[HN Gopher] Amnesia is now open source
___________________________________________________________________
Amnesia is now open source
Author : jsheard
Score : 644 points
Date : 2020-09-23 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (frictionalgames.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (frictionalgames.com)
| chme wrote:
| > Here is everything you need to build Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
|
| But I think the assets are missing, so it is not _everything_.
| Maybe they released those somewhere else?
| runevault wrote:
| Rarely do they release the assets with the open sourcing of the
| engine. If you want those they tend to want you to pay for the
| game and then pull the assets out to put in your build.
| chme wrote:
| That ok. Is great that they open sourced their engine,
| however they don't even mention the assets and that you need
| to buy their game to have them, which is a bit strange. And
| they even say here is _everything_ you need for the whole
| game.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| The announcement on their website noted that you still have
| to own the game itself. Maybe that should be added to the
| readme.
| chme wrote:
| They also own their code. Releasing it as open source did
| not change that.
|
| They don't actually state that you have to own the
| original game on their website.
| masklinn wrote:
| It's implicit in their having "only" open-sourced the
| code: you can't actually play the game without the
| assets, and accessing the assets legally requires buying
| the game. Unless you want to remake all assets by hand I
| guess.
| stefanve wrote:
| Everything to build the game. Which is true.
| chme wrote:
| No. A 'game' can be played, and without any assets it
| cannot be played. It is just a 'engine'.
| slezyr wrote:
| Build - you get an executable, which is true. Run or
| Played is a different thing.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Building != playing.
|
| Building -> a functional exe is produced.
|
| Playing -> Many EXEs expect a set of resource files to be
| in the directory to further their execution.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Is great that they open sourced their engine, however
| they don't even mention the assets and that you need to buy
| their game to have them, which is a bit strange.
|
| When it comes to open sourcing game code, it is pretty
| standard.
| chme wrote:
| AFAIK most open sourcing of 'games' state that they open
| sourced only the engine and not the complete game. And
| maybe provide a guide that shows you how to copy the
| original assets into a game compiled by yourself.
|
| I just think this is misleading and probably just a
| marketing act for the next release of their game.
|
| Personally I find it great that they released their
| engine again, the more open source code the better,
| however they should have just been more careful with
| their press release. Some reporters that don't look to
| close to the code might think that Amnesia is now a open
| source game like 0AD or recently unvanquished, that
| actually tries to make their assets fully open source
| compliant.
| justin66 wrote:
| > assets fully open source compliant
|
| It's hard to interpret that phrase but it certainly seems
| to apply to their art assets. You could ship a GPL
| reimplementation or total conversion mod of their game
| tomorrow and use the game assets, as long as the user
| already owns the game. Just like all the very popular
| Quake and Doom stuff, for starters.
|
| You just won't get the free game that you want.
| ClikeX wrote:
| Maybe they weren't allowed to.
| masklinn wrote:
| > But I think the assets are missing, so it is not everything.
|
| It's everything you need to _build_ the game, which is
| different than everything you need to _play_ the game.
|
| > Maybe they released those somewhere else?
|
| No, studios rarely to never release assets as OSS. In part
| because most artists don't sign off on this, and in part
| because especially smaller studios will license existing assets
| from stores and the like which they literally can not, legally,
| relicense.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| I think it's targeted at modders. So they just get the code and
| take it from there. You get the misleading article.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I think it's targeted at modders.
|
| Modders have been modding for years (Amnesia has over a
| thousand mods). They'll be happy for sure, and certainly are
| one of the targets:
|
| > We are all really excited to see what comes out of it! The
| modding community has been incredibly creative over the years
| and it will be fun to see what it can do with the full source
| code at its disposal.
|
| but they've never _needed_ the code either.
|
| It could also be useful to, well,
|
| > anyone wanting to create their own engine or just wanting
| to learn more about game programming. While the code is not
| the greatest in places and the tech used is not the latest,
| it is a fully contained game engine in a fairly easy-to-
| understand package. It is also a testament that it is
| possible to do this sort of thing, even with a very limited
| team.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > but they've never needed the code either.
|
| That's true, but having the code of a game usually makes
| modding it easier and allows mods to go even farther
| d1zzy wrote:
| Maybe "to build" means more specifically "to build the binary
| of". Then yes, you don't need data assets for that. It
| particularly doesn't say this is everything needed to "build
| and _play_ the game".
| shard wrote:
| From reading the title, I thought this game was being open
| sourced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesia_(video_game)
|
| I never got very far in that game, but it made quite an
| impression on me for the gritty reality in the game that wasn't
| present in other games of that era, with you having to beg or
| wash car windows for money in order to buy food.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| Oh I totally misremembered, I thought it was infocom!
| iainctduncan wrote:
| But I remember playing. It was hard.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| One of the selling points of at least the later games was the
| availability tools to build your own "stories" with the same base
| mechanics, so it's cool to see these be made more widely
| available and some of these fan creations evolve into more.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I only played the first Amensia game. I felt it was kind of a
| weird fit. It was a horror game in that you were in a horror
| environment with entities that were scary. But the lack of
| consequence for death made it feel kind of gamey. Horror is hard
| to get right. The amnesia monsters are horrifying, yes, but in
| the context of a horror game, not especially memorable in my
| opinion. One thing I think the resident evil series has done well
| especially in number 7 and the number 2 remake, is realize that
| players won't be scared for the whole game. In the first half of
| these games, you tend to be weak and there are genuinely
| frightening moments. Towards the end you're pretty desensitized
| to the nature of that game's fucked up shit, and you just want to
| mow them down or get by the efficiently.
