gaming

peter-molyneux-is-back-with-yet-another-new-take-on-the-“god-game”

Peter Molyneux is back with yet another new take on the “god game”

gaming, Peter Molyneux / /

Black & White + Fable = ??? —

Masters of Albion promises “an open world… full of combat, choices, mysteries, and story.”

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  • Welcome back to Albion.

    22cans

  • When gods play with Legos, they use building-sized pieces.

    22cans

  • Crank up that tilt-shift filter, boys. We’re making a god game!

    22cans

  • FIREBALL

    22cans

  • Zombies. How original.

    22cans

  • Running into battle with a flaming sword? In a god game?

    22cans

If you’re a gamer of a certain age, you probably have fond memories of Peter Molyneux as the mind behind ambitious games like Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and the Fable series. If you’re of a slightly younger age, you probably remember him as the serial overpromiser behind Project Godus and a recent NFT game that somehow attracted $54 million in player pre-investment (it did actually launch in some form last year).

I bring up this history because, after years of keeping his head down, Molyneux made a surprise appearance at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live event. He was there to introduce Masters of Albion, a title that host Geoff Keighley said Molyneux has “secretly been working on for the past three years” and which Molyneux himself describes as “an open-world god game full of combat, choices, mysteries, and story.”

A short, early trailer for the game takes us back to Fable‘s “familiar vast world of Albion, packed with stories, quests, treasures, and monsters.” There, the residents of the town of Oakridge have to work to gather and process resources by day and then defend themselves from hordes of creatures by night.

You get to help those citizens out as the kind of disembodied god hand that will be extremely familiar to players of the Black & White games from decades past. That hand can help direct resources, design new buildings like Lego bricks, or cheekily drop villagers from high in the sky.

Players will also be able to leave god mode and possess characters like the “Town Hero,” who in the trailer engages in some extremely generic melee combat with some exceedingly generic-looking zombies. If your hero gets overwhelmed, don’t worry, you can just switch back to your god hand and unleash some powerful lightning and fireball attacks.

Do what you want

The trailer talks up the deep levels of micromanaging customization you can engage with, down to designing the resident’s food, clothes, weapons, and armor. “You can be as silly as you want,” Molyneux intones as the trailer shows a sword made of a loaf of bread (which “doesn’t cut it”) and well after a scene where he force-feeds rats to the town’s citizenry (who react with Sims-like overemotion).

Following some controversial funding issues for recent games, Molyneux is self-funding the development of Masters of Albion, leading a team of 20 that includes Bullfrog/Lionhead veterans like Mark Healey, Russell Shaw, and Iain Wright. “I think my first realization was I had to get the old team back together again,” Molyneux said of the developers he’s gathered to “make something new, unique, and different.”

You can already wishlist Masters of Albion on a fresh Steam page that goes on to promise “a world full of quests and moral choice” as you “unravel the mystery of the mages, defeat the enemy that lurks in the night and conquer a sorcery that could kill us all.” You’ll forgive us for waiting until the game is released to see if it lives up to that promise.

Listing image by 22cans

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the-great-circle-is-indiana-jones-for-a-post-uncharted-world

The Great Circle is Indiana Jones for a post-Uncharted world

gaming / /
A time traveler with a flashlight would blow Indiana Jones' mind.

Enlarge / A time traveler with a flashlight would blow Indiana Jones’ mind.

At first glance, Wolfenstein: The New Order developer MachineGames might seem like an awkward fit for the first (non-Lego) Indiana Jones video game since the Wii era. While there’s some overlap in the over-the-top Nazi villain department, the “shoot your way through every obstacle” nature of the new Wolfenstein games doesn’t seem to lend itself well to Indy’s more free-wheeling, adventurous exploration style.

For the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, director Jerk Gustafsson said that going from first-person shooter to a “MachineGames adventure” style change has been a difficult tightrope walk for the developers. While the team never wanted to prevent the player from using their revolver during action scenes, there was the potential that giving a player that freedom would allow them to “just shoot their way through” in a way that’s antithetical to Jones’ character.

To help avoid this problem, Creative Director Alex Torvenius said most of the game has been balanced so that “it’s dangerous to shoot your gun and it’s dangerous to be shot at.” Guns-blazing action will be a winning strategy in some in-game situations, but “[there are] many scenarios where you can go through the environment without using guns at all,” he continued.

The design is focused on “trying to make sure you should foremost try to use your wits and your whip… navigating around an enemy rather than through them,” Torvenius added. “The only solution in this game is absolutely not to shoot your way through.”

The hand-to-hand combat of the <em>Chronicles of Riddick</em> games was a big inspiration for MachineGames.” height=”480″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/riddick.jpg” width=”640″></img><figcaption> <p>The hand-to-hand combat of the <em>Chronicles of Riddick</em> games was a big inspiration for MachineGames.</p> </figcaption></figure> <p>Gustafsson said this design was heavily inspired by <a href=the early 2000s Chronicles of Riddick games, which many of the MachineGames team worked on directly. As in those games, the combat focus in Great Circle is more on hand-to-hand fights or using improvised weapons gleaned from the immediate environment.

