With new consoles always comes new features and hardware to dissect. This marketing cycle has been unique in the sense that, despite launching in just a few months, there’s still a lot we don’t know about either Sony’s PS5 or Microsoft’s Xbox Series X. On Sony’s side, for instance, we’ve yet to actually see the system being demoed in the flesh, so to speak. But developers have, and one seems to be impressed with how social the PS5 can potentially be.

Talking with Official PlayStation Magainze (Issue 179, October 2020) Oddworld Creator Lorne Lanning talked about the PS5’s social features. Unfortunately, he was somewhat restrained since it seemed he wasn’t sure what he could talk about, but he said he thinks that the features will help open up the experience for players to more human contact, while also being able to share things quicker and without leaving the system itself for the data you want or need.

“Before we’d say, ‘OK, I’m playing my console game…’ and there’s connectivity and there’s friends, sharing of stats and stuff like this, but a lot of it, you’re still going to the web to engage in the discussion.

“I think we’re going to see in this generation a lot more of that interlaced, where you’re not leaving the console as much to go get the other data… It’ll be really interesting to see how much the audience takes to it and what they do with it, and what developers do with it.

“[To] get into the sharing capabilities, the social stuff that’s been built into PS5 – I’m still not sure how much I can really talk about… I want to be careful, but they’re doing a lot more things that are like, enabling you to sort of open your experience a little wider to your human network of people that you’re connected with.”

It’s not clear what’s being referenced, but sounds as if the system has some pretty robust social features potentially. The latest game in the Oddworld series, Oddworld: Soulstorm, is planned to come this year and will be a timed console exclusive to PlayStation platforms. It will be interesting to see if that game takes advantage of some of the things Lanning is referencing.

During Gamescom of this year, Microsoft finally showcased the potential of cloud gaming on Xbox One by demonstrating Crackdown 3. The tech used in the game’s multiplayer’s component is dependent on a set of remote servers that will provide volumetric effects such as enhanced explosions which is simply impossible to achieve locally on the Xbox One.

GamingBolt recently caught up with Lorne Lanning, the developer behind the famed Oddworld series. In a rather lengthy interview focusing on several aspects of the games industry, GamingBolt asked Lanning’s thoughts on Microsoft’s Xbox One and cloud gaming. It must be noted that at the time when this interview was being conducted, Lanning had not seen the Crackdown 3 Gamescom demo but he mananged to provide us with some fascinating insights.

“Regardless of your system’s capability, we can make you run a game experience of a much wider performance than your system is capable of. When David Perry was pushing Gaikai in the beginning before they sold it to Sony, he mentioned to me one day that “What really blew away the guys at Nvidia was that they realized that on the computer, whatever card it’s running as long as it has a basic video capable card and they have good internet connection, we can have them testing the new graphics cards on their old computer.”

“So if you’re you’re saying, “We’ve got a render farm over here in Hawaii that is a cloud computing farm which is 10 times the power of any console today in terms of the visual interactive experience they can deliver. And now if you use this cloud service, you’re not going to know the difference. But it’s going to feel like your console is playing it but it’s really coming from the ultra Xbox hub out there that’s giving you 10x cycles and computations that your machine won’t even give you but you’ll play it on your machine like it’s local.” That is a future. That’s inevitably a big future.”

According to reports, the cloud will make the Xbox One 20 times more powerful. It is different from Battlefield 4 who have multiple people at once and have an entire city that can be leveled. It’s not like a bunch of people are coming together to destroy one building. It’s more like something like “all of us can work together to destroy the whole city at once if we wanted to.” According to Lanning that is progress.

“Now that’s progress. Technically and theoretically speaking, that’s all possible. That capability could be going through your phone as well. You could be playing something that’s PS12, super computer, insane configuration that takes up 2,000 square feet in a server room somewhere running one game. It’s not impossible. Then that game is being streamed down right into your hand and you’re playing it at that full interactive, massive data base. And you’re playing it on a device that would never be capable of it. Basically what is cloud doing? It’s capturing a realtime cloud gameplay, it’s capturing your controller input, and it’s sending that back to the farm, and it’s processing that information and it’s sending you back the video so fast you didn’t notice the latency. If that’s happening then there’s no limit to how much can be computed off the farm.”

