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Amnesia: The Dark Descent |OT|

S

SovanJedi

provides useful feedback
These guys should port the game to the three console digital download services for more exposure... or failing that add in delightful party minigames and downloadable costume packs and Rn'B music covers of their tunes. :(
 
H

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Visualante said:
.
Click to expand...

David, you woke up with amnesia in a complex full of elritch abominations. Things arent gonna make sense right away or be spelled out so easily.

And the slow pace is what make the game so terrifying.
 
V

Visualante

Member
eternal prize said:
This would be a perfect live arcade game
Click to expand...
Wouldn't say perfect, the game is designed around a mouse and the game is heightened by playing in the dark close to the screen. It'd need significant changes- I never played Half Life xbox but the physics puzzles probably sucked a little. Besides Microsoft seems quite snobby about their releases and schedules in general,
 
J

jim-jam bongs

Member
Visualante said:
Wouldn't say perfect, the game is designed around a mouse and the game is heightened by playing in the dark close to the screen. It'd need significant changes- I never played Half Life xbox but the physics puzzles probably sucked a little. Besides Microsoft seems quite snobby about their releases and schedules in general,
Click to expand...

Just musing, but I think that it would actually make a fantastic Move game. The screen proximity could be addressed if the player was standing, and the tactile interactions would be even more effective at immersing the player with a motion controller. It's not as though the controls are hugely complex as it is.
 
G

"God's Beard!"

Member
Visualante said:
Wouldn't say perfect, the game is designed around a mouse and the game is heightened by playing in the dark close to the screen. It'd need significant changes- I never played Half Life xbox but the physics puzzles probably sucked a little. Besides Microsoft seems quite snobby about their releases and schedules in general,
Click to expand...

Shoulder buttons to lean, left trigger to grab, right trigger to throw/use.

Done.
 
S

Stike

Member
Yeah, spreading the love on XBLA and PSN would definitely financially help the developers.

Not sure about the controls, but it could be really nice with Move support.
 
L

LyR

Banned
God's Beard said:
Shoulder buttons to lean, left trigger to grab, right trigger to throw/use.

Done.
Click to expand...


The controls aren't the problem.

The problem is that the Frictional engine is not optimized for consoles. It's in OpenGL, 360 uses DirectX, PS3 uses OpenGL, so it would be possible for the PS3 but it's also very very very (did I say very?) expensive for an indie developer to buy and work with PS3 devkits, it's actually out of question to be honest.
(in the source link below you can read that the engine was created on a 5 year old computer)

Rewriting the engine and optimizing it would suck the already few resources Frictional have. Not to mention it would take a lot of time, time that would be better used in creating a new game.


And going to consoles wouldn't necessarily mean their financial troubles would be over. The developers of Darwinia nearly went bankrupt due to their XBLA release, and the sales of Zeno Clash were much stronger on PC despite the developers buying an expensive console dev kit. What this game needs is a small retail release and some marketing. Their money would be better spent going towards that than gambling with a console release of Amnesia.

Only a few indie games manage to sell really well on consoles, not everything is a Braid, Trials or Shadow Complex (and Epic Games is eveything but indie in terms of resources). Also a certain % of the sales go to the console companies AKA royalties.

It's way more complicated than some of you might think.

(Source)
 
G

"God's Beard!"

Member
LyR said:
The controls aren't the problem.

The problem is that the Frictional engine is not optimized for consoles. It's in OpenGL, 360 uses DirectX, PS3 uses OpenGL, so it would be possible for the PS3 but it's also very very very (did I say very?) expensive for an indie developer to buy and work with PS3 devkits, it's actually out of question to be honest.
(in the source link below you can read that the engine was created on a 5 year old computer)

Rewriting the engine and optimizing it would suck the already few resources Frictional have. Not to mention it would take a lot of time, time that would be better used in creating a new game.


And going to consoles wouldn't necessarily mean their financial troubles would be over. The developers of Darwinia nearly went bankrupt due to their XBLA release, and the sales of Zeno Clash were much stronger on PC despite the developers buying an expensive console dev kit. What this game needs is a small retail release and some marketing. Their money would be better spent going towards that than gambling with a console release of Amnesia.

