http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esthe...of-the-tunnel1
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I, uh... I... :aaaaa:
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http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esthe...of-the-tunnel1
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I, uh... I... :aaaaa:
HOLY FUCK THANK YOU
I thought the first screen was from Crysis, then I realized which subforum this is.
fapfapfap
I will play this so hard. So hard.
if my pc doesn't explode from running this, my dick sure will
*drools*
whoa
Wow.
FINALLY. I've been checking that devblog every day since march. And he puts up an update on the day I don't check it. Lol. Fine.
Thanks for the heads up though.
And my god is that gorgeous. Briscoe continues to push the source engine past anything we've ever seen enrivonment-wise. Can't wait for that mod/game to release.
That's really amazing. Natural environments are hard enough; to accomplish seamless caves with that much detail... beautiful.
My pants just got sticky. :3
SO MANY PROP_STATICS
Prop_Dynamics are better. :realsmug:
That does look spectacular indeed. All i know is, if he doesn't put sprint back in i'll never finish playing it. The first release was interesting and all but i hated walking at a snails pace the whole time.
I agree, that got quite annoying. However, I don't think it was the walking that was the issue- walking through the caves didn't seem that slow because there was a lot to look at - the main problem was those long stretches of boring grass where the player had to bunny-hop to go faster. With all the new terrain changes, I think it will be far more interesting, and therefore much less boring to walk through.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corndogman
Why don't you go back to yer gay silly Call of Faggot games then kid :mad:Quote:
Originally Posted by Corndogman
That's what you THINK. Wait until you get to walking again!Quote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
Honestly? I found the water to be just like the source engine has always been; Average when it came to looks and almost quite novice when it came to interaction with the environment within and around itself.
Otherwise, this is just amazing. A moist cave full of beauty. I'm almost clueless as to how the story pans out (if it even has one), so I'm gonna have to play the earlier levels.
Don't get me wrong, I freaking love Dear Esther, I wish I had that guys voice. Its just that one little thing that annoys me.Quote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
I don't play COD either lol.
Kick ass!
Honestly, any kind of running/sprinting would ruin it. People (not all, but enough) would just zip through paying fuck all attention to anything going on around them and miss the entire point of the mod. Also, it really doesn't take that long to get around the island.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corndogman
How do you even begin to make something like this out of fucking BRUSHES
:suicide:
Implying that half life games didn't have sprintQuote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
they actually needed it
dear esther does not
sorry about your shitpost
Even if it's not needed, they might be better off including it anyway. There are a lot of people (like me) who can't help bhopping around everywhere if there's no sprint key, because that's just what they're used to doing. I think bhopping would break immersion a lot worse than sprinting would.Quote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
That's a terrible reason to include it.
If people are genuinely so accustomed to sprinting everywhere that they're more concerned about moving from A to B as rapidly as possible than they are about taking in the sights and sounds of the environment (particularly in Dear Esther, which people used to break by doing that - narration parts would play over each other), they're playing the wrong mod.
I agree. Though to be true, it's totally possible in the original mod to overlap narrations without even bunny hopping, or even better, you could run around trigger areas and accidentally fuck up the entire area. :downs: Hopefully Briscoe will fix some of that as part of his work.Quote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
That was the first thing he did, if memory serves
Also, the soundtrack is fucking amazing.
This mod is like, a brother to Silent Hill, tbh.
The good ones I mean.
Btw, the guy behind this mod worked as enviro on 2 levels from mirrors edge, iirc.
It's safe to say he's got the environment fucking covered.
Yeah, the soundtrack owns.
Even the original version of this mod is amazingly atmospheric. The new one is just going to be fucking mind-blowing.
Indeed. I was a little moist in the eyes at the end the first time I played.Quote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
Same here. That last pullback shot is amazing- I can only imagine how it will look in the new version.Quote:
Originally Posted by Botolf
Not everyone has the time or the desire to just walk through it. If you don't stop to appreciate the cinematic value of it then its your loss. If you ask me the sprint should be more of a " jog", not full on sprint like in COD or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
Would it be possible to just disable sprint during the voice overs? Like as soon as you enter the trigger volume it is disabled for X amount of time?
The thing is, for newer players, the old version is pretty meh looking; there wasn't much that you could sit back and appreciate, making the voiceovers the only thing to really push to.
Judging by the screens, that won't be a problem this time around.