Lanning believes that Microsoft are taking a risk with cloud computing but risk is what is precisely wanted in the industry. “Then you get into all the logistics which is not a small promise. If they’re saying this, it’s not a small promise. And I hope they come through. Anyone taking chances, I hope they have success. The industry always needs those risk takers. So it will be interesting.”

Stay tuned for our full interview with Lanning in the coming days. It will be well worth the wait. In the meantime check out some amazing facts about Crackdown 3 in the video below.

Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning, currently working on Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty!, is a man of many opinions. He’s very strongly opinionated about AAA publishers who tend to push incomplete projects on consumers for profit’s sake. A recent example is Battlefield 4, which Lanning says represents a publisher being more faithful to its share-holders than its fans.

Speaking to VG247, Lanning said, “Why did Battlefield 4 ship? You know that team was crying. You know that team knew that game wasn’t ready to go. You know that team f**king spent a lot of sleepless nights building that shit out to look as good and play as good, when it was able to be experienced, being played as they were intending it to be played.

“Someone made a decision that the shareholders are more important than the customer. And we see a lot of that. How do you blow that? How do you take that f**king jewel and ship it with dirt all over it?””

The troubles with Battlefield 4 are far from over – DICE recently delayed the PC version of the Naval Strike DLC, stating that it faced issues. No time frame was given for when it would ship. Your thoughts on Lanning’s opinions? Let us know below.

Oddword has released a PC update for Stranger’s Wrath HD, and it is a massive list of fixes that will most probably improve the game. This patch is for the Steam versions of the game, and the patch for the non-Steam versions of the game will be released soon.

“In the dusty, undeveloped wastelands of Western Mudos, cantankerous townsfolk find their settlements besieged by belligerent outlaws. Along comes Stranger, a tall, dark and enigmatic bounty hunter with a critter-firing crossbow. First released in 2005, Stranger’s Wrath has been passionately upgraded for this HD release,” reads the official description.

Here are the features in the HD version.

• 720p, 60 FPS gameplay and cut-scenes
• More than 80 characters remodeled and retextured
• Music, voice and SFX upgraded from 8-bit 11KHz or less to 16-bit 44KHz
• Environments boast better poly-counts, textures and reflections
• Hidden easter eggs, unlockable extras and 37 PSN trophies
• Three modes of difficulty

Check out the patch notes below.

Stranger’s Wrath HD PC – v1.5

Changes from the original 2010 PC port
======================================

== Characters ==
– All 84 character models have been updated with increased polygon counts and higher resolution textures.
– This includes all three variations of Live Ammo: Those in the environment, those on the Crossbow and those in the General Store.
– Zappflies left in the environment glow.
– Fired Thudslugs left in the environment are now not an older design.
– Wolvark Sloghandlers now release Slogs instead of Slegs.
– Professor Dimble now has glasses and an academic tome.
– Made Blisterz Booty unkillable.

== Environments ==
– All environments have been given higher resolution textures.
– Most vegetation has been updated with increased polygon counts and/or higher resolution textures.
– A lot of environment now reflects in water where it didnít before.
– Many, many pipes and barrels rounded.
– Floating debris displays on water surfaces correctly.
– Eliminated some methods of escaping levels as pointed out by Brody Taylor (thank you!)
– Added Abeís Oddysee and Munchís Oddysee easter eggs to the game.
– Added Blisterz Bootyís broken crud gun to the floor by his bolaíd body.
– Sektoís Office has been changed to more closely resemble that seen in the FMV.

== Audio ==
– Sound effects in Bounty Store menu fixed.
– New female voices have been recorded for two characters.

== Display ==
– Fixed shader bugs that were affecting ATI and Intel users.
– Support for 4x and 8x FSAA.
– Anistropic filtering and GPU synchronization togglable in the launcher.
– Instance rendering togglable in the configuration file.
– Vertical synchronization is now checked by default.
– Frame rate has been capped at 100 FPS to lessen the problem of Stranger becoming immobile. This cap can be changed in the configuration file.
– All 16 menus have been updated with a new design based on original unused concepts.
– All menus now support keyboard, mouse and gamepad input.
– Textures added to stamina and bounty bars.
– New posters now occupy the inventory menu when no bounty is accepted.
– Radar fixed to show all enemy vision cones.
– Alt-tabbing is now supported properly.
– Fix to stop movie playback looping.
– Fix to snow effect.

