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new-world-hope · 6 years

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QuakeCon Fallout 76 panel

Panel begins at around 37:50, but if you want to skip the panel intro (in which nothing happens) and a replay of the E3 trailer, go to 42:18. Panel includes Fallout 76 development director Chris Meyer, project leader Jeff Gardiner, and game director Todd Howard.

Important/noteworthy info (I’m sure this is riddled with spelling mistakes, bad grammar, maybe even conflicting info; if you notice anything, let me know):

In regards to questing and general feel, FO76 remains “very similar to the Fallout you know and love.” Howard describes it as being 80% the familiar feel of Fallout, with the other 20% being “really different.”

FO76 has more “adventure elements,” focuses more on what it means to live in the world. It “has to feel real” to the player. The game “has a slow burn,” and they want you to really feel like you are your character in this game.

FO76 uses the Quake III networking architecture.

According to Gardiner, Bethesda Montreal is working on the game’s graphics, while Bethesda Austin is comprised of gameplay and network code experts.

Bethesda debuts the Fallout 76 Perks trailer (in the style of similar animated Vault-Tec trailers which came out before FO4), including things like mutations.

Character creation in Fallout 76 is shown at 54:40. The CC has been improved over FO4, though no details on how or why are given. Immediately after creating your character, you are taken to a screen where you can take your Vault-Tec ID badge photo, using the game’s photo mode, which allows you to select character poses and facial expressions.

Photo mode can be used at any time throughout gameplay, and photos you’ve taken appear in load screens. These are randomized along with “curated photos.”

Loading screens do not appear often, but there is a “little one” whenever you fast travel.

You can change your character’s appearance at any point throughout gameplay, from your hairstyle to even your gender.

At 56:25, gameplay is shown of emerging from the Vault, including your first level-up.

Leveling up begins with choosing whichever one of your SPECIAL attributes you wish to increase, which is followed by choosing an available “perk card” under that category. This seems much less cluttered than FO4′s perk chart screen. Taking a perk again increases its rank up to a seeming maximum of three. Each perk card has a “point cost” which requires a certain SPECIAL level in order to equip it.

“The levels keep going up and up and up. We don’t want to make a game where you have to stop leveling, but we had to make some very interesting decisions on what that means for a multiplayer game for balance.

We see level-ups to level 2, level 4, and then level 42. At 58:37, at the level 42 level-up screen, the player is wielding a crossbow.

PERKS SEEN: (any words in brackets were cut off; all assumptions are my own, though any indicated with ? I am unsure of--KEEP IN MIND that the numbers are affected by PERK RANKS and are thus subject to change; the numbers here are taken from perks of various tiers; this includes things like “there’s no chance you’ll be addicted to alcohol,” which is a level 3 perk, in which we can assume the first two levels just have a lowered chance)

STRENGTH

GLADIATOR: Your one-handed melee weapons now do +10% damage.

THRU-HIKER: Food and drink weights are reduced by 30%.

STURDY FRAME: Armor weighs 25% less than normal.

EXPERT SLUGGER: Your two-handed melee weapons now do +10% damage.

BEAR ARMS: Heavy Guns weigh 40% less.

BATTERIES INCLUDED: Energy weapon ammo weighs 30% less.

BANDOLIER: Ballistic weapon ammo weighs 90% less.

EXPERT HEAVY GUNNER: Your non-explosive heavy guns now do +10% damage.

PERCEPTION

GREEN THUMB: You have a 25% chance to reap twice as much when harvesting flora.

PERCEPTI-BOBBLE: You hear directional audio when in range of a bobblehead.

PANNAPICTAGRAPHIST: You hear directional audio when in range of a Magazine.

ENDURANCE

SLOW METABOLIZER: All food satisfies hunger by an additional 15%.

VACCINATED: Chance of catching a disease from creatures is reduced by 60%.

DROMEDARY: All drinks quench thirst by an additional 15%.

PROFESSIONAL DRINKER: There’s no chance you’ll get addicted to alcohol.

AQUAGIRL: You no longer take Rad damage from swimming and can breathe underwater.

CHARISMA

HAPPY CAMPER: Hunger and thirst grow 40% more slowly when in camp or in a team workshop.