Would it be worthwhile playing the first one before getting into this one?
Yes. I found the original quite enjoyable, odd glitches and basic terrain aside. If anything, playing the original, then playing the new one would give you a better appreciation for all the work that Briscoe has done. Go download, and play now. You can finish it in 40 minutes minimum, an hour if you take the time to explore.
I would agree with this. The island isn't that much of an eyesore, and you may end up loving the narrative (like me :>).Quote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
HEY BUMP. Anyway, Didn't know if anyone had been checking up on this. But he seems to still be hard at work. And it's still looking just as amazing.
http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/devblog/
That's in the same engine as HL2?!
More specifically the Orange Box Engine, but in essence, yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBig
Been following it as well. Can't wait.
Also, bad news Ross, Raindrop moved to another engine (from Source to OGRE) because they intend to sell it. Sad day.
A bit old but still interesting.
Quote:
During the summer of 2008, a Half-Life 2 mod changed the way I thought about games. Developed as part of a research project at the University of Portsmouth, Dear Esther featured no shooting and no puzzles. Instead, it simply presented a Hebridean island for you to explore, and an unusual story of motorways and science experiments that fell into place as you did so.
Almost three years later, that humble mod has been signed by Valve for a full, standalone commercial release on Steam. It’s been rebuilt in its entirety by Robert Briscoe, one of the team behind the stark and strikingly memorable environments of Mirror’s Edge. And it’s stunning. The Source Engine – now more than six years old – has never looked so beautiful.
I’ve played through a good chunk of the second take on Dear Esther, and it’s shaping up to be even more fascinating than the original. But almost as interesting as Esther’s story is the story of the game itself, and how it came to find itself on the cusp of a commercial release.
http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/...-1-590x331.jpg
The Dear Esther concept began in 2007, emerging from a research question proposed by Dr Dan Pinchbeck of Portsmouth University. Pinchbeck wanted to see what would happen were a game to focus purely on storytelling, to the exclusion of more traditional interactive elements. He also wanted to see how people would react if a closed reading of that story were near enough impossible to reach.
“Esther is basically about ambiguity,” he explains. “It came from this idea that you could do more with storytelling in games if you stopped worrying about everything making sense and adding up, and that when you read a book or watch a film, you are filling in a lot of those details yourself. Games are like films in that regard: you have these cardboard cutout sets and no one worries about that – we focus on the front, not the back. So we can apply a similar thing to story, and stop giving as much away.”
Funded by a grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, Pinchbeck and his team set about creating a Half-Life 2 mod to explore his ideas. In Dear Esther, you play an unseen, nameless protagonist, wandering through the mist, triggering randomised audio clips of letters being read aloud to a woman named Esther. It’s not clear who she is, nor how you and she are related. But as you make your way towards the island’s peak, a haunting story begins to clunk together.
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“Grief, loss, guilt, faith, illness,” says Pinchbeck, when I ask about his interpretation of the Dear Esther story. “Cheerful stuff. But it’s also – and this is really important to me – about love and hope and redemption, and how people cling to each other in the face of a brutal, uncaring world.”
Dubbed ‘an interactive ghost story’, Dear Esther is never overtly scary. Instead, it builds atmosphere and an emotional weight. The audio clips tell you about the island’s history while simultaneously documenting a terrible accident back home in England. But it’s also a character story. You learn of a syphilitic shepherd, an explorer whose infected injury sent him insane, and a man destroyed by guilt after a fatal car accident. They blur together. Depending on how you read it, they might not even be three separate people at all.
The island itself is no less intriguing. Phosphorescent paint splashed on walls. Chemical equations etched into the sides of a cavern. Enormous chunks cut out of a cliff face in perfectly straight lines. Bible verses scrawled all over the island, and a flashing radio tower omnipresent in your view.
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Exploring a spectrum of moods within the medium of games is something Pinchbeck takes very seriously.
“It’s important that we all keep pushing at the potential emotional range of gaming and how subtle we can make a player’s emotional journey,” he says. “What I hope about Esther is that although it is fairly dark, there are subtle tones to that: an ebb and flow that makes it an interesting journey that we can all recognise, rather than just us standing there hitting the player with the tragedy hammer until they give in.”
