We're still not following Naughty Dog's PS3-exclusive action adventure game The Last of Us very closely, but this latest "Truck ambush" trailer is pretty neat. Give it a look...

The 16th Wasteland 2 kickstarter update is penned by director of technology John Alvarado and goes into detail on why the company chose Unity, out of all engine candidates.

Unity Technologies, with their Unity 3 game engine, was among the vendors that came to us with congratulations, goodwill and offers of support. Their engine stood out as an early front-runner on point 1 of our requirements. The artists loved its support for the native formats of the art tools we already use (3DS Max and Photoshop). I also like its built-in version control for assets and code.

At first it seemed to be missing a leg on point 2 (support for Linux platform), but I knew that we could get source code and therefore could provide the Linux port ourselves. Given that the engine is designed and structured to support multiple platforms, I felt it would not be insurmountable to port it to Linux (or actually hire some outstanding external contractors we’ve used before to do the job). After talking to Unity about this, we found they’ve already been working on a Linux port, so Unity is supplying inXile the Linux port alpha source code. InXile will work with Unity in order to port Wasteland 2 to Linux.

Where Unity really bowled us over was on point 3. Besides generous support available from Unity staff, the Unity Asset Store is a treasure trove of assets (3D models and code) provided by the large and growing community of Unity users. A recent Unity newsletter announced that the Asset Store customer base has topped 100,000, and the catalog has reached over 3,000 packages! We’ve been able to find all kinds of useful 3D assets and code in the Asset Store ranging in price from cheap to free! Having an organized marketplace like the Asset Store for finding assets and expertise fits right in with our desire to leverage and give back to the community. While we cannot share engine source code changes, we can share script code and components, as well as graphical assets as part of our modding support.

GamesTM has a small interview with Brian Fargo, mostly the usual stuff, but also an update on the Vision Doc:

Fargo goes on to say that a full vision document for the sequel will be posted online soon but does enlighten us on the similarities between Wasteland 2 and the classic Fallout games that he produced. “Cause and effect are the most important hallmarks of this style of game”, he says. “People want to have their actions cause real effects which builds an immersive world and creates replay.”

“I have brought the composer for Fallout 1/2 in for the musical score and he has some wonderful ideas about taking the tone to the next level”, he continues. “The game is top down/isometric and that means we can spend more time on the gameplay and less with all of the modeling. Chris Avellone [Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas] is helping with the design along with Mike Stackpoke, Liz Danforth and Ken. St. Andre. The concept art from Andree Wallin is fantastic and I have never been more determined to make a better game in my life.”

In case you own either Fallout 3 or New Vegas on PlayStation 3 but you don't own their DLC packs, the Bethblog is pointing out that they are 50% off on European PSN until May 30th, with an additional 20% discount for those that are also Plus members.

It's worth pointing out that in both titles, DLC have been known to aggravate problems with framerate, so keep that in mind if you already have some in your current playthrough.

Brian Fargo has been tweeting some on the Unity Engine choice for Wasteland 2:

I can officially announce that we've chosen the Unity engine for Wasteland 2. It meets all the criteria we need. First screens looking good. Although we are using Unity this is not an in browser game but an executable file. We have been supplied the source code to Unity for the express purpose of making the Linux version. It's hard to beat the crowd sourced community of Unity.

Andrius "Crying Horn" Balciunas has posted more of his work with his Advanced Power Armor mk II 3D models. Here's the new ones:

Olympus 2207 is a project by Rain man we have been following for a while. The Russian demo was released some time ago, but egalor has been hard at work behind the scenes to bring us the English version and this announcement:

Olympus 2007, while being more than just a yet another Fallout total conversion mod, is a post-nuclear game set somewhere in the US Silicone Valley. You take the role of one of the survivors of the global atomic war, taking shelter under an immense skyscraper that mysteriously survived the bombardment. Death or glory awaits... or is there no glory to claim?

The game uses Fallout 2 engine, however tons of visuals (including video, animations and static images) were done from scratch. The game also uses a lot of ambient music, which, in our view, nicely fits into the game theme. In this English demo you will be able to experience all of the above, as well as try out different paths to success.

J.E. Sawyer finally caved in and provided some expanded background on the Legion and what New Vegas would've included, if given a few more months of development time:

The additional Legion locations would have had more traveling non-Legion residents of Legion territories. The Fort and Cottonwood Cove made sense as heavy military outposts where the vast majority of the population consisted of soldiers and slaves. The other locations would have had more "civilians". It's not accurate to think of them as citizens of the Legion (the Legion is purely military), but as non-tribal people who live in areas under Legion control.

