[HN Gopher] Ken and Roberta Williams Working on Colossal Cave Ad...
___________________________________________________________________
Ken and Roberta Williams Working on Colossal Cave Adventure Remake
for VR and PC
Author : peterkelly
Score : 192 points
Date : 2022-03-23 12:49 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gameworldobserver.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gameworldobserver.com)
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > interesting characters
|
| I played ADVENT for many hours, back in the day (on the boss's
| time). The only characters I remember are a dwarf, a pirate, a
| dragon, a bird, a giant, and a giant clam. OK, I suppose the bear
| and the troll might count as characters.
|
| None of these count as "interesting characters" - a chap that
| always says "Fee Fi Fo Foo" isn't particularly interesting, and
| none of the others has any dialogue.
| GLGirty wrote:
| What, with your bare hands?!
| omarhaneef wrote:
| > use computer
|
| You don't know how
|
| > pick manual
|
| You have the manual
|
| > read manual
|
| You now know how to use a computer
|
| > use computer
|
| Your hands are busy
|
| > drop manual
|
| > use computer
|
| ... except funnier
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Things like this do happen to an extent in VR games, which is
| funny.
|
| A classic example would be opening a locked door to which you
| have a key in, say, a zelda game. On a controller you just go
| over to it and press A. In VR you may need to sheathe your
| sword to draw the key and put away your shield to steady the
| door knob to unlock it and then push open the door and then
| pick up your weapons again.
|
| The whole "Pick up your weapons again" loop at the end of
| little interactions is common in many games and is more
| involved than in traditional games that would abstract it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I know Kung Fu
|
| Show me
| christkv wrote:
| I've started playing Kings quest 2 with the kids and oh my the
| amount of deaths. I had forgotten the pixel perfect walking
| needed not to plunge to your death. Kids are enjoying it though
| since they get all the fairy tale references.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Initial promotional footage is... not very impressive.
|
| https://twitter.com/colossalcave3d/status/150637770280619622...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Because this is approaching the web horizon, for those who don't
| know, Ken and Roberta Williams are pretty close to the SoCal
| version of Shigeru Miyamoto.
|
| They founded Sierra On-Line in 1979, which published pretty
| stellar titles until its sale in 1996 (and subsequent
| mismanagement and outright corporate fraud by the acquirer).
|
| Here are a list of the things they published, among which some
| were developed inhouse, among which some were developed by one or
| both of the Williams.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment...
|
| PS: And on a personal note, I can't imagine my teenage years
| without Sierra. From _King 's Quest_ to Dynamix to Valve's _Half-
| Life_ to Relic 's _Homeworld_ to Gearbox 's initial _Half-Life_
| console ports, they survived far longer in an industry where so
| many don 't... while putting out amazing stuff over _decades_.
|
| Or to put it another way, when they first started writing and
| publishing games, there was no Internet (in the modern sense) and
| Intel had just released the 10 MHz 8086 built on a 3000 nm (3 um)
| node.
|
| By the time they left the company, the web and JavaScript
| existed, and Intel had just released the Klamath 300 MHz Pentium
| II on a 350 nm node.
|
| Crazy times.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Hacking King's Quest on my middle school's Apple IIe was one of
| the ways I learned to code.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Did they really have much of a role to play for Half-Life or
| Homeworld? By that point they were just a publisher.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Supposedly they chose to publish _Half-Life_ because they
| regretted turning down the chance to buy id, and thought
| Valve seemed like a good company. So I think they deserve
| some credit for recognizing talent.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| The Internet Archive has many historic games (and some of its
| other vintage software) available to run in various emulators
| in-browser. For example, a 1987 release of _King 's Quest_ in
| (F1 for help; note: sound!):
|
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Kings_Quest_I_-_Quest_for_...
|
| Discussion of how it's done with DOSBox compiled to Wasm:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10977424
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Plenty are on GOG, too.
| [deleted]
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| They also had a couple of really cool Nordhavn motor yachts
| which Ken has blogged about extensively, including crossing the
| Atlantic in their first one.
| LichenStone wrote:
| I really hope they make use of the Steam Audio API in the game,
| which can simulate sound reflections, occlusion, reverb, and HRTF
| directional positioning to the listener for sound sources. Would
| make a ton of sense for a cave environment.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Is there anywhere to play the original colossal cave adventure?
| anthk wrote:
| Linux: install bsdgames, type down "advent".
|
| All: Get a Z-Machine interpreter (Frotz/Winfrotz/Lectrote) and
| "advent.z5" from here:
|
| https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Advent.z5
| jmyeet wrote:
| Is it just me or is there a wider belief that VR will never be
| anything more than a niche? Facebook aka Meta has bet its future
| on this and I think it's a mistake.
|
| When people think of VR they think of the Matrix but that will
| never be because of the laws of physics. Latency is the big
| problem (unless such a network is very localized in the real
| world) but visually speaking, black is a problem. Black is a
| colour on computer displays but in the real world it's the
| absence of light. Another big visual problem: focus.
|
| Yet another problem: controls. In the real world you just think
| and act. In VR you have these controls to direct movement. That's
| never going to feel natural so you're pretty much predicated on a
| pure brain-computer interface for it to feel realistic.
|
| There's no killer app for VR (optimists will add "yet") and no
| hint of what one might be.
|
| Part of what made these old adventure games so compelling (IMHO)
| was the format: text. Games like Myst added images and can have
| an appeal all of their own but it's different to the text
| adventure game. The same goes for video (meaning rendered 3D
| graphics). I have doubts that this magic (which has a heavy dose
| of nostalgia) will translate to VR.
|
| For me the Infocom games (Zork in particular) will always be
| remembered fondly but part of the magic was the time and you can
| never step in the same river twice.
| coldpie wrote:
| I think it has a chance, but it's definitely on life support.
| All the big names from this latest attempt (Valve, HTC, Sony)
| have already given up on it. Facebook is trying to turn it into
| a thing, but I think they're just trying one last gasp on a
| failed acquisition before firing that team. Sony and Apple
| claim to have new hardware coming down the pipe, but I imagine
| they're feeling much less enthusiastic about it now than when
| they started those projects. Maybe one of those three will pull
| it off, but it's not looking good.
| pavlov wrote:
| Meta has over 10,000 people working on VR / AR and has
| invested tens of billions in it. I don't think they're giving
| up very soon.
| coldpie wrote:
| If the best they've got for all that investment is that
| hilariously terrible VR demo video from a couple months
| ago, I wouldn't bet on that team sticking around around
| long term.
| pavlov wrote:
| Have you tried the Quest? It's actually good.
|
| I don't know if it will find a true mass-market product
| fit: annual unit sales are still in the millions, a long
| way from the billions of the smartphone market. But it's
| certainly not because the product inherently sucks.
|
| I bet Zuckerberg is ready to swallow at least another $50
| billion in losses before giving up on the VR dream. The
| FB/IG ad machine is sputtering but still pays for that
| easily.
| coldpie wrote:
| I haven't used a Quest specifically, but I have used a
| number of VR headsets, both personally and for work.
| Regardless of the hardware tech, there just isn't a
| compelling user story there, and I think the market
| performance over the past five years bears that out. The
| only thing anyone talks about is Beat Saber, not even
| Alyx made a cultural dent. Facebook's VR demo video was
| frankly embarassing. There's just nothing there to
| attract users, it's a solution looking for a problem.