|
| My absolute favorite horror moment is in the original Silent
| Hill. You enter this giant hospital and you know its going to be
| a huge daunting task if its full of monsters, but its not. So you
| go through the elevator to floor one. It's empty. Floor 2 is
| empty. The final floor, floor three... is empty. So returning the
| the elevator you're feeling like you missed something and then,
| ta-dah, the elevator eerily has acquired a bloody fourth floor
| button letting you know you're about get shat on.
| 101008 wrote:
| The original Silent Hill was a masterpiece of horror games. But
| mainly because it was all in your head. The creatures weren't
| that bad, but the sensation that they were coming at you is
| what it counts. Also, the radio that started every time you had
| one close to you was excellent, because it made you feel
| horrible even if you weren't doing anything.
|
| I played a few games after that one in the next years (I was
| only 11 when I played Silent Hill) and nothing made me feel the
| same.
| StillBored wrote:
| The first couple Penumbra games were the same way. You knew
| there were monsters about, but mostly you crept around and if
| you heard them the only sane strategy was to run like hell.
|
| I think the people who enjoyed the games were the ones that
| could get sucked into that mental model early and didn't want
| to die in game.
| k__ wrote:
| *"the radio that started every time you had one close to you
| was excellent, because it made you feel horrible even if you
| weren't doing anything."
|
| Haha, same with Aliens vs Predator, where you had either
| radar or night vision, but not both at the same time.
|
| The beeping made you crazy.
| ehnto wrote:
| Have you tried Alien Isolation? It's a masterpiece, similar
| mechanic to that in place too.
| k__ wrote:
| I think the last Alien game I tried was "Alien: Colonial
| Mariens".
|
| It was so bad, that I stopped playing games from thaz
| franchise
| watwut wrote:
| I bought the game in some bundle and then watched it on
| youtube. It worked well as horror that way.
|
| I had no motivation to play it after and ended in some entance
| hall right after start.
| bitdizzy wrote:
| I enjoyed how scared I felt in Amnesia until the first time I
| died and reloaded. After that the edge was gone.
| teawrecks wrote:
| IMO "consequence" is the epitome of "gamey". Which is why
| Amnesia didn't seem like it was targeted at the resident
| evil/silent hill players who were used to "mowing" through
| enemies. It was for people who wanted to be scared, and have a
| scary experience, so they didn't give you any way to defend
| yourself besides hiding and covering your eyes. More like a
| movie or...a haunted hay ride. Very Lovecraftian.
|
| That silent hill example sounds cool. They used anticipation
| and your own imagination to scare you. Amnesia is like 95%
| this.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| By consequence, I mean, you have some sort of reason to want
| to avoid death. Amnesia as I recall had very frequent
| checkpoints, and dying set you back a minute or so, only to
| encounter the same scare puzzle shortly after. Doing the same
| scene twice in the same pattern breaks any immersion (which
| is, again, a very difficult problem to solve in game design).
| One of the design principles in the movie Alien was that you
| do not want to show the monster. I think that's a good rule,
| and is doubly true in games where death means you do it
| again. An enemy you can only hide from is cool, but
| frustrating when said enemy follows a scripted pattern and
| its secretly a puzzle rather than something where you
| actually feel like you're hiding from a being (Alien
| Isolation does this well). Haunted hayride is a good
| descriptor. Resident evil and silent hill have tried to
| tackle this problem by inducing resource scarcity. Most scary
| encounters will not kill you, but they'll force you to expend
| resources which make you feel more hopeless about the future.
| It's far from perfect but it sort of works. It is vulnerable
| to players taking the opposite mentality, whereby they
| purposefully die to try and clear sections with lower
| resource loss.
|
| Silent hill games (the good ones...) aren't action games btw.
| Most people consider the second one to be best psychological
| horror game ever made.
|
| Horror's pretty dope these days. Next Resident Evil lookin
| slick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSapXD9vxYA
| tentboy wrote:
| I never played any of the silent hills. I played resident
| evil 4 and 5 years ago, and recently played resident evil 7
| - which i felt had a lot more horror elements then emphasis
| on shooting/exploding enemies like 4 and 5 did.
|
| I REALLY enjoyed RE7. I felt like it kept me on my toes and
| I played it way faster than any other single player game in
| recent times.
|
| What is the best entry point and order for the silent hill
| series?
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Resident evil is a weird series the branches into
| different genres over time. The first few were survival
| horror and played on the dread of not being well equipped
| enough to get through the rest of the game. Then Numbers
| 4-6 become action games with unreasonably sexy badass
| characters. They were good games, and some great co-op,
| but not scary at all. 7 was a horror masterpiece (or at
| least the first half). 8 looks like it'll continue along
| that trend. The recently reimagined Resident Evil 2 is
| phenomenal and finds an unexpected sweet spot between all
| 3 of them where it's still action-y, but has a bunch of
| things that are suspenseful and scary.
|
| Silent Hill struggled to get out of the original
| playstation and hasn't had anything good in years.
| Remakes and remasters of the originals are generally
| perceived to be lower quality. I would try to grab an
| emulator and just play the first 4 in order then pretend
| the rest doesn't exist. Number 1 and 2 are the treasures
| of the series.
