id Software’s yearly event has finally been announced. Quakecon is one of the world’s largest LAN parties often called the “woodstock of gaming.” Fan’s of id Software and Bethesda are the focus here, although there are all types of games being played in the BYOC room. That’s Bring Your Own Computer. Besides that, id Software usually shows off something new and juicy for fans including panels with industry giants including Valve and more. Last year’s was great, showing off the Oculus Rift, where we were on the scene and got to try it out (amazing by the way). John Carmack gave an almost 3 hour keynote, and he, along with Palmer Lucky and Michael Abrash, discussed virtual reality. This year, there is a possibility we may finally see some Doom 4 footage. Here’s hoping for Quakecon: Doomcon Edition.
When we were at Quakecon, we were lucky enough to get an interview with Palmer Luckey, creator of the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Head Mounted Display. In the interview he discusses why the Rift is special and how you can support this bleeding edge technology.
You can listen to it all the way at the bottom of this post.
While you listen to it, you can support the Rift Kickstarter during its last few hours. The Kickstarter ends on September 1st. If you’re a game developer, by all means check out the Rift SDK. If you’re an eager gamer, you might also like to get the dev kit, but be aware it won’t be the final version. Finally, if you’d like to show your support of the Rift, support Oculus by getting an accessory such as a shirt.
Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus said in an interview today with The Examiner that “Once you look through the lenses, you really feel as if you’re inside of another world. It’s like the dream we all have had of being inside of a video game world.”
He went on to say, “There’s some balance we need to have, which is, let’s get to the finish line smoothly. Let’s make sure those few select games have experiences that are the best they can be. When 2013 rolls around and thousands of developers have this in their hands, then you will start to see production increase.”
“There are about six to seven thousand developers who want to get their hands on this device. That’s a lot of dev kits. We really need the community to help solve the issues that still remain though. There are a lot of expectations coming with all of the demand. We are definitely feeling the pressure. We’ll go dark between the end of Kickstarter and when it ships in December.” Iribe said.
Iribe continued, “There are obvious dates we’re looking [to ship on a massive scale], but there’s nothing to confirm yet because we want to make sure its great for consumers.”
So there you have it. While there is no official release date for the Oculus Rift, it looks they’re planning on releasing it sometime in December 2012. So far, the Rift has official support from 2 big games, Doom 3: BFG Edition by id Software and HAWKEN by Adhesive Games. It’s compatible with various game engines including Unity 3D, Unreal Engine, id Tech 5 and possibly more (and even more depending how good of a programmer you are!)
Palmer Luckey’sOculus Rift now has a second game officially supporting the revolutionary hardware. Hawken, a mecha FPS by game development studio Adhesive Games has announced along with its publisher Meteor Entertainment, that it will ship with Oculus Rift support. This is the second game to support the Rift following id Software’sDoom 3: BFG Edition.
Some of the special features the Hawken team annouced in their press release about the Rift include…
Everyone with a Rift will be able to pilot their Hawken mech in completely immersive, stereo 3D virtual reality.
Updates to gameplay, input, the cockpit, and the heads-up-display.
Exclusive Oculus VR cockpit that let’s the player look around inside the mech, independant of the mech’s direction, in full stereoscopic 3D.
Hawken is free-to-play, which means that anyone with a Rift can try Hawken in virtual reality on 12.12.12.
This is really an awesome title to have support the Rift. Being able to pilot a mecha is literally one of the quintessential things seen in movies and games. Now we just need to get Bandai to use for a Gundam game…
Hawken will be free to play and with its release date scheduled for December 12, 2012 (12/12/12/) for Windows PCs.
At Quakecon we caught up with Max Hoberman, the President and Creative Director of Austin based game studio Certain Affinity.
Max Hoberman has been in the game industry for years, with his humble beginnings as a Mac gamer playing Bungie’s Marathon. He eventually went on to work with Bungie for about 10 years on various games including Halo and Oni. After that he made his own company called Certain Affinity which went on to work on Halo 2‘s multiplayer mode which many say set the precedence for console FPS’s. His studio has also done many maps and mods for the Call of Duty series including 2010′s hit game, Black Ops. His company is currently hard at work on Halo 4‘s multiplayer system with 343 Industries. Part of their work on Halo 4 also includes co-creating the Forge map making tools which will allow gamers to create their own levels on the Xbox 360.
At Quakecon 2012 he was part of a panel with other industry veterans including Chet Faliszek (Valve Software) & Marty Stratton (id Software). You can watch the panel below…
After the panel, we were lucky enough to catch up with Max and interview him. We discuss his career including critical works and the things that inspire him to make amazing online multiplayer games.
We thank Max Hoberman and Certain Affinity for the interview.
