Quake 2 Remastered appears to be on the way
Back in 2021 during QuakeCon, a remastered version of the original Quake launched for all modern platforms. Now two years on, it looks like Bethesda is looking to do the same thing with Quake 2.
As reported by Gematsu, South Korea's Game Rating and Administration Committee has rated Quake 2 Remastered. This is the same ratings board that tipped us off to the existence of Quake Remastered a couple of months early in 2021.
If history is indeed repeating itself, then we'll see Quake 2 Remastered officially announced at QuakeCon in August. This year, QuakeCon will finally be an in-person event once again, after three straight years of digital events due to the effects of the pandemic.
Quake 2 Remastered will offer 4K resolution and widescreen support, improved lighting and anti-aliasing, as well as other graphical tweaks. Like the original, we expect that Quake 2 Remastered will release for all platforms.
KitGuru Says: Recently, Machine Games has been rumoured to be working on an unannounced project. Given the company's involvement with 2021's Quake Remastered, chances are the company is also involved here.
source lets face it, it'll probably end up on everything but PC first
PC Games General Thread
-
Dr. Zoidberg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 26206
- Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:33 am
Re: PC Games General Thread
Valve is reportedly banning games featuring AI generated content
Unless developers can prove they own the rights for the assets used to train the algorithms
Valve has reportedly started banning Steam games featuring AI-created art assets, unless developers can prove they have rights to the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create them.
In a Reddit post spotted by games industry veteran Simon Carless, a developer recounted submitting an early version of a game to Steam with a few "fairly obviously AI generated" assets which they said they planned to improve by hand in a later build.
In response, they were told the game could not be approved unless the developer could prove to Valve that they owned all the necessary rights.
"After reviewing, we have identified intellectual property in [Game Name Here] which appears to belongs to one or more third parties," Valve said. "In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties.
"As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game."
Valve said it was failing the build and would give the developer a single opportunity to remove all content they didn't own the rights to before resubmitting it.
The developer said they then improved the assets in question by hand "so there were no longer any obvious signs of AI", but after resubmitting the game it was again rejected.
"We cannot ship games for which the developer does not have all of the necessary rights," Valve said. "At this time, we are declining to distribute your game since it's unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data."
Like professionals in other creative fields, an increasing number of developers are using AI to help create their games. But the rapid uptake of generative AI tools trained on human-made art scraped from the web has raised copyright issues that didn't previously exist.
While it remains a grey area in much of the world, with governments, artists and companies deliberating how best to move forward, Japan recently declared that using datasets for training AI models doesn't violate copyright law. As reported by Decrypt, the decision means that model trainers can use publicly available data without having to secure permission from the data owners.
The Steam developer said they were confused by Valve's decision to reject their game, especially given the availability of some titles on the PC marketplace which clearly use AI generated assets.
One such title is This Girl Does Not Exist (pictured above), which was released last September by Cute Pen Games, which bills it as "the first game of its kind" due to its complete reliance on AI. "Everything you will see here, including art, story, characters, and even voice-over, was generated by machine learning AI," reads the product description.
"So it seems like Valve doesn't really have a standard approach to AI generated games yet, and I've seen several games up that even explicitly mention the use of AI," the developer said.
"But at the moment at least, they seem wary, and not willing to publish AI generated content, so I guess for any other devs on here, be wary of that."
VGC has contacted Valve to request more information about its policies on Steam games featuring AI generated content.
Source: VGC
Unless developers can prove they own the rights for the assets used to train the algorithms
Valve has reportedly started banning Steam games featuring AI-created art assets, unless developers can prove they have rights to the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create them.
In a Reddit post spotted by games industry veteran Simon Carless, a developer recounted submitting an early version of a game to Steam with a few "fairly obviously AI generated" assets which they said they planned to improve by hand in a later build.
In response, they were told the game could not be approved unless the developer could prove to Valve that they owned all the necessary rights.
"After reviewing, we have identified intellectual property in [Game Name Here] which appears to belongs to one or more third parties," Valve said. "In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties.
"As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game."
Valve said it was failing the build and would give the developer a single opportunity to remove all content they didn't own the rights to before resubmitting it.
The developer said they then improved the assets in question by hand "so there were no longer any obvious signs of AI", but after resubmitting the game it was again rejected.
"We cannot ship games for which the developer does not have all of the necessary rights," Valve said. "At this time, we are declining to distribute your game since it's unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data."
Like professionals in other creative fields, an increasing number of developers are using AI to help create their games. But the rapid uptake of generative AI tools trained on human-made art scraped from the web has raised copyright issues that didn't previously exist.
While it remains a grey area in much of the world, with governments, artists and companies deliberating how best to move forward, Japan recently declared that using datasets for training AI models doesn't violate copyright law. As reported by Decrypt, the decision means that model trainers can use publicly available data without having to secure permission from the data owners.
The Steam developer said they were confused by Valve's decision to reject their game, especially given the availability of some titles on the PC marketplace which clearly use AI generated assets.