While Caesar intentionally enslaves NCR and Mojave residents in the war zone, most of the enslavement that happens in the east happens to tribals. As Raul indicates, there are non-tribal communities that came under Legion control a long time ago. The additional locations would have shown what life is like for those people.

The general tone would have been what you would expect from life under a stable military dictatorship facing no internal resistance: the majority of people enjoy safe and productive lives (more than they had prior to the Legion's arrival) but have no freedoms, rights, or say in what happens in their communities. Water and power flow consistently, food is adequate, travel is safe, and occasionally someone steps afoul of a legionary and gets his or her head cut off. If the Legion tells someone to do something, they only ask once -- even if that means an entire community has to pick up and move fifty miles away. Corruption within the Legion is rare and Caesar deals with it harshly (even by Legion standards).

In short, residents of Legion territories aren't really citizens and they aren't slaves, but they're also not free. People who keep their mouths shut, go about their business, and nod at the rare requests the Legion makes of them -- they can live very well. Many of them don't care at all that they don't have a say in what happens around them (mostly because they felt they never had a say in it before the Legion came, anyway).

We always wanted to support post-Hoover play. A few milestones prior to being content complete, it was obvious that we weren't going to be able to support it to the extent that it deserved (robust reactivity to the choices the player made). Because we didn't have time to do it correctly, I made the decision to cut it.

This post on the inXile forum offers an early call to apply for a programming job at inXile, fans of Wasteland 2 getting priority. The post also reveals the engine Wasteland 2 will be using is the highly popular Unity Engine.

If you have a passion for post-apocalytic goodness, experience working with Unity and amazing programming skills, please send your resume to jobs[at]inxile.net. We thought we’d put this out on our blog and forums first, before opening up the search further. Feel free to spread the word if you know of the perfect person.

We are looking for experienced engineers and engineering interns.

Andrius "Crying Horn" Balciunas has posted some fantastic fan-made Advanced Power Armor mk II 3D models, with more coming.

Endocore has released version 1.0 of his Fallout: Tactics Redux patch and mod, which fixes a lot of bugs, and also tweaks and expands a lot of the game's content.

Fallout Tactics Redux fixes numerous bugs and inadequacies of the standard Fallout Tactics game released by Microforte at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The mod also adds novel content to the game, and thus expands rather far beyond the scope of an "unofficial patch."

Fallout Tactics Redux works to revise the standard game in numerous ways, including:

--Fixing script bugs. The original missions and special encounters of the core campaign contain both numerous blatant errors as well as many poor design implementations. I reviewed every single map in the game and fixed every flaw I met. In some cases, merely fixing broken triggers has unlocked previously unavailable but otherwise fully-fashioned original content.

--Fixing broken entities. Nearly every original map contains entities erroneously malformed in this or that respect, such as keys whose tag names don't match doors and switches that don't correctly affect linked objects. I fixed every problem I could find, in some cases unlocking previously unavailable but otherwise fully-fashioned original content.

--Fixing disgracefully inept writing. Epileptic wild monkeys chained to rusty typewriters could have done a better job than the "professionals" at Microforte-- most of whom apparently never graduated from elementary school. The text files of the standard game contain legion grammar and spelling errors. In some files I edited every... single... line of text, and often found individual sentences crowded with three, four, or even five spelling and grammar errors. Players need no longer be constantly insulted by the notion of having paid for such drivel. Though I won't claim I fixed each and every English syntax problem in the game (particularly in taunts.txt-- I've reviewed that enormous file nearly line by line several times, but still find some new deficiency whenever I examine it), the situation is now much improved. Since the game is set in the USA, all game text is now also standardized to use American English rather than goofy Australian lingo.

--Addressing the "Game crashes after finding all Special Encounters" bug. This is an engine issue that strictly speaking I cannot properly fix. However, I've included a workaround that will allow players to continue their games without suffering from the issue once the bug initially appears (and the bug will indeed appear in every single game of Fallout Tactics if the player plays long enough).

--Reimagining the recruit pool of potential teammates for the player-character. Many of the npcs in the standard game are silly and frankly insulting to a player's intelligence. I rewrote most of the recruit biographies, gave the soldiers different skill sets, changed some of the more questionable sprite color choices to traditional military-appropriate hues, and replaced some portraits of the dowdiest MF employees who had faces even a mother would be hard-pressed to love.

