JudasPhysicist

Okay slightly tangential news, apparently some of the original developers of Kabus 22 formed their own studio and are making a brand new 3rd person action/stealth game called Black State that honestly looks like a cross between Metal Gear Solid 5 and Death Stranding. Looks pretty cool.

Well Ross found another Turkish game. I certainly didn't expect two Turkish games in one year. Anyway I might dig up some Turkish game magazine archives again when I have some spare time. Although I'm not sure I'll find anything as crazy or fascinating that was the development of Kabus 22.

@ScumCoderThanks! Just did a little bit of digging into old magazine archives and translation that's all :)

Hey Ross, so a few things I want to say before the meat of the post. Kadıköy is actually located in İstanbul, so its not a city but rather a province of İstanbul. Not that it matters much in the game's story though. Something else I noticed is that the game actually has a ton of billboards that have product placements such as the "Fida Film" posters (Those guys went bankrupt back in 2016 or something) Your pronunciation of the word "Kabus", which means Nightmare, was more or less correct the first time you tried it in the video, your subsequent tries were pretty hilarious :) Almost sound like the word "Karpuz" which means watermelon xD Okay, since I'm a weirdo I tried finding the Turkish version of the game, but all I could find was the English and Russian versions. And I'm not about to try and find a box DVD copy that may or may not work due to janky DRM's of the day. I did manage to find the review of the game from the Turkish gaming magazine LEVEL, arguably the best Turkish gaming magazine at the time. The sentiment seems to be that since there haven't been many Turkish games made, this being a native home grown game excited them. They go on to say that initially the game fails to impress neither with its graphics or gameplay. But they soon realized that this was trying to be more like Resident Evil 3 and that sort of warmed them up. They give a plot summary of the beginning which goes something like this: - A mysterious cult emerges, initially with very few members. - The cult grows in size rapidly thanks to some Nation leaders also joining the cult (I think that's what they mean by Governors joining the cult in the intro, bad translation, just imagine the US President and the French Prime Minister holding hands and sacrificing goats or some shit and their approval rates reach sky high) - The cult does not appear to have a Leader, or no one knows who the leader is, if they even exist. (The guy writing the review must have typed "Ş" instead of "L" in the review, these keys are side by side on a Turkish-Q keyboard, the word "Şider" should be "Lider" which means leader) - The cult promises "Absolute/Certain Happiness" to those who have "Absolute/Certain Faith" to the cult. That's their whole motto it seems, pretty weak to be honest but maybe they do some extra parlor tricks to get people to join. - Soon after the cult grew in size, pseudo WW3 broke out minus the nukes, from what I can understand. The cult wins the pseudo WW3 and for some fucking reason decides to spit up the world into 22 pieces. Now are these pieces like districts or countries? I dunno, maybe they literally carved the planet. It's hard to tell when you are dealing with a cult that's got at least half the World's population. - After taking control of the planet, the Cult decides to make İstanbul it's capitol. Why? Because its a Turkish game and we want it to take place in İstanbul, that's why. - Soon after that the weird creatures called the "Madun" start popping around the place, which probably makes sense as the underground temple was located in İstanbul and they probably did some rituals etc. to release them. So this implies that the cult indeed won WW3 via conventional means by mass indoctrination of the people. That gives me C&C 1 Nod vibes, Kane manages to unify nearly half of the world's population just through sheer charisma and cult like mumbo jumbo then proceeds to conquer the rest via conventional warfare. - Demir is supposed to be a Turkish resistance fighter they are indeed lovers with Ebru. - Watching from your video, I can see that at the begging of the game the resistance fighters take the control of the Kadıköy district back form the cult, then the cultists released the weirdo Demons on the resistance fighters. So this is the first time Demir, or anyone else, is seeing these creatures. The reviewer goes on to say that the game gives of that RE3 Racoon City vibe but mixed with the actual city of İstanbul with Turkish culture, which impressed them. They