| Facebook certainly has the money to fund this boondoggle
| for eternity, but that doesn't guarantee any significant
| userbase or cultural impact. Like I said in my original
| comment, maybe Apple will strike gold and find another
| iPod in this, but I just don't see it happening.
|
| Put another way: VR has the smell of 3D TVs and movies,
| and not the next smartphone.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's hard to see what VR does better than pancake
| computing.
|
| Superficially it's obvious - 3D! immersion!
|
| But practically it's not at all like real 3D (no
| tactility at all, stupid strap-on goggles with trailing
| cables, weird mismatches between head movement and
| perspective, no integration with the real world so you're
| constantly anxious about bumping into the furniture, and
| let's not even get started on avatars etc).
|
| So far it's just too clumsy to be a convincing
| substitute. It's basically only really credible as a game
| accessory - like a joystick, but better.
|
| I can't see VR becoming phone-popular until two way
| direct neural interfaces become a polished technology.
| And when that happens a lot of other developments become
| possible at the same time.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Link?
| coldpie wrote:
| If you want to waste an hour, here's the original:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvufun6xer8
|
| Or a much shorter recap:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gElfIo6uw4g
| grumbel wrote:
| Blacks are essentially a solved problem with (micro)OLED.
| Controls are a non-issue, it's no different than holding a
| screwdriver or pen, humans are quite adapted to using tools to
| manipulate the world and we have hand and finger tracking on
| top if necessary. Latency again, not really a major problem,
| works well enough, this is VR after all, not telerobotics, if
| the game engine has to cheat a little, that's fine. Focus
| adjust exists in a couple of prototypes, but so far hasn't made
| it into the consumer space, I'd rate this as a "nice to have",
| most people quickly get used to the fixed focus.
|
| The big problem VR has to overcome is getting resolution parity
| with monitors. At the moment VR is still extremely low
| resolution, even headsets in the 2000x2000 realm are, due to
| the image being stretch across ~100deg FOV, only the equivalent
| of an old 800x600 monitor. That's not good enough for a lot of
| uses. It works fine for VR games, but barely works for 2D
| movies and even less so for text. Given that the majority of
| content out there is made for larger resolutions, that's the
| biggest stumbling block for VR as it means people have to get
| out of VR and use another display device.
|
| I think once resolution is solved, that will be the killer-app
| for VR just by itself. As it means a VR headsets, which can be
| turned into an AR headset via camera pass through, is able to
| replace every screen you currently have. That will be the point
| where people can start ditching their multi-monitor setups and
| have essentially an empty desk with just a headset. The appeal
| of getting ever bigger TVs will also vanish when you can have a
| virtual IMAX screen in your headset.
|
| It will still take some years until VR/AR headset are good
| enough and comfortable enough to replace TVs and monitors en
| masse. But I have little doubt that it will happen sooner or
| later. All the VR gaming stuff is really just a bonus here and
| I don't think we'll get mass VR adaption just from that.
| trafficante wrote:
| The software side of this vision is already surprisingly
| mature and mostly waiting for hardware to catch up.
|
| On my Quest 2, I can pop into a virtual environment with 5
| desktops scaled around me in 3D space, a physical keyboard
| fully rendered into the environment that also tracks my
| fingers, and a scaleable camera "portal" positioned over the
| location of my doorway (in physical space) that displays a
| camera feed of anyone entering the room.
|
| If I'm trying to relax, I can hop into a virtual movie
| theater on the moon and watch a 3D Blu-ray rip or play most
| modern AAA pc games.
|
| All of this while sitting in a lounge chair in my living
| room.
|
| And then, of course, there's all the 6dof VR games but, after
| Alyx barely moved the hardware sales needle, I don't think
| that sort of thing is what's needed to drive mass adoption at
| this point.
|
| VR needs much better screen tech, high performant SoCs, and a
| "coolness" factor. I wonder if there's a company known for
| all three that has repeatedly yoinked entire markets even
| though they entered "late"?
| kgwxd wrote:
| I did, until my kid started playing it a few months ago and
| that was all he wanted to do all day, every day. Then, he
| completely lost interest and hasn't used it in weeks, so I'm
| back where I started.
| zeagle wrote:
| Re: the blacks. Hopefully the next generation of valve index &
| others will have OLED screens with proper blacks.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I have worked in the VR industry full time for the last 5
| years. Your description of the problems of VR are
| unrecognizable to me.
|
| Which people are these that "think of the Matrix" when they
| think of VR? I've seen some people talk about it, or more often
| Sword Art Online. But they are rare. It tends to mark folks as
| not having really tried VR. I've seen people talk about not
| even wanting to try VR until it's "full dive". That's dumb. I
| doubt it's ever going to get there and I also doubt it's even a
| good idea. See: The Matrix and SAO for depictions of why.
|
| I think "people" know the tech is not magic and have decent
| expectations on what it entails. What I tend to see are people
| blown away by how impactful that simple "box with a display and
| some lenses" concept works at transporting a person to a new
| world.
|
| I don't think anyone really cares about black levels that much,
| not to the degree that it becomes any kind of deciding factor
| on purchases. Focus... are you sure you're not Ronny Abovitz?
| Literally the only person I've seen ranting about focus. Again,
| nobody cares. It'd certainly be nice, but it's just not that
| important of a feature.
|
| Your comment on latency is confusing. Which latency? Motion-to-
| photon latency? Hasn't been a problem in years. Network
| latency? We're not talking about a networked game here, and
| regardless, that's going to be true for any kind of multiplayer
| experience, VR or otherwise. It's also a largely solved problem
| and people don't tend to notice network latency in most
| multiplayer games. The only latency issue I encounter on a
| regular basis is Oculus Quest 2's hand tracking latency. That's
| not a fundamental limitation, though, because other hand
| tracking systems like UltraLeap show that it can be done very
| well. The Quest's problem is that it's running on what's
| essentially a 3 year old smartphone SOC.
|
| As for "killer apps", honestly, I have never really believed in
| the concept. There's nothing on my smartphone that I can't do
| without it being specifically on my smartphone. But combined,
| the whole ecosystem is extremely useful. My smartphone also
| isn't the seamless digital assistant Jobs predicted it would
| be, but it's still extremely useful. Back in 2008, _most_
| people thought smartphones weren 't for them, but now most find
| them extremely useful.
|
| There are problems in the VR industry. Any device that isn't
| the Quest 2 is too expensive and not featureful enough to
| warrant the expense. Building software for VR is still
| extremely primitive (No, Unity doesn't solve it. Come back to
| me after you ship a Unity VR project that meets Meta's store
| guidelines if you disagree). Battery life on standalone systems
| is abysmal. I don't know anyone with a PC-tethered system that
| hasn't destroyed several cables, ports, keyboards, or even just
| glass containers.
|
| And there are problems being foisted on VR. The global chip
| shortage is making it way to hard to scale. Meta's attempts to
| dominate the market by undercutting the competition is a huge
| danger to everyone. This coopting of social VR into "metaverse"
| by crypto grifters is going to kill an entire segment of the
| app market. Megacorp's inability/unwillingness to moderate user
| behavior on their platforms is a lot more harmful to people's
| mental health when it's literally in their faces.
|
| But the biggest one might be people who don't know anything
| about VR claiming it's "useless" or "dead".
