, that's a joke.
uh so i just i just like i i am i at a certain point i'm like well i'm trying to do more of the the story and that involves like figuring out how i'm going to get from here to there and Part of that is where are the gaps in the enemies? Where are they? Where am I going to be just far enough away that they won't shoot at me or that I can get away quick enough that I won't engage?
Yeah, I was really, in pre-show, I was really intrigued to hear that that's your approach, and you explained why, which does make sense, because ammo, ammo. scarcity does seem like a thing although I've scavenged enough where it hasn't been a problem for me. But I think they've at least tried to tune and balance the object placement enough to be like, if you're engaging in combat, you probably...
replenished if you succeed. Once you get to where you want to get to pass the enemies, there will be ammo. Like a lot of it. Anyway. Yeah. So I, I'm not sure why I think it's, I feel like. It's a little bit like I don't trust the stealth system enough to use it. Oh, I'm not stealthing. No, no, no, I know. I know you're reading the signs from the HUD and VO and things to give you those sorts of options.
But I'm saying that if the reason I bring up stealth is really like, what kind of verbs do I have? Shooting is my main one, other than talking to people, right? But you can't talk to the enemies, you can't talk your way through. and you're going to get to soon, you will have to make a decision on how you're going to get into these storage areas.
because they're critical path. And I assume you can stealth in there, but who that's going to be, there's so many enemies in these areas. I don't, I just don't trust the system enough and it'd probably be very slow. And so I was like, I'm just going to shoot. I'm going to shoot everybody and they're going to shoot at me. And, you know, as a secondary topic, I want to talk about the gun, the gunplay. Yeah, so I just went guns a-blazing and pretty much every enemy on the map for me.
I've cleared the map, which allows me now to kind of... you know go where i need to go but there's certain to get the kind of keys you're going to need to get soon you're going to need to engage with these hostiles somehow. So it'd be interesting. I know I'm going to like, I know I'm just like forestalling the inevitable. You know, I was really just like,
I had, I remember when, when the game started, I had a few hundred bullets and then at one point I looked and I was like, Oh, I have 16 bullets. Like, and I was like, And I know where it all went. I had base. I think I basically had two combats in the early part of the game. One with the, there were a whole bunch of guys on a, like a.
platform kind of thing in the middle of one of the rice fields. And then there was some other group that I engaged and I don't remember exactly where they were. And I think they were near the guy you need to deliver the Tuanha to. And I was like, okay, I... I get it. But like where I have to go and have this guy make me bullets. He's slow at it and he's not making me like what feels like a lot when I started with 300 and now I have. you know, low double digits. You're doing the math.
I was just like, this is going to be a real slog for me. And the reason why is that I can't hit the broadside of a barn because we'll get to that in a minute. But it's like, so I was like, oh, no, I'm going to have to really conserve because I have not had an experience yet. where I finished a combat and got a bunch of bullets. So I was just like, I was just, they were just getting whittled away. And then I was like, okay, well I'm going to avoid combat now.
as much as possible, not to stealth. I'm just, I'm just literally walking and there's a voice line that will say, come from your PDA thing that will tell you like. I'm detecting basically the energy signatures of the guns. It says something like a low power, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, whatever. I'm near the guys. So whenever I hear it, I'm like, okay, where are the guys? And I...
change my pathing you know appropriately and so i've just kind of learned what the distance is that's safe thread the needle everywhere i go and i actually just i never really run into them and it's like never a big deal so it's like it hasn't changed the game much for me um but i would like there to be no guys so it just like plays through all of it um so i might i'll probably shift knowing that i'm gonna get
ammo i'm glad to hear that because i was like i'm if i have to go and talk to the guy say make me some of these and then go away for a while and come back like you know yeah it's a long loop Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, I think, I guess the easy, to put your mind at ease a little bit, the easy thing is all the heavily hostile areas usually have like ammo caches.
that you should be able to get. So yeah, I mean, but I get it. I get it. And I guess as a segue to the next topic, the gunplay is a very interesting and bold choice. for the time, but even for today. And my worry, well, I don't know if it's a worry yet, but my suspicion is that... The kinds of guns that were... because you still have only the pistol and i only have right yeah yeah yeah so as we get there's you can see in the hut in the
You can see there's other things coming. Other things coming, but my worry is that the more guns that we're going to get are the ones that were being shot at us right now. Right. And all of them so far, every gun in the game so far is projectile. including the pistol. And to your point, You know, you're leading, you have any lead targets, they're running all over the place, dodging things.