| fetus8 wrote:
| I just played SH1 for the very first time on an emulator,
| last month, and had a great time with it. Getting used to
| the controls and game mechanics took a little bit, but I
| got up to speed quickly. Finished the game in about 7
| hours.
|
| It's creepy, weird, kind of funny, and ultimately an
| interesting game. Definitely recommend a play through.
| slezyr wrote:
| > Amnesia as I recall had very frequent checkpoints, and
| dying set you back a minute or so, only to encounter the
| same scare puzzle shortly after.
|
| It worked great for Limbo, Inside and I loved those. Just
| different tastes.
| rspeele wrote:
| I vaguely remember a dev commentary or interview about
| Amnesia.
|
| If I remember right, one thing they said was close to what
| you said about "you do not want to show the monster" -- but
| changed to "you do not want to show what happens when the
| monster gets you".
|
| If the player dies, you either have a gamey consequence
| (you are set back a long way, you lose resources), or
| nearly no consequence (you restart quite close to where you
| died with the same resources). Either way though, the
| player's fear of this monster is now based on that game
| mechanic, and could be better described as annoyance than
| fear. You've lost the visceral suspension of disbelief
| where on some lizard-brain level the player still thinks
| "this thing is going to GET me".
|
| So it leads to kind of an ironic balance where the devs are
| trying to come up with things that are very effective at
| scaring the player while not __really __being that
| difficult to evade for a reasonably competent player. Their
| ideal is for the player to get through the whole game
| always feeling like they 're in danger and just barely
| surviving, but never actually dying.
|
| Again, wish I could actually find the source, because it's
| been years, but the idea stuck with me. I want to say they
| gave an example of some trick they pulled on the memorable
| "water monster" level, to amp up the terror while not
| actually increasing the player's chances of failing. Maybe
| something like the water monster moves slower while you're
| looking away from it, so when you hear it behind you while
| you're turning a crank you think it's about to get you but
| you actually have enough time to succeed. I don't remember.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| That is interesting. I do remember the water monster.
| That was a great segment. Probably the best part of the
| game. Sounds like a good framework, but that's pretty
| darn tough to execute.
|
| Letting the world end in Majora's Mask comes to mind for
| me. As a kid I was terrified of the ever present timer
| and never let it hit 0, even once. There's probably
| something about agency there. I wouldn't ever choose to
| let the monster get me in Amnesia, but when I did it was
| because I misjudged something and got myself into an
| unwinnable situation. If you're going for the strategy
| they're describing, I think you need to reduce the tree
| of possible mistakes that leads the player without them
| realizing they're taking a risk...
| inanutshellus wrote:
| One mechanism that really got me ... maybe not "horrified"
| but uh, anxious as hell, was the Dark Souls games.
|
| The "you better survive until you find your corpse or you
| lose everything" mechanism worked really well when I was
| new at the games.
|
| Also in the "not horrified but anxious as hell" gameplay
| was the original Bioshock and seeing the Big Daddy
| character... still remember hearing him before he came
| around the corner... so cool. :-)
| grawprog wrote:
| I didn't find that aspect of Dark Souls too tense or
| stressful, maybe because I'd played salt and sanctuary
| and Hollow Knight first and was used to it.
|
| Dark Souls did have some good creepy moments though. The
| first time entering the catacombs with the giant
| skeletons, the first time you face the ghosts of anor
| londo especially if you stumble in there early, seeing
| the guardian at the top of sen's fortress and knowing
| you're going to have to face him after you get by the
| archers and giants after getting through that hellish
| trap filled nightmare. Going back to the undead asylum
| and falling through the floor to face that demon. The
| giant rat before blight town. There's more, Dark Souls
| had a lot of those that worked well on the first
| playthrough. The did lose some of their impact on
| subsequent ones though.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| The Dark Souls one is interesting, because losing a big
| stack of souls sucks. But at some point you're probably
| gonna find an easily grindable stack of enemies and just
| farm them for a few minutes for 15 minutes and get way
| more. So it's not that big of a deal.
|
| But it still works pretty well in spite of that. The
| emotional harm of loss stings.
| galimaufry wrote:
| Have any games tried frequent savepoints + only allowing
| the player to reload 24 hours after dying? Seems like that
| would make reloads feel a bit more fresh/consequential, and
| also prevent addiction.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| 24h sounds like a turnoff, but in general, I think that's
| a great concept. You just need something that the player
| can do while unable to try to scary part again.
| gverrilla wrote:
| this would be boring as hell because it relates to mobile
| games: they will tell you can't do something for X hours,
| unless you pay them some dollars. Even if you don't
| charge, the memories will flow I can guarantee you
| ehnto wrote:
| I think maybe you met the game mechanics too quickly and that
| might have ruined it for you. For me it was very non-gamey
| because I had no idea what the consequences of meeting one of
| the monsters was so I spent almost the entire game petrified.
| Once I had died a couple of times and learned how the monsters
| worked, the spook factor wore off quickly.
|
| But I still far preferred that to the classic weapons based
| horror games where the spookiness is derived from how tough an
| openent is in combat.
|
| You should really, really try SOMA though. They dialed in the
| non-combat spookiness and even once you figure out how the
| monsters work, the few there are, it's the story and atmosphere
| that drives the spookiness anyway so it doesn't detract from
| the experience. Much less gamey, and quite a good mystery mixed
| with some existential dread.