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > As for "killer apps", honestly, I have never really
| believed in the concept. There's nothing on my smartphone
| that I can't do without it being specifically on my
| smartphone. But combined, the whole ecosystem is extremely
| useful. My smartphone also isn't the seamless digital
| assistant Jobs predicted it would be, but it's still
| extremely useful. Back in 2008, most people thought
| smartphones weren't for them, but now most find them
| extremely useful.
|
| Smart phones are portable web browsers. That's the killer
| app. That's immensely useful. VR is non portable, at least in
| the sense that you're gonna look like a huge asshole loading
| up your quest on the subway. That's a pretty difficult
| barrier.
| moron4hire wrote:
| My point was not that smartphones aren't great. My point
| was that the whole "killer app" discussion is broken.
|
| If you took away my smartphone today, I'd be pretty upset.
| It'd leave a whole of convenience in my life. But I'd
| ultimately adapt and continue living largely the same way
| I'm living now.
|
| If you took away my PC today, my career would be over. I'd
| have to find a whole new way to live.
|
| "Killer app" discussions tend to devolve into essentialism
| arguments. What's essential to one person is a frivoloty to
| others. But I don't think any of that matters. Game
| consoles are clearly not essential, yet they're big
| business. Some people gotta have a huge TV in their living
| room with cable and all the streaming services, others are
| fine just watching DVDs, still others are fine with no TV.
| Yet nobody is arguing that game consoles or TVs shouldn't
| exist just because they aren't universally appealing. So
| why VR? What is it about VR that evokes these responses
| "it's dead/dying/should die?"
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Killer app does not mean you would die without it. It
| means the app is so good that you would buy the hardware
| just for that app.
|
| VR isn't dead, but it has no killer apps. It has no
| obvious path to be the next smart phone. Video game
| consoles have plenty of killer apps. It's the games.
|
| VR games aren't that great, and the claim seems to be
| that they're going to be the next big social platform /
| computer tech rather than a game console alternative.
|
| I own an index to play phasmophobia and beat saber. I'm
| very pessimistic about the tech's ability to become
| mainstream.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I have worked in the VR industry full time for the last 5
| years
|
| Maybe this results in having a distorted vision of what VR
| represents for people out there. Just like everyone else who
| works on a specific business for a long time.
| moron4hire wrote:
| If you want to know anything about VR, why would you talk
| to someone who knows nothing about VR?
|
| What is it with our culture that expertise is viewed as a
| conflict of interest? Flat-eathers scoff at astronomers. A
| teacher tells some parents their kid is having trouble in a
| subject and the parents blow up. There's a small band of
| entitled truckers out here making folks late to pick up
| their kids from school because they think they know better
| about vaccines than doctors.
|
| A user only knows their own, subjective experience. As a
| developer, I collect feedback from many users.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Astronomy is a science with objective facts. You're
| suggesting VR enthusiasts are the experts on whether VR
| is good.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that at all. My post was a reply to a
| list of "problems", arguing they weren't actually all
| that important of problems. I also listed real problems
| we face.
|
| I'm the lead developer on a project targeted at everyday
| people. I survey and interview these people about
| problems they have with our software and the hardware. I
| have real insight into the things people complain about
| and praise most often.
|
| I didn't come in here and say "VR good. You dumb." The
| problems GP listed indicate a profound lack of good-faith
| experience with the technology.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| You might be too surrounded by people who are into current
| VR.
|
| > Focus... Again, nobody cares.
|
| That's just not true. Having a single fixed focal distance
| was super jarring when I've tried VR. But normal people won't
| complain about that. They'll just say "looks weird."
|
| Personally, the problem it needs to solve is figuring out how
| to let me virtually move without physically moving, while not
| making it awkward and also not getting me motion sick. So
| far, that problem still feels fundamental.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Agreed and even when you can get the interpupillary
| distance correct you can still get peripheral blurring and
| sometimes have to adjust the headset constantly to make
| sure that you're looking straight on.
|
| FoV is also a big deal that a lot of people tend to
| overlook, most of the commercial offerings only have around
| 100deg whereas humans have about a 200deg FOv. It's like
| I'm constantly playing a submarine periscope simulator.
| curioussavage wrote:
| I agree about the movement. I have a lot of fun playing on
| my quest 2. Fortunately I don't have any problem with
| motion sickness so i can turn on joystick movement because
| it's better to me than the teleporting but still kind of
| weird.
|
| One cool thing I'm looking forward to is house scale be
| games. I'm perfectly fine with the constraints those impose
| due to being able to just walk around
| moron4hire wrote:
| I'm the only VR developer at the company where I work, and
| I don't work for a software company. I make a foreign
| language training tool for people who are largely A)
| government employees, B) not gamers.
|
| We get a small amount of skepticism from maybe 25% of the
| students before they try it for the first time. After
| putting hundreds of our own students through the system,
| only 1 has given it a universally negative review, and he
| generally gave the entire instruction program a negative
| review anyway. Can't please everyone all the time.
|
| Most of our students end up using the system multiple
| times. They always have the option to not use it at all, or
| use it from a 2D PC display. Nobody has opted-out
| completely, and only 1 person has opted-out of VR.
|
| About 10% have mentioned a slight feeling of dizziness
| after their first session, with only about 10% of those
| people saying the feeling returned after subsequent
| sessions on later dates. We've had only 1 person who flat
| out couldn't use the system because of simsickness. It
| comes out to about 0.3% of our students, which turns out is
| less than the proportion of people who experience moderate
| to severe discomfort from watching FPS video games or
| action movies in a theater. I've tried to encourage the
| instructors to limit the first session to 20 minutes to get
| that 10% number down even further, but most of the students
| haven't minded the dizziness enough to stop and end up keep
| going for 1hr+ sessions.
|
| When people provide feedback, they tell us they want more
| to do, higher display resolution, easier setup, and more
| intuitive controls. Noone has ever complained about focus,
| latency, black levels, headset weight, etc.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| I played around with VR back in 2013, and thought 3D
| conferences were neat, but annoying.
|
| However, I believe that if headsets can be made less bulky, it
| will become ubiquitous. I don't know what the experience will
| be like, it certainly won't be matrix-y, but I can absolutely
| see a generation of 20 somethings expecting goggles at some
| point in the future, maybe 10 years from now.
|
| It might actually be Zuck's vision of sanitized cartoony
| avatars zipping around with no legs because look at how much
| money kids spend on VBUCKS to look slightly different in
| Fortnight. The Fortnight generation's kids will be hooked on VR
| if the goggles are cheap/small enough.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I've seen this kind of boom become bust twice already; we'll
| have to see how this one pans out.
|
| I will note that technology-wise, the hardware is better than
| it's ever been and I think it has a fighting chance this time
| previous iterations lacked. For all their simplicity, mouse and
| keyboard have a level of accuracy and precision that VR does
| not. This is partially due to their simplicity (keys are binary
| devices, and a mouse can track position to near-perfection with
| optical flow modeling, or even the old wheel solution from days
| of yore). In contrast, VR not only has traditionally had lower-
| resolution on the tracking signal, it's tracking far, far more
| degrees of freedom (at least six, but if you want to accurately
| represent the user's kinematics the number explodes). Plus, the
| biological sensor fusion we humans use to determine our
| position in the world demands accuracy from the virtual
| hardware because we can be very sensitive to input error (and
| we feel it as nausea, disorientation, or vertigo).
