Post by: Zangi on November 23, 2015, 01:41:37 pm
The Red Solstice (http://store.steampowered.com/app/265590).
You ever play custom mod games in Warcraft 3 / Starcraft: Brood War? No, it is not DOTA. I mean like the Raccoon City types(I don't even know the original map names) where you control a few guys in a city overrun by whatever the heck.
So yea, I've been playing the multiplayer on and off. The biggest problem with it is that the community is pretty damn small. You won't find a full game most days of the week, after work hours. Usually activity picks up after a sale, before it goes back to being mostly empty.
Obviously, there seems to be problems with new folk clashing with vets, like always. I havn't seen that problem much, but yea, I guess its cause I try not to care what people have in their loadouts and avoid the games on 'easy' difficulty like the plague... cause its a snorefest till the later half and the experience rewarded is the equivalent of a turd under the christmas tree.
Games tend to last 50-60 minutes on a successful run, normal speed.
Edit:
Discussion related to the homeless is ok. We expect it to die in a day or two anyways.
If popularity and collective I-want-to-post-about-it last more then 2 days, then they should be able to afford their own home.
Post by: Ozyton on November 23, 2015, 02:26:12 pm
I found that style of game to be pretty cool, controlling a single guy RTS style. I didn't even know what DOTA was until League of Legends came out, even though it was pretty much the only thing that showed up in Use Map Settings and I had to sift through pages and pages of that crap to find the interesting maps. Probably would have preferred it to be more like what Alien Swarm became in terms of controls, but it's close enough.
But yeah, I have a group of friends to play this and other games on rare occasions when we all feel like it. (We also sometimes do things like Guns of Icarus Online, sometimes Interstellar Marines, and we're thinking of doing Polaris: Lost Colony at some point when it gets a bit more features and polish.) The problem with doing these kinds of things on Bay12, in my experience, is that interest is high near the start but we all have different schedules and tastes so interest wanes pretty fast. Unless you manage to find a group that's really dedicated and interested in playing.
On a side note, I have a copy of Red Solstice available in the Christmas giveaway thread if you're interested in a free copy.
Post by: Mephisto on November 23, 2015, 04:48:27 pm
The only mention I see on the forums is one that I made.
My request in the "recommend me a game" thread resulted in me purchasing Wurm Unlimited (which I recommend if it interests you, but we've got a thread on it already). The next week, however, Grav went on sale. I haven't played enough to give a recommendation but it's interesting. Once I get home from work and find the Christmas thread mentioned previously, I'll put up some gift copies.
Post by: miauw62 on November 23, 2015, 05:47:29 pm
It's very fun, if rather pointless since I never figured out how to go to the moon.
Oh and it also has this bullet hell minigame thing which is pretty fun, but I prefer just going fast.
Post by: Cthulhu on November 24, 2015, 12:26:49 am
Not enough content to warrant a buy right now, but you might disagree. Swarms of very persistent enemies are annoying, sometimes it feels like a zombie game. It's also got a blocky Thirty Flights of Loving aesthetic, I feel like a denser voxelstein (http://voxelstein3d.sourceforge.net/screen6.png) look would take better advantage of destructibility.
Also Assassin's Creed Syndicate. It feels like they've finally gotten the hang of the changes they made with Unity, combat is pretty fun and does the batman rhythm combat without turning it into a boring slog like every other similar game.
Post by: Zangi on December 15, 2015, 03:28:53 pm
Picked this up for free from the PS4 monthly free game thing.
Fun little co-op game, all the characters play very differently and the one liners have decent character and humor in em.
Though, my main problem is the fact that picking up gold is FFA, rather then shared. Someone could literally pick up 5k gold, while someone else only picks up 500 gold in a round. That gold is spent to level up skills.
I don't like it, having to be proactive about getting ahead and picking up the gold before others if I want more then 1k gold per round. It also sucks to see someone consistently getting ahead and picking up all the gold(especially at the end of stage exit)... going out of their way to grab the gold while everyone else is fighting.
At the least, typical stages/rounds last around 10-15 minutes at most.
Post by: itisnotlogical on December 16, 2015, 03:27:36 pm
It's a free-to-play hybrid between Diablo's action-RPG game play with more traditional MMO exploring and socializing. There's three specs for each class, and every character can turn into a titular Devilian for increased power and unique abilities.
It's honestly quite fun, I haven't experienced any play-to-win paywalls after playing for about 10 hours. There's lockboxes and standard monetization stuff, but it's very unobtrusive and low-key. The community's pretty small right now so its long-term prospects are uncertain. I'll probably drop some money on it, I'd like this game to succeed.
Post by: Drakale on December 16, 2015, 03:45:37 pm
Dumb yet strangely fun little online game where you eat lesser inferior globs in order to become the greatest. Good for wasting 10 min and get eaten by a gigantic obama.
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on December 16, 2015, 03:57:28 pm
EDIT: Also check out M.A.V.
Post by: Gabeux on December 16, 2015, 11:17:18 pm
Grav (http://store.steampowered.com/app/332500/)
The only mention I see on the forums is one that I made.
My request in the "recommend me a game" thread resulted in me purchasing Wurm Unlimited (which I recommend if it interests you, but we've got a thread on it already). The next week, however, Grav went on sale. I haven't played enough to give a recommendation but it's interesting. Once I get home from work and find the Christmas thread mentioned previously, I'll put up some gift copies.