So, you know, and you can literally see every bullet go by that you're shooting. And they're very slow. They're very, very slow. Yeah. So it's really a different skill set to a typical shooter, even though on GOG. classified as a shooter which i don't and it was at the time yeah there is a first person mode too well i'm playing third person i think you might
No, I'm playing third. I don't find the first person any... I feel the first person feels very uncomfortable to me. I think the FOV is not great. Yeah, I didn't get any motion sickness from it, but I wouldn't be surprised if I did. I went into it accidentally. I was like, okay, what did I just do? It was one of the few times where I reached for the mouse because I was like, I think the mouse scroll pulls you out.
because i originally was starting with mouse and keyboard and then um but yeah i mean the for me the thing that was meant i was having all you know low bullet low numbers of bullets is like i was constantly missing and it took me a long time to adjust i mean when tim says projectile base What he means is like, let's see, what are some games we've played? Like System Jack 2 is this way.
A object is produced at the end of the gun that moves through space over time, like reality. Sure. But in a lot of shooters, that process is. what we normally call hitscan, which means a ray is driven from the muzzle of the gun into the world in the direction that the gun is pointing and finds the thing it would hit. instantaneously and just immediately does damage here it's like doom imps or whatever shooting at you where
And but also when you fire where it just it takes time, like a lot of arcade games, you know, from back in the day, you know, space shooters and things like that. It's like, well, you fire and it takes a long time for it to reach the target, relatively speaking. you know, long time in, in, you know. Game frames time, I guess I mean. So it is... It is really wild to shoot a gun called like an HK or something like that.
have the guy dodge it it's a very like like it does not feel like an hk at that point it's like i guess the air is way heavier here
It's harder for the bullets. Yeah, and the bullets are kind of big and bulky. So it's like it's just such a – yeah, it's a very interesting choice, and it makes – yeah you just have to for me i've had to you know retrain what you know how to how to how to fire because i play so many shooty games um it's just such a very interesting and unique thing but they you know they've put in some simple ai you know behaviors that
They'll sidestep and they, you know, they're not super smart, but they are smart enough and they do sidestep. And the irony is that. for what i've found the best time to shoot them is when they are shooting because they're the most still yeah but of course you're putting yourself you're putting yourself in endangered but the the flip side bonus of all of this is that all of their weapons so far are projectile based and so you can also dodge them pretty well so um
And I find that actually kind of fun. Like, I don't, I like the dodging game. It's, I, you know, we were talking, I like, yeah, exactly. I like the doom model of like, I shoot fast, you shoot slow. Is a fun, is a, is it works better for me, you know? it's a weird offshoot to do, to do this where it's you know, it's the, it's well, it's reflected, right. It's this, it's. Both are symmetrical, I guess is the word I'm looking for. So it is just a strain.
it's just strange feeling like playing a lot of action games over the years of like, I'm used to the instant I did the thing. Like it's, it's the tag that like Cliff Blazinski would say is like, well, we're not really shooting instruments. We're basically playing tag. You know, because it's instantaneous like that, you know, and. Yeah, a pretty weak defense for the violence in video games. I heard that laughter there. I think I hope I'm not misattributing that, but that's my recollection.
He was talking about Unreal Tournament. yeah or or just defending shooters in general like we don't see it like to us it's not about guns oh oh even worse then he's he's trying to use it as a defense yeah yeah yeah well yeah i think it was it's one of those things where people were asking about violence in games it's like well it's not really you know um Our great advocate, Clifford B. Yeah. Again, I'm not 100% sure it was him. I think so, but whatever. Somebody used that as a...
It's a game, I think, where the point is. You're trying to score in a game. Yeah, exactly. You're kind of thinking about things at a more... You know, like, you know, when you play chess, you don't think, ah, I have a night, you know, it's, it's like this piece covers this territory. I'm killing this King. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I get it. I get it. Yeah. Anyway. Do you want to talk? Is there more that you want to cover with the...