|
| The sensor fusion of modern cheap accelerometer tech with the
| absolute tracking of either lighthouses or whole-room flow
| imaging has had amazing consequences, but it's not yet perfect
| and I don't know if a critical mass of users will demand
| perfection or not. We'll find out. But, I've never seen better
| hardware taking a stab at the market before.
| caslon wrote:
| A very large body of HMDs have OLED displays, which have "true"
| blacks.
| onion2k wrote:
| _visually speaking, black is a problem. Black is a colour on
| computer displays but in the real world it 's the absence of
| light_
|
| That isn't a problem. People don't want to use technology to
| exactly replicate the real world - they use tech to replicate
| the real world _up to a point_ , and then they diverge into
| things that can't happen in the real world. People don't care
| if the black isn't quite right. After all, people watch films
| and TV a lot, and they have the same problem.
|
| There are lots of reasons why VR might fail to become
| mainstream in the long term but graphics isn't one of them.
| andybak wrote:
| I've loved VR since I first tried it and I still love it.
|
| > There's no killer app for VR
|
| We'll end up quibbling about the definition of "killer app" but
| I think there's dozens killer apps for VR. If you mean "an app
| that will make it as popular as the smartphone" then you're
| right. But that's a strangely high bar. If you mean "an app
| that is compelling enough to sell a reasonably large number of
| headsets" then that definitely already exists. (but then we can
| enjoy quibbling about what "reasonably large" means)
| ekianjo wrote:
| > There's no killer app for VR
|
| Apparently HL: Alyx may be that kind of thing. Problem is, it's
| just one game, and it took years and lots of efforts to make
| for probably very little return on investment.
| gs17 wrote:
| It's pretty close, I just wish it had proper mod tools.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| its not a killer app. it was a decent ~12 hr single player
| game, and yet one of the only really fleshed out games for vr
| so far
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Alyx was fun. It was nothing close to a killer app.
| anthk wrote:
| >For me the Infocom games (Zork in particular) will always be
| remembered fondly but part of the magic was the time and you
| can never step in the same river twice.
|
| Inform6, 7. Then get Anchorhead, Inside Woman, Spider and Web,
| Vicious Cycles, Slouch Over Bedlam, Curses+Jigsaw and get
| amazed.
| delecti wrote:
| How much VR have you tried? After just 10 minutes of Beat Saber
| I was left with an odd feeling after taking off the headset. I
| think your standards for VR are unreasonably high, considering
| how utterly addicting it's likely to be to huge numbers of
| people if it just gets fairly engaging.
|
| Put another way, both Roblox and Minecraft look like crap, and
| are largely graphics we could have replicated on the the
| Playstation 1 or N64, but Microsoft bought Minecraft for $2.5
| billion, and Roblox has a valuation in the tens of billions.
| The threshold between "there's no killer app" and "yet" is
| razor thin.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Beat Saber is the only reason I still have a VR rig and I
| still feel like I agree with parent. It is a solid rhythm
| game and decent upper body workout on higher difficulties,
| but if I hadn't already bought a friend's used Oculus I don't
| think it would convince me.
|
| A big part of it is how damned inconvenient the whole thing
| is. I need all these long high-quality USB3 cables for the
| headset and sensors, a beefy video card, and most importantly
| an otherwise empty room to play it in safely.
|
| The Quest, the most convenient system, only kinda deals with
| the first two problems and does nothing for the third.
|
| I don't know about you guys, but I can't just have the
| servants clear out the tertiary ball room whenever I want to
| play a game. In the normal sized bedroom I've allocated for
| VR I have managed to slam into walls on more than one
| occasion when moving quickly trying to hit something or dodge
| something.
|
| I would definitely say the whole thing is still pretty far
| into "gimmick" territory for the vast majority of gamers.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I've tried an Oculus Go for maybe 12 hours? Some of it was
| interesting but it always felt gimmicky to me. A bit like 3D
| in movie theaters. Like it was all so... forced.
| andybak wrote:
| The Oculus Go was a 3DOF headset. That's basically a
| glorified 360 movie viewer.
|
| 6DOF is the absolute bare minimum and I feel we should have
| reserved the term "VR" specifically for 6DOF devices. The
| immersion just isn't there without positional tracking.
|
| And positional tracking with the controllers is another
| huge factor. So - I would argue you've never really tried
| "real VR".
| krapp wrote:
| I have a VR headset. What I don't have in my apartment is
| a lot of empty space, nor do i want to move furniture
| around to create a play area whenever i want to do
| something in "real VR."
|
| Everyone dismisses 3DOF VR but that is realistically the
| only form of VR that is widely consumer friendly. If I
| can't stand or sit more or less in a single place, I'm
| simply not going to use an app despite having a headset
| that supports it.
| andybak wrote:
| You're conflating "3dof" with seated.
|
| I'm similarly space constrained a lot of the time but
| 6dof is still my bare minimum requirement.
|
| Head movements of 1 or 2 cm matter for immersion. It's
| not about running round a large play space.
|
| Seated VR needs to be 6dof as well
| krapp wrote:
| Isn't the extra complexity needed for 6dof what makes
| headsets so expensive? Is it even worth it for 1 or 2cm?
| andybak wrote:
| > Is it even worth it for 1 or 2cm?
|
| Yes. It's worth it. It's such a significant difference
| that I just have zero interest in 3dof headsets for
| anything other than 360 video (and I've got very little
| interest in 360 video)
|
| With 3dof, the minute you lean or move your head by a
| small amount, the whole illusion is shattered and you are
| reminded that you're just watching a stereoscopic skydome
| that's glued to your head. It's also why lag and low
| refresh rates are an immersion killer for 6dof.
|
| Plus - even seated experiences allow a lot of mobility.
| You can lean towards things to examine them closer. You
| can duck to either side. "Seated" doesn't mean "immobile
| apart from your head"
| shadowgovt wrote:
| People don't realize it, but without positional tracking,
| even seated experiences feel very "off."
|
| Consider where the joint is that moves your head. When
| you rotate your head, you're not rotating through an axis
| in the center of your head; you're pivoting a spline
| describing your neck. That's a very complicated motion
| and it can't be faked by just turning the view without
| moving the view also (and if you try to simulate it
| without full 6DOF tracking, you'll have to model the
| user's neck length and curvature profile, and that'll get
| _very_ messy, with disorientation consequences when you
| get it wrong).
| andybak wrote:
| Actually 3dof headsets did try and compensate for this by
| modelling the human neck. But that still ignores a lot of
| the range of movement that one makes even when seated and
| relatively still.
| delecti wrote:
| I wonder if susceptibility to accept VR as more "reality"
| than "virtual" is something that varies per person. All of
| the VR I've tried has felt completely _un_ forced. I
| accepted it all immediately.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > After just 10 minutes of Beat Saber I was left with an odd
| feeling after taking off the headset.
|
| Beatsaber is like the Tetris of VR. It won't change anything,
| while it's a good game and it's addictive.
| tokai wrote:
| >largely graphics we could have replicated on the the
| Playstation 1 or N64
|
| I know you are making a hyperbole, but that is just
| absolutely ridiculous.