go on to joke that the price of a Lahmacun raised to 5 lira and that was excessive, fast forward to 2023 and the price of a Lahmacun starts from 60 lira. They go on to make parallels with Silent Hill, RE2 and Devil May Cry, then say that Demir plays more like a tank and has a lot of ammo, Ebru is a bit more squishy and her pistol is bad and finally Inzar tries to play like Dante and that sucks out the survival horror atmosphere of the game. They say that mostly the puzzles are fine and sort of fun, but the need to try keys on like 8 different doors to find out which one it unlocks is pretty tedious. They thought the gameplay was okay, the controls were acceptable, the camera controls were better than most RE games and finally they were really impressed with the loading times between screens and commended that there was no door opening animation between areas. They say that this game took 4 years to develop with a team of 4-5 people and that should commended for the Turkish video game industry. They also have an interview with the game's developers in the middle, it goes something like this: Level - How did you think of making Kabus 22? Yasin - They always had a passion to make video games when they were children, always wondered how pressing keys on the keyboard made the characters move and do things. They decided in 1999 to learn how to make games and started researching and seeking some education on these matters. Their first game was called "SR-Man" (2002) a first person shooter, contracted to be made by a pharmaceutical company (I checked the game, videos of it exist on youtube, looks like a fever dream of Quake mixed with Asimov's Fantastic Voyage). Afterwards 5 more people joined their team and they wanted to make something more extensive. Level - Turkish video game development is still in its infancy, what were the difficulties you faced during the 4 years of development? Yasin - Goes on to say that financial investment was the biggest issue. Investors told them that the video game sector did not exist in Turkey so why should they give them any money. (Sadly very wrong, there was a thriving bootleg video game sector in Turkey, very similar to stories told by CD Project Red's Marcin Iwinski regarding the Polish bootleg video game sector.) They however managed to get investment from a home appliance company (Vestel) of all things. - Skipping one here with the Vestel company Level - Do you think that Kabus 22 will be an economic success? Mevlüt - They think that the game is by far the best video game developed in Turkey to date and deserves the success. They hoped that gamers would go and buy the original boxed DVD versions so they would profit. Level - Are you considering a sequel? Yasin - They are working on some experimental things but nothing is set yet. Level - Don't you think the game is a bit too hard? Yasin - If you play on Normal and get used to the controls, the game is actually easy as it practically showers you with medkits and ammo. But I can't say the same for the Hard difficulty as ammo and medkits are reduces and the enemies are tougher. He goes on to say that they tested the game on Hard and finished it multiple times, and there are some challenging spots where you don't have enough ammo to kill all enemies so you need to come up with alternative tactics. He suggests that people initially play and complete the game on Normal and if they want to play again go for Hard. Otherwise the Hard difficulty will be a real Kabus/Nightmare (nasty pun/word play, I love it.) Level - What do you suggest to amateur groups who want to develop games? Mevlüt - This game shows us that the efforts made in the last couple of years regarding video games is bearing fruit. You need ambition, talent and tons of effort to make good games. In order to make AAA games you need a lot of know-how and financial support. The (Turkish) video game industry is still crawling but there are also important changes happening etc. etc. So from what I gather this game was made by 5-ish people in 4 years and they probably starved while trying to make the thing. I can only guess that none of these developers were writers, they probably only knew how to code, make models, animate etc. They probably never consulted an editor or something either, probably explains why the story feels so bat-shit insane. One interesting thing is that the developer Mevlüt Dinç seems to be making games since the 1980's working in Activision etc. Finally the caption featured on Ebru's screenshot essentially tells her to drop her gun and become a house wife. Not surprising as this stuff wasn't even considered to be misogynistic at the time, aged rather poorly though.

