Kicking off the third day of Eurogamer action, CD Projekt Red took to the stage first to unveil some design facts about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the third game in its Witcher series of Role-playing video games loosely based on Polish books of the same name, which is planned to hit the PC, PS4 and XBox One next year.

In a break from the usual style of Eurogamer, CD Projekt Red decided to not to send any of their design or programming team to conduct the presentation. Instead, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz – Lead Quest Designer – came all the way from Poland to discuss it; and during the Q&A made obvious his unusual position by stating that many questions being asked would have been better answered had a member of the Design Team accompanied him or he had more details on the technical side of things.

Still, the show must go on. Witcher 3, he explains, builds upon the high level of storytelling and detail kept up on previous titles in the series: “We always put a lot of effort into our storylines in our games to make them mature, to make them interesting and to make the characters interesting. And we focus on properly introducing characters to make good connections and to make them convincing. But we felt something was missing.”

That missing thing is described best in one word: “Immersion”. With Witcher 3, the aim of the game is to get the players more hooked into the game world and the events going on around them. “We really felt the need to allow players explore more and immerse themselves in the game world. We feel open-world game play does this best”, explained Mateusz.

What this means is Witcher 3 is the first title in the series to use a large-scale, open-world which players will be able to explore at their will, giving them total freedom to explore the land. “[However,] we’ve tried to avoid sending you a different side of the map or different landscape just for a single dialogue or task.” Instead, Witcher 3 utilises the concept of Quest Clusters: Quest chains will be kept in a small area. So while in a town or village, for example, you will find a chain of events to do there; when you move further out to another part of the game world like another town, forest or whatever, they will have their own cluster of quests. As you travel between clusters however, you will find side-games and wider-area quests to allow you to continue to perform tasks and keep you interested as you travel from cluster to cluster.

Another focus of Witcher 3 is accessibility. “We are working hard to introduce the story to new players as well, so if you haven’t played Witcher 1 and Witcher 2, you will still understand Witcher 3. It was actually an issue reported of Witcher 2 that people who hadn’t played Witcher 1 weren’t catching up with previous events; which we realised was a problem and we’re working to fix in Witcher 3.” Mateusz went on to explain that the team recognises that those who’ve played previous games – and/or read the books Witcher is based on – will always have a heads-up; the aim with Witcher 3 is to ensure the new players don’t feel disadvantaged by not knowing what veterans will and keep the game fun for both camps.

Not that Veterans will find the game easy, since enemies will become smarter just like they have. “We aim to have more opponent types and have the opponents interacting with each other, so [they will work together] in battle – fighting will feel more natural than our previous games.” Also, while many enemies will stay within their own quest clusters or defined territory, this is not guaranteed. “Some enemies, if you try to run, will chase you even going outside of their own area. It’s very divided.”

Opening the floor to a Q&A session, Mateusz finished with a final note to those worried that a game hitting three platforms at the same time will play differently on each. “We are working hard right now to work on keeping the game even on all three platforms and our developers are working hard to create a like experience for all of them.” They added that while the team were looking into achievement structures and taking advantage of specific console-exclusive features, it was important for them that the game plays and feels as similar as possible regardless of your choice of platform – which is good news for everyone.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will launch in 2014.

When a Eurogamer Developer’s Conference starts with a member of Eurogamer staff addressing the floor prior to the presentation starting, and says we’re about to see a “sizeable chunk” of a game, you take an interest. When the speaker tells you the preview constitutes “the first ever live public presentation of the live gameplay”, even more so.

That’s just the opening of the presentation for Dying Light, an Action Survival Zombie Game by Polish game developer Techland – famous for the two Dead Island games. But this description isn’t enough to fully explain the game, says host Tymon Smektała. Asked to describe the game, Tymon starts with a high-impact 30-second trailer as the “short answer”. The long answer? “Dying Light is a First Person, Open World, Action Survival Horror Game. It’s a long description, but all of these words are important.”

What this means is Dying Light is not your everyday zombie survival game. Here, you’ll be interacting with a large game world in order to complete missions and escape being turned into a zombie yourself. Utilising a natural movement system, players will be jumping on crates and ledges, zip-lining down angled wires; and pulling themselves over gates to reach different areas, in a form of zombie apocalypse parkour; and there’s no need to look for doors if the wall is low enough to pull yourself over. When you have to come face to face with zombies, you can always kill them of course, but unlike many other zombie survival games, Tymon is quick to point out that isn’t the only option available here. You can run, you can escape, you can lay traps, you can use what you just built to defend yourself, or you can make use of the environment – it’s all about your approach to the situation. This is crucial, because not even higher ground makes you automatically safe. “Zombies can climb just as well as you can”, says Tymon.

To help you out, many missions will see you laying traps to kill zombies or provide distractions that will let you pass them safely. Some of these include car bombs and electrical boxes with exposed live wires. All traps will be triggered remotely, so until you make them live, you can run through at any time and wait for the zombies to follow – and sometimes you’ll come across traps set by other survivors, which you can trigger too. Another example of a trap is powerful lighting – useful at night, overhead lights can flood an area when triggered to not only make them more visible, but also disorient zombies by essentially blinding them with light.