--Reimagining the game's weaponry. In the standard game, the player has meagre practical options when equipping his troops since a few weapons are utterly superior to all others. I redesigned the AP costs, damage values, and range of nearly every weapon from the ground up so players may now more fully enjoy all the tactical possibilities of the game. I also fictionalized all the "real-world" weapons found in the original game, which are frankly quite inappropriate to the setting and highly disruptive to any player's attempt to immerse himself in the game-world of his characters.

--A new approach to random combat encounters. As implemented in the standard game, most players including myself have concluded random encounters are supremely annoying. Most of these encounters simply aren't fun or "tactical," and they occur with such shocking frequency that attempting traverse even a few squares of the world map results in a cramped index finger as the player clicks "No, I don't want to encounter rats and dogs. Again. *Sigh*" dozens of times. I very significantly reduced the occurrence of random encounters, and in most cases eliminated all but the "hardest" encounters. Hopefully those who enjoy playing random encounters will now have more fun with the remaining larger battles (which were previously quite rare), while those who don't care for them will be relieved to speed off to the next "real" mission.

--A completely redesigned Quartermaster list. Some players don't care much for the Quartermaster system, and are of course free to continue using the Editor to give themselves whatever equipment they desire. For the rest of us, hopefully the Quartermaster system will now work better than ever.

--Expanded gameplay. What sort of military game doesn't have a canteen? I added a number of new items to the game, as well as other new content in several maps. I also incorporated, revised, and embellished a fine older mod I found in the NMA Files section called "Bunker and Xtra Characters Mod" by dark_ark, which adds a fairly significant amount of new and interesting npc interaction to the game.

GameSpot is offering a video Let's Play marathon of the Fallout franchise, starting from the original Fallout, for those who are interested. If I've heard well they're going to tackle Brotherhood of Steel. Yes.

RPG Codex offers a retrospective interview with Fallout and Troika designer and artist Leonard Boyarsky, about his career in the industry.

You are famously associated with the original Fallout mood and look. Was it hard to convince everyone else at Interplay that the "future 1950s" art style was the way to go? What rival ideas were there for the game's look?

When I told people about my ideas for the look of the game, they looked at me like I was crazy. Why would we make a post-apocalyptic game look like a cheesy fifties B-movie? Much to Interplay’s credit however, even though they thought I was insane, no one said we couldn’t do it. So we did. I started pitching the fifties vibe so early that there were really never any other competing art styles considered.

Aside from Fallout's overall art style, can you give us a rundown of what exactly you designed and wrote for Fallout 1 and Fallout 2? Apart from the look, which is the obvious high point, what contributions to the Fallout games are you most proud of?

I’m not going to try to write an exhaustive list of what I designed/wrote in Fallout, as that would be, well, exhausting. When I think about all the writing we did on Fallout, the first things that always come to mind were the edits we had to do for the talking head conversations. A lot of times the conversations didn’t make sense or deliver the information they were supposed to, but they had already been recorded and we didn’t have the budget to rerecord them – so we had to go in and edit/rewrite the player responses and rearrange the NPC lines so that the conversations worked. In some instances, like Vree, the information we wanted to impart to the player just wasn’t there so I had to add her assistant (Sophia, I think?) so that there was at least an NPC around who did have the necessary info. And she wasn’t the only one—we had to add several NPCs with vital information that was supposed to be covered with the talking heads but for some reason wasn’t. I did extensive rewrites on Gizmo, Killian and the Master as well as one or two others. One scenario I really enjoyed designing was in Adytum – Zimmerman’s situation with the regulators, his son and the Blades. I wrote a lot of NPCs, too many to list (or remember). I also wrote some of the holodisks.

From a design standpoint, I’m really proud of the tone we hit for the game, the humor style. Even though I was the one who started the fifties ironic horror/comedy vibe, I can’t take full credit for its final form in the game – it really ended up being an extension of a combination of our personalities. Once it was established, however, I was the policeman who made sure that we hit that tone whether it was in the art or the design. Above everything else, though, the two things I am specifically most proud of are the intro and ending to the game. I guess those would be half design and half art, but I’m proud of both aspects of them. I think the intro did a great job setting the mood, and the ending had a nice haunting feel to it. I still can’t believe Tim let us kick the vault dweller out of the vault to end the game.

For Fallout 2, Jason, Tim and I designed the main story arc and a few side quests before leaving Interplay. They kept a lot of what we had designed, but changed some significant parts of it as well.

With 40 days left, the second season of fan-made Fallout film series Fallout: Nuke Break has hit its Kickstarter minimum goal. Congratulations to Zack Finfrock and everyone involved.