Gustafsson said he “likes to see the whip as the entry point to combat,” and during a short gameplay session viewed by Ars Technica, we saw that whip being used to disarm unaware enemies, trip them up from a sentry position, or simply to swing in from above to get the jump on them. We also saw Indy doing the tried-and-true “throw a bottle to make the guards think I’m over there” trick and using nearby hammers and even rolling pins as handy melee or throwing weapons. The revolver only came out occasionally during the demo, such as to take out a sentry on a far-off scaffolding.

The change in style from the guns-first Wolfenstein games has been a fun one for the studio, Gustafsson said. “You can see on the team the step from going from what we are so used to doing—the guns blazing, crazy shooting experience that we have done—to something that is much more lighthearted… It has taken some time to shepherd that transition for sure, but it has been refreshing for the team, for the studio.”

“Ignore the shooting part”

To help shepherd that transition, Gustafsson said the team decided to just “ignore the shooting part” early in the game’s development, in part because “we know that we can do it well, we know that we can get that right.” Instead, the early focus was on a scene that incorporated the many types of non-shooting tasks that would be integrated into the game, such as exploration, stealth, and traversing around trap-filled environments, as well as the aforementioned hand-to-hand combat.

Scenery-chewing Nazi villain? Check!

Enlarge / Scenery-chewing Nazi villain? Check!

Set in 1937 during the gap between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, The Great Circle starts with a break-in that focuses on a priceless relic in Jones’ home. Pursuing that break-in leads Jones and a team of unlikely allies to a set of mystical stones arranged in the titular “great circle” of locations that map a full arc around the globe. In pursuing those stones, the team is trying to outrun Dr. Emmerich Voss, a Nazi scientist who sees the artifacts as an otherworldly force that’s key to a grand global conspiracy.

The scenery-chewing villain and McGuffin-filled plot are all in service to gameplay focused heavily on exploration. Using a period-appropriate camera, Indy can take photos of various clues and detritus around the environment, providing the player with important spoken and written background information as he does (it’s like an old-fashioned version of Metroid Prime‘s scan visor). All those photos and clues go into a continually updated scrapbook that the player can consult at any time to solve minor mysteries and figure out what to do next.

The Great Circle is Indiana Jones for a post-Uncharted world Read More »

nvidia-is-ditching-dedicated-g-sync-modules-to-push-back-against-freesync’s-ubiquity

Nvidia is ditching dedicated G-Sync modules to push back against FreeSync’s ubiquity

freesync, g-sync, gaming, GeForce, NVIDIA, Tech / /

sync or swim —

But G-Sync will still require specific G-Sync-capable MediaTek scaler chips.

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Nvidia is ditching dedicated G-Sync modules to push back against FreeSync’s ubiquity

Nvidia

Back in 2013, Nvidia introduced a new technology called G-Sync to eliminate screen tearing and stuttering effects and reduce input lag when playing PC games. The company accomplished this by tying your display’s refresh rate to the actual frame rate of the game you were playing, and similar variable refresh-rate (VRR) technology has become a mainstay even in budget monitors and TVs today.

The issue for Nvidia is that G-Sync isn’t what has been driving most of that adoption. G-Sync has always required extra dedicated hardware inside of displays, increasing the costs for both users and monitor manufacturers. The VRR technology in most low-end to mid-range screens these days is usually some version of the royalty-free AMD FreeSync or the similar VESA Adaptive-Sync standard, both of which provide G-Sync’s most important features without requiring extra hardware. Nvidia more or less acknowledged that the free-to-use, cheap-to-implement VRR technologies had won in 2019 when it announced its “G-Sync Compatible” certification tier for FreeSync monitors. The list of G-Sync Compatible screens now vastly outnumbers the list of G-Sync and G-Sync Ultimate screens.

Today, Nvidia is announcing a change that’s meant to keep G-Sync alive as its own separate technology while eliminating the requirement for expensive additional hardware. Nvidia says it’s partnering with chipmaker MediaTek to build G-Sync capabilities directly into scaler chips that MediaTek is creating for upcoming monitors. G-Sync modules ordinarily replace these scaler chips, but they’re entirely separate boards with expensive FPGA chips and dedicated RAM.

These new MediaTek scalers will support all the same features that current dedicated G-Sync modules do. Nvidia says that three G-Sync monitors with MediaTek scaler chips inside will launch “later this year”: the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQNR, the Acer Predator XB273U F5, and the AOC AGON PRO AG276QSG2. These are all 27-inch 1440p displays with maximum refresh rates of 360 Hz.

As of this writing, none of these companies has announced pricing for these displays—the current Asus PG27AQN has a traditional G-Sync module and a 360 Hz refresh rate and currently goes for around $800, so we’d hope for the new version to be significantly cheaper to make good on Nvidia’s claim that the MediaTek chips will reduce costs (or, if they do reduce costs, whether monitor makers are willing to pass those savings on to consumers).

