Comments on: Yet Another Time-Waster

Yet Another Time-Waster

DataPacRat — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:28:49 -0800

The Endless Forest is a strange piece of software (that can be a screensaver), where you control a deer in a, well, endless forest. And so do a bunch of other online players. And you can interact all you like with them - with the minor caveat that deer can't talk.

By: DataPacRat

DataPacRat — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:31:56 -0800

A similar Myst-like "explore the environment without directly talking to other players" game is Noctis, at http://www.anywherebb.com/ (more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis ).

By: HuronBob

HuronBob — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:43:35 -0800

"The Endless Forest game is a Windows screensaver. I guess the cool kids can't play, eh?

By: Miko

Miko — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:51:49 -0800

I don't like that you can only be a male deer.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:53:18 -0800

Female deer would certainly add a level to the interactions.

By: Jofus

Jofus — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:55:50 -0800

...Male deer....can't talk....Too. Many. Jokes...

By: fugitivefromchaingang

fugitivefromchaingang — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:57:14 -0800

I don't like that you can only be a male deer. D'oh!

By: jefgodesky

jefgodesky — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:59:37 -0800

From the Q&A: Will there ever be a Mac version? Since the technology behind The Endless Forest depends strongly on Microsoft's DirectX, this is unlikely. We regret this situation tremendously. We are Mac fans ourselves. But we cannot let technological limitations stop us from expressing ourselves artistically as best as we can. And for the moment, this requires Windows. This made me sad.

By: carter

carter — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:05:51 -0800

D'oh! *That's* a female deer ...

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:07:11 -0800

The Endless Forest is another piece of on-line witchcraft from Entropy8Zuper!.

By: ddf

ddf — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:14:29 -0800

The human-faced deer totally reminds me of Seaman.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:19:05 -0800

Dag, I wanted to be a stag.

By: insomnia_lj

insomnia_lj — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:20:26 -0800

This was created by my netfriend Auriea Harvey (and her partner Michaël Samyn, along with a small team of game developers). Although focusing on game design lately, Auriea and Michaël are very well-known for their webdesign, and have been been mentioned several, several times on MeFi. "And you can interact all you like with them - with the minor caveat that deer can't talk." That said, you can make interesting deer noises at each other. Never underestimate the power of deer flirtation!

By: fidgets

fidgets — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:21:03 -0800

The human-faced deer totally reminds me of Seaman. posted by ddf at 12:14 PM PST on April 27 [!] i was thinking princess mononoke. kinda.

By: cobaltnine

cobaltnine — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:28:40 -0800

There's also that spiffy calliope deer dancing! I just spent a good few minutes mooing and dancing near the bridge. Can't figure out any of this eating stuff yet.

By: shortfuse

shortfuse — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:29:22 -0800

fidgets - I was thinking the same thing, especially after looking at the gallery photos. Then I saw that the creators acknowledge it... somewhat. (Scroll down to design question #9.)

By: shortfuse

shortfuse — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:30:05 -0800

What the hey. I'll quote it: Did the idea of the humanoid face on the deer come from Princess Mononoke? When we asked our concept artist, Lina Kusaite, to design a deer for us, she drew one with a face like that. We know that, like us, she admires Miyazaki's masterpiece. But there are several other occurences of similar creatures in different cultures. Frida Kahlo's self portrait as a hunted stag is one. And Buraq, the horse that carried the profet Muhammed to heaven and back, is often depicted with a human face.

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:33:34 -0800

If you meet a deer who's being a total douchebag, it's probably me.

By: anthill

anthill — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:37:02 -0800

How long until they introduce the pay-as-you go 'wolf in the endless forest' option? I'd sign up.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:43:50 -0800

STOP TRYING TO HUMP ME :(

By: cairnish

cairnish — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:55:03 -0800

Figure's it'd turn into a stag party.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:09:05 -0800

These puns are HURTING AMERICA.

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:32:53 -0800

51 Megs....hmm....

By: redteam

redteam — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:37:31 -0800

This looks really cool but there's only one thing I didn't like about Princess Mononoke and it was that big deer god with the human face. Actually I hated that. Something about the way that looks enrages me. I can't fucking stand it. Oh well, have fun bucking around, folks.

By: ooga_booga

ooga_booga — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:53:14 -0800

If you can't help make things better you're just going to leave? Way to pass the buck.

By: maryh

maryh — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:03:43 -0800

Have a hart- the guy's got every right to hoof it.

