Diecast – Twenty Sided

Like I said at the end of the show: Pretty soon I’m going to have Ross on the show and we’re going to talk about Watch Dogs: Legion. The game launches on the 29th of this month, and Ross worked on it. I don’t know if I’m going to have him on the show next week, or the week after. I’m eager to talk about the game, but I also want to make sure I have enough time with the game that I can ask him meaningful questions.

We’ll see how it goes.

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Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
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Link (YouTube)

00:00 The State of VR

I’ve studied this stuff quite a bit since this recording, and I have some corrections:

• Issac got the Quest 2, not the original Quest.
• The problems with stuttering aren’t a problem with the Oculus Link. It turns out Issac’s computer just isn’t up to the job anymore. Also, if anyone has a suggestion for a sub-$300 CPU+Mobo combo that can offer a reasonable gaming experience, he’d love to hear it.  He’s not looking to go full-on PC Master Race, he just wants something that can handle modern games and lightweight VR. (We’re assuming his GPU is good enough for now.)
• On the show I said that there weren’t any mid-market VR headsets. Like, it’s just the Quest for $299 and then the Valve Index for $1,000. But since then I’ve done some more searching and discovered that there ARE mid-market headsets. The only problem is that they’re all from Oculus, and I find their Facebook crap to be pointless and unwelcome in the same way that (say) Uplay is.
• I hooked the Quest up to my PC and everything ran fine. There wasn’t any weird DRM locking the headset to one account or any other shenanigans.
• On the show I said it feels like another 10° or 15° of field of view would be a massive improvement. I stand by that. It feels like we’re so close to a much better experience, but getting that bump in FOV seems to result in a massive increase in the price of the headset.

I’m sure I got a few other details wrong. I keep reading about this stuff, and after three days I STILL feel like I’m in the dark.

Another drawback of a standalone VR headset: I wanted to have a screenshot for this post, but I have no idea how to capture screenshots / footage from an all-in-one device like this. I can capture stuff played over the link cable through Steam, but I have no idea how you’d capture native Oculus stuff.

28:51 Programming

More of Paul’s Arduino adventures.

34:15 A story About My Uncle

We’re not talking about the game, we’re talking about my Uncle.

40:09 Amnesia: Rebirth

Like I said on the show, I’m not feeling this one. I’ve got long-term goals like “survive and get rescued somehow”, but I’m lacking short-term goals like, “Go to the spooky old house to use the phone to call for help” or whatever. I’m only few few hours in, and it hasn’t grabbed me yet. Right now the experience feels more like SOMA and not like Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It’s interesting, but not captivating.

50:48 Mailbag: Players Scaring Themselves

Dear Diecast.

The new Amnesia game had me thinking about this video:

TLDW: The trick of the original Amnesia is that nothing really bad happens when run low on sanity. The camera and controls might get wacky, but you won’t actually screw-up a playthrough by mismanaging your lamp oil. The dev’s found the bluff was more effective than the actual consequences of failure.

Do you guys think any other games could benefit from this sort of design? Are there any other sort of mechanics that could have benefited from being “fake” for lack of a better word?

Thanks,
Kaden.

Aside: The linked video is really good. Worth a watch.