For most people most of the time, there won’t be an appreciable difference between a “true” G-Sync monitor and one that uses FreeSync or Adaptive-Sync, but there are still a few fringe benefits. G-Sync monitors support a refresh rate between 1 and the maximum refresh rate of the monitor, whereas FreeSync and Adaptive-Sync stop working on most displays when the frame rate drops below 40 or 48 frames per second. All G-Sync monitors also support “variable overdrive” technology to help eliminate display ghosting, and the new MediaTek-powered displays will support the recent “G-Sync Pulsar” feature to reduce blur.

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your-10-year-old-graphics-card-can-run-dragon-age:-the-veilguard

Your 10-year-old graphics card can run Dragon Age: The Veilguard

dragon age 4, gaming, NVIDIA / /

Still kicking —

2014’s Nvidia GTX 970 is still a “minimum requirements” workhorse.

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At this rate, it might be the only graphics card you'll ever need?

Enlarge / At this rate, it might be the only graphics card you’ll ever need?

When Dragon Age: Inquisition came out nearly 10 years ago, PC players could have invested $329 (~$435 in today’s dollars) in a brand-new GTX 970 graphics card to make the game look as good as possible on their high-end gaming rig. Surprisingly enough, that very same 2014 graphics card will still be able to run follow-up Dragon Age: The Veilguard (previously known as Dreadwolf) when it launches on October 31. If you’re using AMD cards, an even older Radeon R9 that you purchased back in 2013 will be able to run the game.

Veilguard‘s minimum specs are just the latest to show the workmanlike endurance of the humble GTX 970, which is currently available used on Newegg for as low as $140. Relatively recent big-budget PC releases like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 both use the old card (or the less powerful follow-up variant, the GTX 960) as their “minimum requirement” benchmark.

Not every big-budget PC game these days is so forgiving with its minimum specs, though. When Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom: Eternal launched in 2020, they both asked players to be sporting at least a GTX 1060, which had come out around four years prior.

For a bit of context, the GTX 970 was used as the “recommended” baseline spec for the mid-range “Oculus Ready” PCs needed to power the then-new Rift VR headset when it launched in 2016. Today, a $500 Meta Quest 3 headset gives you much better graphical performance in a self-contained portable package, no gaming PC required.

Veilguard players sticking with a GTX 970 shouldn’t expect to get the best graphical experience, of course. EA suggests an RTX 2070 (circa 2018) or a Radeon RX 5700Xt (circa 2019) to run the game at “recommended” specs. And you’ll need at least 16 GB of RAM and 100 GB of storage space.

Since work on Veilguard began in earnest in 2015, the game has suffered a string of high-profile staff departures: Creative Director Mike Laidlaw left in 2017; Executive Producer Mark Darrah and BioWare General Manager Casey Hudson left in late 2020; Senior Creative Director Matt Goldman left in late 2021; replacement Executive Producer Christian Daley left in early 2022; and producer Mac Walters left in early 2023.

The full requirements for Dragon Age: The Veilguard are as follows.

Minimum Requirements

OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 3 3300X(see notes)

Memory: 16GB

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 970/1650 / AMD Radeon R9 290X

DirectX: Version 12

Storage: 100GB available space

Additional Notes: SSD preferred, HDD supported; AMD CPUs on Windows 11 require AGESA V2 1.2.0.7

Recommended Requirements

OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i9-9900K / AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (see notes)

Memory: 16GB

Graphics: Nvidia RTX 2070 / AMD Radeon RX 5700XT

DirectX: Version 12

Storage: 100GB SSD available space

Additional Notes: SSD required; AMD CPUs on Windows 11 require AGESA V2 1.2.0.7

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epic-games-store-and-fortnite-arrive-on-eu-iphones

Epic Games Store and Fortnite arrive on EU iPhones

Apple, dma, epic games, epic games store, EU, fortnite, gaming, iOS, IPhone, Tech / /

It’s still a mess —

Epic also launched its store on Android.

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Artist's conception of Epic dodging harm from Apple's decisions (and perhaps its own).

Enlarge / Artist’s conception of Epic dodging harm from Apple’s decisions (and perhaps its own).

It’s been four years since Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games, was pulled from the Apple App Store in a blaze of controversy and finger-pointing. Today, it’s returning to the iPhone—but only in the European Union.

Today marks the launch of the Epic Games Store on Android and iOS—iOS just in Europe, Android worldwide. Right now, it just has three games: Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Fall Guys. And you’ll have to be in Europe to access it on your iPhone.

The Epic Games Store is run by Epic Games, the same company that develops and publishes Fortnite. Most folks who have been paying attention to either Epic or Apple in recent years knows the story at this point, but here’s the quick summary and analysis.

Opinion: Users are still the losers after four years

At the direction of CEO Tim Sweeney, Epic knowingly made changes to Fortnite related to digital payments that violated Apple’s terms for developers on the platform. Apple removed Fortnite accordingly, and a long, ugly PR and legal battle ensued between the two companies in multiple countries and regions.

In the US, a judge’s decision granted some small wins to Epic and other developers seeking to loosen Apple’s grip on the platform, but it kept the status quo for the most part.