| baby wrote:
| The most horrifying moment for me was the hospital level in the
| last of us 2. This and the night where you play abby and save
| the girl and the boy. I had to switch from hard to easy or I
| was going to have PTSD. Didn't remember that the first game was
| really scary.
| ehnto wrote:
| Frictional Games and Loiste Interactive are my two gaming
| sweethearts. Them and Cyan Worlds are the only studios I keep an
| eye on to make sure I don't miss a game.
|
| Cyan Worlds, makers of Myst, are releasing games again for those
| like me who are late to parties like this.
|
| Loiste Interactive released a game called INFRA which I have
| replayed like 4 times already. There is no other game atmosphere
| like it, similar to how SOMA, Amnesia and Myst are without rival.
| There are games as good as them, but few if any games that are
| like them.
| rspeele wrote:
| Cyan's Obduction was pretty good but had its flaws too.
|
| I was just a kid when Myst was a hit, and never finished it.
| But I remembered being fascinated by the strange worlds to
| explore in that game and the uncanny mix of fantastic and
| realistic elements within them. Obduction definitely hit that
| same tone. I was absolutely thrilled with the exploration side
| of it and most of the puzzles were pretty enjoyable too. I
| enjoyed the unique look of each world so much that I was really
| disappointed when one turned out a bit boring -- though of
| course it makes sense in context.
|
| However, like Myst, its open-world puzzle style gets
| frustrating when you run out of obvious paths and aren't sure
| what to do next, and end up running around everywhere trying to
| find something you haven't played with yet. That's a double-
| edged sword because the freedom and discovery is part of the
| appeal of those games, and I would never want them to remove
| it. But it does get annoying sometimes and I wish they would
| have considered that and chosen NOT to have areas to find with
| stuff that NEVER becomes useful. Especially when one of them
| has switches to flip (that don't affect any of the games actual
| puzzles). I wasted probably half an hour trying to find some
| purpose to the submarine cave and tiki bar while stuck,
| thinking they would provide a path through what was blocking me
| when in fact I needed to look elsewhere.
|
| The other thing is that the load times in Obduction are a
| little long. That's annoying given how often navigating between
| worlds is required to complete a puzzle. This is probably
| getting better with faster and faster SSDs these days.
|
| It was great overall though and I wouldn't hesitate to
| recommend it to fans of the genre.
|
| I'll have to check out INFRA.
| dllthomas wrote:
| I've found things published by Annapurna Interactive to be
| disproportionately interesting.
| ehnto wrote:
| I just started playing Outer Wilds today which was released
| by them, and you are absolutely right
| dllthomas wrote:
| You're in for a treat! It leans on tropes a bit in some
| areas, but I'm not sure that's the wrong call - it can be
| hard on your audience when you're too original
| _everywhere_. There 's definitely much innovative stuff,
| and it's a heck of a ride.
|
| I also very much enjoyed Gorogoa, Donut County, and What
| Remains Of Edith Finch. All very different (which is easier
| for a publisher than a studio), but all compelling in their
| own way.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| I would pay a lot of money to be able to play these games on my
| smartphone.
|
| There could be a market for a studio that licenses desktop games
| IP and makes mobile games out of them.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| I have to doubt that Amnesia would "work" on a smartphone. The
| tiny screen would remove a lot of the immersion. Amnesia is not
| (just) about finishing the game - it's about immersing yourself
| in the horror.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| sure - i have a chromecast as well. i can mirror my phone
| screen on my TV in full HD as well.
|
| A phone is far far far more powerful than you think. And the
| new Snapdragon 865 are beasts.
| hoten wrote:
| Isn't there significant latency when screen casting a
| phone?
| robotnikman wrote:
| There already are. Feral Interactive is one I can think of off
| the top of my head.
| panpanna wrote:
| I think there is a large community on android for this kind of
| stuff DIY style.
|
| Probably why monkey island was released on ios only, so it has
| some drawbacks too.
| asimovfan wrote:
| I think you can play monkey island on Android with ScummVM.
| And all the games that work with ScummVM.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| Not talking about an emulator. It's fundamentally taking
| the assets and art and making a mobile first gaming
| experience.
|
| For example, take Braid - that whole time skipping
| mechanic. I'm pretty sure there are ways to do that
| mechanic on the mobile...but you can't emulate.
|
| It could make for a good business model. You are taking out
| the cost of design, story, art direction, everything..
| because you're licensing it.
|
| You are basically creating a game engine company that
| licenses assets, story and gameplay.
| carlio wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's Aspyr Media's
| (https://www.aspyr.com/about) business model. At least, I know
| they're the ones who ported Fireaxis' Civilization games to OSX
| and Linux.
| skee0083 wrote:
| I never played any of these games but the first one looked pretty
| scary from the videos i've seen of it. I might have to download
| it, it is fall after all and i'm in a mood to be scared.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| I played through the first and part of the second. First one is
| quite scary and has an engaging story!
| bpizzi wrote:
| Somewhere almost at the end there's a 'level' where the
| player need to walk across the ocean floor under a rough
| 'weather', be sure to check that part out, it's a highly
| immersive experience.
|
| There's some effort to port it to VR, I can't even begin to
| fathom the kind of feelings that could emerge from such an
| immersion (pun intended, the game sets stage on the ocean
| floor).
| ehnto wrote:
| The sound design in SOMA was incredible. They sold that
| scene so well I felt exhausted after it.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| SOMA was my favorite. Amnesia launched the genre and is more
| famous, but SOMA not only scratched my hard(ish) sci-fi itch,
| it elevated its own horror by doing so.