PHILANTHROP[Y? IST?]: Restore some of your [team’s] hunger and thirst when [you eat] or drink.

SPIRITUAL HEAL[ER?]: You regenerate health for [?] seconds after reviving anot[her] player.

SQUAD MANEUVER [perhaps MANEUVERING?]: Run 10% faster when part of [a] team.

STRANGE IN NUMBERS: Positive mutation effects are +% stronger if teammates are mutated too.

LONE WANDERER: [Wh]en adventuring alone, take 10% [l]ess damage and gain 10% AP regen.

TEAM MEDIC: [Y]our stimpaks now also heal [ne]arby teammates for half the normal strength.

BLOODSUCKER: [Blood p]acks now satisfy thirst, no [longe]r irradiate, and heal 50% more.

PARTY GIRL: The effects of alcohol are doubled.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY: Your Luck is increased by 2 while under the influence of alcohol.

QUACK SURGEON: Revive other players with liquor!

BODYGUARDS: Gain 8 Damage & Energy resist (max 24) for each teammate excluding you.

HARD BARGAIN: Buying and selling prices at vendors are better.

INSPIRATIONAL: When you are on a team, gain 5% more XP.

INTELLIGENCE

FIRST AID: Stimpaks restore 10% more lost health.

CONTRACTOR: Crafting workshop items now costs 25% fewer materials.

MASTER HACKER: Gain +1 hacking skill, and terminal lock-out time is reduced.

EXOTIC WEAPONS: You can now craft Rank 1 exotic weapon mods. (Plans required) [Vault Boy is shown wielding a bow on this card]

AGILITY

MARATHONER: Sprinting consumes 20% fewer Action Points.

GOAT LEGS: Take 80% less damage from falling.

LUCK

SCROUNGER: 50% change to find extra ammow hen you “Search” an ammo container.

STARCHED GENES: You will never mutate from rads and RadAway will never cure mutations.

MYSTERY MEAT: Stimpaks generate excessive, edible meat. Higher Rads improve the chance.

MYSTERIOUS STRANGER: The Mysterious Stranger appears more often when using VATS. [This perk is at level 2 of 3; assume that the Stranger only begins appearing if you have level 1]

LUCK OF THE DRAW: Your weapon has a 10% chance to regain condition when hitting an enemy.

CAN DO!: [30%?] chance to find an extra canned good when you “search” a [?] container.

You can pick any perk that you meet the requirements for when you level up. More become available as you level.

Your stat level determines how many perks you can have active at a time: A character with 12 Strength is shown to have one level 3 perk, three level 2 perks, and three level 1 perks, adding up to 12. Cards can be worth up to 5 points, with each capping at different tiers.

Each SPECIAL stat has a cap of 15.

Charisma in FO76 is designed to share your perk cards with other players in your team.

Perk cards can be unlocked in card packs, which you initially get every two levels, until level 10, after which you get one every five, in addition to the single perk card you unlock every level. They come with four cards and a stick of gum, which can be used as a food item. The gum wrapper has a joke in it, all of which are written by Emil Pagliarulo (writer of such things as Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood questline, Skyrim’s guard dialogue, and Fallout 4′s main storyline).

You can swap out your perks at any time.

There are “hundreds” of perk cards.

SPECIAL points cannot be increased after level 50, but you can still pick a perk card every level after that.

Beta goes live in October.

They fully expect FO76 to be broken at first; the beta will be used as a stress test.

FO76 will be updated regularly after launch; Todd states it will be a “different game” one, two, five years after it comes out.

On PvP, griefing: When you shoot another player, you do a little bit of damage, not full damage, described as an “invitation” to combat, like “slapping somebody at a bar.” If the other player engages, then both enter combat and do full damage. There is a cap reward to combat based on the players’ levels; you will get more caps for killing a high-level character than a low-level character. When you are killed, you can “seek revenge,” which doubles the reward for killing them.

An attacking player can still kill someone who does not wish to engage, but if they do (i.e., against their will), they become a “wanted murderer,” and get no reward for it (no caps, no XP) and appear on everyone’s map as a red star with a bounty on their head--a bounty which comes out of their own caps. They are also unable to see any other players on their map.

Sneaking removes you from the map (unless you are wanted).