Things went a little differently in Europe. EU legislators and regulators enacted the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which had far-reaching implications for how Apple and Google run their app stores. Among other things, the new law required Apple to allow third-party, alternative app stores (basically, sideloading) on the iPhone.

Apple’s compliance was far from enthusiastic (the company cited security and privacy concerns for users, which is valid, but the elephant in the room is, of course, its confident grip on app revenues on its platforms), and it was criticized for trying to put up barriers. Additionally, Apple rejected Epic’s attempts to launch its app store multiple times for a few arcane reasons amid a flurry of almost comically over-the-top tweets from Sweeney criticizing the company.

Despite Apple’s foot-dragging, Epic has finally reached the point where it could launch its app store. Epic had already launched a relatively successful App Store on PC, where Valve’s Steam holds a strong grip on users. The new iPhone app store doesn’t offer nearly as many options or perks as the PC version, but Epic says it’s working on wrangling developers onto its store.

It also says it will release its games on other alternative app stores on iOS and Android, such as AltStore PAL.

It’s been a long, winding, angry path to get to this point. In the battle between Epic and Apple, there remains some debate about who really has won up to this point. But there isn’t much dispute that, whether you want to blame Apple or Epic or both, users sure haven’t been the winners.

Epic Games Store and Fortnite arrive on EU iPhones Read More »

the-crimson-diamond-is-a-wonderful-ega-like-graphic-adventure-game-for-2024

The Crimson Diamond is a wonderful EGA-like graphic adventure game for 2024

adventure games, gaming, graphic adventure games, Sierra Games, sierra online, text parser, text parsing, the crimson diamond / /

But don’t get it wrong—you can definitely die —

The parser works much better than you’d think, and the mystery is pitch-perfect.

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Cover art for The Crimson Diamond

In my mind, this image is slowly drawing into place, with the text arriving last.

Julia Minamata

A text parser? Typing in “Open drawer,” then “Look in drawer,” then “Take brochures,” in the year 2024, on a computer that can generate a 4K 3D model of the Acropolis if I ask it to? Is that really what The Crimson Diamond asks of us?

Yes, it is, and solo developer/writer/producer Julia Minamata is right to ask it. If you have text-prompt adventures from the likes of Sierra in your mental library (like, say, The Colonel’s Bequest), or if you’re willing to meet the parser halfway, it will work. The Crimson Diamond’s parser is fairly agile, accepting a range of nouns and verbs in most circumstances. You can still use arrow keys and a mouse to move and click a few useful shortcuts. And the parser has shortcuts, like typing “n” to look at your quest-tracking notebook or “o d” or “o c” for the very common actions of opening a door or cabinet.

There are a lot of cabinets and drawers in this game because it’s set in northern Ontario, Canada, in 1914. You are Nancy Maple, a junior geologist eager for some field work, sent by your museum to the mining town of Crimson to investigate a diamond that fell out of a river fish’s guts. Everything goes wrong with your trip, and you’re on your own to investigate this town, its odd inhabitants and visitors, and, eventually, a crime that may or may not have to do with potential diamonds.

  • The tutorial room does a great job introducing you to the control scheme: arrow keys or mouse cursor for movement and selecting, but typing for actual action.

    Julia Minamata

  • You spend a fair deal of time in the lodge, talking and looking and picking up little things you know you’ll use later.

    Julia Minamata

  • Cutscenes give the artist new angles from which to demonstrate their remarkable EGA prowess.

    Julia Minamata

  • The characters in this game are richer than you might remember from more memory-limited days, usually having more than one note to them.

    Julia Minamata

A few disclosures must be made. For one, Minamata crafted the EGA-style social avatar for Ars Senior AI Reporter Benj Edwards, who tipped me to this game’s existence. Another is that this is a game that costs $15 on Steam or Itch.io (and 10 percent off on Steam in this first week after release), was made by a solo Canadian developer, with music by notably cool keyboard person Dan Policar, and it evokes some of my earliest, pre-Maniac-Mansion adventure game memories. I also have not played the game to completion. I will not be taking a critical gem loupe to it; I just think more people need to know about it.

Release trailer for The Crimson Diamond

Nostalgia and underdog-cheering sentiments aside, The Crimson Diamond looks and sounds great. The creative constraints of an EGA-like color palette and pixel block size delivered some scenes that are just wonderful to look at. The soundtrack loops about in pleasant and occasionally ear-catching fashion. Alice Bell at Rock Paper Shotgun played much further into this (about six hours and near or at completion), and her major complaint is almost a throwback: a few puzzles with obscure solutions, entirely too easy to miss with text parsing and EGA graphics.

I’m eager to see where Nancy Maple’s journey takes her, even if I have to sometimes wrack my brain for the right text to do the obvious thing. The game so far has felt like spending time inside one of those non-violent mysteries you see on PBS (or CBC), just inside a familiar and evocative game form.

