Good Old Games

[Pop]

$10 for Another World. Buy it.

[Tigranes]

I think I've heard of it but don't recall. Any description?

[Pop]

The basic plot is this - You are a nameless physics professor, whose experiment goes awry when his building is struck by lightning at exactly the wrong moment, sending him and his desk to another dimension, full of danger and strange vistas. This is an adventure game, the kind they made before point'n'click devoured the genre. Which is to say, this is a puzzle game, but it's made up of abstract puzzles in gameplay, which nest further puzzles. Take an early example - You need to pass a corridor behind a destructible wall, but down the corridor is a guard behind a door who will lay down an impassable wall of fire if you break down the wall to get to the corridor. In order to pass, you need to take an elevator down one floor and destroy the circuit that's keeping the guard's door unlocked, leaving you free to escape while he tries to break down his door. Several of these challenges are truly vexing, as you'll think you're doing the right thing until you realize you're missing another 10-15 minute sequence. There is no tutorial, but the game uses approximately 2 buttons aside from direction keys. Advanced tactics must be intuited.

 

The game is made up of many puzzles like that, some of which are quite immense. This is an old-timey adventure game and as such you will die often, and there may be some backtracking involved. Which makes it all the more sweet when you figure out how to get past that ceiling shoggoth.

[Majek]

OMG the made a deal with Atari. Outcast and MoO and hopefully Silver,... \o/ April will be great. I wonder if they'll offer the DVD sized version of Outcast because the quality of music if far superior to the 2CD version.

[Oner]

I want Outcast 2. ._.

[Shryke]

never mind...

Edited March 25, 2010 by Shryke

[Majek]

It has arrived.

 

Outcast and MoO ( 1+2) at Gog.com

[Pidesco]

Brilliance.

[cronicler]

An engine that is horrible, A hero that is made out of b movie cliches, a chick that embodies every cliche., extremely limited software....

And yet it is a truly awesome game.

It is a game that (despite its very limited resolution and poly count) manages to take you on an andventure in an alien world.

By todays standarts, the gameplay is medicore, the graphics are bad, the music is excellent, the voiceovers are superb and the story is passable.

Yet it is one of those games that have a soul. A soul yhat will draw you in and get you lost in it's folds screaming for more.

 

Try it. Try Outcast.

I Just wish it had survived.

[mkreku]

An engine that is horrible? I love Outcasts engine! Where else can you see an entire world composed of voxels? It's awesome!

[Gorth]

An engine that is horrible? I love Outcasts engine! Where else can you see an entire world composed of voxels? It's awesome!

Didn't the original Delta Force use similar technology?

[mkreku]

An engine that is horrible? I love Outcasts engine! Where else can you see an entire world composed of voxels? It's awesome!

Didn't the original Delta Force use similar technology?

Yes, I think Delta Force and some helicopter game I forgot the name of also used voxels for the world geometry. But Outcast was pretty unique in that it used solely voxels! It actually drew all houses, monsters and people with voxels. I think both Delta Force and the helicopter game mixed things up with polygons and sprites.

 

I always secretly hoped voxels would make a comeback sometime in the future as computers became more powerful.. but it never happened.

[Mamoulian War]

... and some helicopter game I forgot the name of also used voxels for the world geometry...

 

Comanche 4 from Nova Logic iirc

[LostStraw]

Yes, I think Delta Force and some helicopter game I forgot the name of also used voxels for the world geometry. But Outcast was pretty unique in that it used solely voxels! It actually drew all houses, monsters and people with voxels. I think both Delta Force and the helicopter game mixed things up with polygons and sprites.

Outcast only used voxels for the terrain just like Delta Force and Comanche.

 

I always secretly hoped voxels would make a comeback sometime in the future as computers became more powerful.. but it never happened.

John Carmack was pushing for a technology called sparse voxel octrees some time back (~2008 and maybe earlier) in order to try getting hardware vendor support for it -- which it would need in order to be competitive with polygon rasterization. Unfortunately nothing has seemed to come of it as yet and I kind of doubt AMD and Nvidia are looking to risk developing specific hardware for content that doesn't exist.

 

@Mamoulian War

Comanche 4 was the first in the series to not use voxels.

[Mamoulian War]

@Mamoulian War

Comanche 4 was the first in the series to not use voxels.

 

At least I remembered the name and company ... it was released pretty long time ago

 

@mkreku: according to wikipedia, Crysis used voxels for the terrain aswell... so there you have your newer game with this technology

[mkreku]

Outcast only used voxels for the terrain just like Delta Force and Comanche.

Yeah, I looked it up, you're right. They used voxels for other stuff too (big monsters and big world objects), but they covered those voxels with textures, apparently.

 

@mkreku: according to wikipedia, Crysis used voxels for the terrain aswell... so there you have your newer game with this technology

I'm beginning to doubt Wikipedia a little

[Deadly_Nightshade]

@mkreku: according to wikipedia, Crysis used voxels for the terrain aswell... so there you have your newer game with this technology

 

The Cry2 Editor can use voxels for terrain but, if I remember correctly, Crysis itself did not use any in-game.

[Nightshape]

I'd like to see a voxel based ray tracer in a game. We needs more CPU's though...

[Purkake]

Sanitarium is 30% off if anyone survived the Steam sale...