Braid Coming to Windows Today
Posted by Derek Yu Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:42:00 GMT
The long-awaited PC version of Braid is now available on Greenhouse (including a demo), and will be unlocked on Steam around noon PST. The game will also be available through Impulse and through Gamersgate today. The price is $14.95 USD.
TIGdb: Entry for Braid
Oh yeah!
Fuck yeah! D/loading the demo now!
It’s great fun, I’ll probably get it on Steam (don’t know much about Greenhouse’s DRM, but as far as I know you have to activate each time you install the game, so I could just get it on Steam then).
What bugs me is that Blow seems to have forgotten to support gamepads - hope that’ll be dealt with in a patch.
Yes, yes, yes, and thrice yes! Time to get naked and dance around the streets I believe.
Braaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiid
Time to do another 100% run!
Robert: Jon Blow said this in a comment over on the indiegames blog
“The thing is, the gamepad support in Braid relies on knowing exactly what the controller is (in terms of how the visual prompting is set up, for example). It’s just really hard to do that with an arbitrary gamepad.
Besides, the game was designed by playing on the keyboard anyway. You can always use joy2key to map your gamepad to keys.”
So it sounds like not giving generic gamepad support was a conscious decision /:
Finally! Good times, good times. Full version via Greenhouse is 119 MB, btw.
robert: Still downloading for me so I can’t check, but you should be able to use Joy2Key to enable joypad use. It’s available at the first result from a Google search (at electracode.com).
As a follow-up, the game recognizes an Xbox 360 controller automatically, even changing the instructional icons above your head to match it.
I downloaded the demo version, but it seems to have a problem with my graphics card. I can hear the sounds but my screen is black. Does Braid need Shader 2.0 support?
I wouldn’t think so Bleagle, as it runs on my pretty ancient PC. Then again I did get a new (cheap) graphics card 3 years ago…
Yes, Braid needs shader model 2 support. But any graphics card that doesn’t support shader 2 would be too slow to draw all the pixels Braid draws (it’s a lot).
Sorry about the high system requirements, but that’s just the game that we ended up making.
Oh, I am going to recommend that the various download locations post the system requirements today.
Looks like the lifetime of my GF5500 FX comes to an end, I am missing out on too many games due to the SM 2.0 requirement.
@Bremze: Yeah, my Geforce MX 440 has the same problem. I couldnt play Portal because of that, too. But now I really need to get a new pc. I cant ignore Braid. I just hope it’ll be worth it…
I don’t gtive a shit anymore. One year is too long a wait, I’m not going to be blow’s bitch.
what if you already played prince of persia?
And remember, if you’re feeling frustrated with the puzzles, go read the official walkthrough.
Bremze that’s quite strange because even my freaking old geforce 5200 fx had shader model 2.0
WHOOOOOOOOP!
How do I tell if I have Shader Model 2?
Tried the demo – it ran excruciatingly slow and with no vsync, destroying the pretty graphics with tearing. There’s no option to enable vsync in the game, but when I forced on vsync in my driver settings, the game ran much faster overall, but with noticably variable speed. Apparently game speed is tied to the video framerate? This feels buggy.
Odd, I’m in europe, steam says that it has been released but there is no button to purchase it.
Solved, Steam typically has sync problems like that when a game is just being released.
BELIEVE, the year delay was very probably imposed by MS.
And people here - the big question on this - is there an editor?
$14.95?
This is an old game with less than 10 hours of gameplay, and I am amazed that they would ask so much for it. Especially in today’s economy.
Yea, steam is being weird. I was really hoping to DL it within the next hour so I could play it on my cross-country flight this afternoon.
I guess I’ll just have to play through cockpit compo entries instead.
If hours of gameplay = quality, then Portal is a piece of shit not worth even the $10 it fetches on ebay.
Ack, ignore my last comment, I can’t believe I bit. :(
I’ve been waiting for this for ages, and now, when it finally comes out, I have a huge paper to write.
sigh
The demo says “TODO: has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
If what vsync says is true, I wouldn’t buy it even if it worked for me. A PC game without vsync capability is immediate and total fail.
Mr. vsync: There was a vsync bug in the initial version that was affecting a lot of people; I am rolling out a fix currently.