But right at the centre of Esther’s story is the idea that there’s no absolute interpretation of the themes at play. Pinchbeck expected that this may turn players off, leaving people bored and unfulfilled. He was spectacularly wrong. Instead, Dear Esther became an indie darling, downloaded more than 60,000 times, enthused about by the gaming press, and honoured with an international award.
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A year later, fresh from a stint on Mirror’s Edge, a level designer showed up.
After an exhausting couple of years working in Sweden, Robert Briscoe returned to the UK, having decided to take some time out to recuperate. He’d originally planned to use this time to work on a small prototype he’d been tinkering with – a zombie-filled survival horror mod built in the Source Engine. But then came an attack of the undead, as wave upon wave of brainmunchers saturated the PC games market. Not wanting his idea to be lost in the crowd, Briscoe put his project on hold.
This left him with a year or so to burn. Searching for ideas, he turned to the premier mod site ModDB for inspiration – and stumbled upon an unassuming little release called Dear Esther.
http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/...25-590x331.jpg
“It was the inspiration I’d been looking for,” he recalls. “A simple, highly original idea which was singularly focused on telling a story through the environment. It stuck in my mind for days afterwards, and although I toyed with the idea of translating Dear Esther’s core mechanics to my own designs, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was so much untapped potential in the original, if only for a proper coat of paint and a more polished design.”
For Briscoe, Dear Esther’s main weakness was the island itself. The story was fascinating, the ideas great, but the island worked against the game: players were getting lost, or stuck, or bored.
“One of the most common complaints about the original was the tediousness of trudging through the simplistic landscape between audio cues and landmarks, which made exploring rather unrewarding,” he says. “To be fair, it wasn’t really a failing of the design per se, but a shortcoming of the Source engine and how it handles large outdoor environments.”
http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/...32-590x331.jpg
Having worked with Source for over five years, Briscoe had a few tricks up his sleeve to bring the concept to life. “It allowed me to create a much more rich and detailed world than ever attempted before in the engine,” he explains, “which encourages and rewards exploration with the incentive of uncovering small clues and details about the history of the island, its inhabitants and our protagonist.”
The remake pushes the Source Engine to places it’s never been before. Realistic waterfalls cascade down the walls of extraordinary caverns, gleaming bright blue in the phosphorescent light. Outside, foliage sways and leaves blow in the breeze, as the moon forms a striking reflection on the eerily calm ocean. The picture painted by Dear Esther is as vivid as any in gaming.
“The visuals are going to have a massive effect on how immersive the island is, and that’s really important,” says Dr Pinchbeck, who afforded Briscoe a great deal of freedom while rebuilding his game. “There’s a lot of subtle stuff going on in there, and what’s really cool is how Rob has responded to the original version and put his own spin on stuff. I sent him pages of notes, and I’ve been looking at alphas and feeding back, but right up until the deal with Valve happened it was mainly Rob’s gig.”
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It was quickly obvious that this was going to be more than a simple graphics overhaul. With his level design techniques, Briscoe had transformed the world of Dear Esther into something remarkable: a game whose world was its primary character, and where every landmark told its own story. “There’s quite a bit more focus on exploration, properly rewarding the player for leaving the obvious path,” says Pinchbeck. “And the great thing about going indie is that we’ve been able to do all of that – to make it more than just a visual overhaul.”
Until fairly recently, the Dear Esther remake was still set to be released as a free Source mod. But that changed when Pinchbeck and Briscoe decided to approach Valve with the view to licensing their engine to release a fully fledged indie game. Valve were impressed. They agreed, and signed Esther as a Steam exclusive.
It was Pinchbeck who originally suggested the idea. “My reasoning behind it was that Rob was creating something so extraordinary, it deserved a wider audience than we could give it as a mod,” he explains. “I love the mod scene, but it is limited in terms of reach.”
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Pinchbeck had another agenda in mind, as well. Esther was originally created as part of a research project at the University of Portsmouth, and one of that project’s pillars was that its games should function as actual, playable titles that the community could respond to.
“I think games researchers have this amazing opportunity to explore high-risk areas of game design, and we have almost an obligation to run with ideas and push them as far as we can. We started off saying ‘will this work as a game?’ and the answer was pretty resolutely ‘yes’. So the next question is, ‘what happens if you commercialise that?’”
If it works, then in theory Pinchbeck and co could find themselves in a position where they can fund their next experiment with their earnings from the last one. “Which is massive,” he says. “We’re doing something that has actual, absolute relevance to the industry, and we’re proving it has value – not in some obscure journal, but out there, in the marketplace.”
