Frictional Games Forum (read-only) - Off-Topic

About the IRC channel #frictional_games

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 15:05:39 +0000

I've entered at Mibbit.net and they no longer have a #frictional_games channel, that information is outdated https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/irc.php, any idea of where I can find live help? Or even if there's another IRC server that is used currently.

I would like to file an issue to the team, to at least remove that page if they no longer have any IRC channel and don't plan to have one, but I don't know where to start.

Thanks in advance!

Question about the plot and the film

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 13:02:27 +0000

First question. There was a rumor that the series would later be reissued as a new film. Does it exist or was it just a rumor? "Project Apophis" "Depth"

The second question. I still went through the game in Soma twice. But I did not understand who revived Simon at the beginning of the game. Is it WAU or Ross?

And how is the name "SOMA" deciphered?

glitch effect soma

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 16:17:06 +0000

Hey. I bought your game a long time ago, watched a lot of blogs about the game lore. Many artworks, files, and simply game locations in the game itself have a glitch effect. Now I want to learn how to do this.

This is amazing!

Please tell me, did you do it in AE or in some other program?

Example:

https://soma.fandom.com/wiki/Item_Files

Effect

A little discovery regarding the website for a new FG's game

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 10:01:31 +0000

Hey, everyone. It's been some time since I used this forum.

I would like to share a... discovery I made a few hours ago. I've searched the forum, using a couple of related keywords, and no matching posts were found, so maybe, as unbelievable, as it may be, nobody has found it yet, or at least the very least — nobody has posted anything about it, so far. I'm not sure if it's the right place for this kind of post, but there's no forum section that's dedicated to any of the upcoming FG's games.

But what am I talking about? Please, take a look at nextfrictionalgame.com (for those who don't know anything about it — it's a sort of a placeholder website that someday is going to be swapped with the actual page for the game [or games] that FG is currently developing). While I think the fetus on the main page looks cool (I'm not sure if it's only my imagination, but I think that the last time I saw it, it was much smaller), the discovery I wanted to share with you is found in the source code of the page. If you're using Firefox like me, you can RMB-click the page and choose: "View page source".

We're not done yet, though. Now, if you scroll down the page, you will see the following code fragment:

Spoiler below!

The code between and seemed funny to me. It kind of looked like a string of character coded in hexadecimal notation, so I cleared up the code using notepad and CTRL+H function to obtain just the string of numbers.

I've got this:

Spoiler below!

Next, I swapped &colon for :, and &period for ., and used an online hex to text converter (not sure if I can share the link, so just search for "hex to text" on Google) to translate the remaining characters.

I've got the following:

Spoiler below!

So what do you think?

----
Update: So, I found out that the entire "decoding" was pointless, as you could just highlight that portion of the code, using "Inspect Element" option in Firefox, and a similar on Chrome.

UNBIRTH on xp

Wed, 22 May 2019 14:14:57 +0000

hi there! i got an laptop with xp that supports retribution game engine maya and both penumbras. Frictional wasnt specific about unbirth, what can it potentially do to your computer????

Is there a Discord server for Frictional's fans?

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 13:59:36 +0000

I haven't found any Discord servers for SOMA, Penumbra or Amnesia... are there any you know about? Is there an official server?

If there isn't an official server, and you frictional people would like to have one, just let me know, I can make you guys a cool server

EDIT: Just realised this is the off topic forum, not sure that's the correct one...

Also if someone doesn't know what Discord is, just think of IRC of the modern age, but targeted towards video game fans.

Hello!

Sun, 30 Dec 2018 11:57:30 +0000

How is everyone doing today? I get this forum isn't very active anymore, but still, to the people still using this forum, how have you been? What have you done today? Any plans for new year's?

Global horror mods for GTA 4

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 03:06:56 +0000

Hello there!
Do you know some good GTA4 modifications?
I'm looking for horror mods... zombie, for example

Pet lovers here?

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 02:18:39 +0000

Let's talk about pets that are close to your heart, tell us something about your pet. How do you take good care of them, how do you train them? What good memories do you have with your pet?

Hello everyone!

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 08:10:45 +0000

Hello guys, I'm the newest member of the team, for my background, I'm a Photographer and works in an online store. I love cooking Asian foods like Chinese, Japanese and Thai foods.

hi guys! i joined the forum XD!

Sun, 24 Jun 2018 08:23:48 +0000

Hi everyone I just joined the forum and the community I'm sure we will all have a great time!
I can't wait to share my thoughts on games like penumbra and amnesia with you guys and I'm sure we will have a great time for a lot of time XD

anyway im looking forward to meet with you all.
this is one of the best forums there are out there probably

Unbirth freeze patch

Thu, 31 May 2018 15:27:01 +0000

I don't know, if anyone is still interested in playing this but just in case, I might have found a way to eliminate freezes from Unbirth. After spending some time in a debugger, I noticed that whenever the game froze it was in a particular function in "aglScript.dll", and in order to figure out what it was doing I tried disabling the function and I stopped encountering freezes.