Listing image by Julia Minamata

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saudi-man-earns-world-record-for-444-game-consoles-hooked-to-one-tv

Saudi man earns world record for 444 game consoles hooked to one TV

gaming / /

Still nothing good to play —

Ibrahim Al-Nasser said he got tired of juggling plugs just to play his collection.

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Those of us who collect classic game consoles and computers (here’s looking at you, AI reporter Benj Edwards) know the difficulty of keeping all that hardware not just working but instantly accessible with a simple press of a power button. Too often, large hardware collections end up languishing, boxed up on shelves, or sitting loose and unconnected to a display for long periods.

Saudi Arabia’s Ibrahim Al-Nasser grew tired of having that problem with his massive gaming collection, so he decided to hook 444 different gaming devices up to a single TV, earning a Guinness World Record in the process.

“After a while, I noticed that I had a big stack of gaming consoles that I couldn’t play,” Al-Nasser said in a video filmed by Guinness. “The TV ports are limited, and if I want to play, I either unplug the existing consoles or I’ll keep everything and add more switchers and of course more converters as well. By adding more switchers, the idea came to my mind to connect all of the gaming consoles I have to the TV, then contact Guinness World Records because this project is unique.”

Guinness says Al-Nasser makes use of “more than 12” HDMI switchers (so… 13?) to keep his collection connected, as well as “over 30” RCA switchers for pre-HD consoles (though some older consoles, like an N64 used in the video, apparently make use of converters for an HD connection). While the HD consoles seem to automatically switch to the correct input when turned on, Al-Nasser uses a massive spreadsheet to keep track of which button to push on which RCA switcher to connect the right cables.

Wait, there are 444 consoles?

A Nintendo-heavy section of Al-Nasser's collection.

Enlarge / A Nintendo-heavy section of Al-Nasser’s collection.

Al-Nasser’s collection seems quite extensive, including both common modern consoles and relative rarities like the Asia-exclusive Super A’Can. To get to a record-setting count of 444, though, Al-Nasser had to include a lot of non-traditional “game consoles,” including cheap plug-and-play devices, mini-console re-releases, gaming computers, Android-based HDMI sticks, “consolized arcades,” and more.

That’s all good enough to count for Guinness, which has faced controversy for letting would-be record holders pay for a chance at glory. In the gaming world, it famously removed and then reinstated Billy Mitchell’s scoring records amid a lawsuit threat.

Even if the hardware count feels a bit inflated, Al-Nasser definitely deserves credit for keeping so many pieces of gaming hardware clean and well-organized without any of the sloppy cable clutter you might expect. “I use all the tools available in the market… to organize the cables,” he said. “It’s like a museum, that’s why it took too much time for me [to organize].”

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behold,-diablo-is-fully-playable-in-your-browser

Behold, Diablo is fully playable in your browser

Blizzard, Diablo, gaming, GitHub / /

Stay a while and compile —

It controls and looks great, though the game was outshined by its sequels.

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A browser window shows an old PC game

Enlarge / Diablo running in Firefox on macOS.

Samuel Axon

You can now play the original Diablo (and its expansion, Hellfire) in virtually any web browser on any computer with generally excellent performance and operating-as-expected controls. It’s all thanks to an open source project published on GitHub called Diabloweb that’s now being circulated by game developers on X.

In the README file in the project’s GitHub repository, the project’s developer (d07RiV) notes that it is based on DevilutionX, another open source project that did a lot of legwork to make Diablo run well on modern operating systems.

“I’ve modified the code to remove all dependencies and exposed the minimal required interface with JS, allowing the game to be compiled into WebAssembly,” writes d07RiV. “Event handling (especially in the menus) had to be modified significantly to fit the JS model.”

It’s pretty easy to set up; you just visit the website, upload a file, and get going.

You have to upload a file because the project doesn’t include the Diablo game files—you’ll have to provide those in the form of the DIABDAT.MPQ file in the Diablo install directory.

There are three above-board ways to source this MPQ file. First, you can, of course, own a physical copy of the original game. Alternatively, you can purchase the game on GOG and install it, then pull the file from the installation directory.

There’s also a shareware release of Diablo, and you can pull the SPAWN.MPQ file from that, and it works just fine. That’s not the full game, though, so that’s more for if you just want to try it.

  • This is the Diabloweb site, which offers brief instructions and prompts on how to get started.

    Samuel Axon

  • I downloaded the Diablo installer from GOG and ran it in a Windows VM on my Mac…

  • Here’s the file we’re looking for.

  • It was just a click on the website to upload that file and behold, Diablo in a browser.

    Samuel Axon

I played the game for about half an hour using the MPQ from the GOG version without any issues on Firefox on a Mac. (There’s no Mac version of the GOG installer, though, so I had to run the installer in a virtual Windows machine to get at the file.) The game is obviously primitive compared to more recent entries in the series (or even Diablo II), but it is an addictive blast to play regardless.

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mysterious-“black-mesa”-website-says-it’s-“not-secretly-working-on-half-life-3”

Mysterious “Black Mesa” website says it’s “not secretly working on Half Life 3”

Black Mesa, gaming, Half-Life 3, Valve Software / /

That’s what they want you to think —

It’s “actually a real company in the Boston area”—or is that just a cover?!