I think we'll come back to it. I'm curious about more guns and things like that, how it changes. I know it's going to come back up because we've seen some of the guns used on us, but one of them is like a grenade launcher. two very different things grenade and rocket launchers yeah yeah um uh there's like a bloody kind of blaster thing there's like this like a spirally. Yeah. So I think, I think when, when I assume we're going to, I would be surprised if they had unique guns for the enemies.
get later. Yeah. It's weird to me that we don't get them now, I guess. It's strange, like, where did the guns go? Yeah, that old chestnut. I guess they drop into the rice field. They go under the water, and you never see them again. And the flooding in the fields. So I guess that's what's happening. Yes, the rise. The charisma field. Yeah, I mean, you know, we already hit it last episode. You don't dwell on it too much, but the othering in the game is...
It keeps getting worse, but anyway. Yeah. I mean, it's, I'm kind of torn about that sometimes. Like, cause I think about things that I've read, you know, like I read. A year or two ago, I read this sort of Annals of the Grand Historian, which is this classic work of Chinese history. It's basically some notes by the grand historian to a particular emperor of like all these things.
And there are characters in it that are just like... mar for example i almost did the intro as mar about mar uh who is the dumb Leader of our administrator, whatever, you know, middle manager jerk who is running the rice production for the, you know, for the enemy. He's basically a toady, you know, for the.
or collaborator for the enemy. And I'm like... I mean, this is a very standard sort of character, like the dumb toady, you know, who doesn't realize what damage he's doing his own people or, you know, his just officiousness.
officiousness is just like getting in the way um of like you know his people so it's it's like those are not terrible analogies to use but yeah it's just being like aliens it's like yeah it's not just said it you know if like if if it's meant to be some sort of china like i don't know year yeah it's just that yeah it's that's the yeah it's I mean you know maybe they had maybe they had people on
I don't know, thinking about this stuff. And maybe it'll all be explained. Maybe it will be, yeah. But it's the simple concept that once they make it alienated, then, you know, you've kind of stepped over a line. But anyway, we addressed it, and there's a lot of good things. We shouldn't keep coming back to it. It's because it's been two weeks. And I will say that to your point with Mar and a few other characters, the characters are pretty good. They've made some very odd accent.
Voivio choices with the NPCs as well. Some of them have different terrestrial accents. some of them will have like a russian kind of accent or an eastern european but then some of them will have an you know more of a They pronounce the same words differently in some cases. I think that that's all just an artifact of... things are recorded independently, right? So nobody hears how the person pronounce it, right? Yeah, for sure.
And it was translated presumably from not, you know, it didn't start as English. Good point. The localization would have been interesting for this game too. But, but the Mars is a standout character. There's. There's the animal handler fellow who is hilarious. Like the voice line, the humor I was going to mention too. I didn't mention it in pre-show as a topic. We'll probably talk about it more later. There's actually quite a bit of pulpy 80s and 90s humor, you know, not just Slade himself is...
Right. Problematic and the typical, you know, Schwarzenegger kind of whatever, Bruce Willis kind of character, which, you know, is fun and he has some. It's humdinger of lines, but also some fun lines. But I will say that they committed to the characters and they're having fun so far with some of these NPCs, you know, like how much the animal handler loves being in. really cares about... I wish I could...
His name is Zelenus. He goes on and on and on. Oh, Zelenus, yeah. He just goes on and on, and he loves those animals, you know, and I can respect that. And he's like, okay, I'll sell you when you eventually buy one. He's like, okay, you're going to sing to it, right? He likes it. she likes to be sung to every night. And Slade's like, oh yeah, yeah. And he makes his comment. I'm totally going to do that. Yeah, yeah. And he makes his comment and he's like,
Yeah, yeah, until I need to eat. And then Zelinus goes, what did you say? Is there nothing, nothing? So it's just some real fun, fun back and forth so far. with with some of the characters so i appreciate that because it's not just They at least made some bold choices and committed and have like a style and a tone. It's not just, you know, the thing, you know, obviously I've worked on Halo, so I don't know if it totally gives me.
you know, permission to say this, but, you know, Halo is very self-serious. And that is, that is an example of like, okay, oh, we played it for the podcast. So I guess it counts, but you know, it's like, okay, the, the characters and the fiction and the lore, like.
very self-serious and like, oh, everything's dire and everything's this and that. And here it's like, oh, these are people. These are, which makes the othering even worse, but these are people and they have great personalities and they have things they care about. So I just didn't expect it in the game. Yeah, I know. You don't see something that's categorized as a shooter and think...
