Forums | MacLife

Oddly, the just-eaten EBGames.com site has Psychonauts on the front page for $29.99.

Must be a post-acquisition hiccup.

It's news.htm, icknuts.

As guessed at the International House of Mojo, the announcement is the Double Fine company store. Ehh. Cool.

So I hear that the game just SHIPPED today, for sale tomorrow. Bah. Sumers suggests going to Wal-Mart tonight at midnight. I would, but I don't want to cede my money to them.

Did you get the $10 mail-in gift voucher?

{Ooh- Psychonauts BradyGames Strategy Guide (HB) $14.99!}

IcarusFountain wrote:

Yeah, yeah, I added an l.  Big whoop.

Considering you were citing the file's absence as proof of an update, it is a big whoop, perhaps the biggest ever! Big enough to swallow you!

I'll be happy with my non-autographed copy. That's tight, but I'm not really all hoopy about signatures and such. Besides, I could just get Tim to autograph it tomorrow night when we're done loving each other up.

Bat, I am curious about the pricing difference. PC games still debut at around $50 usually, right? Odd that they'd debut it at value pricing. Hrm. Does kinda suck for me, but I just consider it a contribution to the Keep Tim In Gaming Business fund.

I GOT A COPY!!!!  I was going to same day FedEx it to reef but I dropped it and it fell down a sewer grate and the alligators got it.

Just point me to that sewer, warpussy. I'm going in.

So I dropped by Wal-Mart about 2am this morning per sumer's idea and because I couldn't sleep. No cigar. Baaah.

Bat wrote:

Considering Grim Fandango's sales, it's lucky it's out at all.

One of the great travesties of our times.

There is no Mac version I've heard of...

Of Psychonauts or Grim Fandango? No hope for a Mac version of the former I don't think, but the latter will gain Mac compatability once the ScummVM guys finish Residual (their port of the GrimE engine).

(Maybe if Manny had been pixel-shaded and bump-mapped... )

Naaah. Better graphics couldn't save crap marketing and an apathetic public. Anyway, Tim Schafer games have always been about using graphics to build atmosphere rather than just impress as eye candy. Thus you won't get much trickery, but you'll definitely feel immersed.

There is a Rue Paul game out?

My cable was out for the most of the afternoon (the reason you felt stood up, love), so one of the things I did to kill time was finally get around to playing the Psychonauts demo.  I think the controls will work better in console form, so it's going to get added to my GameFly list since there's a PS2 version.  It felt like a good game, though the end of the demo had a "when will this end?" feel, despite the incredibly abilities Raz has for moving around.

Um, nevermind.  The PS2 version has a release date of 6/30/05.  WTF!?

YOU ARE ALL UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS.

You really want me to bring out my alternick?!!

sosumi wrote:

My cable was out for the most of the afternoon (the reason you felt stood up, love), so one of the things I did to kill time was finally get around to playing the Psychonauts demo.  I think the controls will work better in console form, so it's going to get added to my GameFly list since there's a PS2 version.  It felt like a good game, though the end of the demo had a "when will this end?" feel, despite the incredibly abilities Raz has for moving around.

Um, nevermind.  The PS2 version has a release date of 6/30/05.  WTF!?

I expect it's the graphics.

"Here is where the PS2 and Xbox differ tremendously in approaches to graphics processor design.  Again we'll start out with the PS2 first.  The task of rendering is left to the Graphics Synthesizer (GS) which is a massively parallel graphics core running at 150MHz.  The low clock speed of the core is theoretically made up for by the fact that it has 16 pixel pipelines giving a theoretical pixel fill rate of 2.4 gigapixels/s and a peak theoretical texel fill rate of 1.2 gigatexels/s for single textured games.  We all know how reliable theoretical fill rates are so we'll leave the specs at that, but it is pertinent to point out that these fill rates are entirely dependent on 100% utilization of the 16 pixel pipelines of the GS.  As we know from our experience with execution units in CPUs, that sort of assumption should never be made.
...
This is generally why most PS2 games are limited to relatively low resolution textures compared to what we're used to seeing on PCs.  While the embedded DRAM of the GS core definitely helps out, there is still room for improvement.
...
What is quite important is that developers are currently taking advantage of the NV2A's pixel and vertex shaders which bodes very well for the PC gaming market since it will hopefully show PC developers how easy these programs are to implement and how stunning the after effects can be. 

The AA support provided for by the GPU also makes a lot of sense however developers do need to enable it in order for gamers to realize its benefits.  Another limitation is that most developers are used to having the host CPU handle the T&L calculations while with the Xbox they must get used to using the GPU and its programmable T&L pipeline for all of that."

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdo … 1&p=14

Xbox and PS2 are very different architecturally; it must be a pain trying to get pixel shader effects thru Sony's pipeline. It's not a dev-friendly arch.

Icks,

So it's 4/21 and I still don't have it.

That's okay, Kitty. One of these days Matt Soell will come clean about Stubbs being an elaborate practical joke on you, and I'm sure that we'll be even.

In any case, I'm in a very forgiving mood right now as I AM THE PROUD OWNER OF PSYCHONAUTS!!! WOOOOOOOOOT!!

The local small shop didn't have any (they mostly deal with used stuff), but GameStop had 'em, and even threw in the tie-dyed tee that came with pre-orders! Now I can play in styyyyle.

Unfortunately, the day's schedule reads something like this: 1) Finish a few small websites, 2) Prepare a Latin translation for my "student teacher" role tomorrow, 3) Start work on the 14-16 pages of essays due next week, 4) Eat. But I figure Psychonauts might squeeze between 2 and 3, or could replace 4 altogether.