|
| Sci-fi horror usually focuses on relatively silly premises like
| "what if the monster gets out" or "what if we open a portal to
| hell." SOMA really rises above those tropes. It's legitimately
| unsettling to have a game confront you with troublesome
| implications of future technology that you had been
| subconsciously avoiding.
| the_af wrote:
| Seconded. I'm still impressed by SOMA, a couple of years
| after playing it. Some of its dialogue has remained stuck in
| my mind: "I woke up in my bed today -- a hundred years ago".
|
| What works for me is that it's a genuine scifi story, even
| with its horror motifs removed -- some people even prefer it
| that way! It's a nice scifi story with interesting
| existential questions and compelling characters. I like how
| key aspects of the ending are foreshadowed by previous
| events, and how it's completely consistent that the main
| character remains blind to the implications.
|
| I was really, really impressed by SOMA.
| saberience wrote:
| I'm always surprised at how people can vary so much in
| opinions. I didn't play an hour of Soma before I felt bored
| and infuriated at the gameplay mechanics, quit and never
| played it again.
| the_af wrote:
| Do you remember roughly at which point you left the game?
|
| SOMA feels very by the numbers horror-survival at first
| (think: Bioshock, System Shock, etc), but this begins to
| unravel after a while. The first few situations seem
| standard, you think you have the plot figured out, and
| there is one escape-from-the-monster situation which is
| infuriatingly difficult.
|
| However, I'd say if you give it a chance you'll discover
| it's not really in the survival horror genre -- some
| people play it with monsters disabled! -- and is in fact
| an exploration of consciousness and the sense of the
| "self". And quite interesting, too. There are some pretty
| poignant moments I wouldn't expect from a videogame.
|
| I know every game likes to say this about itself. I, for
| example, found the plot twist and self-proclaimed "deep"
| plot points about Bioshock very unimpressive. But SOMA
| feels closer to something like A Mind Forever Voyaging in
| my opinion...
| gtsteve wrote:
| It's got some brilliant writing and voice acting as well.
| It's also not too long a game, I played about an hour a night
| and completed it in a week. It's not a giant time sink like
| some games try to be.
|
| I'm definitely interested to hear about similar games - I was
| never able to find anything that quite compared. Amnesia
| looked quite dated and unpolished by comparison after playing
| SOMA and I couldn't quite get into it.
| ehnto wrote:
| There is nothing like the story and atmosphere of SOMA, but
| some notable games in the ballpark of "unique, low combat,
| engaging story" are:
|
| Obduction, The Talos Principle, Alien Isolation (some
| combat), INFRA (creepier than expected)
| jjoonathan wrote:
| I've never found anything that compared either.
|
| I recently had another pleasant hard sci-fi surprise,
| though: Horizon Zero Dawn. I didn't expect it to take the
| backstory (or even the main story) seriously, but it did,
| and it did a brilliant job of it.
| wheybags wrote:
| I had exactly the same prejudice. "Shoot robot dinos with
| a bow and arrow" doesn't sound like a premise that could
| possibly have a decent underlying story, but they
| actually pulled it off.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Nitpick but the genre existed before - Amnesia is a first
| person horror adventure game and the Penumbra series was
| their first attempt with almost identical mechanics. However
| even before there was Call of Cthulhu - and Thomas Grip's
| (Frictional's programmer) own Unbirth game[0] which was
| cancelled but they demo uploaded (the downloads do not work
| but you can find it at the archive[1]). Unbirth feels like a
| very unfinished Penumbra without the physics stuff (but the
| horror adventure game elements are still there).
|
| And of course there were similar games going back in time,
| e.g. Realms of the Haunting [2] and i'm sure you can find
| many others.
|
| [0] https://unbirth.frictionalgames.com/
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/unbirth_alpha
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzT27LXpoyc
| Maken wrote:
| I'm actually a bit disappointed their next game is set in the
| Lovercraftian Amnesia universe. Before the SOMA released I
| considered the Penumbra series to be above Amnesia, despite
| the later being the one which gave them recognition, and
| after SOMA I'm convinced they are much better at sci-fi
| horror than at cosmical/mythological one.
|
| Although maybe the reason is that I find the Penumbra/SOMA
| setting to be much more believable and therefore unsettling.
| the_af wrote:
| Ouch. Color me disappointed as well.
|
| After SOMA, I'd say they are good at _sci-fi_ , period.
| Even with its horror elements removed, SOMA has some
| interesting scifi situations.
| ehnto wrote:
| How did you feel about A Machine for Pigs? I felt the real
| story there was the way the father went crazy, and the role
| the church had, two really believable plot points. Not
| really the man/beast moster and so on which was less
| believable.
|
| I do agree though, for what it's worth they have two
| projects in development right now so maybe one of them is
| more scifi.
| Slartie wrote:
| I strongly second this opinion. After playing SOMA (and being
| seriously frightened by it - you need to play it in the dark
| at night, with headphones, full immersion style) I was an
| instant fan of the studio and tried Amnesia. But the entire
| historic-fantasy-style theme turns me off pretty hard. I'm
| having a hard time continuing to play it, though I want to
| give it another chance sometime.