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Kind of a weird image to post if you're trying to convince people you're not involved in a <em>Half-Life</em> ARG…” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/blackmesa-800×449.jpg”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / Kind of a weird image to post if you’re trying to convince people you’re not involved in a Half-Life ARG…

Here at Ars, we’re always on the lookout for hints and actions that suggest the long, long wait for Half-Life 3 may eventually come to an end. So when users across the Internet started making note of the mysterious and intriguingly named BlackMesa.com recently, our ears perked up for signs of a new promotional alternate reality game (ARG).

Alas, this seems like yet another false alarm. BlackMesa.com is simply the website for Black Mesa, which confirmed in a public statement that it is “actually a real company in the Boston area… working hard to assure and secure vaccine and other biological manufacturing production.”

HALF LIFE 3 MIGHT BE GETTING ANNOUNCED ON SEPTEMBER 30THhttps://t.co/hSytiq2GoR Just went live and it has a countdown at the bottom of the page, that ends on September 30th. When it finishes it will display a white text saying “That’s it.” pic.twitter.com/MK3QveRc6R

— PеQu (@ImPeQu) August 9, 2024

The BlackMesa.com domain name dates back to at least 2006, when the address was filled with search engine optimization ads by an outfit called MDNH, Inc. But in 2022, a page advertising the domain’s availability for purchase was suddenly replaced by a mysterious logo that bears a striking resemblance to the fictional Black Mesa logo in the games. And then there’s the hard-to-read cipher at the bottom, the kind of thing that an ARG might use to hide important information in plain sight.

The site stayed like that, to little wider notice or suspicion, until August 8, when Valve fans on social media began to “[wake] up to a Black Mesa website” that had suddenly been updated with a new header declaring, “Science requires process. Our insight defends it.” Others on social media were quick to note the old cipher text as a well as a new, obfuscated JavaScript countdown function with the internal name “Lambda Incident”. That countdown seemed to be pointing toward something happening on September 30, which seems like as good a time as any to announce Half-Life 3, right?

Truth is less interesting than fiction

The old Black Mesa web site, as it appeared for roughly two years, until last week. Note the cipher text on the bottom.

Enlarge / The old Black Mesa web site, as it appeared for roughly two years, until last week. Note the cipher text on the bottom.

The Valve faithful hoping this was a new version of the old Portal 2 Potato ARG had their hopes quickly dashed, though. Internet sleuths soon found a digital paper trail for Charles Fracchia, a research scientist who is listed on LinkedIn and elsewhere as the founder of “Black Mesa, a stealth company developing technologies that create provable assurance for advanced manufacturing workflows” since back in 2022. And by last Friday, the Black Mesa team put up a blog post quashing any game-related rumors that might be circulating.

“As much as we would be honored to be part of any Valve game—we do not work in this sector at all,” the blog post reads. “We are not secretly working on Half-Life 3, Project White Sands (whatever that is/may be) or any other Valve title—we’re just nerds working to secure the global bioeconomy.”

The team went on to thank the Half-Life community that had sent in “a ton of messages of support and curiosity” about the company, as well as “thousands of fake inquiries” that “made us laugh.” As for that old ciphertext? Turns out solving it simply unlocked a recruitment message seeking “engineers, cybersecurity professionals, and biologists” for the company. “KingPotatoVII please reach out, we’ve been trying to send you some swag for cracking the cipher a while back,” the Black Mesa team wrote with a smiley face emoji.

Any excuse to repost this video is a good one.

Despite the revelation of the real Black Mesa corporation, some hangers-on haven’t quite given up hope that this is all still just an extremely subtle bit of stealth marketing. “What if [actual scientist Charles Fraschia] is such a huge fan of Half-Life, like us, and decided to use his image/likeness to do this ARG for the game?” one Reddit user wrote last week. “Maybe he reached out and absolutely went full madlad with Valve to make this a magnum opus of an ARG. … Could be simply someone is heavy trolling us, and to be honest I’m not even mad because this is fun af!”

Keep hope alive, Valve faithful! Half-Life 3 is obviously just around the corner, no matter what anyone says! The truth is out there for those with eyes to see it!

Mysterious “Black Mesa” website says it’s “not secretly working on Half Life 3” Read More »

classic-pc-game-emulation-is-back-on-the-iphone-with-idos-3-release

Classic PC game emulation is back on the iPhone with iDOS 3 release

App Store, Apple, DOS games, emulator, gaming, iDOS, iDOS 3, MS-DOS, Tech / /

Emulation —

Apple amended its App Store rules to allow PC emulators, not just console ones.

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An MS-DOS command line prompt showing the C drive

Enlarge / The start of any journey in MS-DOS.

