[adventurer78]

It's obvious why they haven't begun to release demos, videos or images about the game : another delay is coming. Has anyone checked the released date for Germany on this site (November 5th)? I though the release date of October 10th was the definitive one but seems pretty clear that's not gonna happen.

[flamedrake]

The November 5th date is for the German release of Black Mirror III. All of the official sites for GM and stores selling the game have been saying October 29th for a while now, and all of the press releases since E3 have said "late October." I don't know where you got October 10th from.

Also there have been screenshots and the new trailer, and there's a playable demo on the Gamescom floor. It might slip further but there's really no reason to think this game isn't almost done.

[PolloDiablo]

Okay - I've been able to play a few sessions at Gamescom and I'm not going to cancel my preorder. Some of the animations do look awful e.g. picking up a rabbit. With all the noise on the expo it wasn't really possible to judge the sound/voice acting (it was an English spoken version with German subtitles, probably not final anyway). But I did like the atmosphere and the different bits of gameplay we were shown behind closed doors. There is lots of stuff to look at and libraries of books to read (not obligatory to understand story) and I am confident I will enjoy this game.
The game will supposedly last about 25 hours (8 chapters). The only difference between the PC and Xbox versions will be the Achievements in the latter.

[UPtimist]

It was PC (that you played it on), I presume?

[PolloDiablo]

Both were playable and both were shown behind closed doors. Differences in graphics or animations did not stand out to me and the presenter switched smoothly between the two.

[Lee in Limbo]

TL;DR version:
- Bit artsy, but a little repetitive with the smoke and text.
- Didn't care for the concept art shots. Hope it's not in the game.
- If it is, hope it's implemented better.
- The computer animation looks correct. It just looks choppy because the frame rate of the renders we're seeing are dialed down to save resources. I'm hoping the animation in the game will use a more natural frame rate.

Original Version:
The trailer wasn't great, but what I saw of actual game play looked good. They just had a great deal of concept art and comic book-style stuff padding it out, which I don't really understand. If there's going to be a fair bit of that sort of illustrative styling in the game proper, it's going to be a pretty weird game. that might actually be cool, but so far, I would have to say that I'm not loving those bits. And if the comic book/concept art stuff really doesn't feature in the game proper, I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to pad out the trailer like that.

And as for the animation, the walk cycles were so brief, it's hard to genuinely say if they look wrong, but to my mind, what I saw didn't look bad. I just think the animation sequences were shot a little low-fi for the trailer, which makes them look choppier than they probably are.

It does make me worry that the system requirements for the game are going to be a bit prohibitive, but I didn't see anything that looked grossly out of whack. I used to be a bit of an animation buff, while I was trying to get into college to study animation, and I saw a lot of animation cycles, good and bad, back in the day. It just looked like the footage wasn't 'shot in ones', which is a classical animation term for one frame of incremental action per segment of cycle*, the smoothest frame rate you could get with hand drawings without messing up the speed of the film (24 frames per second). This is complete conjecture, but I suspect there's probably going to be a refresh rate in the video options, for those whose systems can't run super smooth animations without going nighty-night.


* For example, Flintstones and other Hanna-Barbera animations were shot in twos and threes, where they doubled and tripled up segments of movement, reducing the number of frames total that had to be hand drawn. They still had 24 frames, but instead of twenty-four segments of movement per second, you had twelve or even eight unique drawings, which were padded out with multiples to make up the proper frame rate. That's why those old cartoons looked so choppy and cartoonish, which is sort of their charm, but doesn't work with more naturalistic animation styles.

You see a bit of that in modern computer animated games, especially in AGs, which is what most folks are really griping about when they say the animation looks off. The frame rate is different (it's a little faster than it used to be, which requires slightly more frames), but it's the same basic principle. Budgetary concerns force animation cycles in most AGs to be rendered with fewer 'inbetween' images, making the animations look like those old zoetrope animations that spun in a slotted cylinder that looked a bit like a cake tin or a car filter pan. Once it got up to speed, everything looked normal, but the flickering between frames showed whenever the cylinder slowed down or wavered.

You can actually see this for yourself by playing with some freebie film editing software, or even Flash if you can afford it. You have to add a lot of inbetween segments of action to make the animation look natural, but it boosts the frame rate (and thus the file size) through the roof, which in turn causes bandwidth issues for internet productions, or storage and rendering problems for games you buy on disc.

Here's an example of an animation with extremely few frames: You get the idea of what's being portrayed, but there are really only two drawings involved, which are cycled at just the right speed to make it look like the action is fluid. It's cheap and dirty, but it gets the job done. Try doing that with more natural forms with lots of detail and it just looks cheesy.

Aesthetically, you can get away with it to some extent if you use stylized art (think The Last Express), but if you try doing it with art closer to real life, it looks inhuman, which throws everyone off, because we all see people walking and talking every day, and know in the back of our heads what it's supposed to look like.

Okay, art lecture over. Thanks for reading.

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by PolloDiablo

Both were playable and both were shown behind closed doors. Differences in graphics or animations did not stand out to me and the presenter switched smoothly between the two.

So can you explain anything about the XBox control scheme (it's still been quite vague so far)? Was it some kind of direct control thing, did it have hotspots popping out when the character moved around, how did all the different actions (look, use) work etc.? If you got such a good view, that is

[Neptin]

I found this Collector's Edition at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.de/Gray-Matter-Col...2659610&sr=8-8

Special features: soundtrack, poker deck, postcards, poster.

