{"id":51037,"date":"2020-10-26T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=51037"},"modified":"2020-10-26T01:24:39","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T05:24:39","slug":"diecast-320-vr-amnesia-rebirth-mailbag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=51037","title":{"rendered":"Diecast #320: VR, Amnesia Rebirth, Mailbag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like I said at the end of the show: Pretty soon I&#8217;m going to have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seventh-house.org\/about\/\">Ross<\/a> on the show and we&#8217;re going to talk about Watch Dogs: Legion. The game launches on the 29th of this month, and Ross worked on it. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m going to have him on the show next week, or the week after. I&#8217;m eager to talk about the game, but I also want to make sure I have enough time with the game that I can ask him meaningful questions.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n<p><br clear='all'><audio controls><source src='\/diecast\/diecast320.ogg' type='audio\/ogg'><source src='\/diecast\/diecast320.mp3' type='audio\/mpeg'>Your browser does not support the audio element.<\/audio><div><small><a href='\/diecast\/diecast320.mp3' download='diecast320.mp3'>Direct download<\/a> (MP3)<\/small><br\/><small><a href='\/diecast\/diecast320.ogg' download='diecast320.ogg'>Direct download<\/a> (ogg Vorbis)<\/small><br\/><small><a href='?cat=287&feed=rss2'>Podcast RSS feed.<\/a><\/small><\/div><br \/>\nHosts: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peripheralarbor.com\/\">Paul<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/\">Shamus<\/a>. Episode edited by <a href=\"http:\/\/steamcommunity.com\/profiles\/76561198087035658\/\">Issac<\/a>.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast320.mp3\">Diecast320<\/a><\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nz6ykag9Wk8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nz6ykag9Wk8'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>00:00\u00a0The State of VR<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve studied this stuff quite a bit since this recording, and I have some corrections:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Issac got the Quest 2, not the original Quest.<\/li>\n<li>The problems with stuttering aren&#8217;t a problem with the Oculus Link. It turns out Issac&#8217;s computer just isn&#8217;t up to the job anymore. Also, if anyone has a suggestion for a sub-$300 CPU+Mobo combo that can offer a reasonable gaming experience, he&#8217;d love to hear it.\u00a0 He&#8217;s not looking to go full-on PC Master Race, he just wants something that can handle modern games and lightweight VR. (We&#8217;re assuming his GPU is good enough for now.)<\/li>\n<li>On the show I said that there weren&#8217;t any mid-market VR headsets. Like, it&#8217;s just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oculus.com\/quest-2\/?locale=en_US\">the Quest<\/a> for $299 and then the <a href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/valveindex\/\">Valve Index<\/a> for $1,000. But since then I&#8217;ve done some more searching and discovered that there ARE mid-market headsets. The only problem is that they&#8217;re all from Oculus, and I find their Facebook crap to be pointless and unwelcome in the same way that (say) Uplay is.<\/li>\n<li>I hooked the Quest up to my PC and everything ran fine. There wasn&#8217;t any weird DRM locking the headset to one account or any other shenanigans.<\/li>\n<li>On the show I said it feels like another 10&deg; or 15&deg; of field of view would be a massive improvement. I stand by that. It feels like we&#8217;re so close to a much better experience, but getting that bump in FOV seems to result in a massive increase in the price of the headset.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I got a few other details wrong. I keep reading about this stuff, and after three days I STILL feel like I&#8217;m in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>Another drawback of a standalone VR headset: I wanted to have a screenshot for this post, but I have no idea how to capture screenshots \/ footage from an all-in-one device like this. I can capture stuff played over the link cable through Steam, but I have no idea how you&#8217;d capture native Oculus stuff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>28:51\u00a0Programming<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>More of Paul&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arduino.cc\/\">Arduino<\/a> adventures.<\/p>\n<p><strong>34:15\u00a0A story About My Uncle<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re not talking about <a href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/278360\/A_Story_About_My_Uncle\/\">the game<\/a>, we&#8217;re talking about my Uncle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>40:09\u00a0Amnesia: Rebirth<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like I said on the show, I&#8217;m not feeling this one. I&#8217;ve got long-term goals like &#8220;survive and get rescued somehow&#8221;, but I&#8217;m lacking short-term goals like, &#8220;Go to the spooky old house to use the phone to call for help&#8221; or whatever. I&#8217;m only few few hours in, and it hasn&#8217;t grabbed me yet. Right now the experience feels more like <em>SOMA<\/em> and not like <em>Amnesia: The Dark Descent<\/em>. It&#8217;s interesting, but not captivating.<\/p>\n<p><strong>50:48\u00a0Mailbag: Players Scaring Themselves<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Diecast.<\/p>\n<p>The new Amnesia game had me thinking about this video:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How Amnesia: The Dark Descent Tricked Players Into Scaring Themselves | War Stories | Ars Technica\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sMl2la8-3-o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>TLDW: The trick of the original Amnesia is that nothing really bad happens when run low on sanity. The camera and controls might get wacky, but you won&#8217;t actually screw-up a playthrough by mismanaging your lamp oil. The dev&#8217;s found the bluff was more effective than the actual consequences of failure.<\/p>\n<p>Do you guys think any other games could benefit from this sort of design? Are there any other sort of mechanics that could have benefited from being &#8220;fake&#8221; for lack of a better word?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks,<br \/>\nKaden.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Aside: The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sMl2la8-3-o\">linked video<\/a> is really good. Worth a watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like I said at the end of the show: Pretty soon I&#8217;m going to have Ross on the show and we&#8217;re going to talk about Watch Dogs: Legion. The game launches on the 29th of this month, and Ross worked on it. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m going to have him on the show next [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diecast-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51037"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51054,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51037\/revisions\/51054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}