| delecti wrote:
| I am being hyperbolic, but not that much. Certainly running
| the full simulation of either Minecraft or Roblox (not to
| mention the network bandwidth requirements) is well beyond
| anything that old, but purely the level of visual detail
| would barely be out of reach of that generation.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The VR folks are starting to sound like the Year of the Linux
| Desktop folks.
|
| Y'all standing at the station for a train that might never
| come
| moron4hire wrote:
| The train already came. We're already on it. We're having
| fun and getting work done.
|
| And I'm not even going to say "you missed it". You can get
| on the train any time you want. It's here and it's pretty
| cool.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| With the exception of Half-Life Alyx, everything I've
| seen on VR has been either a gimmick or "meh"
|
| And don't even get me started on how awful virtual
| workspaces are.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Half life alyx is extremely gimmicky if you stop to
| observe how it works. Enemies are stupidly generous in
| telegraphing their moves. The game, correctly, expects
| you to be very slow and unable to integrate moving and
| shooting.
|
| Boneworks is a game that does the opposite, but is
| similarly disappointing. You get fast walking speed with
| the analog stick allowing you to be very agile. Presuming
| you don't get nausea... this is by far your most useful
| asset in a fight. The real world movement is basically
| nothing and a lot of the fighting is better done as a
| sort of jousting with your weapon held in front of you
| and your move stick held forward.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Everyone loves to bring up beatsaber when discussing the
| future of VR but beat saber is so carefully designed to avoid
| its pitfalls. You don't move more than a few feet irl or in
| game. Everything you need to see is in front of you. You have
| infinitely light weapons with no resistance.
|
| Graphics is not the problem. It's the interface.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| _Everything_ is designed around its own pitfalls. Books,
| podcasts, movies, television shows, flatscreen video games,
| they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. When a
| movie comes along that does an astounding job of playing to
| cinema 's strength, people are going to bring it up as an
| example of a good movie. Beat Saber is the same.
|
| Which isn't to say all games have to be designed strictly
| around VR's strengths, there are games that exist in both
| formats, and sometimes it comes out better than the
| original version (Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Super
| Hot). Other times it's just ok because the game design
| doesn't translate as well to VR (Skyrim, Borderlands).
|
| If what you're hoping for is mainstream AAA titles to get
| adapted into VR and achieve millions of sales, then yes I
| think you'll be disappointed. But Beat Saber isn't the only
| opportunity to be thoughtful about how VR interfaces work.
| I doubt I'd have ever bought a minigolf game to play on a
| TV, but Walkabout Mini Golf is relaxing and a lot of fun.
| On the shooter side of things, you have games like Half-
| Life: Alyx or Hyper Dash. Puzzling Places lets you assemble
| 3D puzzles of scanned real world environments. Tea For God
| takes a limited play area and carefully designs a
| continuous level that feels boundless as you walk freely
| though it.
|
| We're not going to have Matrix-like VR interactions any
| time soon where you swing a sword and your hands are
| physically stopped when your opponent blocks it. But I
| wouldn't look at that and say "No way this goes anywhere,
| the pinnacle of game design is the limitless interface of
| two thumb sticks, four buttons, a D-pad, and a pair of
| bumpers/triggers."
| oneoff786 wrote:
| > Everything is designed around its own pitfalls.
|
| This is true, but it's also true that most things don't
| claim to be major paradigm shifts and "the future".
| Designing VR around these limits won't satisfy people who
| have been promised ready player one. It's a gimmick with
| some good potential, but it's just a gimmick.
| wiz21c wrote:
| What about Elite Dangerous ? Anyone played ? I heard it was
| real good on VR.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| As a seated experience (in a spaceship, where my Star
| Trek fantasy training has taught my brain, oddly enough,
| that motion in space should involve no feeling the
| acceleration forces), it's really quite good. Night-and-
| day from the same experience mouse-and-keyboard or HOTAS.
|
| The game itself, sadly, doesn't hold my attention for
| very long, but I think the VR UI is nearly ideal for it.
| munk-a wrote:
| Elite Dangerous VR almost requires something like Voice
| Attack but if you set it up like that I think it's
| immensely immersive - I've always had issues with the
| gameplay itself though so it's still not completely my
| cup of tea. I personally want a space freighter game
| where I'm drifting between breaktaking vistas - or an
| exploration game where I'm probing the edges of
| civilization - Elite Dangerous allows both of these to an
| extent, but it's strongly focused on dog fighting
| mechanically.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Haven't played it but at a glance its a cockpit game for
| VR. So again, no moving, no local physics interactions
| that the players hands have to deal with. Looks pretty
| cool.
|
| But when people think vr, and they look at the movies,
| they're thinking about games where you are a person in a
| place that feels alive.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Funny enough, they just added a whole bunch of FPS style
| content, and it is locked out of VR last I checked.
| munk-a wrote:
| > You don't move more than a few feet irl or in game.
|
| Maybe that's the real future of VR? I enjoyed Half Life
| Alyx as it was a really polished feeling VR shooter but
| trying to move in that game was always a janky experience -
| I think VR exploration when things are peaceful is
| interesting and fun but, since you're never going to be
| able to freely navigate a scene by walking around alone
| it'll always be quite immersion breaking. I'd be more
| excited to see something like a mech warrior game with a
| navigable bridge than a COD style shooter - if you design
| the setting around having a fixed limited environment you
| can freely move around in in VR that you then move around
| in a larger environment... I think that's the sweet spot
| for VR for the foreseeable future.
| ipaddr wrote:
| That's how all 80s and 90s games were carefully designed
| with limited memory/cpu. They designed to avoid those
| limitations by limiting play or encouraging other actions.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| One of the giant limitations for VR is physical playing
| space. Memory and processor can always get better,
| faster, and cheaper, but I don't see how available
| playing space is going to improve in the future.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| It definitely beats me sitting in this char for playing
| space. I had a Quest 2 and I can say the playable space
| is pretty large, more than enough, and I walked away from
| the experience feeling that it was absolutely profound. I
| haven't had such a game changing experience since I
| bought my Diamond Monster 3D (3dfx Vooodoo 4MB).
|
| It's not going to be for everyone. Games today aren't
| either. Some people just don't like gaming, reading, VR,
| sitcoms, etc.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Memory limits weren't fundamental problems with video
| games. They were temporary limitations.
|
| My point is not that you cannot make fun games in VR. you
| can, and beat saber is very fun. But you can only have so
| many beat sabers.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I love beat saber, but I feel like it is VR at the space
| invaders stage. I think in the next ten years we will see
| the platformer and beat-um-up stage games; I just don't
| have the imagination to predict what they will be like.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Memory limits are still problems on my c64 but clever
| people came up with ways around like[geos windows before
| windows) or There is a guy who appears on here powering
| his website off a c64.
|
| Whatever limits vr creates there are people who can work
| within those limits.
|
| The problem is so fewer developers are making indie vr
| because it is locked down and expensive.
| rob74 wrote:
| What makes me worried about the future of VR is that there is
| no "entry-level" VR solution anymore since Google and Samsung
| cancelled Daydream and Gear VR respectively. Which means that
| in order to try it out in the comfort of your own home you now
| have to invest ~400 EUR.