Only a few indie games manage to sell really well on consoles, not everything is a Braid, Trials or Shadow Complex (and Epic Games is eveything but indie in terms of resources). Also a certain % of the sales go to the console companies AKA royalties.

It's way more complicated than some of you might think.

(Source)
Click to expand...
I was just replying to the mouse and keyboard comment, though.
 
S

Stike

Member
Thanks LyR for clarifying that. Sad to hear that porting isnt THAT easy :(

If it happened, I'd gladly double-dip on it...
 
Druz

Druz

Member
12 pages? How?

Btw... I'm inching through the game though it feels cheap that the monsters SPAWN out of no where. I accidently ran into a monster instead of away... and I survived the dead end I found myself in my simply running a centimeter around him
 
H

Huggy

Member
I really like what these guy do in terms of their graghics engine and gameplay mechanics, so I follow them.
But I haven't purchased any of their games, as they are way too scary. I think the people who like combat-less games are too few to sustain Frictional Games.
 
V

venom2124

Member
Stike said:
Yeah, spreading the love on XBLA and PSN would definitely financially help the developers.

Not sure about the controls, but it could be really nice with Move support.
Click to expand...
I would buy Move for this game no question.
 
L

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
Just Finished it and loved every second of it! But im ashamed of myself, since I
Used Gamefaqs to save Agrippa, :(
 
C

cbox

Member
Xseries update again! Now for the full game, steam version coming later today apparently. GOD I CANNOT WAIT TO GET HOME!

New patch is finally available!

The most important fix is that for ATI X1000 series card (below X1000 might still have issues). Also included is a bunch of other fixes.

Download and more info here:
http://support.frictionalgames.com/entry/98/

Note that this version does NOT work with Steam. A steam patch is in the works and should be released later today. All other stores such as our own, D2D and gamers gate work fine!
Click to expand...

http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-4658.html
 
M

Max

I am not Max
A friend of mine was talking to me about Singularity and how he wanted to play it because he heard it was scary. I said bother that nonsense and told him to try out the Amnesia demo on Steam. He played through jokingly talking about it on skype until he got to the water beast which continued to maul him to death. He then quit the game.

Some people...
 
B

BobsRevenge

I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
Lonely1 said:
Just Finished it and loved every second of it! But im ashamed of myself, since I
Used Gamefaqs to save Agrippa, :(
Click to expand...
I did too. How they hell were you supposed to find that thing?
 
A

ArjanN

Member
Zabojnik said:
Thinking about buying it. Not that it really matters, but how long is the game?
Click to expand...

6/7 hours or so.

Seeing that you have a System Shock avatar you'll probably like this. It reminds me of the Looking Glass games.

I definately recommend it.
 
N

NameGenerated

Who paid you to grab Dr. Pavel?
So...I saw the Giant Bomb quick look for this and thought it looked neat so I dowloaded the demo on Steam. I've never really played any horror games so maybe I just suck, but I'm stuck. I'm at this wine cellar area and have no idea where to go. The only door is to the Rainy Hall but it "won't budge". If I got stuck here will I get destroyed by the full game? I see the blood-like liquid near a pile or rocks but I that doesn't seem to help. All of out supplies too.
 
J

jim-jam bongs

Member
BobsRevenge said:
I did too. How they hell were you supposed to find that thing?
Click to expand...

I found all of the bits except for the vitae without a guide, but my old adventure game experience had kicked in and I had started trying to use everything on everything else by that point. I randomly put the meat on the rope and lowered it into the well without it really clicking that the bit about the mucous made reference to the creature in the well.

The vitae I missed when I went in the first time because I was being stalked by one of the monsters with the metal arms so I was desperate to get out of that foggy hell-hole!
 
D

Dascu

Member
NameGenerated said:
So...I saw the Giant Bomb quick look for this and thought it looked neat so I dowloaded the demo on Steam. I've never really played any horror games so maybe I just suck, but I'm stuck. I'm at this wine cellar area and have no idea where to go. The only door is to the Rainy Hall but it "won't budge". If I got stuck here will I get destroyed by the full game? I see the blood-like liquid near a pile or rocks but I that doesn't seem to help. All of out supplies too.
Click to expand...
If I remember right, you can
move a few rocks and/or crates out of the way. I think it's in the same room as the one with the door that's stuck.
 