Dying Light’s whole gameplay rests on a continuous day/night cycle mechanic. In the daytime, zombies are less active, giving you a chance to build up defences and prepare for the night ahead. Once night falls, the real challenge begins, as zombies spawn more frequently and become aggressive. For 95% of Story Missions and 100% of Side Missions, so claims Tymon, you can start a mission at any time of the day, giving you as much or as little time as you desire to complete tasks before the zombies get serious. Hints were dropped that night-time action will lead to greater rewards, leading to a serious risk/reward mechanic – do you start a mission in the day to stay safer for longer; or wait to later in the evening and potentially get more value out of difficult situations? Between one and four players can play at any time, dropping in or out at will. But even though co-op players will share a game world, there’s no requirement for them to perform the same missions – the choice is up to them.

Dying Light also makes use of a dynamic encounter system, making every playthrough different. You may never know when a survivor needing help; or a super-tough zombie that’s harder to defeat will appear. Helping others can lead to rewards as well, but at night-time saving others might be risking your own life. Additional help comes in the form of air drops sent from outside to provide survivors with extra resources, but do you take the time and risk to go pick them up? Your actions in the game will develop your character differently, letting you build yourself up the way you want to play and customise your character the way you like.

Dying Light hits PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows next year.

Minecraft, a game known for its vast world sizes, has been used as the building structure for a virtual map created using actual Ordinance Survey data to accurately resemble Great Britain.

The map, in area covering the equivalent of 224,000 sq km (86,000 sq miles) and using around 22 billion blocks, is the result of a fortnight’s work by intern Joseph Braybrook working with the OS’s Innovation Labs team and OpenData OS software to create a map that’s as accurate as possible and like all Minecraft worlds, completely breakable and customisable. The OS map products, OS Terrain 50 and OS VectorMap, create the 3D map of the earth’s surface with features such as rivers, forests and roads included.

Speaking about the map Graham Dunlop, the Manager for OS’ Innovation Labs said that this could be the largest Minecraft world ever created using real-life world data. He believes this proves that Minecraft shows ‘massive potential’ as a tool for geographical and computer technology use within schools, but also as a way to demonstrate the scope of OpenData and applications that could be created for it too.

The map covers the entire of the mainland part of Britain, comprising of England, Wales and Scotland as well as some islands but does not contain any parts of Ireland, North Ireland, the channel Islands or the Isle of Man. Upon download players enter the map through the OS’s building in Southampton and from there can explore the lay of the land around them, building upon the land with their own ideas or recreating British landmark buildings if they want.

The map download is located here: Download the Minecraft-GB.zip archive (this is a large file – around 345 MB)

Here are some locations to get you started:

Southampton Water --- X = 9000 Y = 100 Z = 26000
London -------------- X = 10632 Y = 100 Z = 24422
Mt Snowdon ---------- X = 5218 Y = 200 Z = 20913
Outer Hebrides ------ X = 2110 Y = 100 Z = 10000
Shetland Islands ---- X = 8900 Y = 100 Z = 4969
Poole Harbour ------- X = 8020 Y = 100 Z = 26235
Weymouth ------------ X = 7300 Y = 100 Z = 26440
Foulness Essex------- X = 12000 Y = 100 Z = 24174
Lake Windermere------ X = 6800 Y = 100 Z = 18080
Ordnance Survey ----- X = 8745 Y = 100 Z = 25695 

Use the values above with the teleport command, for example /tp 6800 100 18080.

The image below may help you find your bearings:

It shows the coverage of Minecraft GB expressed in world coordinates and the relationship with National Grid 100 km squares.

You’ll also notice in the image above the metal lines and brick on the map

The table below lists the materials used for each map feature:

So where there is a brick area, denotes a town/city so you can find where you live and the metal lines are roads that you can follow to where you want to go

We will be putting this map up on the station Minecraft server for a short time (starting tomorrow) to have a play with and if you like the map, we may keep it for later (or we could use the tool to make the world)

If you want to join us on the station Minecraft server, goto Multiplayer on the front screen of Minecraft and in the server address box, put www.sanitarium.fm and come and join us

Wow…  what a few days for ArenaNet…

First the staggered release of the Looking For Group system that should be released on Sept 17th, and now this…

 
Now surely the POINT of an official forum is to get feedback, yes there will be whitenoise of people upset/butthurt over something, but still…  Staggering…

Ok, Tuesday 17th was a BIG day for the Guild wars 2 community

Not only was Tequatl the Skinless being redone as an encounter to something that even the Dev team find hard to do, but was also the release for the long awaited Looking For Group Tool (something most of the community expected in the release last year…)

However, we just got this on the official forum…

Hey everyone,

 

With Tuesday’s release we are gearing up to launch the new Looking For Group tool for Guild Wars 2. As the system comes online, our primary focus is with the quality and the stability. To ensure a solid rollout, we’ll turn on the LFG tool in beta form to a subset of players. As the week goes on, we’ll periodically unlock the system to additional groups of players.

 

In Tuesday’s release notes, you’ll see the complete list of what the feature will do once we’ve fully unlocked the system. However, during the beta rollout not everyone will be able to use the LFG tool and the World vs. World subcategories will be disabled.

 

The Looking for Group feature has been highly requested and we’re excited to be this close to its final release, but quality is paramount. Therefore, we ask for your patience and understanding while we work through this phased beta rollout and with any problems we encounter.

 

Thanks,
Mike Zadorojny
& the Looking For Group team

[Source]

Hmm…   Will be interesting to see the fallout from the community when they DON’T get the LFG tool that’s been advertised…