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Amnesia is now open source
- doomlaser 6y agoPretty impressive. These games have sold millions of copies. Here's the GitHub the repo for Amnesia: The Dark Descent, https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent 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/ https://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/
- messe 6y agoMinor correction: I think you mean SDL, not STL.
- svrtknst 6y agoHeh, HPL... Fitting name
- westmeal 6y agoLovecraftian game engines, who wouldve guessed
- panzagl 6y agoAnyone who's looked at game engine code...
- eternalban 6y agoGargoyles of the cathedral of computing.
- 0-_-0 6y agoCyclopean code blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror...
- tripzilch 6y agoScreamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the devs that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive reference writhing in code that is not code, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting defines, corpses of dead memory with sores that were variables, charnel winds that brush the pallid pointers and makes them flicker null. Beyond the memory vague ghosts of monstrous constructs; half-seen columns of unsanctified statements that rest on nameless line numbers beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the repository the muffled, maddening beating of keys, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous beeps from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond the kernel; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless functions whose soul is Nyarlathotep. (from Nyarlathotep by HP Lovecraft)
- Shermanium 6y agonon-euclidian
- vanderZwan 6y ago> 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 6y agoWhy is that? Do the Swedes use Angelscript pretty exclusively?
- hnarn 6y agoI’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?
- vanderZwan 6y agoThe few devs I know who use it are all Swedish and working in game dev. IIRC it's used in at least one of the game dev university courses over there, that might be part of it
- vorpalhex 6y agoOne 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.
- sandGorgon 6y agoI 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.
- panpanna 6y agoI 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 6y agoI think you can play monkey island on Android with ScummVM. And all the games that work with ScummVM.
- sandGorgon 6y agoNot 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- carlio 6y agoI'm pretty sure that's Aspyr Media's (https://www.aspyr.com/about https://www.aspyr.com/about) business model. At least, I know they're the ones who ported Fireaxis' Civilization games to OSX and Linux.
- TonyTrapp 6y agoI 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.
- skee0083 6y agoI 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 6y agoI played through the first and part of the second. First one is quite scary and has an engaging story!
- bpizzi 6y agoSomewhere 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 6y agoThe sound design in SOMA was incredible. They sold that scene so well I felt exhausted after it.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoHorror games in VR are way too much for me. I can't handle games like HL:A and the walking dead one. Its just too stressful. A shitty horror game on PC becomes terrifying in VR.
- jjoonathan 6y agoSOMA 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.
- lilboiluvr69 6y agoFrictional 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_ 6y agoNot sure if it's my connection, but the website seems to not responds.
- hesdeadjim 6y agoI'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?
- Waterluvian 6y agoAre they the kind of assets you can stuff into a folder and if absent fallback to some dummy assets?
- hesdeadjim 6y agoNo unfortunately not. The most important ones are code assets. For instance I use heavily modified versions of: - PuppetMaster from http://root-motion.com/ http://root-motion.com/ - Chronos from https://ludiq.io/chronos 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.
- deelowe 6y agoI'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.
- mcpeepants 6y agoCould you theoretically supply patches to those libraries alongside your code? I'm curious what the legal implications of that are.
- klmadfejno 6y agoI 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.
- bitdizzy 6y agoI enjoyed how scared I felt in Amnesia until the first time I died and reloaded. After that the edge was gone.
- teawrecks 6y agoIMO "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 6y agoBy 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSapXD9vxYA
- shmerl 6y agoThat's the right way to preserve past games.
- __david__ 6y agoAbsolutely. This practically guarantees there will be a port of this to every OS available for years to come.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoFor 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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoSo 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 6y agoDoesn't look like any assets are included in the github repo.
- chme 6y agoThe 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 6y agoI think "build" in this context means "compile," as opposed to "run."
- chme 6y agoWell a 'game' can be played, otherwise its not a 'game' its just a 'engine'.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- __david__ 6y agoJust 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.
- tauchunfall 6y agoFrictional 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 6y agoMaybe 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 6y agoMaybe (given the timing), but Frictional is known for open-sourcing their older games. The Penumbra sources are on their Github, too!
- niek_pas 6y agoI’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.
- chme 6y ago> 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 6y agoRarely 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 6y agoThat 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_ 6y agoThe announcement on their website noted that you still have to own the game itself. Maybe that should be added to the readme.
- chme 6y agoThey 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 6y agoIt'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 6y ago
- asutekku 6y agoAwesome! I can also recommend their earlier Penumbra series. Bit dated by today’s standards, but still very enjoyable horror games.
- paines 6y agoSOMA 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....
- sharkweek 6y agoI 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 6y agoMy 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 6y agoAmnesia needs to come out with a mobile version so I can go camp out in the woods alone.
- ehnto 6y agoFrictional 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.
- dllthomas 6y agoI've found things published by Annapurna Interactive to be disproportionately interesting.
- ehnto 6y agoI just started playing Outer Wilds today which was released by them, and you are absolutely right
- dllthomas 6y agoYou'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.
- rspeele 6y agoCyan'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.
- ninefathom 6y agoThis 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...)
- lux 6y agoWith 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.
- Arelius 6y agoDoes 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?
- aspaceman 6y agoThis 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 6y agoTheir own website incidcates Linux support: FBX Python SDK Windows FBX Python SDK Windows Mac FBX Python SDK Mac Linux FBX Python SDK Linux
- cfcosta 6y agoHe meant Linux/ARM64.
- 6y ago
- shard 6y agoFrom reading the title, I thought this game was being open sourced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesia_(video_game) 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 6y agoOh I totally misremembered, I thought it was infocom!
- iainctduncan 6y agoBut I remember playing. It was hard.
- tehsauce 6y agoThe 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/blob/ea45a1e253aa1a50aa89654f56f352dbf13b0e0f/amnesia/src/game/LuxEnemy.h#L206 https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blo... Implementation: https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blob/master/amnesia/src/game/LuxEnemy_ManPig.cpp#L282 https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blo... There's also naming gems like "mindfuckevents" https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blob/master/amnesia/src/game/LuxEnemy_ManPig.cpp#L204 https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blo...
- zemnmez 6y agoisnt the man pig the enemy from the DLC ‘a machine for pigs’? or is that coincidence
- tleb_ 6y agoAnd the macros used for the implementation are available here: https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blob/ea45a1e253aa1a50aa89654f56f352dbf13b0e0f/amnesia/src/game/LuxEnemy.h#L313 https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent/blo... Scary stuff.
- MatthiasP 6y agoThe most scary part is the usage of if(0).
- ExcavateGrandMa 6y agoEPIC :Ð
- eska 6y agoThat's common for generated code, though. It makes it so that the other code can always use "else if".
- baby 6y agoIIRC the game was impressive in the way you could slightly open doors and drawers, never played it but I remember that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DonCopal 6y ago> We encourage everyone to contribute code to this project Why though?
- skldjf723as 6y agoAm I the only one who's kind of terrified at the inconsistent formatting throughout the codebase?
- Ace17 6y agoMaybe keeping the devs terrified helps making terrifying games? :D
- edoloughlin 6y agoBrowsing the source brought me back to the bad old days of using C macros to fake things like exception handling, messaging etc. #define kLuxOnMessage(x) return true;} else if(aEvent == eLuxEnemyStateEvent_Message && apMessage && apMessage->mType == x){ Debugging misplaced braces, parentheses (or anything) in stuff like this was not fun.
- doubleunplussed 6y agoNo Arch Linux package yet!