When you die, you drop your junk items--think crafting materials, a large portion of the gameplay loop. You can store your junk in a stash. The point of this is to represent sunk time, to make sure you are preparing before heading into a dangerous area.

You can respawn at any fast travel point; the point closest to you is free, the Vault 76 entrance is free, but everything beyond that has a cap cost dependent on distance from you.

PvP does not “kick off” until level 5.

You are able to “ignore and block” players; ignoring blocks them for the session. (Assuming blocking means you won’t be matchmade with them again?)

There is a “pacifist flag” (mode) which sets the game so you cannot accidentally engage in combat, so that no one can trick you into fighting by jumping in front of your bullets (further preventing griefing)

PvP is balanced so that stronger players will indeed be harder to kill, but if you play cleverly and well you can still manage to come out on top; the cap reward will be incredibly high if you pull off a kill on someone much higher in level

Blueprint system: Save blueprints to a creation so that you can easily rebuild it if it gets destroyed, and so that it can be moved within your camp to fit it nicely with the terrain whenever you move somewhere new.

Camps can be destroyed so that you cannot grief players by trapping them inside a prison.

Example of a trap set by Bethesda employee: Player sat in the middle of the road playing a tuba, but built turrets in the foliage to the side of the road. When players attempt to attack him, the turrets turn on them and fire from the foliage, killing them first.

Camp can be moved so that players can move their camps around when they find a nicer spot, but players tend to settle in to a specific place to keep their camp.

There is voice chat for your team, and for the game world; area-based, so you can hear players near you.

VATS is now real-time. You cannot initially target individual body parts, and the ability to do that is a perk you can unlock. Percentage to hit is based on your Perception. VATS can be used to find players (as you can in other modern Fallout games).

VATS becomes more and more useful the more you invest in Perception.

Inon Zur is scoring Fallout 76.

Licensed music: FO76 has more tracks than have ever been in a Fallout game. There are radio stations you can listen to. There is a balance of “classic” tracks used in older Fallout games, as well as songs new to the series; they seem to be drawing most heavily from 40s music this time around. Howard says there is an “unbelievable amount” of weird, wacky 40s music.

Private servers are definitely happening, specifically because they want people to be able to mod the game. It’s going to be “very, very complicated,” but Bethesda is “committed to it.” They are in the process of solving that problem.

#fallout 76 #fallout #bethesda game studios #bethesda softworks #todd howard #quakecon #quakecon 2018 #fo76 #video #panel

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humansizedplanet · 4 years

Text

first semester.

In the last few days and weeks, I’ve laid witness to a flood of joyous “end-of-first-semester”-type posts on Instagram, Facebook and otherwise. Slides and galleries of shiny, beautiful humans — at parties and museums, in dorm rooms and at galas, some sober and some definitely not — have dominated my feed (and I am sure yours too, for my collegiate peers). So lucky to be here, the captions read. The end to an amazing semester. Whirlwind. Can’t believe it’s over.

From rooftops and in darkness, they shout, implicitly: look at my people! Look at how fun! Look at how deeply I am in love, and look how much I have done!

And I cannot doubt the veracity of these narratives. Rather, I congratulate them. I am sure the photos, or at least I hope so, are captures of moments of joy. They are emblems of what makes college an extraordinary experience for some. In fact, many of us — probably including myself — have experienced one of the best times of our lives this semester in college, whether it be our first or one of our last. In college, joy escapes few who permit themselves to feel it, and who have the circumstances to do so. Joy has acutely rested in the palms of the dominant majority as new experiences, bodies, feelings, and opportunities have bubbled excitedly to the surface. It is normal to live a collegiate life enshrouded by a happy ambiance, momentarily (or, for some, permanently) immune — or perhaps just deflective towards — negativity and anxious stress. I mean, when your school has just won its first NCAA men’s soccer College Cup in institutional history, how can you not stoke the flickering fire in your stomach, the warmth of a newfound pride radiating through every part of your body? When you dance to good music at strange parties, surrounded by those who you have claimed your own, how might you stop the spread of smile? When your professor grants you a good mark or says something kind to you in office hours, what rationale is there to suppress the kick of joy at your belly?