As for the game speed slowing down / varying in-game, the most likely cause is just that your video card can’t draw this many pixels. But if you do have a high-end video card, it is possible it’s a bug (and if so I will fix it!)
Solved me too, and i want it on my steam list damnit!!! i have it on xbox but i just need it on my pc, as i already did for aquaria, buying it two times (one from bit blot site and a year after again from steam :P)
Is anyone else getting big-time slowdown? I am, but only when I enter the 3rd World for some reason. Task manager said it was taking up 298,948 K of cpu.
Frankly, I wasn’t convinced of Braid. I thought it only got the status as that “big indie hit” because it is fun, pretty flawless and looks great, which made it a good candidate for that current hype for few indie games. I’ve now played the demo for a while and I’m convinced that Braid is great, special and totally deserves the recognition it got. That’s not to say it’s one of the only games, many more indie games should be hyped like this. Still, Braid seems to be well deserving it anyway. I’ll buy it as soon as it is on Steam.
By the way, about vsync: Jonathan Blows Braid blog seems to be down at the moment, but he posted that he is aware of the problem and it is going to be fixed very soon. There is even a way to manually enable VSync already using a commandline parameter, unfortunately I don’t remember it. But, really, as he said in that blog entry, it’s just a bug. If your computer can handle it, VSync should automatically be activated anyway. I didn’t have a problem with it myself.
Braid is amazing. Now please add gamepad support so I can play it on the HDTV more easily. Joy2Key is not a good option, too much hassle. :D
Why is it showing up as unlocking tomorrow on Steam instead of today? (Canadian thing only?)
The Steam page now says it’s coming out tomorrow at 5pm PST. Nuts.
Same in Germany. They apparently simply postponed the Steam release yet another day. I wonder if that might be intentional, or if it’s just due to some accident. Either way, I suppose more people will buy it from one of the other sites, which I think is a good thing :)
By the way, Blow released an updated demo which should fix the vsync-issue and potentially also solves the problem with crashes. As the blog is still hard to reach I’ve included the link to the updated demo in my nickname, just click it.
Got the demo on Greenhouse (which is proving to be really nice) and I’ll definitely be buying it soon. Really a beautiful game, in all aspects.
It’s good stuff, well worth the wait.
I love platform based puzzle games. Especially ones with cool mechanics such as this. The most instantly addicted I’ve been to a game since World of Goo.
And here it goes.. The confusion in the Steam Store is settled, Braid is now officially available from all four distributors :)
Stayed up till 3 in the morning to play this and it didn’t disappoint. I do feel like it takes a bit too much from Mario, but oh well.
No joystick support = what the F?!?!?
This is lovely, Jon. I bought it on Greenhouse, and I must say that I was really charmed by it. Beautiful and also mentally challenging in a rare way.
I sort of wish you had added transitional animations for the ladders though… there’s something jarring about the ladder climbing which takes me out of the game world a bit. I think part of the problem is that he glides too smoothly up and down the ladders… he should pulse up them like a real person.
This game ain’t work on my computer.
I ain’t buyin this shit.
The game took me about five hours to complete. It was excellent!
Most of the puzzle pieces were pretty easy to get, although there were a good three or four which had me confused for a bit.
I think it could have used another stage or two and some harder puzzles, but all in all I really enjoyed it. The last bit was awesome.
Can someone from the eurozone who bought Braid via Greenhouse please tell me if the VAT is added to the final price, or if you just pay the correct dollar price (i.e. in this case ~11,35€)? Thanks :)
I lurve this game :) Bought on Steam, played with my logitech controller via JoyToKey.
Just got it on Steam. Pretty damn cool game. Now I understand what everyone is talking about.
Remember, that’s $14.95 US fiat dollars.
Already playing. Damn, it’s harder that I thought.
No that’s not $14.95 US fiat dollars. That’s something 18.65 US fiat dollars. audio conferenza
I waited too long for this and damn, i don’t ‘get it’. Next.
Played the demo and I can say it doesn’t disappoint. But it’s pity the framerate on my lap is so low - floating between 5fps and 15fps.
Meh, who cares about this traitorous crap. Oh well, at least it didnt take years to come to PC, like some other traitor - Halo - did.