| grumbel wrote:
| Quest2 goes for $300/350EUR and is a substantially more
| complete and better VR package than Daydream/GearVR ever was,
| i.e. positional tracking on headset and controller,
| Daydream/GearVR was rotation only. Not having to use a phone
| also reduces a lot of friction in using the device and
| drastically improves the visuals.
|
| I do however miss the $200/200EUR WMR headsets that we had
| for a while, that felt like a more reasonable entry point for
| a PC gaming headset. There is currently no replacement for
| those. Quest2 not only adds price, but also weight due to
| battery and SoC, which you don't really want or need when
| using it only on PC.
| telman17 wrote:
| I use VR for Flight Simulator and Elite Dangerous. Living my
| space exploration dream in VR (sitting down!) is truly a
| magical thing. VR isn't necessarily only the room experience
| games and I think some folks forget that.
| Netcob wrote:
| I got the first Oculus Rift dev kit not too long after it came
| out and I got the first version of the HTC Vive.
|
| I find it hard to talk about VR as some monolithic thing. When
| I first tried it, I felt the same "wow, this is the future!"
| feeling most enthusiasts got. The stutters and the weird
| headaches then made me add "...but not the present".
|
| But my personal issues with it are both surmountable and not
| shared by everyone. On the hardware side, the depth-of-focus
| issue must be solved somehow, and graphics processing must
| improve a lot on both the hardware and software side in order
| to eliminate any stutters (IMO any frame drop or framerates
| below 90 are unacceptable, again, my personal issue), image
| sharpness must match real-world screens at a reasonable
| distance (at least where I'm looking at) and when it comes to
| games, unfortunately anything that tries to look realistic
| still looks like mid-2000s graphics in VR.
|
| Plus the headset must be comfortable to wear for at least 8h at
| a time, and there needs to be good full-body tracking, although
| for a virtual workplace that's not so important.
|
| I'd probably spend all of my work and play time in VR if these
| things were solved, and I could totally see that happening in
| the next few years, the way things are going.
|
| Unless the only good option is Facebook, in which case, I'll
| pass.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I agree with most you say, but did you try a newer Standalone
| VR helmet? It might not be for everyone and overhyped last
| year, but we are getting tremendous value from it in online
| meetings, working together and using it as substitute for a
| stack of (5) large monitors on one laptop. I like the games but
| I am not a big gamer and can see how the controls are an issue
| for hardcore gamers, however for at least dev work, this thing
| was worth it's weight in palladium and then some for during and
| now 'after' covid. Now that handtracking starts working well,
| it is only getting better.
|
| I hope it will improving as I can see this working well for
| portable dev work once everything gets smaller and more
| powerful. I mean I am there now but there is no software (at
| least last I checked) to work in environments where I can just
| have 5-6 screens with browsers open without my laptop
| connected. If that and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and I no
| longer need a laptop for 90% of my work. And then just make it
| smaller for improvement:.
| [deleted]
| mancerayder wrote:
| I have a Steam Index and I think the games are fun and re-
| playable. The problem for me was -
|
| I live in too small a space, and this requires a dedicated game
| room or having to re-arrange furniture, set up the external
| sensors (not true for Oculus but true for this), and then
| recalibrating. That, plus the heavy headset and massive cables.
|
| The controllers are amazing through, they track all your
| fingers without being attached to your fingers.
|
| It has a future, it's still a little rough around the edges.
| However, apartment dwellers might be limited in their interest.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think it's an example of why companies need mature governance
| models.
|
| It's cool tech, but it seems like it's boiled down to Second
| Life + helmet graphics.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| The same was said for PDAs from Apple Newton (1992) -> Windows
| CE devices (1996) -> Palm Pilot (1997) -> iPhone (2007). Lots
| of enthusiasts who thought having a computer in their pocket
| was amazing and everyone else who thought it would never be
| anything more than a niche.
| ekianjo wrote:
| SO are you saying that all niche eventually become mainstream
| products? I hate to disappoint you, but most niche products
| remain niche products. The exception you took is far from
| being the rule.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Power glove.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| I don't know. I only know that for me, after playing Half
| Life: Alyx, I never want the play a non-VR first person
| shooter again. Being there is 10x better than looking at a
| movie of being there (a 2D monitor). Having played No Man's
| Sky in VR I can't imagine being satisfied with a non VR
| space game. Having played Until You Fall, I can't imagine
| being okay with a non-VR action hand-2-hand combat game.
| Having played several rhythm games in VR I can't imagine
| going back to most 2D rhythm games. The VR ones make me
| dance so the experience is far more impactful. The 2D ones,
| maybe only those with accessories (Rockband, Guitar Hero)
| would still be ok but their excitement level is not even
| close to the VR games. Having played Jet Island I'd never
| be satisfied with non-VR Spiderman. Having played Farpoint
| I won't be able to appreciate the Metroid Prime 4. Even
| Astrobot VR makes it hard to go back to Mario even if Mario
| is a better game.
|
| I'm not saying all those games are perfect or even good,
| only that the immersion, presence, impact was such that I
| can't go back to many 2D monitor based games. Sure there
| are exceptions, it's not always about graphics or etc, but
| I'd much rather play GTA5 than GTA3, not because GTA3 is
| bad, it was great, but because based on the type of game it
| is it's just better with modern tech. The same is true for
| many well made games in VR.
|
| So will VR get to iPhone level? No idea. But I hope it gets
| close to PS4/PS5/Switch levels
|
| ---
|
| Let me add, my point in PDA progression is that we don't
| know what it will take for VR to explode. PDAs didn't
| explode until 3 things happened (1) switching from
| resistive (stylus required) to capacitive (finger)
| displays, (2) requiring a data connections, all previous
| PDAs it was an expensive option that few opted into but
| iPhone effectively required it since it was a replacement
| for your phone and so it forced users to see the benefit
| (3) an OS designed for fingers/phones first.
|
| In VR it could be we need smaller eyeglass like devices
| instead of bulky phone display devices:
| https://www.gmw3.com/2021/01/new-design-appears-at-
| ces-2021-... It could be we need the device to read your
| hands+fingers instead of requiring controllers. It could be
| we need to wait for the VR to be like that in Black Mirror,
| Season 5, episode 1, Striking Vipers. That's still "VR".
| criddell wrote:
| My first VR experience was in 1992 (Dactyl Nightmare!) and I
| thought for sure it was going to be the next big thing.
| Thirty years later, I think the VR market is pretty big and
| might be plateauing. There are millions of headsets out there
| - enough for a lot of software companies to make money. Does
| it still need exponential growth?
|
| Or maybe it's going to take a company like Apple to really
| figure out VR. As you pointed out, it took them two swings at
| the pocket computing problem over 15 years to really nail it.
| Maybe the VR headset trajectory will be similar - semi-
| successful product in a year or two and then 15 years from
| now, something really great.
|
| I mostly believe the first thing I said is true - the VR
| market is pretty big and is only a failure if you were
| expecting iPhone-like success.
|
| AR, on the other hand, is going to blow up but probably not
| with anything head-mounted. For example, my car projects
| information onto my windshield when I drive. I think that
| qualifies as an AR device.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| I believe AR will blow up but I don't believe AR
| entertainment will likely blow up except for a few niche
| games. It's arguably way too hard to fit every story to the
| environment you're in (AR) than to just put you in a
| different environment (VR) for playing a game or
| experiencing a VR movie.