Beyond the scope of sports teams and compliments, my own joy has been immense throughout the last four months. From pieces for the Georgetown Voice + Independent to poetry slams, I’ve found spaces to write and create and share so much of my heart. In class and through conversation, I’ve learned previously unheard narratives and the contours of faces lost to the sands of history. I’ve let dance seep into my bones at concerts and political realism indoctrinate my foreign policy takes in seminars. I’ve tried strange foods and strange music; I’ve sang in stairwells at unholy hours. Most importantly, I’ve tied new knots in an ever-expanding safety net of human beings I love and trust, and these bows are ones made by some of the most considerate, intelligent, talented, and visionary people I’ve had the chance to meet. These are relationships that welcome challenge and fear no depth of dialogue; these are individuals who are happy to free dive into the muddy waters if it means emerging with a new clarity about the world above the surface afterwards. These are people who pivot to the sun without forgetting the shadow that leaks behind, who radiate light but shy, not, from sheer darkness. And God, I am so lucky.

I, too, then, have so much to post about: so much has been good to me.

Yet I cannot help but feel a bit of guilt at the subtractive artifice that comes with presentations of this first semester on social media. Those joyful posts I’ve encountered — and my own paragraph, immediately above — imagine a neon world, full of brightness and joy and success and humor. Indeed, social media is a preservationist tool: they tell us what you put on the Internet is out there forever, and I believe it. It makes sense to plaster joy on our feeds because it memorializes times and people that make us happy. Why not seal them in amber, parade them around like trinkets? Certainly, it’s better to celebrate what is joyful rather than what is tragic. I myself curate meticulously: my Instagram is filled with the flash of teeth, and it makes me happy to share with the world the moments of joy that I feel profoundly.

But in doing so, we lose the messy, real edges. We erase unshapely life. The neon world ends up neglecting the hours that are not so glorious, and preaches delusional narrative to the consuming masses that all is to be filled with joy. Perhaps social media is not meant to be very realistic, but I have spent so many hours in its vestiges that I refuse to accept that this must be its only formulation. I write this post not to critique social media or launch into yet another explanation of how social media changes our psychology and has toxic aftereffects. As (mostly) conscious consumers, we are all aware of this truth. I am sure many of you have gone on your own social media cleanses, have identified how it propagates challenges with self-esteem and forms artificial, at-times untenable expectations.

So I come to you, instead, with an admittance of (at least some of) the messier edges of my own college experience. Yes, it has been defined so loudly by joy: I feel lucky every day to be at Georgetown and to be surrounded by such magic. But for every night of spontaneity and fun and happiness and catharsis there has also been one of struggle. For one, college is also about confronting loneliness, and normalizing social singularity. I ate many meals alone this semester, many more than I would like to admit. Sometimes as a result of schedule, sometimes as a result of intention (“needing space”), and other times simply because I was too shy to ask someone to dinner, I found myself often in the dining hall amidst a pulsating, socialized universe. And though I had always been so comfortable with loneliness — as the only child of immigrant parents, this reality is unavoidable — I found the collegiate breed of it to be particularly corrosive. What am I doing wrong? I wondered. Am I not good enough?

And it is this question of “good enough” that defines so many of the darker narratives of the collegiate experience. So much of college — at least at Georgetown — is this process of trying out for things; applications for clubs and fellowships and grants build a mountain of attempts to try to throw yourself into things. This story is, I think, particularly familiar to the first-year student: we are told, before even stepping foot on campus, that there is some family here for you. Most of the time, there is — and so it makes sense to continue this narrative. But the result is that freshmen blindly throw themselves at things, and so much emotional gravity is placed on acceptance into these spaces. Rejection, eventually, becomes a quiet but familiar face for so many. Rationalizing with it yields no comfort; ultimately, there is only the necessity of accepting that you are not meant to be certain places at certain times, and the search continues. You convince yourself that you are good enough…for something. Hopefully. And I searched. Even when I was lucky enough to have been given entrypoints, I was still confronted with this persistent question: is this it? Am I here?

When asked about my support system — my place on campus, more specifically — by old friends, former teachers, even fellow freshmen on campus, I came up with a routine answer: still working on it. I am still working on it. This is no hyperbolic dramatization: I think the cycle is still spinning in my laundry machine. The engineer of that machine never gifted me a timer, however, so I see no end to this process. I know it must come, at some point, but when? How will I even know?