Played the demo. It’s excellent, but I have serious length concerns. I’m waffling over whether to buy it now, or wait for the inevitable Steam Sale.
You know, I enjoyed the game, but so much about it screams “have never designed or possibly played a PC game before”:
-Refresh rate: Locked to 60hz, crashes if forced to anything higher. Hello eyestrain.
-Alt-enter for Window mode (as a workaround the refresh rate): runs fine except game viewing area is vertically squashed, makes playing impossible.
-Gamepads: Does not support non-360 pads, which is terrible considering pads designed for PC come with superior configuration software.
-Keyboard: Does not support the numpad arrow keys. WTF? Does not allow any kind of key binding.
I’ve unlocked worlds 2-6, and cleared the first three worlds (i.e., got all puzzle pieces). Question – aside from the lairs, is there any challenge to the game aside from getting puzzle pieces? It seems like the levels are otherwise just walk from left to right and win. Kind of odd.
The only way I can get to run the game with any semblance of smoothness is at 10 fps.
orz
What exactly does this mean, and what can I do to fix it?
TODO: has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
@Consarnit: You can’t beat the game unless you get all the puzzle pieces. Getting the puzzle pieces is the point of the game, “completing” the levels is ancilary. It’s a puzzle platformer, not an action platformer.
@JoseHeno, put -windowed after the target in a shortcut to the game. Unfortunately you have to run it windowed until Blow fixes it (see his blog).
Played the full version at a friend’s house, and while I’m impressed with the mechanics and most of the puzzle design (also, contrary to what I heard there’s plenty of content for a puzzle game), I don’t find it a particularly enjoyable game. There were too many instances where I quickly figured out how to solve a puzzle, but the enaction of the solution was extremely fiddly. This lead to long periods of trial-and-error tedium.
I probably suck at platformers, but still…
“-Refresh rate: Locked to 60hz, crashes if forced to anything higher. Hello eyestrain.”
Yeah, that is pretty bad. I’m very sensitive to this, so I can’t use 60hz more than five minutes before I get a headache for the rest of the day.
I did find Braid playable in windowed mode, but I’m disappointed there’s no proper menu where you can set different resolution/refresh rate settings.
Blow posted that he is going to include resolution settings sometime soon. He didn’t want to do this, because all the art was hand drawn for exactly this one resolution. But I suppose everyone would rather play with downscaled graphics than not at all.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up for changable refresh rates, though. He said it is locked at 60HZ for the platforming physics to be most precise. But then again I know nothing about programming.
I have very little technical insight, but as it’s possible to run the game in windowed mode and with 85 Hz (as that’s the refresh rate my desktop uses), I don’t quite see why it shouldn’t be possible to do the same in full-screen mode as well…
I know I’m not the only one who have serious problems with games that run 60 Hz. Without the windowed mode (which should have been easier to access), I would not have been able to play this game at all.
Well, it’s just kind of weird to have a level structure where passing the levels is secondary to collecting the collectibles. Maybe it’s a meta-commentary of some sort, but it’s dislocating to say the least. Why not make the collectibles requirements for beating the level or, alternatively, make it possible to enter the levels in any order from the get go?
Because if collectibles are requirements for beating the level, then you can’t get any further in the game once you reach a puzzle you are stumped on. This is a classic problem with puzzle games and is one of the reasons games have been getting easy to the point of lameness.
The thing is, you could run fullscreen at 85hz but the game would be running at 60hz, so some frames would be longer than others, so it would look stuttery. However, maybe this would be preferable to the flickering of CRTs. I don’t know, I haven’t used a CRT in 7 years (for this exact reason).
Dammit Jon, I really love Braid but you need to stop pushing the game’s inadequacies onto the platform. Yes, some people still use CRTs, and have different refresh rates and resolutions and video cards and input devices. It sucks having to accommodate all this but it is NOT impossible. It takes extra effort from the developer but it’s worth it. Your message will reach a much larger audience.
I would hate to see your future games be console only because of these small annoyances. Just give the PC people options and they’ll be happy. Sure, this means that someone is probably playing Braid at 5 fps, 640x480, and with a Gravis joystick but LET THEM. Better they see the game like that than not at all.
PC gaming is all about giving the options to the consumer. Console gaming is all about keeping the options in the hand of the company.