Chris Avellone has penned a blog entry dedicated to the original Wasteland, its skill system, and how that contributes to the role-playing. Snip ahead:

So after the skill allocation phase, it’s clear this character is physically challenged, has esoteric old world knowledge, and is gifted with electronics and machines and codes, so after remembering that Wasteland has a high technology bent, it occurred to me I had the freedom to imagine him as an android if I wanted to. And this could account for his limited mobility, esoteric pre-bomb knowledge, and his crappy CHR and DEX. Having fun and digging about the pre-knowledge of Wasteland and memories of my crappy knowledge of coding in Basic way back in the days of the TSR-80, I thought it’d be cool if I built an android that incorporated some elements of the 80s and came up with a makeshift bio:

G.I.G.0: Stands for “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” and his name reinforces that there’s something flawed in this character’s intrinsic android programming, since the last character is a “zero” not the letter “O.” I saw him as a damaged android the Rangers deem only worthwhile for reconnaissance in hazardous areas, notably because it seems like he’s been damaged already (“past warranty” is what G.I.G.0 occasionally says, although no one’s quite sure what he means when he says this - they assume it’s a location in the game, and who knows, they may be right).

While G.I.G.0 will respond to his name when addressed, he will remind each new speaker once that “G.I.G.0.” is not his original designation, which has left some inhabitants of the Wasteland to wonder what kind of nation this “Desig” may be and if all the residents are like G.I.G.0.

G.I.G.0 wandered in from the wastes, following a radio signal being broadcast from a series of TSR-80 cultists (based on this, I assumed it might also be fun if I imagined him as occasionally stopping to have conversations with radio towers and computers in the game). He walked into the base and started communicating in Basic which the cultists understood and assumed he might be some sort of programming messiah sent by the Tandy gods and lavished praise and goods on him to encourage him to stay and guide them.

As years passed, however, G.I.G.0. became their messiah of disappointment and made them wonder if the pre-war years were more of a mess than it may have seemed from the history books to have made G.I.G.0. in the first place: Initially believing that an android gift from the wastes was a blessing, the cultists discovered the android had some series of programming flaws, and as far as compiling code and helping with repairs and programming around the base, it wasn’t helpful. At all. Every computer G.I.G.0. seemed to interact with on any complex level beyond simple on/off tests created near-catastrophic failures.

After he nearly flooded the lower levels of their facility with waste after being asked to recompile the sewage treatment management code, they gave him the name “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” blaming whoever built G.I.G.0. for his current programming weaknesses. G.I.G.0. accepted this new designation, although he seems unable to spell it without replaced the “O” at the end with a zero, further proof of some fundamental programming flaw.

Generally considered a pain and a burden, the cultists were tempted to send him back out into the wastes and let him roam until he found another culture to curse with his presence. Then another plan occurred to them - they'd offload him, and kill two birds with one stone. (Or two vultures with one shotgun shell, as it were.)

GameStar.ru has an interview with Brian Fargo about Wasteland 2, though Fargo does warn of "Some translation issues".

Е3 is coming soon. Are you and your team planning to present anything at Expo?

We will definitely not be showing anything at this E3.. it is way too soon. And frankly I'm not sure if we will spend money at the next show as we want to maximize the monies that go into the game itself.

If it’s not a secret, what is the main expenditure item while developing of the role-playing game?

The biggest costs in making any kind of game are the people costs. Take a simple 15 man team with a fully burdened (rent, hardware, software, insurance) overhead cost of $9,000. That team would be costing almost $150,000 a month. In addition we have a large amount of money spent on outside art, music and design services. We are very excited about the budget we have for this game but it is not on the high side of development. Not having to make the cinematics makes it possible to create a deep game without a much deeper budget.

(...)

What biggest failure in RPG genre could you recollect?

I think the biggest failure in the recent past is this assumption that the audience is not smart. Too much effort is being spent making it dummy proof. The situations have become bland and all the clues are being held right in front of their nose. The exploration and journey is the reward.

Indie developer 14Bytes studio is working on a new, browser-based online multiplayer post-apocalyptic RPG named Fraternity Project. There's not a lot of information available so far, but you can find the announcement (in French) on RPGFrance. The website also has some additional concept art and one WIP screenshot on the game's page. The team is also recruiting additional web programmers, and, from what I can decipher with my rudimentary understanding of French, the game will feature a persistent world and offer multiple playable races.