For those of you with a hex editor, the function is located at offset 20820, and in order to remove it you simply replace the first three bytes with "C2 04 00" (which is the binary coding of the "ret 4" x86 instruction).

Alternatively you can just download the patched version I've attached to this post.

I managed to get a good deal into the game without any Windows compatibility stuff enabled. Far beyond where I could go without the patch.

Of course it is possible that, at some point in the game, the function will actually be used and the game will break in a silly way, because the function now doesn't do anything but so far I haven't encountered any issues (specific to this patch at least).

Also note that freezing isn't the only way the game is broken, and there are several areas that are broken in various other ways; fortunately here is a patch for one of them, and for the rest you can just use the "map" console command to get past (I have since included this in unbirth_patch.zip).

Here is a walkthrough, in case you don't want to figure everything out on your own.

And in case you can't find a download, somebody uploaded it here.

Edit: I updated the patch adding two more files.

The first allows progressing into the mansion from street1 (same as one linked above but without the ammo patch, which isn't necessary). The second patch makes it possible to complete the puzzle for the cemetery key, which was broken previously. This makes the game completable without the use of the console.

The basement in house3 remains graphically broken but it is still beatable.

If you want to can also manually make the game run in windowed mode by changing "fullscreen = true" to "fullscreen = false" in "misc\default.cfg", which will allow you to alt tab. You might be able to use an external program to make the game borderless fullscreen.

Lastly I also added a backup in case you want to revert to the unpatched version.

Edit 2: Added a walkthrough for the bits not covered in the other walkthrough:

Spoiler below!

Getting the "Cematary" key:

After opening the gate to the street with three houses, enter the basement of the left most house.
The basement is graphically broken but it is still possible to beat despite half the walls not rendering properly.
Run straight ahead and you will encounter some pipes attached to invisible walls. Further ahead you will see coridor that is actually visible; go right and through the door.
This part of the basement isn't hilariously broken, continue ahead and find a Hammer inside a locker (the Cassette tape on top of the hammer is useless but you can pick it up if you wish).
Now make your way out of the basement and go to the top floor, and enter the apartment there.
Pick up the penknife, enter the diningroom and smash the statue with the hammer, to get the bent "Cematary" key.
Enter the apartment on the ground floor, enter the bedroom (door on the left at the end of the hall), use the penknife on the painting of Jesus and pick up the Locker key.
Go back inside the basement but this time, when you reach the visible coridor, turn left instead and use the Locker key on the locked locker to get a Pair of tongs. This is the bit that was broken, since the locker key was spelled incorrectly in the map script.
Use the Pair of tongs on the "Cematary" key to bend it straight. You can now enter the "Cematary".

Tool location:

The other walkthrough gives you a hint on where to find this tool, but since I had way too many issues with finding it I will write down the exact location here.
From the same street as before with three houses go in between the two left most houses and keep turning left until you reach a dead end with a bunch of trash cans in it. The tool is in the right most trash can.

Opening the door to the otherside:

The other walkthrough will get you most of the way but once you get the four-digit code use it to open the locker outside the chemistry room. This will give you two more chemical jars.
Now you have to combine the chemical ingredients in the correct order. If you get it wrong you can use the matches to start over. If you want you can figure it out on your own, the note gives you enough hints but if you just want to get it over with, the correct order is cloride, salt, iron, matches.
After you've made the correct mixture use it on the door at the bottom of the stairs, and enjoy your stay in hell.

The otherside key code:

Inside the third area in the otherside. This is completely optional and is only here for completeness sake. I have no clue how you are supposed to figure this out, perhaps something to do with the plaques in the first area, but the solution is 0264.

Edit 3: plutomaniac pointed out that if you open "misc\config.cfg", and change "name = d3d9" to "name = d3d8", "house3/basement1" will work render properly.

unbirth_backup.zip (Size: 878.16 KB / Downloads: 539)

unbirth_patch.zip (Size: 878.15 KB / Downloads: 640)

what happened to the forum

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 15:47:01 +0000

I think a new bot is attacking us

Assassin's Creed IV：Black Flag for free

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 09:43:02 +0000

Ubisoft celebrates the 10th anniversary of its series of "Assassin's Creed", from December 12 to December 18 at 18:00, players can get Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag for free.
https://free.ubisoft.com/promotions/assa...k-flag/16/

*** touchscreen

Sat, 02 Dec 2017 12:52:23 +0000

Hi there.. May be a long shot but I'm having some atypical trouble with my laptop.

There's a crack in the screen, this causes Windows to think I'm pressing in a lot of places at once and makes Windows go coo coo.
I was able to go in the hardware manager and disable the touch, so now it works like a regular laptop and I was happy again.