“The thing is, you could run fullscreen at 85hz but the game would be running at 60hz, so some frames would be longer than others, so it would look stuttery. However, maybe this would be preferable to the flickering of CRTs.”
It would, believe me. As I said, I play it in windowed mode which means that the screen refresh rate is 85Hz while the game updates at 60Hz, and it looks pretty smooth to me. So I don’t quite see the problem. Include a warning about it if you want, but please give us the option to run it with a proper refresh rate.
“Because if collectibles are requirements for beating the level, then you can’t get any further in the game once you reach a puzzle you are stumped on.”
Well, that’s a partial (and I think inadequate) explanation – though I appreciate getting an answer at all!
First, it’s inadequate because it doesn’t explain why you have to enter the levels in order. Indeed, requiring the players to enter the levels in order (with the very small exception of worlds 5 and 6 or whichever they were opening at the same time) belies the claim of a “nonlinear” story (at least in terms of the story’s presentation). The linearity is strong with this one. It’s just you spend a lot of time backtracking.
Second, it doesn’t explain why you don’t have some collectibles, which are easier to get, required to clear the level, or some other kind of obstacles, which are harder to clear than those currently in the game, in the player’s path. Having the levels so short and easy means that beating the is a source of absolutely no satisfaction. The only satisfaction comes from solving the puzzles. Why rob the player of a sense of satisfaction? Why not let him earn it with more interesting level challenges?
Third, I note that the combination of very easy levels and relatively large number of time-stuck keys, levers, and enemies actually makes the time time-traveling as a way of avoiding death or dead-ends significantly less meaningful. The only time I really died (in the parts I’ve played) is to the bunnies (who actually kill me relatively regularly). And I’ve had to quit and reload levels fairly often because I’ve dead-ended them. The time-traveling doesn’t even reduce replaying that much because the time-stuck aspects, or coordinated shadow, or whatever often makes traveling backwards in time an inadequate way of getting back to where you were before.
This last point sort of is what it is. There’s no reason the game had to make its rewind feature a perfect way of avoiding dead-ends and boring replaying. But that’s how most reviewers (and I seem to think the game’s own publicity) described it.
Consarnit reminded me, the thing that really annoyed me (even more than solution-death) was puzzle state resetting. For me it wasted quite a bit of time. If there was also an absolute state-rewind, that affected even the time-immune objects and thus just undid the player’s actions, it wouldn’t be a problem. I understand such complexity isn’t desirable on consoles, but as a PC gamer I would’ve appreciated it greatly.
Hrm? Leaving the level from the door you came in, then re-entering the level resets the puzzles. I found that fairly quick and painless.
@ Zyrxil – the time adds up on the trickier unrewindable puzzles.
You guys got the 360 pad to work with yours? No such like with mine.
Anywho, finally bought this. I have to say, the graphics, music and most of the gameplay is quality, but I don’t think the story could have been much worse.
Really, if I’m interpreting this correctly, there’s some super awkward metaphor relating the Manhattan project to an abusive relationship. I also became more and more tempted to just skip the text-books as they were so disconnected from the gameplay except for vague descriptions of the level’s gimmick.
I’d rather there be no story than have to read bizarre passages about explosions being candy stores.
Fuck this commercial bullshit. Who cares?
We can’t let that be the last comment. Even if it is (hopefully) a joke.
I’ve been enjoying the game the past few days. That includes both the gameplay and the story, which I see not everyone appreciates. There are some ideas raised of the sort that you don’t often see in games.
Now if we could just do something about Blow’s overly brief (ahem) development period. :)
the system requirements are too high. I have a dual core, and this is a 2D Game with no shader effects, at least no visible ones, but it runs with very view fps. This means the code behind the scenes is bad. This game was developed for XBox360 and optimised for that, and after that it was ported very lame to the PC.
No Gamepad support No Options
you cant config the input you cant config the graphics quality you cant config anything
As long as it is still this bad, I would not pay any money for it.
It does have shader effects actually – shader 2.0 is required. The game was also developed for the PC, not the XBLA. I agree about the gamepad support and lack of config options, but there was a new update to the game recently that allows you to change the resolution and fixes some of the low fps bugs.