T

theinfinityissue

Member
Zabojnik said:
Thinking about buying it. Not that it really matters, but how long is the game?
Click to expand...

Theoretically, you can have thousands of hours of content with the custom story generator. The gaf effort hasn't really gotten underway yet, and I haven't contributed to it yet due to not being able to get the program to work. With my schedule clearing out a little this week, I'm gonna sit down to some serious work on it to see what I can do.
 
E

epmode

Member
Frictional Games posted a summary of Amnesia's first week back on the 15th. I don't think anyone linked it on GAF: http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-week-after-release-of-amnesia.html

They're very happy with the way the game turned out and how it was received but this part is a little sad:
As many of you might already know Amnesia is a sort of make or break game for us. At the time of writing, we are very close to our "all is good"-goal, meaning that we are still in business (due to contractual stuff we cannot release any numbers right now)! However, there are a few "buts" to all this.

The response we got from the game is a lot better than we expected, yet the sales are only "good" according to our, much more modest, expected response. This makes us wonder what sales we would have gotten if the response would have been more like what we thought it would be. If this is our time in the spotlight, then a lot less noticed game would probably put us out of business. As it looks now, we still have to be quite careful in budgeting our next game (although much less careful than what we had to be with Amnesia). We were hoping a really successful release would makes 100% unworried about finances, but that is not what has happened.

Can we really judge sales from just one week? According to current graphs: yes we can. Even though reviews keep coming in from major outlets and we keep pushing out marketing material (videos, release of tools, etc) sales are dropping fast. Around 50% of our current earnings where made in less than a week and on pre-orders from before release. The sales where at the top during the last hour of the Steam 20% discount, and has since dropped almost exponentially, being pretty much halved each day. It will be really interesting to see at what level it pans out.
Click to expand...
The most distressing thing is the sales though. Even though we are far from complaining, it feels like we do not have the financial security we would like to have, to truly be able to focus on making the best game possible. So what should we do? The things we have discussed include: Increase the cost of the game, doing a console port instead of Linux/Mac, do a less niche title and more. Now is too soon to make a decision though and we have to see how the coming weeks and months go.
Click to expand...
BUY THIS GAME GAF.
 
G

goldsoundz

Member
Well, after watching the Giant Bomb quick look yesterday and reading about the praise for this game I decided to purchase it on Steam this morning. I buy it, and find out that the game locks up when played with ATI X1000 series of cards. The studio released a patch for the game mid last week that fixes this issue, but Steam hasn't released it to its customers yet. I downloaded the patch from the dev's website, and it doesn't work with the Steam version.

Don't leave me hanging, Steam.
 
Y

Yasae

Banned
goldsoundz said:
Well, after watching the Giant Bomb quick look yesterday and reading about the praise for this game I decided to purchase it on Steam this morning. I buy it, and find out that the game locks up when played with ATI X1000 series of cards. The studio released a patch for the game mid last week that fixes this issue, but Steam hasn't released it to its customers yet. I downloaded the patch from the dev's website, and it doesn't work with the Steam version.

Don't leave me hanging, Steam.
Click to expand...
Great to hear. They also made sure to mention it in their newsletter.

I'm going to download the updated demo. I'd love to purchase at the moment, but even at $20 it's out of question for now. I have no game budget for this month and probably the next... But soon enough.
 
G

goldsoundz

Member
Man...

the sound in this game is more terrifying than the surroundings, not that they don't make me feel extremely uneasy. I was finally able to play the game for about 30 minutes tonight--all my mind could take--with my surround sound headphones on. The ambiance is shit-your-pants-scary enough already, and pianos playing themselves, the raspy breathing of some kind of monster from the eighth level of hell hunting me down, and my own footsteps causing me to stop, stand still, and listen to make sure if they really are my footsteps I'm hearing is chilling my blood.