Samuel Axon

After a 14-year journey of various states of availability and usefulness amid the shifting policies of Apple’s App Store approval process, MS-DOS game emulator iDOS is back on the iPhone and iPad. It’s hopefully here to stay this time.

iDOS allows you to run applications made for MS-DOS via DOSBox, with a nice retro-styled interface. Its main use case is definitely playing DOS games, but it has seen a rocky road to get to this point. Initially released over a decade ago, it existed quietly for its niche audience, though it saw some changes that made it more or less useful in the developer’s quest to avoid removal from the App Store after it violated Apple’s rules. That culminated in it being removed altogether in 2021 after some tweets and articles brought attention to it.

But earlier this year, Apple made big changes to its App Store rules, officially allowing “retro game emulators” for the first time. That cleared the way for a wave of working console game emulators like Delta and RetroArch, which mostly work as you might expect them to on any other platform now. But when iDOS developer Chaoji Li and other purveyors of classic PC emulator software attempted to do the same for old PC games for MS-DOS and other non-console computing platforms, they were stymied. Apple told them that it didn’t consider their apps to be retro game console emulators and that they violated rules intended to prevent people from circumventing the App Store by running applications from other sources.

PC emulator UTM released a version of its software that worked around Apple’s rules, but it was a subpar experience. But on August 2, Apple amended its App Store rules to explicitly allow emulators of classic PC games. That opened the door for iDOS, which has made its triumphant return and works quite well.

Developer Chaoji Li’s announcement of iDOS 3’s availability didn’t have a tone of triumph to it, though—more like exhaustion, given the app’s struggles over the years:

It has been a long wait for common sense to prevail within Apple. As much as I want to celebrate, I still can’t help being a little bit cautious about the future. Are we good from now on?

Get iDOS3 on AppStore

I hope iDOS can now enjoy its turn to stay and grow.

P.S. Even though words feel inadequate at times, I would like to say thank you to the supporters of iDOS. In many ways, you keep iDOS alive.

Given that Apple’s policy changes were driven by regulatory concerns, it seems likely it’ll stick this time, but after everything that’s happened, you can’t blame Li for putting a question mark on this.

In any case, if you’re among the dozens (or maybe several hundred) of people looking to play Commander Keen, Might and Magic: The World of Xeen, Wolfenstein 3D, or Jill of the Jungle on your iPhone, today is your day.

Classic PC game emulation is back on the iPhone with iDOS 3 release Read More »

doom-+-doom-ii-is-a-great-excuse-to-jump-back-into-hell,-for-free-or-for-$10

Doom + Doom II is a great excuse to jump back into Hell, for free or for $10

gaming / /

My critical opinion is that this absolutely whips —

Just how you remember it, but through a 4K, 120 fps accessible lens.

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Some kind of huge gun, laying waste to a bunch of demons in a brown-ish Doom level from Legacy of Rust

Enlarge / I don’t know what this flame crossbow (?) is from the Legacy of Rust campaign, but I am going to keep running and gunning until I get it.

Bethesda Softworks

I have only one criticism of the “definitive, newly enhanced versions” of Doom and Doom II you can now pick up in a $10 package or as a free upgrade if you already owned one of those two games. My gripe is that it is entirely your own fault when you get hit by enemies.

On a PC, Xbox X or S, or PlayStation 5, you can play Doom at 120 fps at 4K. You are moving so ridiculously fast, speed-skating across those Marine bases and/or hellscapes, that the imps tossing fireballs at you feel like they’re a parent gently coaxing their kid to catch a softball. Even the enemies with instant-hitting guns feel like they’re winding up a tree sap cannon. The one time I died inside the first three levels of classic Doom was when I jet-walked right off a circular path and into an inescapable poison moat.

Does a flame thrower work against creatures that literally live in Hell? Only one way to find out.

Does a flame thrower work against creatures that literally live in Hell? Only one way to find out.

Bethesda Game Studios

It’s easy to recommend this newly packed-up and enhanced edition of these two first-person icons, released Thursday as part of QuakeCon. For one thing, it’s being offered by Nightdive Studios, which has been turning out fan-favorite (and generally Ars-approved) remasters of games like Dark Forces, System Shock, Quake, and Quake II. For another, it’s a real bundle, with both games, a huge number of classic add-on maps (including John Romero’s Sigil), and an entirely new episode, Legacy of Rust, made by folks from Nightdive, id Software, and Wolfenstein auteurs MachineGames.

And then there’s how playing these levels feels, which to me is as close as I can get to the caffeine-pulsing, speed-metal-blasting flow state I remember from much younger days. I’ve installed Doom and played a few levels now and then, but this is the first time I’ve made plans to keep going after the first session. After sprinting through a well-trod Hell, I’ll be eager to keep going in Legacy of Rust, where I saw quite a few cool design tricks in just a couple levels. Further along, new weapons await me, and I am eager to pick them up.

Doom + Doom II release trailer.

Wonderful, optional options

It helps that this version incorporates the rearranged, real-instruments “IDKFA” soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult, first made available in 2016 and now officially putting some heavy crunch into the classic tunes, along with some new Doom II tracks. It deserves its place in this official package, because it rips. As with almost everything else, the upgrade is optional—you can stick with MIDI if you like.

