THE WINE, new surreal horror game from the creator of MIND: Path to Thalamus.
Hello Wanderers! I am Carlos Coronado, solo game developer of your beloved or hated MIND: Path to Thalamus. I don't want to talk too much. I am making a new horror game called HORROR TALES: The Wine.
It is in many many ways similar to MIND, but diferent in many others. You'll have to find for yourself. The surreal environments are there indeed! It will be released in two months.
Here are some screenshots of it. EEENJOY! If you want to know more, visit it's steam page :)
Winter fixes
First of all, you deserve some words. The game is not well maintained, you’re right. As we stated some times in the forums, MIND was developed by only one person, and Carlos published 2 more games and is working in his next unannounced title.
That made hard to fit the necessary time to fix some of the issues you reported. MIND is an old game, and some of the features added, specially for VR, were developed when the headsets and the motion controllers did not exist. Some of the systems behind are hard to modify and we needed to wait until Carlos could invest the needed time to avoid new bugs from the fixes.
Today we’re releasing a new patch that addresses some of the known issues with VR movements and some features missing from time ago.
VR movement has been changed. Use the left hand trackpad (Vive) or joystick (Oculus) to move around WASD like. Also, now the character will move in the direction you’re looking, no more head-body disconnection. Finally, you can use your right hand trackpad / joystick to rotate the character, especially useful if you play with only one station and don’t have 360º tracking. Next you can find a full VR controllers reference:
Last, but not least. We added 2 “new” languages today, Hungarian and Norwegian. Both languages were in the game in the past, but they were missing and we’ve been able to put them again. I want to remind you that the game does not rely anymore in Steam language selection. We had to make a new system because the game has some languages not currently present on Steam like Catalan and Euskara. To change the game language go to Settings > Game.
Fixes to fix the fixes
The title may seem redundant but it’s what literally happened with Mind and the language support and the patch we launched today.
Nearly one month ago we launched a patch that fixed the translations of the game. It worked in our internal testing but once merged with a new build with more fixes the translations banished again.
Later we will go deeper in the technical aspects but for those looking for what’s new, next you can find how the new language system works.
In the Settings - Game menu you will find a new option called “Language”. Every time you click on it the game will be translated to a new language, click until you find yours.
Due to some problems with some languages the current supported languages are:
English
Russian
Português
Korean
Chinese
Italian
French
Euskara
Spanish
Deutsch
Japanese
Català
Later we will update the game to add the missing languages. Also, now the game ignores the language you selected on Steam, we will update the game to detect and configure the game accordingly in the future. On the positive side, Catalan and Basque people will be able to play the game without having to hack it ;)
Technical stuff
In the last announcement we talked about how the updates of your tools may cause problems. Well, this is a good confirmation of the theory.
The last update fixed the language problem. We relied on some kind of hack of the Steam’s depot system that allowed us to overwrite the file that corresponds to the english translation of the game. Every time you switched from a language to another, Steam overwrites the english subtitles with a file with the texts on the selected language. And in fact, it was working correctly, the files are updating correctly right now, but for some reason, the texts ingame were in a perfect English.
After some research it seems that the Unreal Engine translation system crashed and the game is not loading that file and it’s showing the default value for the the texts in the game (yes, English).
Luckily Carlos is working in a new game and he developed a new translation system for it and finally we adapted it for Mind.
That’s why we needed some time and that’s why it’s not fully functional, it’s a beta version of the translation system and it lacks some features (like getting the language you selected on Steam).
Thanks for reading,
Do you MIND if I fix MIND?
First of all, we want to apologize for the delay fixing the game. We launched two games this year (Annie Amber and Sky Racer) and maintaining Mind and the other games needs to be done while Pantumaca Barcelona is working in a new title. And Pantumaca is a one developer studio.
Also, it was hard to know what was happening because we have changed nothing in the game, so it was strange to have so many new errors. In fact, all the problems came from updates… but not from Mind, but from Vive and Unreal Engine 4. These updates changed how some low level API work and broke our game.
We are releasing an update today that addresses some of them, next you can find the changelog:
Fixed player spawn in the 2nd part of the Father chapter
Changing the language in the Steam properties fixed
Fixed Vive controller’s touchpad problems
Achievements can be unlocked again
White borders appearing in Vive
Many thanks for your understanding
NEW CONTENT FOR “MIND” – VISIT MIND’s DARKEST CORNERS
“MIND: Path to Thalamus” is here again, with new content to surprise all its regulars and potential new players. We have added an exclusive level, Halloween-based. Be ready to visit the darkest corners of a mind on this new level we’ve prepared for you... NO MIND CAN ESCAPE FEAR ITSELF!
THE HIGHEST BEAUTY CAN TURN… UNSETTLING
“MIND” is renowned for being a game full of the highest beauty thanks to the expert hand of its creator, Carlos Coronado. Breath-taking environments that are dreamy and poetic. But the same ability to make the game impressive and beautiful can make it spooky and unsettling. Expect a whole new layer to the MIND experience, ready to cause you some good ol’ goosebumps.
BRING NEW THINGS BUT NEVER FORGET THE GOOD OLD ONES
Carlos Coronado is a prolific gamedev that have surprised the world with beautiful games such as “MIND”. But since then he has also created the mesmerizing game “Annie Amber”, created to be experienced in VR. And now Sky Racer has been his latest release, also to be played on VR. But good thing is he juggle between creating new hits while also revisiting and improving prior games. This is what has happened with MIND, even if it succeed years ago, the game has been improved constantly, with whole new features such as a VR version. And now we have this, a Halloween level, that adds a whole new layer of experience to the game.