== Controls ==
– Duplicate controls in the configuration menu now show up in red text (but to permit you maximum customaziation, you can still set duplicates if you like).
– In the controls configuration screen Up, Down, Left, Right and Select have been renamed Menu Up, Menu Down, Menu Left, Menu Right and Menu Select respectively.
– Added ammo selection controls separate from menu controls. You can map them to the same keys if you wish.
– You can also now interact with the ammo selection screen using your mouse and fire left/fire right controls as well.
– Added support for tiltwheels.
– The controls youíve mapped now appear in gameplay dialogue boxes (except for ëMovement Controlsí and ëCamera Controlsí) and are listed correctly in the layout schematic.
– Non-dynamic gamepad layout image replaced by dynamic list upon user configuration of gamepad control mapping.
– Tutorial dialogues can be closed with Esc and primary mouse click as well as Jump and Menu Select keys.
– Clicking to close tutorial dialogues while in first person mode will cause the corresponding barrel of your Crossbow to be fired.
– Removed deadzone on camera if mouse-controlled.

== Difficulty ==
– All armour upgrades increase Stranger’s health (they did nothing in the original 2005 Xbox release).
– Added difficulty levels to the game: Easy, Medium and Hard.
– In easy mode Stranger has twice the health, enemies have half the health and stamina.
– In hard mode Stranger has a third less health and enemies take a bit more to kill.

== Unlockables ==
– Added 12 brand new Steam achievements.
– Hideout Seek renamed Junkyard Challenge.
– Get to Last Legs renamed Giving a Leg Up.
– Concept art and movie extras for completing each region of the game.

== Language ==
– French and German audio has been added.
– Togglable subtitles for pre-rendered and realtime cutscenes, and for vital GameSpeak.
– Full text translations for French, German, Italian and Spanish.

== Launcher ==
– Only one instance of the launcher can be created at any once.
– Launcher displays a warning message if youíre not running OpenGL 2.0 or greater.
Fixes v1.5
==========

Updated credits movie.
Improved shutdown code.
Improved frame rated compensation code to smooth out stuttering.
Changed Steam Achievements so they can be triggered while playing offline.
Fixed jerky motion of Stranger.
Added FXAA.
Re-enabled SSAAx16.
Corrected name of SSAAx9.
Reduced number of vertex shader uniforms to improve graphic card compatibility.
Added support for none depth/stencil hardware, mainly Intel chipsets.
Added screen capture support. These are saved into folder Documents\Oddworld\Stranger’s Wrath HD\ScreenShots\. If playing with SSAA, screen shots will be extra large. Capture key can be redefined in the launcher. (Filenames are randomly generated, view the files by date to find the most recent.)
Added key binding to QuikSave and QuikLoad. These can be redefined in the launcher.
Added new language translation for text: Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Polish and Portuguese.
Changed menu fonts to support Russian and Polish characters.
Fixes v1.4
==========

Added missing achievement “Slakker Clakker”.
Fixed issues with some achievements not getting triggered correctly.
Fixed in launcher audio language selection problem.
Fixed in launcher joypad configuration issues when using dpad controls.
Added into launcher new advanced options. Shadows, Vegetation & Water Reflections can be disabled to improve frame rate. Mip Map Bias can be adjusted. Max frames per second can be set.
Guide to configuration file
===========================
The configuration file for your installation of Stranger’s Wrath HD can be found in your Documents directory under Oddworld > Stranger’s Wrath HD > config.txt

The majority of the file comprises your control scheme mappings. Other settings can be changed to affect the game’s performance on your computer.