[PolloDiablo]

Yeah the Xbox control scheme does require some getting used to, but I suppose the manual will explain it all - had to figure it out by trial and error on the expo but it was not too hard.
You walk around with the stick. Sam moves her head and looks at one of the hotspots which is then labelled and highlighted. Pressing A will give you a close up or description or let's you pick it up, whatever is proper for that particular object. A combination of B and X will let you hold one of the things from your inventory in your hand in order to combine it with something else. Pressing the Back button will reveal all the hotspots. You can also use a circular (radar/compass) pointer to cycle through the hotspots. It's not as intuitive as the PC control scheme, but it makes sense.

[Terabin]

I wonder when the game's system requirements will come out. Do those tend to come out before the game itself comes out?

Lee, you've got me worried that I'm going to have to upgrade my computer to play the game!

[kuze]

Originally Posted by Terabin

I wonder when the game's system requirements will come out. Do those tend to come out before the game itself comes out?

Lee, you've got me worried that I'm going to have to upgrade my computer to play the game!

If any computer build after 2005 can't handle a few polygons and a big backdrop image, the engine must seriously suck. I wouldn't worry about that.

[Terabin]

Well, my computer IS old. DualCore 2.4 GHZ, 2 GB RAM, and a four year old graphics card, the ATI Radeon X 1950.

[Manly One]

Originally Posted by Terabin

I wonder when the game's system requirements will come out. Do those tend to come out before the game itself comes out?

I was one of the beta testers, and can confirm that the system requirements really aren't steep at all. I think the minimum was 512 megs of RAM with a 1.5 ghrz processor and a 64MB graphics card running either Windows XP or Vista 32/64 bit (Windows 7 compatibility was a little problematic for a few people, at the time, but by now the developers would've ironed-out those issues.) Yes, any computer circa 2005 should run it fine.

Mine is only a measly 3.1 dual core Celeron processor with 2 gigs of RAM and a 512mb Nvidia 8500 video card. I could activate the highest graphics settings and special effects and the game ran very well (only slight frame rate drops in heavy traffic areas.) There were people in our group with weaker systems than mine, and they could still run the game fine at the highest settings.

You shouldn't have difficulty in my opinion, but if you want to be sure, I doubt that it will be too long until DTP officially announce the minimum/required system settings. Perhaps things have been upgraded since the beta version, it may need a computer with more grunt. I'd be curious to see the final requirements nonetheless.

BTW, with talk about lengthy load times a while back - they never were a problem for my computer. The longest session would probably average 5-8 seconds. Bare in mind, the longest loads were always the first couple. Consecutive loads being much faster, as the majority of assets would be stored in RAM. The fastest load would average 2-3 seconds, particularly a room\location traversed previously. Therefore every room is a separate load. Take this from a guy with a very average computer setup (see above), compared to probably most of you who should far exceed those specifications.

[Terabin]

Hey Manly One, very encouraging news. Thank you for your response. Of course I'll also be curious to see whether the requirements are steeper when they are released officially.

[inm8#2]

My laptop failed earlier this year, so I'm on my 8 year old desktop. Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 64 MB GeForce 4 GPU. I'm meaning to get a new laptop with a nice GPU (ATI 5650 or nVidia GT 335m), so it seems like such a system should handle Gray Matter no problem (I'd love to play this game with all high settings).

[flamedrake]

A Radeon 5650 (or equivalent) should be able to play any game you throw at it at 720p with absolutely no problems. If it's not good enough for Gray Matter then we're all in trouble.

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by PolloDiablo

Yeah the Xbox control scheme does require some getting used to, but I suppose the manual will explain it all - had to figure it out by trial and error on the expo but it was not too hard.
You walk around with the stick. Sam moves her head and looks at one of the hotspots which is then labelled and highlighted. Pressing A will give you a close up or description or let's you pick it up, whatever is proper for that particular object. A combination of B and X will let you hold one of the things from your inventory in your hand in order to combine it with something else. Pressing the Back button will reveal all the hotspots. You can also use a circular (radar/compass) pointer to cycle through the hotspots. It's not as intuitive as the PC control scheme, but it makes sense.

Oh sloblock... And I suppose they aren't going to do a late p&c-addition either... It's not like I'm saying I won't get used to it or even find it good, I just think it's silly if there isn't even the option to go point & click.

Maybe I should just get it for both systems...

Originally Posted by Neptin

I found this Collector's Edition at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.de/Gray-Matter-Col...2659610&sr=8-8

Special features: soundtrack, poker deck, postcards, poster.

Interesting. Well, mainly the soundtrack part (I have to say, I really didn't expect this to have a special edition). The poker deck is fun too, but I won't have any use for it, not that I'd dare actually take it into use anyways

[Neptin]

Originally Posted by Neptin

I found this Collector's Edition at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.de/Gray-Matter-Col...2659610&sr=8-8

Special features: soundtrack, poker deck, postcards, poster.

[Monolith]

I'm liking the collectors edition! I could put those cards to use. haha KINGS CUP FTW!

[Roper Klacks]

Great looking CE! I think i'll buy it, just to have it in my shelf. I'm planning to buy 2 copies, one digital (only if it gets on Steam though) to actually play it, and a physical one for collection purposes, and i think this CE might be it.

Will it be exclusive for Germany?