Dishonored

You Won't Blend In Wearing A Snazzy Dishonored ShirtIt looks like I may be about to add a third outlet to my tiny list of "stores I buy gaming shirts from", because Gametee—a new outlet that's about to hit its Kickstarter goal—is designing some very attractive tops.


As they should! One of the partners is British artist AJ Hately, whose Dishonored work floored us a few weeks back (and which features, at least partly, in this line).


You can see the full line below.


Gametee: Premium T-Shirts for Video Gamers [Kickstarter]


The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim after being modded all the way to crazy town.
Skyrim after being modded all the way to crazy town.

What will the Games of Tomorrow look like? Will they be virtual reality dreams designed in collaboration with J.J. Abrams? Maybe. As RPS points out, adventurous ideas were plentiful at this year's D.I.C.E. Summit. Skyrim director Todd Howard, however, told the site that good ol' fashioned graphical improvements shouldn't be undervalued.

"Everybody always wants more power," said Howard, sadly not followed by a guttural "uuueehhh?" and irresponsible use of power tools. Instead, he said that while more powerful PCs have a variety of benefits, he thinks "people discount graphics."

"They’ll say, 'Well, the gameplay's what really matters,' and it does. But I do feel that graphics and your ability to present something that feels new, real, and believable puts people in that environment where they can really enjoy what they’re playing."

So what new, real, and believable world will Bethesda present next? "There are certain types of fantasy that appeal to me," said Howard, "but there are also period pieces, and if something was good in the modern day, I’d want to do that as well. Writing anything off at any point in time is silly."

Well, it's been narrowed down to "anything." Read all of Howard's comments at RPS.
RAGE

RAGE's Mod Tools Are Daunting, But Might Result In Awesome "New" GamesHaving been promised for an age, id Software finally made good last week on a pledge to release a modding tool kit for its ambitious, if slightly wonky 2011 shooter RAGE.


And what a set of tools it is.


If you were hoping for a friendly system full of handy tips and giant buttons, sorry. These are basically the same tools id used to build the game themselves, and carry warnings like the fact this stuff is "not be interpreted as consumer-ready", and that it's "only for the technically sophisticated and adventurous!"


Only serious modders need apply, but then, the payoffs might be worth the toil; RAGE had a ton of potential, especially in terms of its game world, that was capped only by some repetitive action and a pretty terrible ending.


In the hands of someone other than id, with the power of serious tools, who knows...we might get a game built using RAGE's bones, but better. Or not. But hey, it's a nice day outside, given the talents of modders I'm going to be optimistic!


The tools—which are 35GB in size—are available on Steam, with an intro guide below.


RAGE Tool Kit Available Today on Steam [Bethesda]


RAGE
rage tool kit


In the grand tradition of releasing a new thing for a game just as we're beginning to forget all about it, iD software have bolted the official toolkit for Rage onto Steam. You can finally build your own environments, guns, mutants, cars or whatever else. Perhaps you could swap John Goodman's character Dan Hagar for one that looks more like John Goodman, or create a mod that changes the colour palette from 'very brown' to 'less very brown' - whatever your heart desires. However, there are a couple of things to bear in mind with the download, not least the fact that it's a whopping 35+ GB in size.

There's a welcome document accompanying the toolkit, which makes clear that the kit is "provided on an 'as is' basis only for the technically sophisticated and adventurous." iD's John Carmack tweets that "The toolkit release is not something that we consider consumer friendly, but it does let you get a look inside the construction process."

To download the toolkit, head to Tools section on Steam (it's helpfully listed as Rage Tool Kit).

Thanks, Eurogamer.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)

Dragonborn, the second major Skyrim expansion (third, if you count Hearthfire) arrived on PC this week, after an unfortunate two-month wait from the Xbox version. I’ve unearthed my old character and dragged him off to the island of Solsteheim for adventures anew. Was it worth it? Hearken to me now, traveller.> (more…)

Steam Community Items - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Jim Rossignol)

Bethblog has word that the Rage tookit has arrived on Steam, along with some serious documentation to speed would-be modders on their way. Carmack has some advice, too, tweeting: “Doing significant work will require patience, because internally we use a 300 core renderfarm for megatexture creation.”

It’d be interesting to see what people could mod in using existing assets, though. If the toolkit gave enough access to get at the inventory and so on then I think there might be a true open world sandbox/economy game in there waiting to get out. But maybe not. Either way, significant work will require patience. And an enthusiasm for Rage.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim



The Witcher 3! Dragonborn! A Half-Life movie? This and other topics get tackled this week by Evan, Tyler, and T.J., who returns from Iceland to tell us about the games he saw at Paradox Interactive's annual event. We also touch on the merits of Linux gaming and SSDs.

Listen to PC Gamer Podcast 343: Bear-On-Werebear Violence

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext. 724 or email the MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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Follow us on Twitter:
@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Dragonborn DLC


On the scaled wings of yesterday's Dragonborn DLC release for Skyrim, the free HD Texture Pack from Bethesda has been updated with meatier visuals for all three DLC packs, including Hearthfire and Dawnguard.

Bethesda also reminds intrepid Thu'umers of the minimum specs needed to handle the boost: 4GB RAM, a DirectX 9.0c compatible Nvidia or ATI card with at least 1GB RAM, Windows Visa/7, and at least 4.7GB for the update. You can pile on a bevy of graphics mods to turn Skyrim into a truly spectacular experience, but to get started, Bethesda's offering is a comparably hardware-friendly way to make it shine.

Grab the HD Texture Pack off Steam.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)

Is that Surprised Cthulu?

I’ve totally missed the critical reception to Skyrim add-on Dragonborn, but operating on the no news is good news principle I’ll presume that people aren’t generally wanting to kill it with fire. Or maybe they’re still locked in shocked, appalled silence. I’ll find out very soon, as the PC version of the Morrowind-set, dragon power-boosting DLC is now available. (more…)

RAGE
RAGE_5


While you could sum up Valve's plans for Linux compatibility as "full Steam ahead," it seems that not everyone is as sold on the OS's role in mainstream gaming. Yesterday, John Carmack questioned the wisdom of development studios working to make their games run natively in Linux. He tweeted, "Improving Wine for Linux gaming seems like a better plan than lobbying individual game developers for native ports. Why the hate?"

Carmack later expanded on his comments in a thread on Reddit's r/Linux, saying, "I don’t think that a good business case can be made for officially supporting Linux for mainstream games today."

"I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities (Burn the heretic!); I use Linux for the flight computers at Armadillo Aerospace, but not for any regular desktop work. I was happy to hear that Rage ran in Wine, but no special effort was made to support it.

Carmack notes that Zenimax, Id's owner, doesn't publish Mac titles - instead partnering with Aspyr. "I would be stunned if they showed an interest in officially publishing and supporting a Linux title. A port could be up and running in a week or two, but there is so much work to do beyond that for official support."

And Carmack is no stranger to the Linux market. "The conventional wisdom is that native Linux games are not a good market. Id Software tested the conventional wisdom twice, with Quake Arena and Quake Live. The conventional wisdom proved correct. Arguments can be made that neither one was an optimal test case, but they were honest tries."

He argues that, despite the technical stigma, emulation is a more viable move. "Translating from D3D to OpenGL would involve more inefficiencies, but figuring out exactly what the difficulties are and making some form of “D3D interop” extension for OpenGL to smooth it out is a lot easier than making dozens of completely refactored, high performance native ports."

"Ideally, following a set of best practice guidelines could allow developers to get Linux versions with little more effort than supporting, say, Windows XP," Carmack finishes. "Properly evangelized, with Steam as a monetized distribution platform, this is a plausible path forward."
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