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It will be interesting to see how the wider gaming community reacts to Dear Esther. It’s slow, uneventful and pondering, and only an hour long. Robert Briscoe has struggled to describe Dear Esther during the 18 months he’s been working on the remake. “I often find myself avoiding the word ‘game’,” he says, “preferring to describe it as more of an experience or story. I always want to ask people if they’ve ever stared at a painting and wondered what the story was behind it, or imagined being able to transport themselves through that small window into the world and explore it. Most people connect with this.”
For Pinchbeck, this indicates a newfound maturity in gaming. “I think we’ve been in an amazing period of creative expansion in games for a couple of years, and that ranges right from really left-field independent titles to mainstream AAAs. There are so many great titles and developers out there, and some really experimental work finding a place in the market. Games get a lot of stick for being derivative, but the reality is that it’s one of the most amazing mediums on the planet in terms of the audience actively demanding innovation, and being happy to fund that themselves.”
Perhaps the most interesting comments come from composer and sound designer Jessica Curry. She’s currently in the process of re-orchestrating Esther’s entire soundtrack: as Briscoe has done with the environments, Curry is rebuilding the audio from the ground up.
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“I’m not a gamer, or from that world at all,” she says. “So I’ve always seen it as a piece of digital, interactive art. Dan sees it as a game, but neither of us really think you have to make the distinction. For me, art is about an experience which touches people deeply. I really think, and hope, that Dear Esther achieves that
I'd read that before, but it's still really interesting. Can't wait for the game to be out this summer.
Still wondering how they manged that in source.
What's the price going to be?
There is no announced price yet, but my impression was that it would be quite small- I'd say no more than $20, probably far less, around $5-$10. The devblog mentioned other cheap release games as a model, including (as I remember) one that a choose-your-own-price game. Regardless, I'll buy it- totally worth it.
Guys guys guys guys new update:
http://dear-esther.com/?p=275
http://dear-esther.com/?p=291
http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/devblog/?p=708
Quote:
Well, a lot has been happening since I last posted here, some of it bad and some of it good.
Whilst development on DE has been going relatively smoothly over the past few months, we were unfortunately hit with a rather large setback relating to the University who was originally backing our Indie Endeavour. Due to various convoluted legal reasons regarding liability issues, insurance and a whole bag of other things a cant begin to comprehend, the University decided to pull out of the project just before the final bits of paperwork were due to be signed, and we were to get access to the retail Source code. This meant that not only had we lost our backers, but obviously our funding also, putting us into a state of limbo until we could gather our thoughts and figure out what to do next.
Fortunately Dan had a backup plan; free the Dear Esther IP from the Uni and make TheChineseRoom into a fully fledged company so we could pursue backing on our own as legit Indie Developers. Meanwhile, Dan had also already been in talks with a company called IndieFund about funding another project and we decided to see if they’d also be interested in helping out with Dear Esther. They wanted to see a demo! I asked Dan to stall for a couple of weeks while I began crunching like crazy to get the pre-alpha version of Dear Esther into a more ‘alpha-like’ state; implementing all of the content, scripting and game play, in an attempt to really show off the game when we presented it to them. Although an exhausting couple of weeks, ultimately the work paid off after IF enthusiastically agreed to fund us, which was not only a big relief but hugely flattering coming from the top Indie developers that make up the IndieFund. It was also a huge milestone for me as it meant that, after two long years, the game was in more or less of a completed state, with only a few tweaks left to do.
So that is where we are now! All that’s left is for a few last bits of paperwork to be sorted and things will be kicking off again very soon.
With the content complete, minus some polish here and there, all that’s left is simply porting the content and our existing code over to the latest version of the Source Engine (which we’re hoping will be the Portal 2 code base!). And considering most of the code work consists of simple tweaks to already existing features I’m hoping it will be a relatively simple process!
In the short term im holding off showing any more media now until we’re in the new engine and can present something that’s a bit more final (There’s much, much more detail in the maps now) However, until then I thought I’d post just a couple of new screens as a thanks for all your support during this time and to tide you over until more cool stuff shows up!
Finally I’d really like to say thanks again to IndieFund again for all of their support!