I'm going to have all these conversations with delightful weirdos, you know, and that's a long time. Like some of them are like 10 sentences long. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, another favorite of mine was the priest. who can't remember this key part of his religion. He's like, I just need to see the tablet again. If you could just get the tablet. It's like, I haven't looked at it since I studied it originally.
hundreds of moons ago which i guess is months or hundreds of months ago or whatever they say um hundreds of months ago you know it's like oh okay dude but it's kind of important i'm trying to save your world here could you like you know, help me out. And he's like, well, yeah, just go get it from Mar, you know, and bring it back to me. And, um, you know, and I'll, you know, I just need a little, you can jog my memory. Um, he's also like,
you get to him, he's totally tired and he's like, I really need my Magua, I think is what he's, I think that's what he wants. And it's like, You know, he's a guy who just, he's, he's run out of Magwa. What's Magwa? I don't really know, but, um, is it caffeine? I think it's something like that, but also I think you, in that quest, you basically get it illegally.
So I don't know if it's a drug or what, but it was like, can you go over to this guy that sells this on the side to get the magloform? You know, it's so funny. So there's a lot of little subtle things that are unexpected. Yeah, that one in particular is such a – it's like the funniest justification for a fetch quest. It's like, oh, yeah, I forgot. Can you go get me my notepad that's in a chest?
that I gave to somebody that you then have to blow up with dynamite to open. Yeah. It was like, what? Yeah. Yeah. It's quite a, it's quite a thing. Yeah. So those, I mean, those have been some surprises. I mean, I also, I wanted to mention that. The creature design on the Tuanha, which are the rideable thing. I didn't know I was going to get to ride one of those. That's cool. I mean, I did get the description from somebody who told me.
like what I would have to do in order to ride one. I thought I was going to have to find one in the wild. So that was the part that I didn't quite cotton on to. I'm sure I'm get around to it because there was a quest log in the game. And we can talk about that in a minute, but I really liked, they gave me a real like dark crystal kind of vibe, you know, of just like this creature design, which is.
Like, it makes, you know, some anatomical sense. Like, it's like, okay, this is a believable creature. You know, I could actually see this as sort of a beast of a burden. It's sort of like a... across of like a, I don't know, like a camel and a kangaroo or something. It's like this weird, um, or like a llama maybe more, more than a camel. Um, cause it's got kind of this long neck, but no, no humps or anything.
But it does have this long tail, which made me think of a kangaroo. And it's like, yeah, it's kind of a cool design. I could totally see that. I think they're just two-legged, which is a little strange. Yeah, I think so. Uh, but, um, but yeah, you know, it could, could, could work, you know, like I, it totally made sense to me. Um, and that was kind of a, a thing that I didn't expect either of like. A Dark Crystal was not a thing I thought I would pull from a 1999.
european action game but i i suppose i should like having played Beyond Good and Evil and things like that. It's just that the Europeans definitely have a different, and like even the Raymans and whatever of the world, that there's a different aesthetic sense. And I just forget about it. Because, you know, I don't play as many European games as I play Japanese or American. And they're always just kind of like delightful, the different aesthetics that they have.
That thing in particular stood out to me and really appreciated it. Like, yeah, this is really not something I would see in most of the games that I play. Yep, yep. It's a surprising game for sure. It's really interesting to see what it actually is turning out to be. Again, clearly, I played a little bit of it when it came out, but I clearly... um so it's all been a kind of a nice delightful surprise but the the mounts
I wouldn't say they're OP, but I don't think they take fall damage. They jump really far. Well, really far relatively to this game. They can't go in water, I don't think. But like you can like climb one of the temples by just staying on your mount and you just ride up there. You can jump off of the top of the temple down to below. They're really cool. That's cool.
That makes me think even more kangaroo. Yeah, yeah. But I just applaud them for... I think Pausalinus would feel if they died. Yeah. Well, they do react when you're in combat because you can fire from them too with your gun. So you kind of have mounted combat. And they do, I think, make sounds when you start firing. They're like, I'm not happy about this. Not into this. But I applaud them design-wise because...