This sense of perpetuity — this continuous question of finding where exactly I belong — has been accompanied by a strange reorientation of social place. Beyond mere loneliness, I found myself often struggling to parse through the literal thousands of students I was surrounded by. How do I find my people? Who do I even like? What do I even like? What the hell am I even doing? I struggled with my gut instincts about individuals because in the past I have been proven, again and again, so profoundly wrong. First impressions rarely reveal the elemental nature of relationships. So on a college campus where the only real tool towards beginning to feel social place is capitalizing on first impressions, what do you even do?

Even those that I found myself gravitated to — things were not always pretty. Nor will they be. People fight. Misunderstandings happen. Even beyond conflict, I found myself time and time again having to help friends confront new challenges in their personal lives. Lots of hands held. Lots of hugs given. Many hours of sitting in the quiet. Presence matters. And it’s hard, often, to be as present as you need to be.

There was a reckoning with the past, too. There were catch-up calls with old high school friends where I felt, suddenly, like a foreigner peering into their local lives, startled by how much of their worlds were no longer landscapes I could even begin to understand. I struggled to figure out who to message when I got off the plane at Thanksgiving because I didn’t know who liked me enough to spend their precious hours with me during those short days. There were text message discussions with my former high school teachers where I felt alien, too mature and yet not enough to exist, still, in their worlds. And along the lines of all of this was a quiet fear that I had done it all in high school, and that I had left so much for so little.

You may have noticed the excess of rhetorical questions that have colonized the last few paragraphs of this piece. I think it’s clear that I’m still in a state of inquiry. And I accept it joyously, because that state of inquiry had historically always led to better results for me in both lab reports and in general life things. Just know that as I have questioned and answered and questioned again, there have been valleys as much as there have been peaks.

If you’re a first-year student reading this and haven’t had the best few months of your life, I hear you. I love you. Your story is valid. There were many nights where I felt like I was the only one going through stuff, even though I knew there definitely were so many others feeling the same way. There were many sad moments in private library rooms where I chewed on gummy candy and contemplated why I was where I was. In shower stalls, mindlessly letting water cascade, wondering if my day was going to be any good. If you’re a first-year student reading this and have experienced nothing but utmost joy, props. I hope, dearly, that it lasts. If you’re yet to enter college, I hope reading this demolishes any pressure you have come next fall to make your freshman year perfect. It might not be. And that’s okay. And if you’re one of the lucky people that is years older, I hope this post related experiences and validated emotions you may have felt so many years ago.

When I look back on the last four months, I refuse the rose-colored glasses. Not everything has been easy. But in seeing my first semester realistically, with all its mess, I find such value and such room for optimism for the next one. I’m incredibly excited. Sunlight feels good now, don’t it? So many kisses. x

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literateape · 7 years

Text

Now Playing: Light and Echoes from a Dark Room

By Dana Jerman

Back in college I took a film class. This wasn’t about how to make movies, but how to appreciate them as an art form and as visual literature. It was a dope course. We watched Clerks.

This academic pursuit, like most, required writing papers. Fortunately, it was only one.

Herr Professor needed to know you understood what concepts had been conveyed. So you could choose to apply these critical reasonings to either: a scene from a film of your choosing watched out of class or a music video.

I immediately chose a film scene. Gawd, the erratic/sporadic/epileptic nature of a music video seemed like too dense a black hole of meaning and possible extensions of meanings to tackle adequately inside of 7-10 pages.

I didn’t keep the paper, but I know the scene I chose was from the original Lolita. Clare Quilty at the piano…

Generally, now as then, I watch a lot of weird stuff. Dark. Ominous. Frightening. Documentaries about serial killers and deviance and undesirable elements of society. I get on a real tear for it, like I get in the mood for a good horror film. (Don’t you ever just want to listen to a bunch of metal at top volume and make faces? Try it sometime, it’s a great release.)

I know I’m definitely not alone here, but lot of sane folks stay away from this nightmare-inducing pap. Maybe I take on the perverse duty of watching gory true-crime shit because it makes dealing with the minor horrors of life diminish in comparison. And cast into stark relief is that fine line where people, when pushed into certain stressful situations and no matter who they are, end up doing some pretty despicable things.