Here's a small bit of concept art:

The 15th Kickstarter update can be found on the Wasteland 2 blog rather than Kickstarter. It doesn't say much, just an update on what's happening.

Now that we’re funded, you’re probably wondering what happens for the next 18 months. We’ve been hard at work preparing our core design principles vision document. This document contains a solid overview of the important elements from which we will be crafting the detailed game design document. Before we started on the vision document, we spent a lot of time on our forums reading what elements you feel are important and what systems and features you’re not too fond of. The vision document will be available on our Wasteland portal in the next few weeks.

We already have an amazing community on our forums, and we know that it’s going to get better and better as we get further along in the game. If you haven’t done so already, head there and let us know what’s important to you. We’ve seen some wonderful suggestions that have already improved the vision of the game!

We are still working with some backers on account reconciliation through Amazon, and we will have a final list of all backers and reward tiers tomorrow. Very soon we will prepare the questionnaires that correspond to your reward tier. Here you will be able to give us all relevant information on your shirt size, NPC characters name, what package you want or any other applicable bits relating to the reward you selected. Any information relating to in-game rewards (i.e. Statues, weapon names, shrines) we will use when setting our production specifications, so please try to send it back relatively soon. We’ll set a deadline on it, but you’ll have a few weeks to reply.

Once we have that information back, we will also set up a backer database on our site. You will be able to login with the user information you presented to Kickstarter or PayPal and can manage your reward tier here. If you move in the future, just stop by and update your address. If you’d prefer to be contacted at a different email, modify that in our database. If you accidentally selected the wrong reward, you will have the opportunity to change it. If you wanted a higher tier, but didn’t have the funds to secure it during the campaign, you will be able to upgrade your tier in a backer-only store. We are not changing any of the tier limits, so sold out tiers are unavailable as upgrades.

Mostly covers things our readers should be familiar with, but Digital Trends has an article-style interview with Brian Fargo on Wasteland 2. Snip:

Halfway through the Kickstarter campaign, InXile promised that if $2.1 million was raised, Alpha Protocol developer Obsidian would be brought on to assist in Wasteland 2’s creation. That goal was shattered, so Obsidian is on board. “Obsidian’s involvement is the help of Chris Avellone helping in the design of the Wasteland world and the levels themselves,” explains Fargo, “He spends 2-3 days a week over here brainstorming everything from storylines to combat systems. It’s been a joy to work with him again. Additionally Obsidian has a host of tools that may help us to get story and dialogue assets organized and integrated more easily. The coding is happening at InXile.”

Things could have been so different. While the Kickstarter game development boom of spring 2012 has been accompanied by plenty of rhetoric on the problems with traditional publishing models, few creators have been as vocally bilious towards the industry old guard as Brian Fargo. Would Wasteland 2 have been made if a publisher backed it in 2012? Would it be the same game? Maybe, but the game’s connection with its audience would definitely be lost. “I highly doubt we would have the same relationship with the public that we do. In the past I had to fight for features that I knew the fans would want and now we have none of that. A publisher may well have given us more money but it is normally with doled out slowly with heavy conditions on each check,” says Fargo, “The best development happens in a more fluid manner with priorities and ideas shifting around the core tenets. Publisher led deals are typically more contract driven in that you must crystal ball the details and do them in that order no matter what the impact on the overall game or the shift in ideas.”

Wethegamerz offers an interview with Fallout Lanius director Wade K Savage.

What inspired you to create a short film about Lanius?

I’ve been a Fallout fan since the first two games, of which I’ve played over and over. I enjoyed Fallout 3, but Fallout: New Vegas was something altogether different. I really loved the atmosphere and writing. I loved the characters and voice acting, how the world was put together and fleshed out.

I’ve been wanting to do a Video Game Fan film for years, but I just needed to do something no one had done before. I thought the Lanius origin story was really fun, and that the tribal/Caesar’s Legion dynamic is rarely looked at. I wasn’t really interested in doing the usual Fallout stuff, as I think that ‘Nuka Break’ covered it.

Have other Fallout fan films, like Fallout: Nuka Break, inspired your creative direction at all?

‘Nuka Break’ played a big role in my wanting to do a ‘serious’ toned Fallout film. They’ve done an amazing job at creating a parody/comedy/meta Fallout world. I’m more interested in drama, conflict and the exploration of people in a harsh world. I’ve also seen ‘Desert Story’, ‘Deprivation’ and I’ve been contacted by the ‘Fallout: Houston’ folks, who are fantastic. My primary inspiration however is the tone and atmosphere of Fallout: New Vegas. Nothing can beat that.