Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

John Carmack Joins Oculus VR As CTO

John Carmack has joined Oculus VR as its new CTO. Carmack explained on Twitter how his duties will be split from Oculus, iD and Armadillo Airspace:

"My time division is now Oculus over Id over Armadillo. Busy busy busy!"

This is great news for Oculus as they are getting an amazing CTO. As an iD fan I am not entirely sure what to make of this. On one hand, iD has a great set of tools and engines with iD tech 5 but many people have already left the company and as an iD fan, I am a bit concerned.

That said, Carmack mentioned Oculus in his recent QuakeCon Keynote and I imagine some of what he wanted to see the platform handle, they may now do. He also noted that the Oculus... Read All

EverQuest Next: A New Kind of MMO

"EverQuest Next is a complete reimagining of the EverQuest Franchise.....

Everything in EverQuest Next can be destroyed. Crush the ground beneath an enemy's feet — or bury him under an avalanche you created. The world is your weapon.

The land of Norrath changes every day, based on the actions of all players… including you. Cities rise and fall, kings live and die, even the gods may change. You won't want to miss a moment of it!"

EverQuest was one of the first MMO's to start the current craze that is still the dominant game type in the MMO scene. Makes sense that Sony would look to pull in more modern game elements to make a much more fresh experience than the typical... Read All

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/07/2013 at 09:55pm

I'm really interested in seeing how this works. It feels like a typical MMO mashed up with Minecraft/Terraria and Second Life. Which really excites me. I can't wait to get my hands on Everquest Next Landmark and start building things!

I do wonder how much griefing/trolling there might be by players. Will it be possible to mine so much around a town that it's impossible to enter? They said the land heals itself, but I wonder how long that takes.

I've not played an Everquest game before, but this is something I will almost definitely try out.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/08/2013 at 06:29pm

I think I read somewhere that there will be areas that you can't touch, so if I build a house somewhere it can't be destroyed. Because, yeah, it would totally suck to put a lot of time into building a house or castle and have it destroyed.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/08/2013 at 07:22pm

I think it would be potentially awesome to build a CG settlement that can be destroyed, and have to protect it against other players, or ogres or something.

What I would recommend to the developers is to be able to save "plans" of things you build, so that if a house/castle/building did take a lot of time, and was destroyed, it could be basically rez'd again without the effort you originally put into it. Perhaps you would still have to gather materials, or wait an allotted amount of time whilst it's being rebuilt, or perhaps it pops into place.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/08/2013 at 07:23pm

And all the links of course are blocked at my work, so all I know is what I saw in the video.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/08/2013 at 08:47pm

Oh, and a mashup with Spore, with Landmark like Spore's Creature Creator.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/08/2013 at 08:49pm

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/02/forging-worlds-everquest-next-landmark/

"Everquest Next’s voxel world allows for fine manipulation of objects, on a much more precise scale than more familiar block-based constructs. The construction tools utilise a brush, of variable size, so that large scale structures can be placed and then edges can be smoothed, eroded or embellished.

However, in order to build, players have to find resources and to do that they set out into any one of the infinite procedural continents or islands that Landmark produces. When they begin exploring the world, characters have a flag, and in the fine tradition that saw America conquer the moon for future terraforming, planting that flag stakes a claim on the surrounding area."

Unsure if you can lock your land or not, but I hope they allow something like that. What we could do is all play on the same server and then walk a direction and stake out an area we like to make a Cheerful Ghost settlement. Totally dig the idea.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/08/2013 at 09:41pm

It looks like "staking your claim" is in reference to Landmark, and not the full game. But perhaps they'll incorporate the same idea into it.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/08/2013 at 10:44pm

I think so, but we will see. I bet they will do more to clarify that soon.

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Chroma Squad Kickstarter: A Power Rangers TV Sim

Back this on Kickstarter!

"We want to create a game where you manage a sentai tv studio, hire actors, record episodes and use awesome special effects!