Now Windows done some updates and re-enabled this function by itself.. now it's impossible for me to even start anymore because all the presses it "sees" cause it to go in recovery menus and whatnot before I'm started.

Any way to disable the "touch" of a touch screen outside of Windows ?

A question about a book...

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 21:40:09 +0000

Hi guys, I'm writing a book base on the videogame SOMA.
But I have some questions... I mean, I need to know if I can publish that book. Cause I'm afraid to fall into the copyright abyss. Yes, because...

My book, named "The Afterdeath" (in english, the book is in italian for now), is a sci-fi novel about a guy called William Duck. This guy is doing some research in an agency called LSDU (in english: LSCD), an underground place where people study death and what could the humanity find after it. William is doing those research for his dead father, Christopher Duck, who has already worked down there.

So, William finds out that a mysterious guy is getting in William's way to stop him for some reason. This guy, you will found out later, was thinking about a machine able to explore the cosmos. He wants to do this to...

Take ARK back. Yes, ARK, the machine in SOMA where all people, once dead, find themselves inside this thing.

So, I ipotized that ARK, after a couple of years, crashes on the Sun.
And so that guy was trying to create a robot able, as I said before, to reach where ARK is, because he thinks that ARK is still in function on the moon. But that experiment will never see the light, because nobody supported the guy. So, after that, I never mentioned ARK again.

And it isn't that important for the story, I mean, it was an example for saying that this guy is doing experiments about machines and the space.

So, the question is...
Will I get reported for publishing this book, though I credit our lord Frictional Games and their work?

Edit: Okay, so... To be sure of my actions, maybe I might change some things such as ARK's name, but I don't know if I can use its story (life after death and the launch to space).

Remothered: Tormented Fathers

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 03:39:23 +0000

I've seen a couple of threads pop up over the years sharing different upcoming games, and so I thought today I would share with you a game I am very excited about that is releasing for Early Access on Steam on Halloween!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/633360...d_Fathers/

It's a game that follows in the footsteps of the Clock Tower series and Haunting Ground, as well as takes inspiration from a lot of the old school Survival Horror titles.

Please give it a look-see if you're interested!

Blender Open Projects

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 19:27:13 +0000

Hi,

i just renewed my blender cloud subscription to nick some models from open movies and try them as game assets (most probably too highres but..).
And i remembered your open source HPL 1 and with the size of some of your Games/extensions it might be an Idea to collaborate with the Blender Institute for an Open Game?
YoFranky sadly was not to big a success and Blender guys have not tried them selfs at games since then, but quite some work has gone into interoperability since then and there is even funding from valve for better game support.
It would be so great to have an open content game.
Open source even bigger of cause even with old overture engine.
Being able to look the masters over the soulder while they are creating magic is so fascinating.
I love amnesia forthnight for the same reason..
(And your blogposts by the way)
Anyways great fan of your stuff here :-) - keep it up!
I'm thrilled to see new projects from you.

Best,

dronnn

Bonbon, or Where Has MrBehemoth Been?

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 15:47:07 +0000

Hello lovely FG people. I've not been around here for a while, because I've been working with Unreal. My SOMA mod was abandoned. I'm a terrible person. Maybe one day you can forgive me.

In the meantime, there's some stuff I made on my itch.io page. Thought you might like a look. In particular, Aetheric Games (that's mostly just me) is releasing its first commercial game, this Friday 4th August. It's short, cheap and it's called Bonbon.

(I was very kindly given permission to mention my new release here, but please remember that if you have any questions or issues or want to chat about it, the best place to do that would be on itch.io, not the FG forum.)

Cheers!

Net Neutrality is at Risk!

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:59:41 +0000

Alright guys and girls of the Frictional Games community, we've got a serious issue at hand that could potentially change the way we use the internet in a very big way. I'm talking about the Trump Administration's FCC Repeal of the 2015 Net Neutrality Rules.

I don't entirely understand what the repeal would mean but my simple understanding is that without net neutrality, the internet would function a lot like your cable provider. "We are going to charge you for this section of channels, and this section, and this one! Don't want to pay for it? Then you don't get those channels!" except replace "channels" with "websites".

Now I learned about the repeal from the Terraria Community Forums, and they put it very well:

"Like having access to the entire internet? We are at real risk of losing it. The FCC and ISPs could potentially change the way we access the internet by enacting paid prioritization (choosing apps and sites for you), blocking sites, and throttling sites they don't benefit from you accessing. You can help save the open internet by completing and submitting this form to the FCC *Use Proceeding 17-108 "Restoring Internet Freedom". If you would like more information on Net Nuetrality, visit https://netneutrality.internetassociation.org/action/ The form does require a quick comment, and if you'd like help on what to say, check out this article."

So please everyone, take the time to read up on Net Neutrality, form an opinion, and if you side with Net Neutrality, then please complete the form above. It literally took me less than 5 minutes. It was simple and easy.

That is all, thank you for your time!