Probably I just dig the adrenaline.

My earliest experiences here involve the 'rents spooking me a bunch by letting me watch the TV series V when I was much too young for that shit, and consequently later on were very careful about what I was allowed to watch.

When it came to movies, they took that rating system seriously. No Rated R stuff until I was 18. I sure fought them on this when Pulp Fiction came out.

Of course I remember with glee my first ‘R’ in the theatre: Interview With A Vampire. I watched it with a group of friends when I was 16. Mom knew about it. It was my then BFF’s birthday, after all.

These arguments, which have no doubt seen their fair share of a PhD thesis in more than one school of study, is beyond the choice to pursue the occult over the mainstream. Here, they all work in tandem.

Recently I received a compliment. A friend had watched something weird on the tube and wanted to share it with me because she said she knew I dig the strange.

A flattering remark this, because it is within my power to make a concerted effort to keep working toward undoing the blockages in my own mind that only permit the possibility of so many things, and actions, and reasons.

If I can fight censorship within myself and out in the world, then I can stop my own fascist ego in its tracks. I can reduce the damage done by the impulse that says “I know everything, and I am the most important thing.”

These arguments, which have no doubt seen their fair share of PhD thee-sees in more than one school of study, are beyond the choice to pursue the occult over the mainstream. Here, they work in tandem.

It nearly goes without saying—in a visually oversaturated culture, one’s relationship to the media one consumes is tantamount to how their personality, and most certainly their value systems, are built.

I’d like to think this says one key thing about me, which is: I very much appreciate the adaptability of humanity to situations far beyond what those involved initially thought physically and mentally possible of themselves.

Sometimes this epiphany ends in utter disaster. Out of sheer eventuality, death comes for us all.

I love full-length film the most. Ninety or more minutes. Dogtooth. American Beauty. Morvern Callar. Sling Blade. Anything featuring Willem Dafoe.

Also, shorts! Short films, especially animated shorts, run a close second on my private tastemaking list. They are great fun to experience collected inside a film festival format.

Too, I seem to revisit that music video format more and more. Not being myself immune from the dwindling of collective attention spans—which only seem to serve to increase the rate of consumption within the last vestiges of stumble-upon culture still in existence—I find I’ve cultivated enough of a delightfully semi-pretentiously trashy YouTube-junk habit to be proud of such a thing.

Cultural diamonds spun out of chaos are always found in the vast and churning rough.

One example amid many (including everything from TEDx show-and-talks to anything on ubuweb.com to Adult Swim late-night mindrips) I consider myself to be a super-fan of content (straight outta LA) produced by SuperDeluxe.

At nearly 900,000 subscribers, about a hundred posts over the course of a year and change, user/creator Vic Berger is my new favorite poet. Except he probably wouldn’t call himself one. More so a remix artist. On this platform, he uses words and images from news sources and additional corporate media to create intriguing social critiques that, with a run time clocking between a minute to 20 minutes plus, almost feel like extended music videos curated with the delicate hand of a horror film director.

Herein he explores curious themes bearing repetition. Exaggerations of color, distortions of perspective and unnerving instrumentals. Soundtrack-like swelling musical clips combined with foley effects.

Extreme close-ups you can’t unsee and slow-motion exaggerations of one expression after another after another.

Unexpected shifts-loops-echoes, and the oft used debate AIRHORN! calling out potty humor, vacant gesturing and all manner of ridiculousness and non-sequitur.

All these and a few more subliminal tricks are utilized to create don’t-blink humor and illustrate a perversion of the message and the narrative over which not even our dear and desperate leader DJT (to say the least) has as much control as he would like.

In any case, each video stands perfectly among its own anti-story as an incomplete investigation of the sinister within the absurd and the absurd within the sinister.

Endings/wrap-ups/lead-ins to the next video often include a woman’s voice suggestively cooing “Wow... Wow, I love that.”

And I keep my gaze high to look beyond net neutrality disputes and threatened free speech anxieties to the spastic and incredible future of all this art piled upon art and rejoice!

I mean, don’t you want to live in that crazy world where Memory Hole becomes a news channel?

#movies #film #music videos #horror #critique #television #personal #cinema

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