Because it's such an open, at least this one is a very open level slash world. The fact that they gave you a mount that is so flexible is surprising to me in this era because I can see a lot of reasons. You know, in this time. I could have seen a lot of reasons that they would limit it and say, oh, you can't go upstairs with it, or you can't do this, you can't do that. It's just a good...
you know, from one point to the other on the terrain, but they kind of don't care. They're like, you know, you go wherever you... you want. That's giving them a lot of credit. It's very possible that they're like, man, it would be really hard to limit this. Oh yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, they do put it. I think they have quote unquote Mount invisible walls while you're on Mount. So for instance, like I said, you can't go, you can't jump across the.
The central moat that goes to the main temple. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. They did put that stuff in, but other than that, it's pretty free reign. I mentioned the quest log earlier. It took me a while to discover it. I am not a person, I know that you do this a lot better than I do, where you kind of prod.
all the menus to see what's in the, in the game. And I kind of like fumble along until I, you know, I accidentally open a thing and go, Oh, what's that? I mean, in this one, it's mostly because the, uh i'm playing windowed and so it's just like a small part of my monitor relatively speaking it's in the center but it's it's not the full screen and um
So actually a lot of the icons and texts are really small. Oh, yeah. And so I... I'm playing on Steam Deck. I can't actually tell looking at it. I'm like, huh. Well, I know that's where the guns are. And that's, you know, I'm in there and I'm like... And this is the inventory down, I think is the inventory, but like left and right or up and right. Rather, I would just not.
look at because i was like i was in there for the inventory i'm looking for the save stone the gomsov um so uh well you know i don't i don't need these other things and then I just happened to accidentally go to the wrong one when I had opened it. I was like, oh my God, there's a whole list of things I'm supposed to be doing. There's a checklist of like. things you can do in this area um and what i haven't figured out yet and i don't know if you have is like is that being dynamically added to
Yeah. As you get, as you have certain conversations or progress, like I think each line.
has probably a state to it. Well, I mean, it turns off when you do it. So the list is persistent. So it's like... and i think they kind of organize it so like three lines and three sentences in a row would be related and you'll do you might see the progression it's not well it's not the usability of it isn't great but But it does keep a running tally, and then when you do something, it'll gray out, and you'll know.
Okay, yeah, I've noticed that things gray out. I guess I've sort of noticed things that are somewhat related. One thing I didn't notice was... One thing I didn't know is that there was a point at which I talked to somebody kind of out of order. Yeah. And. It's sort of like, it reminds me like an Ultima game where... You can talk to people, and if you know what words they'll respond to, you know, historically with Ultima, it was like, you do name, job.
And that gives you like a little bit more information to go on with the character. But if you already knew that you could talk to somebody about whatever, a particular city or something like that, you could just type that in. And they would respond to it. They wouldn't know that you never found that in the world.
And it's the same thing here is where you go and talk to somebody and they have the topics that they'll talk about. And that's not a dynamic list of topics. It's just, these are the things this person knows about. So if you. nobody's told you to talk to Zelenus yet, but you talk to the person who knows who Zelenus is, you can actually skip a step of a, of a quest.
I talked to him and he was like, oh, you can find Zelenis over there. And I think if I had gone and talked to Zelenis, he still would have been like, well, here and you can get a, you know, you can get this thing to bring to the. You know, the guy who needs a Tuanha or whatever. And I would have skipped whatever got me to Zelinas, you know, whatever the order is. I'm making up the example because I noticed that at one point I was like, oh, I don't know if I had.
was replaying or if I just happened upon something, but I was like, Oh, I didn't know to ask this person about this, but it was there already. Um, and that's why I asked about the quest log because the quest log, um, I think when I found it, it already had 12 things in it. And it was only later that I discovered that you could scroll it as well. So it was like, oh, there's like 20 things in here. I could only see 12. There's a lot of little UX things that it needs help with.
you know, it says show me that there's more stuff, for example. Um, Maybe there's a scroll bar and it's super thin in the resolution I'm using. Anyway, I was not expecting a quest log either. I'd been taking very detailed notes about what I was supposed to be doing.
because i was worried that i was going to forget you know in between sessions i play like once a week right you know so i was like taking these really detailed notes and now i'm like i don't have to take any notes at all it's all right here You know, I could just go pick up a thread here and follow it back. And I was really appreciative, even if it's a little janky to get to it or to like, even though it's there, dig into it.
