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With the announcement of the first Fallout 4 DLCs we can expect to see in the near future last week, a number of people were asking – “where’s the game’s Creation Kit”? Not that modders haven’t already been doing a great job without it.
Now details of the modkit have emerged, and it’s due to be releasing in between the first two DLCs – Automatron and Wasteland Workshop. At least, if you own the PC version it will. not that the console players won’t be getting it, it’ll just take a month more for Xbox owners and two more months for owners of the PS4 version. Owch.
In an interview with Game Informer Todd Howard said: “Our goal [for full mod support] is between the first two DLCs. It’ll go up at that time on PC. In April. All of that stuff will go up on PC. People are beta testing it.”
The new Survival mode was also talked about. From what we know, it’ll only save when you sleep; will not contain fast travel; will have diseases and the combat is probably going to be overhauled as well to remove a little of the bullet-sponginess on both side of the equation. Needless to say, it’ll probably go through a beta stage so that Bethesda can be sure they’ve gotten the balance right.
Are you excited for the advent of even greater Fallout 4 mods? Let us know in the comments!
Failbetter Games, developer of the game Sunless Sea have launched a new funding process for indie game developers making small narrative-driven or interaction fiction games.
Called Fundbetter, the developers explained how it’d be working in a blog post:
“We want to pay our luck forward, and support game designers and writers from all kinds of backgrounds: first-timers, veteran game makers, LGBT+ and black and minority ethnic creators, people whose backgrounds are in linear fiction, theatre, radio, TV and film. We’re open-minded on the meaning of ‘narrative’ and ‘game,’ though we’re most excited by text-centric projects. Your idea could be a game with a strong linear storyline; a choice-based narrative using Twine or a similar technology; a piece of parser-based interactive fiction; a card game where story emerges from the mechanics; or a dozen other things we haven’t thought of.”
The funding currently sits at between £2K to £20K, but Failbetter say that they’d go higher for a promising project, especially if the project matches the funding through other means such as Kickstarter. The sorts of games they’re hoping to help out are mainly low-cost, text-based games – but they’re not limiting themselves to just those types of games.
As for what Failbetter get out of it, they’ll receive 50% of the game’s revenue until the initial investment has been recouped. After that they’ll only be taking 20%m leaving the rest for the funded indie to use to update or patch their game, or even move onto the next one. Of course, Failbetter also need to be credited within the game as an investor as well, so there’s also exposure involved. Any idea that doesn’t make back the initial funding aren’t tied into anything either.
Interested parties should take a look over on the Failbetter announcement for details on how you can get yourself involved and apply for the funding.
The news that Overwatch wouldn’t be making the journey to Mac was revealed during Blizzcon, and while some weren’t surprised others were a bit confused as Blizzard generally supports Mac gaming. According to game director Jeff Kaplan, it’s because of Apple’s policies with OSX.
“It was a result of not having all the technological support we needed to make the game viable on Mac systems,” said Kaplan. “We have a real love and dedication for Mac players, they’ve been extremely loyal to us and we love giving them Blizzard games. But when dealing with the PC, the Xbox One and the PS4 – all of which are extremely welcoming to the technological needs to run a next-generation shooter – in a lot of ways we felt left behind, that we weren’t given the support we needed to make a great product on the Mac.”
OSX does have some graphics technology that compared to Windows seems pretty underpowered. While optimised for Mac hardware, many do choose to dual-boot into Windows to run games on their machines. There’s also the issue of driver support from companies like AMD and Nvidia, which again isn’t up to the level that Windows PCs currently get.
Kaplan thinks this could change in future, but only if Apple put more effort into making it worthwhile for companies to develop games for Mac.
“I think Apple’s an amazing company, and I hope, I really hope Mac players are vocal back to Apple that Mac gaming is extremely important and should be extremely important. I can only guess how important things like iPhone and other products are to a company like that – but I think Mac gaming should have equal importance.”
It seems that nowadays any big game beta seems to have some problems, and they usually include a problem with the framerates. It seems that the latest Hitman game’s no exception to this rule.