| dwringer wrote:
| Wow, your post sure got a lot of replies, heh. I've not used a
| modern VR headset but I have used a TrackIR, and to me it
| provides such a huge leap in immersion that I can't really see
| how VR would be worth the extra hassle over that. I'd rather
| have a CAVE than anything like today's consumer VR. Give me
| more and bigger screens, not some headwear out of a dystopian
| sci-fi movie.
| ndand wrote:
| "Roberta and I will be on Twitch tomorrow to talk about a new
| game we're working on. Our interview will be at 3pm Pacific
| time."
|
| https://twitter.com/caboken/status/1506390567197896705
| smoyer wrote:
| If you're interested I'm the original Infocom text adventures,
| the "Eaten by a Grue" podcast does an analysis of one game peer
| episode. The first half of each episode is spoiler-free so you
| can enjoy the content before you've played through.
|
| https://monsterfeet.com/grue/
| dekhn wrote:
| Dark Crystal (from their company) ruined adventure games for me.
| Later I found a cheat book and turns out you had to type a
| totally non-obvious command (LISTEN STREAM) in a specific
| location to unlock the rest of the game. No fun.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Roberta Williams, the Queen of Graphic Adventure Video Games_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30781307 - March 2022 (no
| comments yet)
| auselen wrote:
| Ken's book "Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings" was a nice
| read: https://kensbook.com/faq/
| 20wenty wrote:
| Audible version is great, too. https://www.audible.com/pd/Not-
| All-Fairy-Tales-Have-Happy-En...
| magpi3 wrote:
| I would like to see this happen for other games like the old
| Inform game Trinity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(video_game)
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I'm actually thinking it makes a lot of sense to convert those
| dungeon crawlers (Dungeon Master for example) to VR. I'm
| wondering how much work is needed. One definitely needs to
| remodel the whole world and create new models for the monsters
| and items so it's essentially making a whole new game, plus a lot
| of gameplay code needs to be "converted" to VR. And how does one
| limit the actions of players in VR?
| lolive wrote:
| I really hope we will die a lot in this game... Like in the good
| old times [1]
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/KLPXP5KkcMQ
| drewg123 wrote:
| I first played Colossal Cave adventure on a terminal in my mom's
| office in the late 70s. She was a FORTRAN programmer for a
| defense contractor, and would take me into the office on school
| holidays when she could not find daycare. She'd plunk me down in
| front of the terminal, and I'd play text based games all day.
|
| I think this is what got me into computers and is basically
| responsible for me choosing my major and later my career..
| johnny53169 wrote:
| It's very interesting, did you and your mom ever talk about
| your respective programming career? How was it like when she
| was a programmer?
| drewg123 wrote:
| Sadly, she was a heavy smoker, and passed away from lung
| cancer when I was still very early in my career.
|
| The one time we "worked together" was when I got a summer
| internship at another defense contractor, programming in
| FORTRAN 77 on VAX/VMS. Coming from C & UNIX at the
| university, VMS and FORTRAN was quite different. She taught
| me the basics of the language over a weekend. I never really
| adjusted to the column layout stuff.
|
| I recall we would use used punch cards for scrap paper when I
| was a kid. Pretty much every note or list she wrote was on a
| used punch card.
| pugworthy wrote:
| 1976 I was part of a US National Science Foundation project for
| high school students. Someone had a teletype on 300 baud modem
| in the house we stayed at, and played it there. Good times, and
| also highly formative.
| sgustard wrote:
| Same here, my mom worked at the local community college. The
| other detail was the computer had no display, only a line
| printer. Spewed out quite a stack of paper by the end of a day
| playing Adventure.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| You can re-live your childhood online:
|
| https://grack.com/demos/adventure/
|
| It's the 1984 variant version[1] but close enough. It's also
| retro styled as well!
|
| ---
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure#Later_...
| [deleted]
| AyyWS wrote:
| In the late 80s, I was in a middle school Unix class. My
| friends and I spent most of the time playing MUDs over telnet.
| They're all in tech jobs today.
| munk-a wrote:
| See - that's what I'm waiting to come to VR, the MUDs.
|
| I want to strap on my VR helmet and be in a dark bedroom with
| only the glow of the CRT for light at 3 AM in the morning
| MUDing with someone on the otherside of the world who I'd
| been trying to set up a scene with for weeks for IC reasons.
| boogies wrote:
| MUD = Multi-User Dungeon
|
| IC = ?
| munk-a wrote:
| MUD is a general term for text-based roleplaying game -
| Multi-User Dungeon has always struck me as an unhelpful
| definition since it applies a lot more focus on
| mechanical components than most MUDs actually have.
|
| IC is in character.
|
| I can explain this better with an example I believe.
| While playing as a jeweler in Minas Tirith in a MUD I had
| need to consult with an armorer PC to receive some in-
| character training on basic armorsmithing as Gondor was,
| at that point in the plot, in desperate need of arms and
| armor quickly so all of the PCs who had any sort of forge
| capable of metalwork were trying to make an effort of
| supporting the war effort. While there were lots of
| weaponsmiths in EST the one armorer I knew well and
| enjoyed playing with happened to be a Chinese player who
| _occasionally_ overlapped with EST. I ended up staying up
| late one Saturday night and having a very fun scene with
| them, but there were serious logistical complications and
| a bunch of DMs sent back and forth to make sure we were
| both available.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| That sounds amazing! Where was your middle school?
| AyyWS wrote:
| Kansas, USA. The class was put on by Washburn University.
| jandrusk wrote:
| I just don't see VR going mainstream for gaming. I think there is
| a certain degree of tactile feedback that gamers look for when
| gaming that they get from a controller or a keyboard and mouse.
| It will reach a niche audience and I think that most likely be
| millennials.
|
| It will never work for greybeards like me with Vertigo ;)
| jedberg wrote:
| Have you tried an Oculus? I have vertigo too and am a graybeard
| and it doesn't bother me at all. They did a good job with the
| refresh rate. Other VR headsets do still bother me, so they did
| something right (at least for me) on the Oculus.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I get uncomfortably sweaty after 10 minutes, but maybe that
| depends on fit.
| kemayo wrote:
| It makes a fair difference if you add a fan into your
| headset: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/08/a-fan-for-the-
| valve-in...
| mancerayder wrote:
| I grew up on those Sierra adventure games -- LucasArts too!
|
| Would love to see these (and the Williams) come back in any form.
| spcebar wrote:
| For some background, Colossal Cave Adventure is arguably the
| first narrative computer game, and probably the first text
| adventure. It was developed in the 70s by Will Crowther (who
| helped create ARPANET) and Don Woods, who added most the game's
| puzzles.
|
| It's a very oldschool fantasy text adventure which, by today's
| standards, requires a lot of patience, but it created a genre and
| inspired games like Zork (and by extension Infocom), and
| Adventure for the 2600, which itself inspired many other games.
|
| Rick Adams has a great website dedicated to it with a lot of
| history and fun facts (https://rickadams.org/adventure/), and you
| can play the game directly on the site.
|
| Very exciting to see the Sierra crew taking this on. It seems
| like a bizarre thing to adapt but I'm a big fan of them and the
| original.