I was really pleased to find it there. So it was another surprise, I have to say. And it might be the theme of this whole thing is like, huh, what a surprising game. So it might be the big takeaway. Surprise your players again and again and again. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a similar era to some other stuff we've played. It's a similar era to...
European games, like we talked about too, you know, especially in that region. Maybe there are surprises to us and they shouldn't, they wouldn't be to others. I don't know. Yeah. Not being European developers at that time, of course, or ever. It is like, I know you might mention a, I don't know if you're going to mention the voice actor thing, but revelation that you had, but it's, it'll come up in our mail. Okay. Yeah. But, but.
Is it milieu? Yeah, there's a sort of milieu to some of the games we've actually played semi-recently from this region that you can kind of see them. in the same family. And it's very fascinating. That's always fascinating. I mean, there's something to be said for... shooters or something, you know what I mean? It's like, there's a milieu there too, you know, of various, of a certain time. Yeah, it's a scene, right? You know, that feeds itself. And I think that...
You know, it makes me curious, you know, and maybe if we have European listeners, I know we have at least one because we got an email this week. But I also think we had somebody who suggested this game, not the same person. you know, they know what are the games that they think this was building on? I would just love to know. I'm just really curious about it because it is so... opaque to me um it is it is one thing i'm just i find myself really curious about is like what
What did these guys play, you know, who made this game? The lineage of it all, yeah. Yeah, what did they play that made them think, ah, now we have to make Outkast, right? Um, you know, that was, that was, you know, probably also like, what were they reading? I mean, I think we know what movies they were watching more or less, but, um, But, you know, what were their what were their inputs, you know, that that got them to this? Yeah, I'm really.
As I play, I still keep – I brought it up I think in the first episode, but I still – often my mind wanders to populace again. Yeah, yeah. Because we have the sort of like, again, almost like alternate reality versions of – Peter Mullaney's direction and then Sid Meier's direction and kind of like they both exist and they both even existed at the same time but they both were coming at it from a totally different direction.
you know, and obviously one is just number sevens just coming out. And, you know, Peter's still doing stuff, but it's just interesting that these forks in the road are always so fast. And yeah, and just Populous was such a weird game for that time. But looking back, it was not. It was just trying something differently. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely a thing we should probably do more of. I've alluded to it a couple of times now.
So I think we'll turn to it, and that's the email that we got about this game from a fan, somebody who played it back in the day, and his sort of brief reminiscence about it. This was sent to devgameclub at gmail.com. If you could read it, please. Oh, and I'll mention in advance, I removed the name of a current game because we try not to disparage current games. We'll get to the point in the mail and it'll be like, I'm playing a new game.
you know, I didn't put in the specifics of what game that was, but I think the point stands without knowing that game specifically. So just to, just to kind of put that out there. Okay. Go ahead, sir. Yeah. All right. Now I'm going to be intrigued if I can guess. Outcast is so idiosyncratic, it occupied my whole brain.
Hi, both. It's exciting to hear you guys cover Outcast. That game has a very special place in my heart. I finished it twice back then within a very short time. I think the reason I was so entirely captivated by it... is exactly that it is so unconventional. Its combination of its voxel graphics... controls including its gliding, dreamlike movement scheme, the weird language, the animations, even the music.
by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, I did not know that, demanded from you that you meet the game on its terms. That fit very well with the concept of entering a foreign and strange world. Today, even more than in 1999, asking a player to go all in like that may sound like a bad design. But for me, it made for a very rewarding experience. I felt like OutKast occupied my whole brain.
or similar for me in that regard. Compare that to a new game I'm playing. I am mildly enjoying it, but am very aware I am doing typical video game stuff, but with different textures. Outkast makes one big exception in meeting you somewhat halfway, and it comes in the form of the... action sci-fi cliches it throws at you, especially in the beginning. I played a German version, which emphasized this by giving Cutter Slade the German voice.