One such title is This Girl Does Not Exist (pictured above), which was released last September by Cute Pen Games, which bills it as "the first game of its kind" due to its complete reliance on AI. "Everything you will see here, including art, story, characters, and even voice-over, was generated by machine learning AI," reads the product description.
"So it seems like Valve doesn't really have a standard approach to AI generated games yet, and I've seen several games up that even explicitly mention the use of AI," the developer said.
"But at the moment at least, they seem wary, and not willing to publish AI generated content, so I guess for any other devs on here, be wary of that."
VGC has contacted Valve to request more information about its policies on Steam games featuring AI generated content.
Source: VGC
-
Dr. Zoidberg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 26206
- Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:33 am
Re: PC Games General Thread
Team17 to Publish WWI Survival Horror Game 'Conscript', Aiming for 2024 Release
Things are still humming along for solo indie developer Catchweight Studio and their upcoming WWI survival horror game Conscript. Only now, Conscript has received a big boost thanks to Team17, who has announced a publishing deal for the title, along with a tentative 2024 release date.
"Catchweight Studio is really just me," says Jordan Mochi, founder of Catchweight Studio. "So, after six years of development, I'm glad to have backup from the experienced people at Team17. Conscript emerged from my own love of history and my love of survival horror. I've long dreamed of making games and of creating stories for people to play. Over the last six years, I've been happy to see a community of players grow around Conscript, and I'm looking forward to working with Team17 to launch the game for the community and players around the world in 2024."
Conscript will be at this year's Gamescom with a demo, though if you can't make it, you can always check out the demo on the game's Steam page.
Set in 1916 during The Great War, and tells the tale of a lone French soldier named André, who is looking for his brother Pierre – missing-in-action during The Battle of Verdun. In the midst of the trenches of the Great War. You must navigate the mazelike trenches, scavenge for supplies and solve complex puzzles – all the while fighting for your survival.
Source: Bloody Disgusting
Things are still humming along for solo indie developer Catchweight Studio and their upcoming WWI survival horror game Conscript. Only now, Conscript has received a big boost thanks to Team17, who has announced a publishing deal for the title, along with a tentative 2024 release date.
"Catchweight Studio is really just me," says Jordan Mochi, founder of Catchweight Studio. "So, after six years of development, I'm glad to have backup from the experienced people at Team17. Conscript emerged from my own love of history and my love of survival horror. I've long dreamed of making games and of creating stories for people to play. Over the last six years, I've been happy to see a community of players grow around Conscript, and I'm looking forward to working with Team17 to launch the game for the community and players around the world in 2024."
Conscript will be at this year's Gamescom with a demo, though if you can't make it, you can always check out the demo on the game's Steam page.
Set in 1916 during The Great War, and tells the tale of a lone French soldier named André, who is looking for his brother Pierre – missing-in-action during The Battle of Verdun. In the midst of the trenches of the Great War. You must navigate the mazelike trenches, scavenge for supplies and solve complex puzzles – all the while fighting for your survival.
Source: Bloody Disgusting
-
Hawq
- Site Admin
- Posts: 8275
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 7:45 am
Re: PC Games General Thread
for the one or people out there that may not have tried it yet I guess, the source version is also on sale at -90% 85p here & HL 2 at -90% 85p, though I expect everyone & their dog to have at ,east the basic versions by now. Why make the first one free you ask, well its Half-Life’s 25th Anniversary apparantly
-
Hawq
- Site Admin
- Posts: 8275
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 7:45 am
Re: PC Games General Thread
6 Best RTS Games Of The 1990s, Ranked always loved Dungeon Keeper, shame the series died then got turned into a pay to win pile of shite, at least War for the Overworld is a good spiritual successor
-
Hawq
- Site Admin
- Posts: 8275
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 7:45 am
Re: PC Games General Thread
some good looking mods in this
-
Dr. Zoidberg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 26206
- Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:33 am
Re: PC Games General Thread
More than 20 years after its debut, revered sci-fi adventure The Ur-Quan Masters is finally coming to Steam next week
The beloved open-source remake of Star Control 2 will debut on Steam as Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters.
The Ur-Quan Masters, an open-source remake of the revered sci-fi exploration-adventure Star Control 2, is coming to Steam next week, free for all and with a slightly different title—Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters.
The Ur-Quan Masters situation is a bit complicated, but here's the crash-course version. Star Control 2 was developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade in 1992. It was a successful and tremendously influential game, and some years later—after the release of a dismal Star Control 3 that was developed without their involvement—studio founders Paul Reiche and Fred Ford made the source code for the 3DO version of Star Control 2 open source, resulting in the highly-regarded 2002 fan game The Ur-Quan Masters.