|
| But SOMA? Really, really great game. I'm considering
| repurchasing it on PS4 and replaying it in my home cinema
| setup for even more immersion. Though knowing the story
| beforehand probably takes quite a bit out of the experience.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, try to experience SOMA without spoilers. "Figuring it
| out" is part of the experience.
|
| If you're 5 minutes in and worry that you've figured it out
| and aren't impressed, don't worry, you haven't seen
| anything yet.
| ehnto wrote:
| I found the themes in A Machine for Pigs to be more
| believable and thus scary than A Dark Descent, but neither
| hold a candle to SOMA thematically and most people regard A
| Machine for Pigs to be less good than it's predecessor.
| rspeele wrote:
| SOMA was wonderful. Maybe it helped that I didn't have really
| high expectations going in -- I pretty much thought "more
| horror like Amnesia, but in a new setting". So I went into it
| blind.
|
| But it ended up being one of those experiences that you keep
| thinking about for a few days afterwards. And it's a rare
| video game that I think would have lost its impact as a movie
| or a book, despite not having much gamey stuff to do (it's
| practically in the walking simulator category).
|
| The philosophical questions it brings up may not be anything
| new, but the game does an excellent job of putting the
| humanity in them and making you really consider what it would
| feel like to be in the circumstances of its characters -- not
| just the playable ones or the ones they interact with
| directly, but the ones you find audio logs and transcripts
| from.
|
| Edit: I should also note that I played The Talos Principle
| shortly after playing SOMA and was struck by a couple
| similarities they have. Talos is a much less story-driven
| game, you can almost ignore the story and just focus on the
| puzzles if you please. But playing it right after SOMA I
| couldn't help but enjoy how it almost covered the same type
| of scenario from another -- perhaps more optimistic -- angle.
| ehnto wrote:
| We had a really similar experience, including playing Talos
| directly afterwards. They both had a really incredible
| solitude to them, which I think resonated because of the
| same ideological reasons but in two different contexts like
| you said. They managed to evoke pretty much the same
| emotions from me, except for the horror from SOMA.
|
| There was an uncanniness to the Talos robots and the
| terminal entries which was really creepy to me though, I
| found them really unsettling at first.
| ninefathom wrote:
| This absolutely thrilled me. Right up until I realized that
| there's a closed-source, binary-only dependency (FBX SDK). I
| guess my dreams of playing this game (which I do, in fact,
| already own a copy of - twice over, actually) on Linux/aarch64
| are still a ways off. AutoDesk indicated as of ~2017 that
| Linux/ARM support for the FBX SDK wasn't on their road map, and
| nothing seems to have changed since then.
|
| Still- major kudos to Frictional for doing this. It's 100% an
| appreciated move, and very much in the right direction. The
| choice of FBX SDK is just, in hindsight, unfortunate, but that
| doesn't diminish the helpful nature of what they've done here.
|
| ( _fingers crossed_ - maybe FBX SDK is just needed for the
| editor? Hope springs eternal...)
| Arelius wrote:
| Does it actually use the FBX SDK during runtime? Most engines
| I've worked in just use the FBX SDK to convert assets from a
| DCC into engine specific assets. If that's the case you might
| just be able to disable it?
| ninefathom wrote:
| Just got the HPL2 engine from TDD to build on Linux/aarch64
| right up until it needs to link against the FBX SDK. Only real
| PITA was getting Newton on ARM going. After that it was a few
| cmake hacks in HPL2, and a few symlinks in the lib/linux
| directory of the dependencies archive.
|
| Looks like the culprits are "MeshLoaderFBX.cpp" and
| "LowLevelResourcesSDL.cpp" - any workarounds for FBX SDK would
| need to rework and/or replace those.
| aspaceman wrote:
| This all sounds very fixable, and one of my first programming
| projects was actually interacting with the FBX SDK. I'll take a
| look at it tonight, could be fun.
| tus88 wrote:
| Their own website incidcates Linux support:
|
| FBX Python SDK Windows
|
| FBX Python SDK Windows Mac
|
| FBX Python SDK Mac Linux
|
| FBX Python SDK Linux
| cfcosta wrote:
| He meant Linux/ARM64.
| lux wrote:
| With it being open source now, someone may be able to write a
| new asset loader using either GLB or UDZ and convert any FBX
| assets to one of those formats.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| Frictional Games also developed SOMA. It's also a horror game,
| but the psychological horror in the game is just a gameplay
| element where the philosophical topics are embedded.
| Meekro wrote:
| Maybe trying to generate interest for their upcoming game,
| Amnesia: Rebirth? Honestly, their stuff is quite good if you like
| horror games-- Amnesia: Dark Descent and SOMA are excellent!
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Maybe (given the timing), but Frictional is known for open-
| sourcing their older games. The Penumbra sources are on their
| Github, too!
| niek_pas wrote:
| I'm not sure open-sourcing an older game would gain them many
| eyes, since this news will likely only reach programmery types
| and the most hardcore of gamers.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| So can you fully build the game and run your executable build,
| such that we could start seeing these games showing up on Flathub
| and the like? Or is it the Doom-style "You can build the engine,
| but you still need to supply your own assets from a purchased
| copy of the game"?