– “bbp” stands for ‘bits per pixel’, describing colour quality. It will only accept 32 or 24 as its value.
– “maxfps” defaults to 100 if unset, but you can lower it yourself. This caps the game’s framerate, which can be useful if you have a problem with Stranger getting stuck on the ground.
– “novsync” is present if you have unchecked ‘Vsync’ in the game’s launcher. Vertical synchronization caps your framerate to your monitor’s framerate, which can be useful if you have a problem with Stranger getting stuck on the ground.
– “anisotropicon” is present if you have ‘Anisotropic filtering’ checked in the launcher. Anisotroping filtering makes textures look better when they’re at an angle to the camera, but can slow down the game.
– “useinstancerenderer” is present if you have ‘Instance rendering’ checked in the launcher. Instance rendering draws all like decorators in a level at once. This improves performance but can cause graphical glitches on some graphics cards. Disable if vegetation appears skewed in your game.
– “mipmapbias” controls the distance at which mipping comes into effect. Mipping is a graphical improvement that makes distant textures lower res to reduce visual noise. Making this value more negative pushes away the distance at which mipping occurs, making distant textures sharper. Making the value zero or positive pulls that distance in, making textures blurrier.
– “antialiasing” can be set to 0 for no antialiasing, 1 for 4xFSAA, or 2 for 8xFSAA. Be aware that antialiasing in Stranger’s Wrath HD is more resource-intensive than you may be used to in modern games.

Speaking to GIBiz, Lanning stated, “Our agreement is, you won’t be seeing our profit being spent on Ferraris and shit like that. Our profits are going back into games so we can ultimately raise to the point where we can grow our audience, who are expecting new content.”

On the decision to reject EA, he states, “When you say that to us, we go ‘fuck you very much’, quite frankly. That’s not a sustainable model, that’s a hostile acquisition. That’s why we had to strive to get independent. Rather than get into bed with someone we knew was a horrible bed partner we said ‘let’s stay virgins for longer’.

“If we have a hope on this digital landscape we’ll be able to go directly to our audience and learn more about them, more from them. Let’s make a really intelligent re-entry into the market place and show that games to people who didn’t get exposed to them. And then if that’s successful we’ll have the money to start building brand new stuff.”

And really, you have to read the original article because Lanning is tossing pipe bombs left and right.

Details on already announced Oddworld projects have been confirmed as well as pleasing news that Munch’s Oddysee will be heading to PSN in HD.

The developer had previously announced the HD remake of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath last year for PC and PSN, but confirmed the PS3 version would support 3D, Move, YouTube uploading, as well as a “feature X”, whatever that may be.

An Abe’s Oddysee HD remake has also been confirmed. It will remain a 2D side-scroller with animated backgrounds. It too will land on PSN, but other platforms are to be announced at a later date.

The Oddboxx, which is currently only available on PC, will be hitting PSN and will include Munch’s Oddysee, Stranger’s Wrath, Abe’s Oddysee and the PSone Oddworld games.

An HD remake of Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee is also coming to PSN and unannounced platforms.

However, there is another Oddworld game coming called Hand of Odd, and it’s a tablet game based on a “shelved” Oddworld real-time strategy game announced way back in 1998.

It features the usual Oddworld inhabitants like Mudokons and Glukkons, and the original design of the game will be modernized for iPad, Android tablets, Facebook, PC and Mac – platforms which are currently being “looked at” for the game by JAW.

Calling the game “casual rather than more intense,” Just Add Water’s Stewart Gilray said the game is still a ways off and a console release is unlikely.

“It works well with touchscreen interfaces or mouse control direct,” he said. “On consoles, however, you get analogue sticks or your Move controller. While Move is good for certain kinds of gameplay and it’s responsive compared to Kinect, it still isn’t that intuitive.

“We’ve not had experience with Kinect yet, but playing the games already out there for that, it does seem at the moment it’s got a lot of work to do before it catches up with that more direct, action kind of game.

“All the games that are out for it, you’ve got to do huge body movements to get involved in it, which is why it’s fun. With this, there’s a bit more thought involved, rather than flinging your body around a room, which is why we thought if we did direct control through touchscreen, you can put your finger on it, or with a mouse with PC or Mac, and just drag items.”

That’s a lot to take in for Oddworld fans.

Thanks to Neogaf for the info.

No information about the games other than that they will feature “all of your favourite Oddworld characters.”, and we are promised to hear some more information “over the coming weeks and months.”

“To work with the team at Oddworld has been amazing; being able to tap the minds of Lorne Lanning, Sherry McKenna and others has been fantastic,” said Stewart Gilray, JAW boss.

“It’s almost symbiotic in that when something moves forward on any of the projects we just start chatting about new items, or what if we do this. We’re all extremely excited to breathe life into the Oddworld universe and indeed to let it breathe life into us.” he added.

Oddworld is back, what do you guys think?

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