August bugfixing update
Today we are publishing an small update, in fact, there are only two items in it:
Fix: Father chapter portal problem
Fix: Clear Night in Uyuni ball not showing
I want to apologize for the delay fixing these two, it was hard to find what was happening, especially in the second one because it was related to a new feature of Unreal Engine we were not aware of.
Every time you post in the forums a bug we start the bugfixing process. It’s starts by reporting it to Carlos and implies prioritizing them. For example, game stoppers are always at the top, because it’s preventing people from ending the game.
Then it comes the tricky part. We need to reproduce a bug to be able to fix it. It could seem easy because it’s failing for you, and it’s clear there is an error, but the variables that may cause an error are overwhelming. Sometimes it’s a problem with the graphics adapter, the operating system or how the engine is made, and even it’s possible that it’s a problem with a single model of graphics card and driver version.
Once a bug is reproducible, it’s possible to start fixing it because you can change something, test how it affects the game and find what’s causing the error. Ironically, it’s usual to spend less time fixing the problem than finding how to reproduce it.
Thanks for reading
Teleporting for HTC Vive is here
People who followed us in the last year were aware of the effort we put in the Enhanced Edition was VR ready from day 1. We worked hard to redo the game using Unreal Engine 4 and Carlos invested countless hours stalking how people walk in order to create VR Olive, a locomotion system meant to reduce dizziness in VR when you play with a gamepad.
VR Olive was not perfect for everyone, but it specially failed when you have such a different device as the VIVE is, with its controllers and the ability to move around. It’s a great technology for VR. But Mind is not a VR game, and because of this it was not easy to adapt it.
As you may know we are working in new games. We released Annie Amber for GearVR last month (do I said we are running a little contest?) and now we are porting it to other VR devices and at the same time working in a new title we will announce soon.
The easy way was to focus in the new projects and let MIND rest in peace. But you, our community, make us what we are and thanks to you MIND is a successful game. So thanks to your feedback we noticed that there was something wrong. You deserve a complete VR experience with MIND.
In this update we added to MIND: Path to Thalamus a teleporting motion system to the VIVE users.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QYfgJt7D8
When VIVE is detected, you will see a “lantern” in the game, by using the trigger and you will see a white line ending in an sphere, point to the place you want to teleport to and if the sphere is green, you will get that point as soon as you release the trigger. Additionally, you can use the trackpad to move around WASD style.
With the other hand you can grab the ball using the trigger. Additionally, if you play with only one station and 360º movement is not possible, you can click the touchpad to rotate the body 30º.
Finally, we modified some parts of the game to fit this new system. Some puzzles needed some tweaking to assure you don’t teleport to places you are not meant to reach. Some others are now easier for evident reasons.
We hope you will enjoy the update.
Bugfixing update, 32 bits news.
Hi,
We just released a new update fixing a couple of bugs, VR releated and on-vr releated. These are the mayor bugs fixed:
- Fixed player height in intro level when using a Oculus headset
- Fixed the problem with the ball not emitting light in the "Light in the Deep" level
- Fixed portal teleportation in second chapter, in the grass fields.
-12 minor bugs fixed.
Also, we dropped support for 32 bits in the enhanced edition, however, you can still play it in 32 bits by selecting old_mind in the betas tab. We dropped 32 bits support because it is a mess to have it while also doing VR. It caused a lot of bugs and crashes so we decided to just drop it.
Thanks for your patience,
Carlos Coronado.
[Update] Better Vive VR support, non-VR Fullscreen support and bug fixing!
Hi everyone!
Great news for both VR players and non VR players!
Carlos has been crunching all the weekend instead of playing with his cat to refine the VR support. In short, you won't be 4 meters tall in the game anymore, the player spawning in the wrong direction after entering a portal have been fixed and it is now easer than ever to return to the main menu using the vive controllers!
Aside from that, after investigating a little bit, we have also added better fullscreen support. So, how does it works now? When you launch the game in Non-VR, the game will automatically detect the highest native resolution of your monitor and then you can force a higher or lower resolution using screen percentage in the settings menu. No more "windowed fullscreen" problems :)
We have also added a little menu when you launch the game that lets you choose if you want to play VR or non VR. But... we've done some testing and if you want to play non VR but you've got a Vive, you will have to turn off the vive first. It doesn't happen with all the Vives we have tested... but in some of them it will launch the game in VR instead of fullscreen if you got it plugged...
Complete and serious changelog:
- Fixed VR eye height while ingame.
-Fixed Pawn too far from eyes while ingame.
-Fixed bad player rotation after going out of a Portal.
-Redesigned the pause menu to a "fade to go back to main menu" widget.
- Added choose how do you want to play little menu on steam.
-Changed the steam library name to MIND: Path to Thalamus E.Edition to adapt to the choose how do you want to play Menu.
-12 minor bugs fixed. Including lighting build leaks and static lighting not being applied to some meshes.
Better HTC Vive/Oculus support and Linux
As you surely know Virtual Reality is finally here, and MIND: Path to Thalamus Enhanced Edition was compatible with this new technology from day 0. With the consumer versions of Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in your hand we needed to update the VR SDKs integrations to take advantage of the headsets hardware.
MIND: Path to Thalamus is designed to be played as a seated and stand-up experience with no room scale. You can use a classic gamepad or the Vive controllers to move around the environment.
We also improved Olive VR to be more flexible and from now you can turn 30º using the gamepad shoulders (or Vive triggers).
Linux support
Those penguins out there, SteamOS or classic Linux users, will be able to play MIND: Path to Thalamus Enhanced Edition right now.
Changelog
VR performance improved 14%
Improved Vive controllers support
Stereo rendering enabled
Added Oculus Rift 1.3 support
Added degree rotation for VR (mouse wheel, gamepad shoulders and the