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| Doesn't look like any assets are included in the github repo.
| chme wrote:
| The README.md states:
|
| > Here is everything you need to build Amnesia: The Dark
| Descent.
|
| But as you said, the assets seem to be missing. Maybe they
| release them somewhere else?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I think "build" in this context means "compile," as opposed
| to "run."
| chme wrote:
| Well a 'game' can be played, otherwise its not a 'game'
| its just a 'engine'.
| [deleted]
| __david__ wrote:
| Just because it's not complete doesn't make it a game
| 'engine' (though there's likely an engine in the code
| somewhere). It's more than a game engine, it's a game--
| it's just has no art assets. So, no, you can't make a
| full release from this repo, but you can build the
| executable.
|
| This is also how the Doom 1, 2, and 3 sources were
| released. You get the code but you need to buy the game
| to legally get the other assets.
| remram wrote:
| You guessed right, the GitHub repositories only include the
| code, and the README mentions (emphasis mine):
|
| > All _code_ is under the GPL Version 3 license.
|
| And the linked page:
|
| > Very important note: This doesn't mean that the game is
| suddenly free. It just means that people are free to use the
| source however they want as long as they adhere to the GPL3
| licence. The game and all of its content is still owned by
| Frictional Games. Just like before.
| asutekku wrote:
| Awesome! I can also recommend their earlier Penumbra series. Bit
| dated by today's standards, but still very enjoyable horror
| games.
| lilboiluvr69 wrote:
| Frictional Games has always had good Linux support as well. I
| wish other companies would follow suit and release some of their
| older, abandoned (not that I would call Amnesia either) titles to
| the open source community.
|
| Warzone 2100 had something similar happen and it gained a
| community revival.
|
| Edit: I can't believe Amnesia is 10 years old!
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Not sure if it's my connection, but the website seems to not
| responds.
| whitten wrote:
| I had problems as well. 9/23/2020 @ 10:54 AM (EST)
| snvzz wrote:
| https://archive.is/Ij2zA
| kuu wrote:
| It's not working for me either, I guess we killed it :) I
| couldn't find a cache link neither...
| sharkweek wrote:
| I consider myself pretty thick-skinned when it comes to being
| scared but I * _checks notes_ * still have only played 27 minutes
| of Amnesia according to Steam.
| gnulinux wrote:
| My grandma has this super old wooden house in the middle of
| nowhere. One summer I was staying there with her, I went
| downstairs, turned off all lights and played Amnesia. I
| honestly thought it'd be fun, but I stopped after ~1 hour. It
| was an experience.
| catsdanxe wrote:
| Amnesia needs to come out with a mobile version so I can go
| camp out in the woods alone.
| tehsauce wrote:
| The monster's AI is amusing to read, and its behavior has a
| surprising amount of depth. Really explains its scary, clever and
| unpredictable nature.
|
| It has over 15 different behavior states:
|
| Idle, GoHome, Wait, Patrol, Investigate, Alert, Search, Eat,
| Hurt, Hunt, HuntPause, HuntWander, AttackMeleeShort,
| AttackMeleeLong, AttackRange, BreakDoor, Dead, Flee, Stalk, Track
|
| States:
|
| https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blo...
|
| Implementation:
|
| https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blo...
|
| There's also naming gems like "mindfuckevents"
|
| https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blo...
| shmerl wrote:
| That's the right way to preserve past games.
| __david__ wrote:
| Absolutely. This practically guarantees there will be a port of
| this to every OS available for years to come.
| paines wrote:
| SOMA sources would be nice. Just last night I ran into this bug
| under Linux when pulling the lever at the relay station in delta
| sector the game reproducibly crashes with an trap divide error in
| libfmodevent....
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| I'd love to do this with my VR game, but it contains at least a
| dozen thirdparty paid assets -- some of which contain heavy
| modifications. I'd have to withhold these assets from a release,
| making it unbuildable, unless someone could prove with invoices
| that they also own them.
|
| Kind of bums me out, because there aren't really any released
| projects from commercially successful Unity games. And then there
| is the legal ramifications of having your source out there.
| What's stopping a bad actor from trying to find something trivial
| they could sue you over because of vague patents?
| boarnoah wrote:
| Hobbyist gamedev, kind of a concern to me too. There is no way
| to make such a project FOSS to any degree without treading on
| license obligations from the Engine or third party assets (most
| of which only allow redistribution within a clearly defined
| team).
|
| A compromise I've seen (and what I do with my hobby projects)
| is to publish source code to github without a FOSS license, so
| at least the code I write has some value to others to look at,
| binary assets (including third party) are included in the
| project over git LFS so its possible to deny access to those by
| not providing LFS credentials.
|
| An example along the lines is a project I follow a lot, the
| developer publishes their core gameplay mechanics code as
| MIT[1] and it's been very useful to me in a UE4 context (for
| things like understanding good practices re: building larger
| systems in UE4).
|
| I guess I mean realistically impossible for you to release
| projects as FOSS but IMO there is still value if you can push
| any content you do have ownership to in an open way (at least
| for educational purposes for others).
|
| 1 - https://github.com/alanedwardes/Estranged.Core
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Well, in theory, if you had used a free libre engine, you
| would not need to fear such a thing. That would have been an
| ahead of time consideration, when choosing your tools.
|
| Whether or not you could have done what you have with a
| differently licensed software is a different question, which
| is about licensing of big companies and their ethics.
| klodolph wrote:
| At hobbyist scale, it's usually more of a problem with
| assets rather than the engine itself, or with tools.
|
| For example, in a game jam you might want to be able to
| push something to a public Git repo that anyone can pull
| from and build, and license it so people on the team have
| no question about whether they can share the code with
| other people. Easy way to do that is to have an agreement
| like, "Let's license our code under MIT and make the art CC
| BY 4.0. Agreed?" Then drop copies of the license text in
| the repo with everyone's name on it, and make the repo
| public.