Of Bruce Willis, Germany has a very strong dubbing industry. Almost all film releases are dubbed as standard. Thank you. Thank you for the podcast. It's a wonderful project and I enjoy the chemistry between you both. I think that's hydrogen. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, hydrogen sulfide is the chemical he's talking about. Yeah, obviously the casting makes a lot of sense. I should reveal at this point that I also looked up who does the English.
voice for Carter Slade, and it's the same voice actor who did Page, which is another connection to Beyond Good and Evil. So they're there if you look. I was surprised. I can sort of hear it. It's a pretty distinct voice.
They're definitely playing in the Bruce Willis game. Yeah, Bruce Willis is so awesome that they got that same. I mean, imagine playing as – I mean, now I'm trying to imagine being Vitor and kind of playing it in its time. I think Vitor – unconventionality um if that's a word um and just the combination of all the things that it's doing it makes it such a gem of almost like, you know, video game history, not to put a call out to what we were talking about earlier, but just playing it.
as a German person with that voice actor in the game. like elevates it so much as well. Can you imagine if we were playing it in 1999, it was Bruce Willis? Bruce Willis? Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. It legitimizes it even more so. It's probably very high quality. So yeah, that's really, thank you for sharing that. I would have never, I would have never known that. And we didn't talk about it. Maybe we'll talk about it next time, but I do want to say I love it.
it elevates the game even more so. It's very John Williams to me so far. And you're doing a lot of running around, so you're not doing all that much. But boy, the music makes it feel like you are. So they did a great job with the... Yeah, we can talk about it more later because I think there's some interactive music type stuff we can definitely talk about there because I've noticed a lot of...
game state information coming through in the music as well. Yeah, for combat, for sure. Yeah, but thanks for letting us know, Vitor. And if you are a person who is old enough to kind of like be able to connect the dots on what games... led to this i'd love i'd love to hear them i don't i don't know that i'll have time to get around to playing them unless some particularly stand out to me but i am really
So I'll throw that out there as a, as another ask. And again, to, to anybody. And that's at, um, again, at dev game club at gmail.com. You can also send us reviews. We love to read them on the air when we get them. You know, if you use a platform other than Apple, go ahead and let us know and we can find them that way.
We're on the web at devgameclub.com and my co-host here is twitching somewhat regularly at twitch.tv slash Tim Longer Jr. with a J-R at the end. Do I have this right? You've returned to Dark Souls 2? I have. Yeah. As of last week, I should be doing it tomorrow as well. Yeah. I just missed it. I missed the souls. I needed to. Very rusty. I'm very rusty, but I did go back to the dagger. Of course, you're rusty like your dagger. Yeah, better nice back. And I'm enjoying it. I'm glad to be back.
Yeah, I actually read over break because I just took my Kindle with me. So I had a ton of stuff that's been in there for a while. the dark souls you died, uh, compendium collection of essays or whatever. And it made me really itching to get, get back to it. I don't know that it really fits my life right now, so I'm probably not gonna, but I was definitely looking at it like...
Yeah, I never did get the platinum trophy on that. Hmm, maybe I should go back. On Dark Souls 2? No, the original. Oh, on the original. Oh my gosh, what does that even mean?
What do you have to do? You have to make all the weapons, which is the biggest thing. Oh, no. Yeah, and so that takes a while. And then... all the bosses including optional there's like a number of sorts of things and it takes apparently like two and a half playthroughs and you like have to I mean I would use a guide because it's the weapon stuff that I wouldn't know how to do although I did do a ton of
You got far in that. I did so much extra stuff in that. I probably have a fair amount done. You're making me so nostalgic for that game now. I know, right? When I was streaming last week and people were coming on and like... Why are you playing this? I thought you were going to do Trespasser or something else.
And I was like, yeah, I just missed it. And Bio came on. And I was sort of like, oh, man, I just missed Dark Souls. And he's like, why don't we just go back to play Dark Souls 1 then? Why are you playing this if you miss it? I think about that game way too much. Yeah, clearly. It only comes up every week on the podcast. We have a fan run discord who once a year organize a cool event. There will be a link in the show notes.
Our intro and outro music was written and performed by Kirk Hamilton, commissioned by a friend of the cast, Aaron Evers, and our logo, merch store, that Discord, all kinds of stuff, all by Mark Garcia. Have fun looking for a Magwa this week, and good night. Hey, I got your magwa right here. I'm afraid to know what a magwa is. What is a magwa?