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Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

 
Sumo Digital acquires TheChineseRoomAug 14, 2018 - PC GamerSumo Digital has acquired Brighton-based developer TheChineseRoom, creator of Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Sumo, currently working on Crackdown 3, made the announcement earlier today. This was followed by a blog post from TheChineseRoom’s co-founder, Dan Pinchbeck, in which he explained the move. “Following the studio’s closure in summer 2017, we were faced with a decision,” Pinchbeck wrote. “We knew we didn’t want to just start over, trying to recapture a time in our history where a we could push out arthouse titles and survive the process. It was an amazing few years, but it came at a cost, one that I knew I wasn’t about to take on again. And it was time for a change—to make different games, explore new ideas and, if TCR was going to reboot, to evolve into something that opened up new opportunities.” TheChineseRoom laid off its entire staff in July last year, moving out of its Brighton office and entering a state of hibernation, while Pinchbeck worked to prevent it shuttering completely. Two years earlier, the studio’s other founder Jessica Curry left her job co-running TheChinessRoom to purse her career as a composer, although she still retained some presence, providing soundtracks for the studio’s games. Now that the future is more secure, Pinchbeck went on to explain his plans for future games, stating that a bunch of existing concepts which never went into production “are still very much on the table.” “Before leaving us to pursue his own games, the uber-talented Andrew Crawshaw and I worked up a new prototype of The 13th Interior, with the fantastic support of the UK Games Fund,” Pinchbeck wrote. “The game still needs a little bit of work to nail down some core mechanics, but then it’s finding the right opportunity to roll out the rest of development. It’s very much still in the plan to finish it up at some point. There were also two other concepts we were playing around with—very different types of games for us—and they will remain gently percolating in the background.” In addition, Pinchbeck plans to revisit their Google Daydream project So Let Us Melt. “Injecting more mechanics, building on the gorgeous art and audio the old team created and getting it out to a wider audience," which suggests the studio will be bringing the title to new platforms. Finally, Pinchbeck is working with Sumo Digital on a new title that will be “something bigger” than those aforementioned games. “It’s exciting times. A fresh start,” Pinchbeck concluded. “If this was a game script, a gravelly-voiced man would probably say something about a ‘new dawn’.” Sumo buys Everybody's Gone to the Rapture studio The Chinese RoomAug 14, 2018 - EurogamerSumo has bought The Chinese Room. The Crackdown 3 developer said it had acquired The Chinese Room, the studio behind Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther, from founders Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry. Brighton-based Pinchbeck is on board as creative director of The Chinese Room, while Curry will continue her career independently as a composer, Sumo said. Pinchbeck added he's now working on new concepts. In a blog post, he said The Chinese Room is talking to potential partners about a new game, "something bigger"... "something that takes a more traditional game genre - no, you don't get to know what just yet - and lets us spin our worlds and stories on top of that. It's going to be very, very exciting." Read more… The power of spring in Horizon Zero Dawn, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and The Last of UsMar 15, 2018 - EurogamerAfter the darkness and dormancy of winter life restarts, almost as if the punishing frosts, snows and winds had never happened. The season of spring starts to take hold, colours reappear, foliage regrows and landscapes transform to offer different looks, feels and opportunities for interaction. This can be truly impactful when it manifests in video games. Where winter revealed the bones of landscapes and their design, spring brings a softer touch, its re-birth and revitalisation draping life and colour back over lands. Spring can empower a landscape to represent and symbolise in its own way. By adding these into games' story arcs and narratives, a whole new side of the landscape can be seen and experienced - one where the land tells stories of recovery, shows an ability to cleanse and has an ability to enhance peace and quiet, all while under the drape of a colourful, full of life landscape, giving the land an entirely new look and atmosphere. Within Horizon: Zero Dawn's expansive, detailed and believable landscapes are fine spring elements and characteristics. Used through both massive and minute brush strokes, plants show spring's power on the land and establish an environmental connection between Aloy and the narrative. As a result, Horizon is a great example of how spring can shape and transform an environment and its landscapes, elevating it to something beyond a plant-filled, softer, greener playground. Small plants lead the way across Horizon's landscapes. The vibrancy and regrowth of grasses plants show the revitalisation of the land is in full swing. Swathes of meadow grass ripple across the landscape, but even grassy plants in forests and on hillsides dominate their locales. The blocks of red grasses, interacted with heavily throughout by Aloy, show the importance that one particular plant group - one that is always early to make a reappearance in spring - has in demonstrating spring's impact. The coverage of grasses is widespread and immediately shows spring's softening of the land - particularly in juxtaposition to the nearby, still-snowy areas. Read more… Everybody's Gone To The Rapture composer to host videogame music radio showJan 25, 2017 - PC GamerClassic FM is a long-serving radio station that's operated in the UK since 1992. As its name undoubtedly suggests, it tends towards classic music and, in-line with its 25th anniversary celebrations, is set to launch a dedicated videogame music show this year.  