| mintplant wrote:
| I discovered ADVENT because it was bundled in with DSLinux [0],
| the Linux distribution for the Nintendo DS. Poking through
| /bin, I thought it was going to be a little CLI advent calendar
| ---imagine my surprise when the console started telling me a
| story! There was a long period in grade school where I was
| kinda obsessed with the game and its derivatives, especially
| Mike Arnautov's 770-point expansion [1]. I remember pulling
| apart his A-code sources (a custom DSL for implementing his
| versions of the game) to make my own additions to the world.
| From there I discovered the Inform 7 authoring system [2] and
| the wider text adventure/interactive fiction ecosystem.
|
| I came into the whole thing comparatively late (sometime in the
| late 2000s, I guess?), but Colossal Cave is still a huge part
| of my childhood. Expansions, ports, remixes, and re-imaginings
| are already a tradition for the game: even the version most
| people are familiar with is Don Woods's expansion of Will
| Crowther's original code. I'm psyched to see the Williams's
| contribution to the canon!
|
| [0] https://dslinux.org/
|
| [1] https://mipmip.org/downloads.html
|
| [2] http://inform7.com/
| anthk wrote:
| Inform6 it's better if you like easy OOP and structured code.
|
| Get Inform Begginers Guide and Inform's Designers Manual.
| Both are free PDF files.
|
| You'll need Inform6 and the Inform 6 library (easy).
| VonGuard wrote:
| Want to hear Roberta talk about her experience playing Adventure
| for the first time? We interviewed her in our podcast about this
| very topic: https://art19.com/shows/the-
| madecast/episodes/a9172691-a4fb-...
| gotaquestion wrote:
| Excited to see how this pans out. Myst and Riven (and to an
| extent, "7th Guest" and Gadget) 3D-ified text adventures and were
| very successful. Riven III was node based but provided full 360
| degree viewing, but the game sucked. With the Williams' at the
| helm I don't think they'll let a substandard game through.
| Although I'm curious to see if they can add any more depth to it
| than Robyn and Rand Miller could squeeze out of the engine. IMHO
| I don't think there has been a single novel advancement to 3D
| games in decades, as I don't consider goggles to be novel.
|
| I had already played all the Infocom games before discovering
| Crowther and Woods' Adventure (remember this was pre-internet).
| It came in the box with a Mockingboard speech synthesizer I got
| for my Apple in the early 80's. The novelty was that the mocking
| board text-to-speeched the game, which was neat but unbearable.
| Not to mention it didn't know how to say "xyzzy" correctly.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Have you played the 3D Myst remake? I've played it both on
| pancake monitor and in the Quest.
|
| On PC, I found it was very easy, though that might have been
| because I was 20 years older than the first time I played it.
|
| It's a delightful experience in the Quest. Some of the
| difficulty comes back due to not having any ability to take
| notes. But being able to walk around and see this world "for
| real" that I've already spent so much time in was giddying.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The VR headset really simplifies the Channelwood first
| puzzle, where half the challenge, I'm sorry to say, was
| understanding if you were coming or going as you moved around
| the node network of walkways and shunted water back and
| forth.
|
| ... but simplifies in a good way. I'm not a fan of the sort
| of artificial challenge that a viewpoint more limited than my
| avatar should have in a game induces, and I considered that
| complexity in the original more bug than feature.
| mattl wrote:
| What's a pancake monitor?
| moron4hire wrote:
| Slang for playing a 2D mode versus VR mode on PC.
| jhgb wrote:
| It's not 2D mode, though. That's just bog-standard 3D
| (unless there's some software that can do 2D-in-VR and
| has only 2D and VR modes -- is there any? Something like
| Age of Empires VR Edition?)
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > It's not 2D mode, though. That's just bog-standard 3D
|
| But without the depth perception that VR gives you.
| That's why it's "flat."
| jhgb wrote:
| Yes, it's always been that way.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Well, not really, because there are 3D displays with
| shutter glasses and lenticular displays that can show
| graphics with depth without the use of goggles or
| glasses. The graphics may be rendered in 3D, but the
| monitor itself, the thing I spoke of, only shows 2D
| images.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Just a regular monitor.
|
| It's an idiom in the VR community, especially since a lot
| of games support both VR and non-VR. But always saying
| "non-VR-mode" or "normal mode" (which mode is 'normal'? VR
| or not?) is kind of awkward.
|
| It started as "flat", people started joking about it being
| "pancake" and it just stuck.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Pancake X has always meant to me the first version of X
| that turns out not well done before you do it right the
| second time. Like how your first pancake is always a
| little off because the griddle isn't heated right.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Sure, if you still need to git gud at cooking.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Huh I've never heard "pancake" used that way before -
| though yeah the analogy is common enough. In this context
| though it's certainly as I described.
| schoen wrote:
| So, a retronym kind of like "snail mail"?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Or "dead tree"
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Yeah that's a good comparison.
| jhgb wrote:
| I googled it because I was confused as well, and it led
| me to https://www.sironacc.com/product/alarm-ratemeter-
| with-pancak... , which didn't make a lot of sense.
| [deleted]
| gotaquestion wrote:
| I remember reading something about it back when it came out
| (RealMyst I think?) but didn't get into it. I think a non-
| node based Myst would be difficult since there would be so
| many places to look for clues. In node-based Myst, you were
| forced to scrutinize a very small field of view. Myst III
| solved the 360-degree FOV by having the clues be quite
| obvious, as it is harder to "hide a lever" if the user can
| look anywhere.
|
| I was excited for Return to Zork's attempt at rendering, but
| was that ever a bummer ("Want some rye?" ...wtf?), as was
| Inquisitor.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Yes, RealMyst, name escaped me for a moment.
|
| Like I said, I found RealMyst easier than original Myst.
| Being able to move in 3D space made levers more obvious,
| not hidden in background detail. I also tended to get lost
| in original Myst and had difficulty getting back and forth
| between puzzles while backtracking (especially a problem in
| Riven). RealMyst with free movement taps into my spatial
| awareness much better.
| jrmg wrote:
| I think the game you're referring to (since you say you
| played it recently, and on Quest) is just called,
| slightly confusingly, "Myst":
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1255560/Myst/ (link to
| Steam, but I think it's available on all current-gen
| consoles too)
|
| 'realMyst' is an earlier 3D remake: https://store.steampo
| wered.com/app/244430/realMyst_Masterpie...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I think VR and text adventurers are at an odd crossroads. Text
| adventures are noteworthy for what they let you do with an
| unlimited interface. But it's also noteworthy in what you CANNOT
| do. In VR there's a lot of things you can't explicitly forbid
| trying to do, namely anything that's somewhat physical in your
| nearby space.
| xioxox wrote:
| I'll be interested in this remake when it's done. I don't know
| what it is about Colossal Cave, but the descriptions of the caves
| were pure magic to me when I played this many years ago. Perhaps
| it comes from the real experience caving of the authors. I also
| loved the Magnetic Scrolls games from the end of the 80s, like
| Jinxter - they had some great humour (but difficult puzzles).
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| I wish Ken & Roberta would work on a new 2D pixel art point&click
| game.
|
| Doing VR well takes a lot of effort, which would be better spent
| on story and creating beautiful pixel art - which somehow has a
| richness that VR can't seem to replicate (yet).
| bebop wrote:
| Off topic, but I was just watching an interview with those two
| about some of the games that they developed at Sierra:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAemLilaNjk
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