Chroma Squad: sentai heroes, manager, tactical turn-based, meta-game, pixel art fun! Everything you want in a fresh indie game! In this game you become responsible for managing and recording episodes for a sentai TV show.

So, what is Sentai? Our game is based on 90′s Tokusatsu TV series, like “Power Rangers”, “Changeman” or… “Captain Planet And The Planeteers”. Yep, any group of 3 or 5, each with different powers, whose union makes a special weapon appear to defeat their enemies. In this case, Captain Planet himself. =)"

It's a great thing that... Read All

StarCrafts Season 2 Ep. 13 Thunder and Lightning

I haven't seen the Thor used a lot in the games i've played. A cool unit for sure but does anyone use this typically as Terran?

Card Hunter: Beta Key Giveaway

I've been playing Card Hunter, to the exclusion of nearly all else, for about a month and a half now. It's a free-to-play, half-strategy, half-rpg kind of deal. It's a deck-and-card based game, but there's a really clever equipment-as-cards paradigm that prevents this from turning into a may-the-best-card-win kind of affair. The writing isn't exactly subtle, but if your childhood involved sitting around a table with your fellow nerdlings trying to figure out the practical difference between "ration, standard" and "ration, iron", then the game was written with you in mind.

Right now, there is a waiting list to get in on the beta, but I've got a single key to share with... Read All

Stardew Valley Farm Animal Dev Update

Keep your animal happy (and maximize production) like so:

Pet once a day

Make sure she has enough food

Let her outside if the weather is warm

Make sure she is secure at night

Purchase a heater to counteract the unhappiness of being inside all winter

As always, the updates that keep coming to Stardew Valley look great. Very excited to jump in and try in what looks like to be the most involved farming sim RPG i've ever seen.

As always, when a release date drops you will be the first to know.

http://stardewvalley.net/dev-update-9/

If you are looking for a collection of the other dev updates, check the CG Stardew Valley page for easy viewing:

... Read All

John Carmack's Quakecon 2013 Keynote

Every year John Carmack gives a Quakecon keynote and I tune in. This year it streamed live over Twitch.tv and as luck would have it I watched the majority of it over 3G on my Phone. In this keynote Carmack gives no details about Doom 4(he was asked and said he couldn't say anything) and spartan details about any iD game specifics but does talk about game tech and the industry, graphics technology, the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft and Armadillo Airspace.

Ocarina of Time Speedrun in 22:38, live at AGDQ201

I found a seriously incredible Ocarina of Time Speedrun by Cosmo. In this Speedrun video he gives the Speedrunning history of Ocarina of time and how these particular glitches work so the game can be complete in 22 minutes.

If you are interested in checking out more of Cosmo's videos, check out his YouTube channel and prepare yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CosmoSpeedruns

Interview with Game Designer Paul Vorvick

I wasn’t winning with the same strategy I used in real life. I figured even if I started out with a bad economic situation I could win on the merits of making the right moral choices alone. I was wrong. The way to win in Paul Vorvick’s newest game isn’t to save and be conservative, you need to swing high and stomp everyone else into the dirt.

When I heard that local game designer Paul Vorvick was showing “Privilege: The Game of Economic Inequality” at the New York at the Games for Change Festival I was very interested in checking it out. When he came back to Portland I contacted him and we met at a local pub so he could show me the game and talk about it. As we chatted... Read All

Damsel in Distress: Part 3 - Tropes vs Women in VG

"This is the third installment in our three part mini-series exploring the Damsel in Distress trope in video games. In this episode we examine the rare Dude in Distress role reversal and then take a look at the use of "ironic sexism" in retro inspired indie and mobile games. We conclude with an investigation of some titles that attempt to subvert or deconstruct the traditional damsel narrative."

The next installment from the Anita Sarkeesian "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" series has dropped and you can check it out embedded above. Let me know what you think of it in the comments below!