The people at Gaming Bolt have been putting the beta of the assassin game through its paces in the last few days before they lose access to it (the access being a bonus of pre-ordering the game) and the results are… well, not great.
Running the game on a Radeon R9290 4GB GPU along with an AMD FX 8350, they’re reporting that during the opening training mission the game is failing to maintain even a steady 30FPS. Other tests done seem to confirm this, with an hour spent on the training mission ship using two 980 TIs it’s hard to get a steady 60FPS. Admittedly the beta isn’t configured for dual GPU set-ups, but even on a single 980 the framerates drop. And this is on quite good hardware too, so you can imagine the issues more affordable hardware could have with it.
Unsurprisingly, it’s the NPC crowds that do it. Less populated areas run faster as there’s a lot less on screen to process and keep track of. Since this is a game about murdering targets that are generally located in very populated areas though, you have to hope that IO Interactive is planning some further tightening of the game’s optimization before the full release.
Mind you, there’s a good track record because Hitman:Absolution was apparently well received on its PC port. So there is hope that IO will have it sorted by launch. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Welcome to your weekly update in interesting things going on in the world of Kickstarter campaigns.
As always I’m starting with news to do with previously covered projects and we’ll start with the bad news first. Space Revolver did not reach its funding target in time, although the developers have said that they are still planning to release the game onto Steam Early Access soon with multiplayer, but a smaller set of weapons and other things that they plan to add to over time. The funding for Ghost Theory was also cancelled a few days ago as they were running far short of their goal. For now the developers are debating whether to approach publishers to get the game made, or to revise their campaign and relaunch it in a few months. Either way, the game is not dead.
Other not so good news comes from the fact that a handful of other games are looking like they won’t be reaching their targets in time, including Project Elliott (and I was really hoping that this one would get made), Dread Bot Factory and Mission to Mars.
However there is some good news to report this week. Invisigun Heroes managed to beat its target with a “huge surge” of attention that pushed it past the goal in the last day or so of the campaign, as well as Poison Bottles having comfortably surpassed its target with 12 more days remaining as of writing. Which Friend and MachiaVillain are also doing well, although both still have a little way to go yet to reach the set funding goals.
Now a note before I go into this – this is not a game. It is however a fairly interesting looking game builder, so I’ve decided to break the rules for once because dammit, it’s my article.
GameSpawner is designed to be a game creation tool that allows for more than one person to work on a game at the same time, using real time updating for teams who might not all be in the same location. It’s built for those who aren’t good at coding and includes a lot of free and editable content to help construct the games. There’s also a hope that GameSpawner can be implemented as a learning tool for colleges and other course that require it.
GameSpawner is looking to make £7,000, and has made £225 already with 27 days to go.
Next up is a game that we actually got a press release through for and has launched only recently.
Wounded is a story of a search. You and your daughter Lisa have had a terrible accident and now you are looking for Lisa, in a world of horror and nightmares. Gather clues to avoid falling into the darkness and giving into your terror. The only way to end the nightmare is “to find Lisa and escape or to die. Horribly.” It’s also got people working on it with credits from games like Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed and Outlast.
Wounded has 29 days left to go and has made €106 of its €15,000 goal so far.
Now we have the card game of the week, and its another drinking one, albeit this time crossed over with some hero/RPG elements.
Beer Hero requires you to assemble a team of heroes with stats that vary based on how intoxicated they are. It also requires you as the player to stay sober enough to continue playing. Some heroes fight better drunk, some need to be sober and others have a sweet spot in between. All of this can be altered through playable cards that can raise and lower all stats including intoxication levels. And in case you aren’t a big drinker, they’re planning to have Lite and Dry versions of the game too!
Beer Hero has made $505 so far of its $7,500 goal and has 29 more days to go on its campaign.
The final game for this week is a sandbox adventure game that is said to take inspiration from Sunless Sea and Majora’s Mask.
Set in a city that seems alive, A Place for the Unwilling is the developers attempting to remedy that issue they find with most adventure-filled open-world games – a lot of space that seems empty and devoid of life. So this game will see them fill the urban landscape with characters to meet and engage with as you play.
A Place for the Unwilling has a target set of €20,000 and has 23 days left. So far it has made €7,831.
