A Tale of Two Demos

Recently I heard about this alpha version of a demo that a team was making. It sounded intersting. So I decided to check it out. Downloaded the files and tried to run the program. Got an error message stating that "msvcr110.dll" was missing. WTF?

I really wanted to check out the game. Therefore I researched the file and found that it was a Visual Studio 2011 redistributable runtime file. Microsoft releases their redistributables for free. I downloaded and installed Microsoft's install. Then the game worked. I was irked that I had to go through all this trouble.

The game was not bad. It was not good. With the broken install, I decided to pass on even mentioning the name here. Contrast this with another demo I just checked out today: NeonJack. This download came with a readme file that explained everything I needed to know quickly. The executable worked right out of the box.

Initially I tried running NeonJack using a small screen. That was no good. I could not see the track well enough to drive in it. Even with a bigger screen, I had trouble when I hit the gas too much. I only used my laptop and keyboard to play the game. It is supposed to be played using an Occulus Rift Virtual Reality headset.

Good luck to the people at Shinyfish software. They might have a winner here with NeonJack. I was impressed that the lead developer quick his day job to work on the game. This was especially surprising as his day job was mobile game development.