There are lots of accessibility options now—high-contrast text, text-to-speech in chat, and more—along with quality-of-life stuff. I was wary of having the crosshairs light up when an enemy (or barrel) would be hit, but given the sometimes unfair 2.5-D nature of the level design, and the spread of some of the bullet weapons, I’m keeping it on.

Cacodemons, chain guns, high-school-notebook Satanism—but in 4K, at 120Hz, and incredibly loud, if you like.

Cacodemons, chain guns, high-school-notebook Satanism—but in 4K, at 120Hz, and incredibly loud, if you like.

Bethesda Game Studios

If all that wasn’t enough for you, there’s 16-player co-op and deathmatch, with cross-platform play across Steam, Windows, Epic, and GOG on PC, and on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch consoles, using room codes to connect everybody (and, it must be noted, a Bethesda account). There’s even split-screen multiplayer, with up to eight people on a (very big) PC screen. Nightdive’s port of the code to its KEX engine should make it easier for mods to be brought forward to this edition.

A caveat here that while the author is broadly aware of the many, many upgrades, mods, and other good things made possible by the open-source code and ports of Doom games (including ZDoom), he can’t say exactly how they compare to this bundle. While Bethesda and Nightdive seem to have created a space for uploading mods and levels, and keeping the basic DOS version available, it remains to be seen how they work out over the long run. If open-source Doom was always good enough for you, or you don’t like the idea of rebundling stuff that started out in the open, by all means, save yourself the $10 here. For many, though, this is just a far easier way to get at all the good stuff now possible in demon-shooting land.

If you haven’t checked out Doom in a while, whether sitting in your library or just $10 away now, this is too easy an excuse to check in on it again. Do it soon. Hell devours the indolent, you know.

This post was updated at 8: 40 a.m. to note the potential tension of Bethesda’s rebundling of Doom against its open-source community.

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legendary-rom-hacking-site-shutting-down-after-almost-20-years

Legendary ROM hacking site shutting down after almost 20 years

gaming, gideon zhi, nightcrawler, retro games, rom hacking, romhacking.net / /

RomHacking.net —

Disputes about how to keep the site going led founder to archive and close it.

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Super Mario Land 2 in full color, with Mario jumping over spiky balls.

Enlarge / A thing that exists through ROM hacking, and ROMHacking.net: Super Mario Land 2, in color.

Nintendo/Toruzz

If there was something wrong with an old game, or you wanted to make a different version of it, and you wanted people to help you fix that, you typically did that on RomHacking.net. After this week, you’ll have to go elsewhere.

For nearly 20 years, the site has been home to some remarkable remakes, translations, fix-ups, and experiments. Star Fox running at 60 fps, Super Mario Land 2 in color, a fix for Super Mario 64‘s bad smoke, even a Pac-Man “demake” that Namco spiffed up and resold—and that’s not even counting the stuff that was pulled down by corporate cease-and-desist actions. It’s a remarkable collection, one that encompasses both very obscure and mainstream games and well worth preserving.

Preserved it will be, but it seems that the RomHacking site will not go on further. The site’s founder posted a sign-off statement to the site Thursday night, one that in turn praised the community, decried certain members of it, and looked forward to what will happen with “the next generation.”

To condense the statement by founder Nightcrawler: the site had come a long way, he missed the early small-group days, there are more options now, and then, last year, he attempted to hand control over to a small internal group. That is when, Nightcrawler writes, he “discovered a most dishonest and hate filled group,” one that targeted him for cutting out of the site and harassment.

The site’s database, minus accounts and profiles, has been handed off to the Internet Archive. RomHacking will have news posts and forums, but everything else is read-only, and the official Twitter and Discord “affiliations” are ended.

“I thank all of the many staff and community members whom kept the wheels turning and the lights on over the years. I am proud of our many accomplishments here together. I will carry forward remembering the good times, laughing about the bad times, and knowing she was right for the time, but time has a way of moving on,” Nightcrawler wrote.

Not the whole story

Gideon Zhi, proprietor of Time Capsule Games and member of RomHacking for more than 20 years, took issue with Nightcrawler’s monologued coda. In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), Zhi acknowledged the site’s technical debt, monetary cost, and the burnout in being its administrator. “But he existed as a single point of failure for the site and exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade,” Zhi wrote.

Zhi details a near abandonment of the site last year, followed by attempts by interested members, gathered on the site’s Discord chat server, to transition the site’s back-end to modern storage and file serving, such as Amazon Web Services S3, and last-minute refusal by Nightcrawler to enact the changes. He also denied that the volunteers on the attempted transition threatened or doxxed Nightcrawler.

An administrator on the now “unofficial” Discord for the site confirmed a “rocky” relationship between the founder and the would-be administrators, as reported by PC Gamer. The Discord admin also denied threats or harassment toward Nightcrawler.

While ROM hacking, translation, demakes, and other game-altering work will certainly continue elsewhere, the gaming world has lost a kind of central depot for the most notable fixes, one with a community full of very experienced hackers.

Legendary ROM hacking site shutting down after almost 20 years Read More »