This one is on Early Access at the moment. It is developed by a single person and the scope is pretty massive. You can think of it as Mount and Blade but in space.

Oh thanks! Never realized Ross saved this game from abandonware status :D

Here is something weird, while this is technically a Ubisoft title, the game engine and the game itself is developed by Massive Entertainment. On their website it says they are a Ubisoft company https://www.massive.se but the studio's roots go way back till 2001 with their first title Ground Control, a very competent fully 3D RTS, and Homeworld + Ground Control were the first fully 3D RTS games that I know of. In 2004 they released a sequel to Ground Control, which I love none of them have base building etc. they focus soley on the action and tactics side of things. Finally in 2008 they released World In Conflict and almost went bankrupt and Ubisoft bought them out. And at this point the story goes pretty bizzare in typical Ubisoft fashion, they had Massive Entertainmet cancel their work on the World In Conflict console ports and potentially any other RTS game they were making before their acquisition. Massive is at this point a studio known for making purely RTS games and have ~8 years of experience under their belt, so naturally Ubisoft tasks them to make the tacked on multi-player portions of their Far Cry and Assasin's Creed games for years on end and also puts them in charge of developing and maintaining their Steam competitor DRM thingy Uplay (now it's called some other weird thing but whatever even Blizzard changed their DRM name but people still kept calling it Battle-net lol). I was massively surprised when I saw this Massive Entertainment's name attached to the Division because I thought they went poof under all that AAA published slave driver culture, similar to what Activision did to Raven Software. The game was pretty much so so in my opinion and I have no idea why they made it an online only looter shooter when it could have been a solid single player game. But the talent is still there, the amount of detail and effort poured into making that city, that amazing winter storm atmosphere, I've never really felt any other game conveyed a cold winter city any better. To my knowledge the music in this game was made by Ola Strandh, who also made the music to Ground Control back in the day and that was pretty awesome. But I suppose corporate meddling or whatnot mandates that games don't have any musical identity anymore. I mean just listen to this track from 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir74RSi-5Gs&list=PLCF6ACD0618F0879D&index=5

If you pause the video right around 7-8 seconds it says Eternam. I guess a left over from copy pasting

Is there a way to get the soundtrack for this game apart from directly recording from the game itself? That intro music is pretty amazing, I think Ross has a new rendition of that he used on the Dream Software video. Searching for Eternam soundtrack brings up Doom Eternal soundtrack, while it's also pretty metal, that's not what I want ?

Yep, duly noted. I don't actually have a microphone I'm just using the laptop's integrated mic, and some ancient hd cam corder I found which had a tripod.

Hi everyone, After years of procrastination, I finally decided to something because of the quarantine. I made an amateurish review of Hitman 2016 here: I'd love some feedback on the vid. Also I could remove the vid if it's against the forum rules to self market, but since this is the general gaming section I thought it would be okay. Cheers, have a happy new year.

Oh well, it's just how some old games are coded I guess. It's just a shame when a 3D game has arbitrary resolution limitations

If you could edit the resolution but not the aspect ratio, why not use 1440x1080 as a resolution? It's still 4:3 so the game assets look normal, you get more resolution out of the game, plus it looks nice on 16:9 monitors when it's centered.

Wow you really should upload it, that's proper archeology right there. Someone might even translate it if they have the time.

Hey guys, the rebelmind.com website seems to be dead. Therefore the game is sort of abandonware. I couldn't find it on steam or gog (even though the game is Polish). I wanted to download Frater and give it a go, but I suppose it's not possible anymore. Does anyone have a downloaded version standing around anywhere?

Hey guys some of you may remember pit droids from early 2000's it was this Puzzle game with Pit droids from star wars ep1 where you placed arrows and stuff on the ground leading them to an exit. Pretty much star wars lemmings. Anyway the game is pretty much abandonware you can download it here https://www.myabandonware.com/game/star-wars-pit-droids-403 however to the best of my knowledge there is no way to get it working on a modern operating system so I tried Wine emulation but I get stuck during the installation process about an error and can't proceed anymore. If anyone knows how to get it working could you help? Also the game has an amazing sound track, just worth playing for the sound track alone.

I don't know about Poland's economic situation but 5000 dollars is around 4248 Euros, which in turn is 18267 Zlotys. Now I am obviously no expert on Polish economy or what the average rent is around those parts, but it looks like a good amount of money to not starve and also have a roof over your head. Now lets have some fun and compare this to what an average engineer in my country (a Middle East country), which is 832 Euros because the economy is not good at the moment. This makes 3578 Zlotys which is 5 times less than what is donated to Ross. Now lets check out an average Polish engineer, a quick google search shows that they make 2050 dollars per month which is 7486 Zlotys. It is a decent middle ground between the two numbers. Now obviously the amount donated per month is going to change every time so the numbers can vary, but as long as it is over 2000 dollars, it is still more than what a Polish engineer earns. Considering how many times Ross has stated that he considers himself extremely lucky to recieve this fan support, I totally understand him now. The average engineer from the Middle East would probably have starved or has to eat cheaper less healty stuff. This post does not in any way try to prove a point or anything, it simply is just an interesting comparison between Europe and Middle Eastern countries and how wage varies extremely between them.