By: beerbajay

beerbajay — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:38:48 -0800

redteam: me too! worse yet are characters like these. why can't heroic creatures in fantasy just be animals? Why must we give them horrible softened human features?! WHY!!?!?

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:40:18 -0800

That's it? Someone throws up a link to the blue, and evenyone gushes over a few points? I'd post to MetaTalk to complain, but I'm not about to chew bark over this.

By: Sparx

Sparx — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:56:45 -0800

Glad to hear you're not a chewbarker, Smart Dalek. That would place you in entirely the wrong IP. Rahhhghhh. (Oh, c'mon. You were all thinking it)

By: maryh

maryh — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:04:26 -0800

Huh? I don't fallow, dear.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:13:05 -0800

Chewbarker the Wookie?

By: Sparx

Sparx — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:36:36 -0800

Huh? I don't fallow, dear. I am bested. I fawn in your general direction.

By: maryh

maryh — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:42:11 -0800

Pudu you love, baby?

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:44:09 -0800

If anything the que....I mean deer atmosphere will keep all the homophobic asses away, except mayor of course !

By: Sparx

Sparx — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:08:29 -0800

pudu MEFIstophiles, of course.

By: notsnot

notsnot — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:28:34 -0800

What a neat, gentle, fun game (non-game?). My niece will love this.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:11:09 -0800

Hmm. In brief: the creators are doing this so they can play god.

By: Extopalopaketle

Extopalopaketle — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:23:40 -0800

The game is buggy... My avatar is blind! -- i have no ideer why. Now it's lost its legs! Still! No ideer.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:25:15 -0800

...Ray, a drop of golden sun. Me, a name I call myself. Fah, a long long way to run. Sew, a needle pulling thread. Lah, a note to follow sew. Tea, I drink with jam and bread. That will bring us back to...

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:36:19 -0800

Now it's lost its legs! Nothing like a little ground beef to go with your venison...

By: illovich

illovich — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:49:23 -0800

Since the technology behind The Endless Forest depends strongly on Microsoft's DirectX, this is unlikely. We regret this situation tremendously. We are Mac fans ourselves. But we cannot let technological limitations stop us from expressing ourselves artistically as best as we can. And for the moment, this requires Windows. jefgodesky: This made me sad. Especially since, from what I know about video game/graphics programming Direct X isn't really the tool that comes to mind for the people who want to "[express themselves] artistically as best as [they] can." It may be easier to get started with, but I figure that once you can get started with that, it can't be much harder to go with the more portable and open OpenGL. Oh well. I guess I could install it on my PC--but I use that for WoW for pete's sake!

By: jfuller

jfuller — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 20:00:12 -0800

This is cute but how much of a resource hog is it? Does a 1.9gHz have enough muscle to run it? It takes forever to finish starting up, frequently pauses and then catches up with itself, and the disk light stays on constantly while it's running. Then it takes forever to let go of the pc when you turn it off. Everquest and WOW run fine on this machine. In addition, it's obviously ill-behaved in some respects. At startup it tried to hit the internet, and ZoneAlarm popped up the usual warning about an unrecognized program trying to phone home--shall we let it or shall we not? waiting for policy decision here--but Forest had taken over the screen so thoroughly ZoneAlarm's warning didn't show on top. No way for the user to know that ZA was waiting for input, but of course Forest wasn't going to get to the internet until ZA got the input it wanted. That little contretemps could have gone on quite a long time.... Also, is there any way to make it play with itself? If you don't interact with it at startup it'll eventually burn the image of a sleeping deer-thing into the phosphors. Not exactly what I think of as a screen saver.

By: zardoz

zardoz — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 21:08:17 -0800

Installed it, and it's sloooooow. My 'puter's not a real high-end machine, but it ain't bad, and for such a relatively small program there's some real lag issues there. And yeah, I'd call this a game, not a screensaver.

By: TwelveTwo

TwelveTwo — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 23:30:05 -0800

Interesting. If you make internet users be mute deer in a forest, then they gather around and dance.

By: moonbiter

moonbiter — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:11:07 -0800

It's an incredible resource hog. Took up 200+ MB RAM 1.2+ GB virtual memory on my machine just to get it started. Uses DirectX, not OpenGL, so Windows-only. Like the concept, not too hot on the execution.

By: raygirvan

raygirvan — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 09:08:10 -0800

Female deer would certainly add a level to the interactions. They've probably gone into town to ... see the remake of DOA.

By: Pink Fuzzy Bunny

Pink Fuzzy Bunny — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:05:48 -0800

Pfft, forget wolves, I'd pay to be a virtual hunter with a high powered rifle.