Scheduled to run for six weeks from April 22 onwards, the show will command the broadcaster's 9pm-10pm Saturday evening slot and will be hosted by The Chinese Room co-founder Jessica Curry—the BAFTA-winning composer responsible for Everybody's Gone to the Rapture's wonderful soundtrack.   "Fourteen years ago, Classic FM became the first station to broadcast a weekly national radio programme dedicated to film music," says a note on the Classic FM website. "Now, we’re launching the UK’s first weekly radio series dedicated to symphonic video game music." Popular videogame series such as Zelda, The Elder Scrolls and Final Fantasy have taken their orchestral shows on the road in the past, however getting game OSTs into the homes, cars and garden sheds of listeners who may be less inclined to seek out game music stands to showcase its worth (and maybe dispel a stereotype or two along the way) to a wider audience.   "The six-week series will start on 22nd April and will run every Saturday from 9pm to 10pm," adds the Classic FM site's blurb. Until then, stick on this and browse Mary K's gorgeous Everybody's Gone to the Rapture screenshot gallery.  Patch notes v. 1.01Jun 23, 2016 - Community AnnouncementsGeneral Performance Graphics settings have been tweaked to improve performance. We have also fixed a bug that would change some settings upon loading after the initial run. SLI performance We have identified an issue with NVIDIA SLI setups related to cloth meshes in the game, which were causing GPU stalls during geometry updates. This is now fixed. 21:9 Ultra-wide resolutions We have now added support for ultra-wide 21:9 monitors. Field of view We have added a command line variable which allows the default field of view to be changed. To do this, edit the following line in the 'system.cfg' file, located in the root of the install folder (by default: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Rapture\): Cl_fov=X (where ‘X' is a value between 25 and 80) Please note that the game was designed with a default FOV of 52, and changing this setting may cause some minor clipping issues within the environment. Main GPU vs. integrated GPU detection Some users have reported an issue with the game defaulting to their integrated GPU, rather than their main (more powerful) GPU. We have added a command line variable which provides an alternate detection method, which may help these users. To enable it, please edit the following line in the 'system.cfg' file located in the root of the install folder: r_overrideDXGIAdapter=X (off by default = '-1'; try setting value to '0', '1' or '2' to cycle through available GPUs) Crash on triggering scenes A small number of players have reported Microsoft Visual C++ related crashes upon tuning some of the manually-activated scenes. We have been unable to reproduce this issue internally, but have implemented a tentative fix by including additional dll’s in the game install. Windows System Timer In rare instances, the game may run slower if the Windows System Timer defaults to low resolution. To force the game to enable a high-resolution timer (and potentially improve performance), please edit the following line in the 'system.cfg' file (located in the root of the install folder): sys_highrestimer=1 Manual save points Separate to this patch, we have also implemented a new "beta" feature that allows players to manually save at every framed map in the game world. Please note that this is a big change to the game, which wasn't designed with this feature in mind. Whilst we have tested it internally without any observed issues, your mileage may vary. Since this is a "beta" feature, it is only available by opting in to the "beta" branch of the game on Steam. To access it: In your Steam Library, right-click on "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" Select "Properties" In the Properties window, click on the "BETAS" tab Under "Select the beta you would like to opt into:", select "map_save" Click on the "CLOSE" button at the bottom of the window. Steam will then download an update for the game. Please note that the manual save system will not be available: while a scene is playing, or for up to 20 seconds after the end of a scene if you are...Patch notes v. 1.01Jun 23, 2016 - Community AnnouncementsGeneral Performance Graphics settings have been tweaked to improve performance. We have also fixed a bug that would change some settings upon loading after the initial run. SLI performance We have identified an issue with NVIDIA SLI setups related to cloth meshes in the game, which were causing GPU stalls during geometry updates. This is now fixed. 21:9 Ultra-wide resolutions We have now added support for ultra-wide 21:9 monitors. Field of view We have added a command line variable which allows the default field of view to be changed. To do this, edit the following line in the 'system.cfg' file, located in the root of the install folder (by default: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Rapture\): Cl_fov=X (where ‘X' is a value between 25 and 80) Please note that the game was designed with a default FOV of 52, and changing this setting may cause some minor clipping issues within the environment. Main GPU vs. integrated GPU detection Some users have reported an issue with the game defaulting to their integrated GPU, rather than their main (more powerful) GPU. We have added a command line variable which provides an alternate detection method, which may help these users. To enable it, please edit the following line in the 'system.cfg' file located in the root of the install folder: r_overrideDXGIAdapter=X (off by default = '-1'; try setting value to '0', '1' or '2' to cycle through available GPUs) Crash on triggering scenes A small number of players have reported Microsoft Visual C++ related crashes upon tuning some of the manually-activated scenes. We have been unable to reproduce this issue internally, but have implemented a tentative fix by including additional dll’s in the game install. Windows System Timer In rare instances, the game may run slower if the Windows System Timer defaults to low resolution. To force the game to enable a high-resolution timer (and potentially improve performance), please edit the following line in the 'system.cfg' file (located in the root of the install folder): sys_highrestimer=1 Manual save points Separate to this