It seems almost every youtuber has been effected by this ad friendly content thing. I suppose this is what happens when people like pewdiepie, whom I see impulsive, irresponsible and childish, are given a great status and just can't figure out how to handle it properly. You would think that racism and holocaust are things you shouldn't be casually joking about, but here we are. Naturally Ross and other people who try to make a living through this system gets the sharp end of the stick while pewdiepie probably won't get effected much by this change since he probably has made enough money to sustain a decent, if not better, life style for the rest of their lives. Oh well maybe we really should learn useful skills like cooking, carpentry or hunting just so we can survive when all other means fail us. edit: Jim Sterling has made a really nice video about this issue ->

Deus Ex was created during the "John Romero is going to make you his bitch" era. While I don't know Romero had much part in creation of Deus Ex, it is safe to assume that he was busy making Daikatana with Ion Storm Austin. However his almost crazy entrepreneur genious game developer rock star attitute must have been mimiced by Ion Storm Dallas, who made Deus Ex. Fast forward to 2011, Square Enix bought the Deus Ex franchise and with a giant mega corporation funding a video game comes the cons with it. There was no way a AAA publisher backed up studio to create a Deus Ex game to come close to the scope of the original. You lose the freedom you have with almost indie like development of late 90's. And hell even Jim Sterling has 2 videos on the newest Deus Ex where Square Enix tried to gimp the game at any way they could. And also the insane production values these games have must be mentioned, where up to 100 million dollars can be spent on AAA games. Not to mention the insane sales expectanties from Square Enix does not help at all, Tomb Raider selling 3.4 million copies is a comercial failure apparently. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-26-tomb-raider-has-sold-3-4-million-copies-failed-to-hit-expectations So yeah people want to make great video games but the insane cost of making shiny graphics causes them to be under a mega corperation's leash where it gets harder and harder to make the product you were meaning to. Of course there is the other side of the coin where giving too much freedom to a developer, cough Tim Shafer, can lead to disasterous things. So what sould be done in conclusion? I don't really know, I'm just a physicist.

Ground Control 2 has an awesome sound track to it. Unfortunately it was never released as a proper sound track so the tracks have no names. I'll give you the link for the youtube playlist, extracting the sound files is not in my expertise but I could find a way to get them if you find them to your liking. It's got a bit of everything in there, techno, some rock and space opera! Track 8 is my personal favorite.

Gothic 1 and 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_%28video_game%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_II:_Night_of_the_Raven It's a pretty solid RPG for it's time. The sequel is a lot better though. But they dropped the ball in Gothic 3 and then the developers made Risen which was a spiritual sequel to Gothic 2.

Well I was more than prepared to watch this episode I guess. Just look at the attached image.

It wasn't as funny or witty as your other content Ross.

Well that's pretty much what I think of 3D currently. There used to be 45 minute long Imax 3D movies, those were insane. One was about dinosaurs, one of them was an underwater documentary and if I'm not mistaken there was another one wich was like a rollercoaster ride. Now those were pretty amazing. You could actually feel like touching the stuff coming out of the screen. Avatar's 3D was arguably the best of the "modern" 3D but still it's like, look at that thing it's slightly closer to you than that other thing over there. Why even go the extra cost of making your movie 3D when you could easily achieve the same effect with some depth of field blurring on your camera. Also the term 3D kinda annoys me because the stuff we see is already 3D, even though we see it projected on a 2D surface our eyes can know what is distant and what is closer. Things are already 3D, the effects just make them pop out of the screen. So I think we should call the illusion of making flat surfaces pop out as "lame holograms"

Why does everything have to be happy? I don't see anything wrong with a heated discussion. You have some valid points there. However no one is going to give two fucks about those because you're fucking vulgar.