Fast-forward a quarter century, and Ford and Reiche finally decided it was time to make their own direct sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters, called Ghosts of the Precursors. Just one problem: Stardock claimed it acquired ownership of the Star Control rights in Atari's 2013 bankruptcy fire sale, and it filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the project. The lawsuit was eventually settled amicably: Stardock maintained the rights to the Star Control name, while Reiche and Ford were free to make new Ur-Quan Masters games.
Which, very slowly and circuitously, brings us to now. Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters, "a classic space game that captures the charm of retro science-fiction, space combat, and high adventure," is headed to Steam on February 19. Pistol Shrimp Games, the studio founded to work on the Ur-Quan Masters games by Reiche, Ford, Ford's brother Ken, and Dan Gerstein, said on Twitter that it is "the base UQM build with a couple tweaks," described in a small FAQ on Steam as including "voiceover, 3DO music, and other minor changes."
The original Star Control and Star Control 2 remain available for purchase on Steam and GOG, as do Star Control 3 and Star Control: Origins, a newer addition to the series developed by Stardock. The Ur-Quan Masters, however, is not available on Steam: As befits an open source project, you can snag that one, for free, from Sourceforge. That's apparently part of why Pistol Shrimp is putting Free Stars: The Ur-Quan on Steam: "We also wanted to bring the game to Steam to reach the millions of players who use it as their game library of choice," the FAQ states.
"While UQM was—and always can be—available elsewhere, having a presence on Steam for UQM is helpful in a few ways," Gerstein wrote in an October 2023 blog post. "It's a place where we can showcase the work of our community in maintaining UQM and maybe even help it reach new audiences.
"It also lets us establish a presence for the whole series. If game number 1 is on Steam, when game number 2 is coming, we can tie them together nicely in a way both new and old players can understand. Book stores, as an analogy, usually put each book in a series sitting next to each other on a shelf, and we want to do the same."
Reiche and Ken Ford left Pistol Shrimp in September 2023 but work is still continuing on the direct sequel that was announced in 2017. As agreed in the Stardock settlement, it now has a new name that's more in keeping with the renamed series: Free Stars: Children of Infinity. There's no sign of a release target at this point but you can find out more about what's coming at freestarsgame.com.
Source: PC Gamer
The beloved open-source remake of Star Control 2 will debut on Steam as Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters.
The Ur-Quan Masters, an open-source remake of the revered sci-fi exploration-adventure Star Control 2, is coming to Steam next week, free for all and with a slightly different title—Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters.
The Ur-Quan Masters situation is a bit complicated, but here's the crash-course version. Star Control 2 was developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade in 1992. It was a successful and tremendously influential game, and some years later—after the release of a dismal Star Control 3 that was developed without their involvement—studio founders Paul Reiche and Fred Ford made the source code for the 3DO version of Star Control 2 open source, resulting in the highly-regarded 2002 fan game The Ur-Quan Masters.
Fast-forward a quarter century, and Ford and Reiche finally decided it was time to make their own direct sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters, called Ghosts of the Precursors. Just one problem: Stardock claimed it acquired ownership of the Star Control rights in Atari's 2013 bankruptcy fire sale, and it filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the project. The lawsuit was eventually settled amicably: Stardock maintained the rights to the Star Control name, while Reiche and Ford were free to make new Ur-Quan Masters games.
Which, very slowly and circuitously, brings us to now. Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters, "a classic space game that captures the charm of retro science-fiction, space combat, and high adventure," is headed to Steam on February 19. Pistol Shrimp Games, the studio founded to work on the Ur-Quan Masters games by Reiche, Ford, Ford's brother Ken, and Dan Gerstein, said on Twitter that it is "the base UQM build with a couple tweaks," described in a small FAQ on Steam as including "voiceover, 3DO music, and other minor changes."
The original Star Control and Star Control 2 remain available for purchase on Steam and GOG, as do Star Control 3 and Star Control: Origins, a newer addition to the series developed by Stardock. The Ur-Quan Masters, however, is not available on Steam: As befits an open source project, you can snag that one, for free, from Sourceforge. That's apparently part of why Pistol Shrimp is putting Free Stars: The Ur-Quan on Steam: "We also wanted to bring the game to Steam to reach the millions of players who use it as their game library of choice," the FAQ states.
"While UQM was—and always can be—available elsewhere, having a presence on Steam for UQM is helpful in a few ways," Gerstein wrote in an October 2023 blog post. "It's a place where we can showcase the work of our community in maintaining UQM and maybe even help it reach new audiences.
"It also lets us establish a presence for the whole series. If game number 1 is on Steam, when game number 2 is coming, we can tie them together nicely in a way both new and old players can understand. Book stores, as an analogy, usually put each book in a series sitting next to each other on a shelf, and we want to do the same."
Reiche and Ken Ford left Pistol Shrimp in September 2023 but work is still continuing on the direct sequel that was announced in 2017. As agreed in the Stardock settlement, it now has a new name that's more in keeping with the renamed series: Free Stars: Children of Infinity. There's no sign of a release target at this point but you can find out more about what's coming at freestarsgame.com.
Source: PC Gamer