patch, we have also implemented a new "beta" feature that allows players to manually save at every framed map in the game world. Please note that this is a big change to the game, which wasn't designed with this feature in mind. Whilst we have tested it internally without any observed issues, your mileage may vary. Since this is a "beta" feature, it is only available by opting in to the "beta" branch of the game on Steam. To access it: In your Steam Library, right-click on "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" Select "Properties" In the Properties window, click on the "BETAS" tab Under "Select the beta you would like to opt into:", select "map_save" Click on the "CLOSE" button at the bottom of the window. Steam will then download an update for the game. Please note that the manual save system will not be available: while a scene is playing, or for up to 20 seconds after the end of a scene if you are...Everybody's Gone to the Rapture 4K gallery: a walk in the woodsMay 12, 2016 - PC GamerNow Available on Steam - Everybody's Gone to the RaptureApr 14, 2016 - Product ReleaseEverybody's Gone to the Rapture is Now Available on Steam! Featuring a beautiful, detailed open-world and a haunting soundtrack, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is non-linear storytelling at its best. Everybody's Gone To The Rapture confirmed for PCApr 1, 2016 - PC Gamerhas at last been confirmed for PC after a long stint on PS4. We suspected it was on its way: the first hint was Rapture's appearance in a SteamDB listing—an entry that was updated as time wore on. All but confirming things, a recent AMD Radeon driver update listed Rapture support. Now we have the news direct from The Chinese Room: everybody's coming to the PC. What we don't have is a release date, but if AMD is tailoring drivers to Rapture, it can't be far off. To prove that this isn't April Fools' lies, we hit up creative director Dan Pinchbeck for the story behind the transition, accompanied by delightful 4K screens from the PC build. Dan Pinchbeck: We always wanted to get it onto PC as it's kind of our home turf and we've got a lot of really passionate, supportive fans on PC. We kept making sure all the way through development that Sony knew that we could do it, and that we really wanted to do it. Around the time Rapture came out on PS4 there must have been an internal discussion at their end, as suddenly it became a possibility, so we jumped at the chance. It's a bit like coming home—we're absolutely chuffed to bits it's going to get a PC release. PCG: As Sony Santa Monica is a credited developer on the game along with The Chinese Room, did that create any logistical headaches in bringing the game to PC? DP: The development of the game was all us, with the normal kind of publisher support, so there was no issue with any direct development input from Sony. That definitely kept things simpler. The whole initiative seems geared around third-party studios. DP: It's mainly performance—there's a framerate cap you can turn off, and with a good rig you can push up to 60fps, and obviously you've got scope for much higher resolutions. To be honest with you, we were pushing the PS4 about as far as it will go graphically, so it's not like there's massive space for improvement anyway. What we're really excited by is the addition of some accessibility features, like a crosshair option for people susceptible to motion sickness; visual assist for hearing-impaired players; and a 'one button tilt'/simplified event-triggering feature for users with mobility issues. It's also fully compatible with most controllers and keyboard/mouse, so the core thing for us is that it's as accessible to as many players as possible. PCG: The game's had an amazing response on PS4—to those coming to the game for the first time, how does it build upon the first-person games your studio has made before? DP: It's by far the most ambitious game of this type that's been made to date: it's properly non-linear, set in one giant open world so you get a much higher degree of agency in terms of storytelling than is normal for walking simulators. It's not just a corridor with story getting parachuted in to you as you move along, so we think it really pushes the genre forwards again. Explor...AMD outs Everybody's Gone to the Rapture on PC in Radeon driver updateMar 28, 2016 - PC Gamer, which came out last August, would be exclusive to the PlayStation 4. Say what you will about walking simulators, but I thought Dear Esther was a powerful piece of work, and I was looking forward to seeing what the studio could do with that success to build upon. But then a few months ago came hope: The game turned up in a SteamDB listing, and then a month after that, the entry was updated with banner art. Even with all those clues, the possibility that it was a hoax remained, but now AMD has erased any doubt. Not with a big reveal or a GDC presentation, but in the highlights notes for its latest Radeon driver. The new driver, it says, includes support for the Oculus Rift SDK 1.3, and updated Crossfire profiles for Hitman and—ta-dah!—Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. I've reached out to The Chinese Room for confirmation, but given the accumulating evidence, it seems almost certain that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is headed our way—and probably in the not-too-distant future. We'll keep you posted. Thanks, Reddit. New evidence for Everybody's Gone to the Rapture on SteamJan 8, 2016 - PC GamerIn December, database spelunking by SteamDB revealed an entry for PS4 exclusive Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, suggesting a port was in the works. SteamDB can't offer proof—any third-party developer might have called their app Rapture—but now the entry has been updated with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture banner art. Specific packages that include the Rapture app are being updated almost as I type: 'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture for Beta Testing', which is the typical pre-release label, and 'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture Developer Comp' have been edited today. If it's a hoax, it's thorough. Thanks, Destructoid.

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