I'm a huge horror game fanatic, but this sound work is taking survival horror to a whole new level. And I haven't even encountered any enemies yet. I just had a flashback that leads me to believe that's about to change as soon as I step out of the room I'm in. That was the point in which I said to myself "I can't do this anymore tonight. Who knows what could be outside of this room waiting for me? I don't want to know tonight." *hit ESC and saved & quit game*

Oh, and already I have been closing every single door I've been through behind me. This game is fucking bleak, and I love it. The survival horror genre has provided me, hands down, with the most memorable moments in gaming. I will never forget James Sunderland's mindfuck of a journey through Silent Hill in SH2; this also goes for SH1&2. I will never forget the desperate pleas for death by the Many in System Shock 2.

I'll definitely see through Daniel's journey to the end, it will just be in bits and pieces over the course of a few weeks. I can't imagine what my reaction is going to be when I encounter whatever it is that's hunting me. It will probably be to rip my surge protector plug out of the outlet. I can't wait to continue the journey tomorrow!
 
G

goldsoundz

Member
Max said:
546 MB update? Wha?
Click to expand...
I've been waiting for this patch since the weekend. It was actually released last week, but as usual, you have to have the Steam version of the patch in order to play the Steam version of the game. The game wouldn't run on my series of video card due to a bug, and this fixed it. It obviously fixed something else at that file size, but I don't know what. It's running like a champ now though.
 
C

cbox

Member
Reached a very dark section of the game
after the elevator
and i can't go on, ran out of oil and im too scared to go on :lol :lol
 
G

goldsoundz

Member
eternal prize said:
Reached a very dark section of the game
after the elevator
and i can't go on, ran out of oil and im too scared to go on :lol :lol
Click to expand...
I'm paranoid about having my lantern out for too long. Using the tinderboxes to light candles isn't very helpful, but they'll do the job. If I run out of oil I'm going to literally shit my pants.
 
J

Jackl

Member
The prison

I'm playing in 15 minute bits, all I can take. The game is slowly amping up the OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK moments with each section.

As a first time poster to this thread I'd like to congratulate friction. For making the most scary fucking game I have ever played, and for doing it so well. This same game with mediocre sounds, plot, and events would be the most boring game in existence. But no, they had to go and do it right so its immersive as fuck, and I'm too fucking scared to peek around a corner a see what those footsteps are.

GODDAMIT ITS JUST A GAME.



....right?
 
C

cbox

Member
Ok just passed it. One of the most atmospheric games i've played and it gave me more than one "im gonna cry if this keeps happening" moments.

Everyone should buy this, gonna tell all my friends :D



Now to give the custom story creator a shot
 
I

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Hey folks, just was schooled on the existance of this game thanks toa Lovecraft game thread I started:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=409144

Ready to buy.

My question... Steam or Direct from Frinctional? Any good reason not to just buy on Steam? Any DRM?

Thanks, and forgive if repeated. This thread is hefty and I have work to do today.
 
B

BobsRevenge

I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
Buy direct from Frictional just to give them a little extra money. They have a good service and give you a key to activate on Steam anyways.

The game is really fucking good, so have fun.
 
kittoo

kittoo

Cretinously credulous
Imbarkus said:
Hey folks, just was schooled on the existance of this game thanks toa Lovecraft game thread I started:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=409144

Ready to buy.

My question... Steam or Direct from Frinctional? Any good reason not to just buy on Steam? Any DRM?

Thanks, and forgive if repeated. This thread is hefty and I have work to do today.
Click to expand...

If you buy from frictional they will get more money so I guess thats the way to go.
 
I

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
BobsRevenge said:
Buy direct from Frictional just to give them a little extra money. They have a good service and give you a key to activate on Steam anyways.

The game is really fucking good, so have fun.
Click to expand...

Ooh clincher. Will buy tonight after some time with my son on Left4Dead The Sacrifice.

Thanks folks. Time 4 me to Get2Work!
 
D

Draft

Member
Mr. Snrub said:
Yeah, now knowing their financial struggles, I wish I'd bought it straight from Frictional for full price :-\
Click to expand...
While I can sort of understand this, I don't feel bad at all buying the game through Steam, or taking advantage of the pre-order discount. I bought the game day one. I did so based solely on word of mouth. I think there's a point where there's not much else I can do as a consumer to show my support.
 
B

BobsRevenge

I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
HK-47 said:
I wonder if anyone will use the tools.
Click to expand...
Back in highschool I'd be all over them.

Now I have a job and shit to do so I'll just keep pretending I'll get to it eventually.

...

:(
 
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