|
| As soon as you use third-party assets then you _probably
| can 't do that any more._
|
| Just speaking from a practical perspective here... I'm
| working with people and want them to freely use the code
| that I've written and the assets I've made.
| boarnoah wrote:
| Yep, as far as I'm aware none of the larger engines UE4
| or Unity mind if you release your source code under a non
| viral FOSS license.
|
| But almost all third party assets have restrictions, it's
| not like the assets can have DRM to prevent the paid for
| asset being redistributed and used in other works.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| I'm not sure if this release contains assets either, it looks
| like it is the engine only.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Are they the kind of assets you can stuff into a folder and if
| absent fallback to some dummy assets?
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| No unfortunately not. The most important ones are code
| assets.
|
| For instance I use heavily modified versions of:
|
| - PuppetMaster from http://root-motion.com/ - Chronos from
| https://ludiq.io/chronos
|
| Trying to fake the API surface area of these assets would
| be... hard. And without them the game is entirely non-
| functional.
| brokensegue wrote:
| You could still release what you can. Might be helpful as a
| reference or for modders of your game.
| mcpeepants wrote:
| Could you theoretically supply patches to those libraries
| alongside your code? I'm curious what the legal
| implications of that are.
| deelowe wrote:
| I've seen other devs open source their games and simply
| release it in a non-functional state with statements
| clarifying what's not included, why, and what it would take
| to get things up and running. Just about anyone looking to
| build a modern game from this sort of source release is
| going to know what they are getting into with or without
| these assets and may still get value out of the release
| even if it doesn't provide all the necessary bits to create
| an executable.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| If you're doing it for community contributions then yeah you're
| stuck. But if you just want to let other people see & learn
| from your code you're perfectly free to release whatever you
| can.
|
| For example DOOM, the thing ported to freaking everywhere, was
| released without working sound on DOS because of licenses (
| https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM ):
|
| > The bad news: this code only compiles and runs on linux. We
| couldn't release the dos code because of a copyrighted sound
| library we used (wow, was that a mistake -- I write my own
| sound code now), and I honestly don't even know what happened
| to the port that microsoft did to windows.
|
| And also without any game art assets - no textures, no levels,
| no sounds, no etc... Just the code, and just the code that
| wasn't covered by a license agreement.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I'd love to do this with my VR game, but it contains at least
| a dozen thirdparty paid assets
|
| Note that the release doesn't contain any assets. It's
| buildable in the sense that you can build the binary (and even
| then it looks like that doesn't actually work quite yet for any
| random setup).
|
| IME this is common for OSS release of commercial games,
| generally you have to provide the game assets to get a
| _playable_ artifact. Though I guess it 's more complicated if
| building the game assets is part of your build pipeline.
| danShumway wrote:
| I have a policy with the games I'm working on that I won't
| include any resource, engine, code, etc... unless it's Free
| (Libre) or I personally own the IP. I often wonder if I'm too
| strict about that, but seeing comments like this makes me feel
| like it's the right move.
|
| I don't want to be in a situation where I want to do something
| with my game and can't because I would need to track down the
| rightsholder. As a consumer I want to have some semblance of
| ownership over the things I buy, but even more than that as a
| creator, I _really_ want to own the things I make.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Kudos! Also, I just checked out your personal site and WOW
| does "Reset Hard" (2018) sound amazing!
|
| https://danshumway.com/blog/reset-hard-announcement/
|
| On my phone, no time now to look closer but plan to soon.
| [deleted]
| doomlaser wrote:
| Pretty impressive. These games have sold millions of copies.
|
| Here's the GitHub the repo for Amnesia: The Dark Descent,
| https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent -- looks
| like a custom C++ engine called HPL using SDL for input, Newton
| Dynamics for 3d physics, and OpenGL for graphics? The engine also
| supports AngelScript for scriping in-game events & logic:
| https://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/
| messe wrote:
| Minor correction: I think you mean SDL, not STL.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _The engine also supports AngelScript_
|
| Heh, if I didn't know already that FrictionalGames was a
| Swedish studio, this would have given it away
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Why is that? Do the Swedes use Angelscript pretty
| exclusively?
| hnarn wrote:
| I'm Swedish and I've never heard of it, but I also don't
| work in the games industry. Apparently a Swedish guy made
| it according to Wikipedia, so I'm assuming it's popular
| among Swedish game developers or something?
| svrtknst wrote:
| Heh, HPL... Fitting name
| westmeal wrote:
| Lovecraftian game engines, who wouldve guessed
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Cyclopean code blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping
| with green ooze and sinister with latent horror...
| panzagl wrote:
| Anyone who's looked at game engine code...
| eternalban wrote:
| Gargoyles of the cathedral of computing.
| Shermanium wrote:
| non-euclidian
| baby wrote:
| IIRC the game was impressive in the way you could slightly open
| doors and drawers, never played it but I remember that.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| For anyone that hasn't yet seen it, I'd highly recommend watching
| Ars Technica's video interview on Amnesia and how it created its
| unique atmosphere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMl2la8-3-o
|
| Along with the rest of their War Stories videos, for that matter.
| The interview with Andy Gavin on Crash Bandicoot is great, even
| though I never played the game:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o
| [deleted]
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