Oh man... I'm glad there's some backing on this. And it's cool that they might sell a limited disc package. It's all crazy. To see how far this has come. I remember having played the first one, and had to show everyone I knew. Blew my mind back then, this is even better (obviously).
Yeah, I loved the original, but it definitely had its issues. I look forward to being able to introduce it to my girlfriend without having to be like "ok, don't fall down there, you'll get stuck, and pause here so the voiceovers don't overlap" etc. AND IT LOOKS SO DAMNED PRETTY.
Ha ha, for sure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
oh man that vegetation
take notes, Valve
holy shit, that noise
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhh
Release Date:February 14th, 2012
http://store.steampowered.com/app/203810/
This is still awesome. I've been following it. Glad to see some actual live footage rather than screenshots. It looks amazing.
I would preorder this now if I could.
Hey looky that.
They're charging for it.
*Shocker*
Dammit you beat me to posting the link haha. And warlord, the website and the devs have stated for months now that it would be for charge, but at a very low price. Personally, I think 10 dollars is a perfectly fine payment for this game.
Not only that, there is a free version you can play.
Its just really shitty looking compared to that masterpiece. :)
So what is this game about before I pay $10 to look at scenery?
We just played it through. The story IS the game. If I were to tell you what it was about, it wouldn't be nearly as fun/interesting the first time you played it. If you're really skeptical, go play the original mod- it's pretty graphically out of date, but the general story is the same. The visual upgrade helps a lot with the plot though, as it hints at more.
TL;DR: You wander an expressionistic island as you trace the mental and physical steps of a man dealing with loss and confusion. It's eerie, beautiful, and moving. Also somewhat randomized, so you get different pieces of the story each time you play.
It's about paying $10 to look at scenery.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amit
I enjoyed it. Wasn't much different than the original, but I really liked the original too. So no complaints there. It was very pretty in some places. It does make me sad how dated the source engine is at times. lol. But he did some cool stuff. I do however wish the soundtrack would have come with the game instead of having to buy it separate.
this game annoyed me.
from what i worked out there was like 3 different story line arcs.
the writting on the walls,
talking about paul
and and the self reflection side of things.
the only thing is that half of everything doesnt story make.
shit like the writting on the cliffs on the way to the light house, 90% i couldnt fucking read cause i couldnt get an angle good enough to read it so i literally lost half of that,
shit like missing massive parts of the other parts of the story because you took a wrong turn, or fell down a hole... LIKE WHAT IS THIS?????
STORYS HAVE TO BE TOLD before they're a fuckign story, otherwise they're just an idea.
worst 10 ever.
Honestly it took a few playthoughs of the original for me to fully appreciate it. It only gives you part of the story each time, and a lot of it is up to your interpretation. That's what makes it interesting, in my opinion.
sorry but if i play a game i want to be given a story thats understandable.
not something thats intentionally misleading and has gaping holes in it.
So you don't like Halo that much then Boddie? :iamafag:
The story and environment is the game, Bod, and thats what makes it so interesting. It's a great concept for people who like to read and shit, and not have to go killing with people with machine guns. The point in it being randomized and different story arcs is to make you play multiple times to finall realize what it all is, and then reflect and notice more details. It's like watching a movie for the second or third time. Once you kind of know the basis, you can go back and pick up much more details that you missed to make parts make more sense.
I still haven't played this yet, but I played the original and thats what I found it to be so interesting. It's not your average "GO SHOOT STUFF!", its a game about plot and understanding.
i love story i dont like having important aspects of it not told for no reason other then to call it "art"
if you think i'm only about shooting stuff your solely mistaken.
i read more then probably most people on this forum, i've take intense pleasure in incredibly complex games, such as starcraft, and i fucking hate dood of cooty so you best rethink your post.
My post was pretty in a pretty general context and still stands, I don't really see what there is to "rethink" about it. If you don't like the game than so be it, there are plenty of others who find it pretty enjoyable, as seen in this thread.
NOT BUYING.
We've officially played through this at least 4 times. Possibly in various levels of stoned-off-our-minds. Okay, more than possibly.
Great game. Justifying the price is up to the person buying it (need I say this). A straight forward story is boring, so I like how laden this is with metaphors and other non-cohesiveness which kept you listening for the next monologue. Not to mention, the discussions to be had about the interpretations of the story and reaching a semi-common consensus on it.
Also, not only does the dialogue change with each playthrough, but details around the island change as well. It's a mindfuck either way.