Don't want to be that guy, but..I was going to write a review for Grav but felt too lazy. So here's my take:
Grav is insanely grind-oriented and it's pretty boring to get to fun stuff. You can also get easily griefed on multiplayer games (which the devs seem to always find a way to prevent, but still).
It also seems to take a long while between updates, which don't seem to add a whole lot of new things to warrant checking out at every release.
However, I did misteriously spend a lot of time on it, and even though it plays as a default mob-grinder MMO with Minecraft under the hood, I believe it has potential if they were to stop with the MMO mentality that pisses me the **** out. I think it reminds me of some old games that I can't really recall.
It's one of the cases I recommend staying away from it until it is released, and then checking trailers and reviews before jumping in.
I can also say the same thing about TerraTech, except once you learn how to get around in TerraTech you can cut the ""grind"" down by around 75% (or maybe more now that selling parts seem easier).
PS: I only played this game on singleplayer, and what I heard is that there's less grind in MP because you can share resources, and maybe there are multiplayer bonuses.
-
PS2: I forgot to include my contribution to the thread.
FortressCraft Evolved (http://store.steampowered.com/app/254200/) probably didn't as well as it could because of its name. But it's more Factorio and less Minecraft.
It's different enough from both to be it's own thing, though, so I think the naming was exceptionally terrible.
Problem with it is that it's insanely time consuming to do the kind of fun stuff you can do on Factorio from the Get Go, and even though it's not on EA, it's DEFINITELY not finished.
But if you like automation as much as I do, check a few videos and screens. It's a pleasant surprise, and the developer is really active and usually engages in conversations regarding the future of the game.
I just don't like the fact that it's stated as a full game, but I enjoyed playing it and I'll actually finish it after I'm done murdering goblins and dancing in taverns in DF.
Post by: Zangi on January 12, 2016, 04:16:21 pm
http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=532757
Day 1 purchase.
The TEW series is a wrestling manager simulator. There are demos available for them. (http://www.greydogsoftware.com/index.php?page=demos) You can expect more of the same with TEW2016. You are a booker or the owner of a company/promotion. You pretty much manage/decide everything, from who to hire, when to put on shows... who wins, who loses and a whole bunch of other details.
Though... the game pretty much boils down to a vehicle for the player's imagination... Kinda like a playhouse Sims version of a wrestling manager game. Its popularity mainly being in the real life equivalent mods for many of the other players. (I personally just stick to the in-game universe.)
In TEW2013, The AI companies/promotions can be considered on the barely passable end and they have trouble growing past certain sizes on their own. Generally, not considered too big a threat...
Meh, someone else could probably make a better write-up, so this is good nuff.
Post by: Sonlirain on January 12, 2016, 11:15:56 pm
http://store.steampowered.com/app/212480
It's a kart racer.
And a good one. Probably best of all mario kart clones available on PC.
Supports Xbox 360 controllers (but will support any off brand controller as well.)
How to describe it?
Well it's Mario Kart but with sonic and many sega owned (or guest) characters.
The 2 main differences would be the tracks changing a bit between laps.
For example lap 1 has you racing over a sky island. Lap 2 has bits of the land being torn off when the initially idyllic isle gets attacked and turned into a warzone. Lap 3 basically takes place in airplanes because most of the island is reduced to chunks floating in the void.
It's probably my favorite racing game and i give it a 9/10.
Post by: Folly on January 13, 2016, 01:45:43 am
A game called just came out of early access and my friend introduced it to me.
It's a free-to-play hybrid between Diablo's action-RPG game play with more traditional MMO exploring and socializing. There's three specs for each class, and every character can turn into a titular Devilian for increased power and unique abilities.
It's honestly quite fun, I haven't experienced any play-to-win paywalls after playing for about 10 hours. There's lockboxes and standard monetization stuff, but it's very unobtrusive and low-key. The community's pretty small right now so its long-term prospects are uncertain. I'll probably drop some money on it, I'd like this game to succeed.
(http://[/url)
I played this to max level. Inexplicably, they turn off matchmaking at max level, forcing people to find groups in chat, which might not be the worst thing in the world if they had any sort of filter for the gold sellers, but they don't.
I ran Hell+2 dungeons 25 times without getting a single upgrade before I said **** it, uninstalled, and joined the dozens of other people ranting on reddit about the same issues.
Devilian was localized by Trion, the same company responsible for several other noteworthy games.
Rift was the first game I played from Trion, developed by them, I enjoyed that MMO for several years. Unfortunately, like most other MMO's, they failed to innovate at all with their expansions, instead letting the game become stale and eventually unplayable.
Defiance was, and still is, one of a very small number of respectable MMO FPS games. Unfortunately they never did get raids in, or any meaningful endgame progression, so my experience there was short-lived.
ArcheAge was Trion's first big project that involved localizing rather than developing. AA had a lot of social aspects that brought players together in fun and unique ways, which I greatly appreciated. Sadly, they patched in dramatically more powerful gear with each patch, which was also dramatically more expensive, so that just half a year after launch it costed thousands of US dollars to maintain any semblance of competitiveness.
Trove was a great attempt to recreate Minecraft's building experience, while also having refined combat and lots of unique classes. I had very high hopes for this one, but then they made it exceedingly difficult to collect the basic building block colors, so players couldn't even construct simple structures without hundreds of hours of farming. Also I found the endgame raids lackluster, and class balance severely lacking.
Then came Devilian. I don't know why I let myself believe this time would be different..but I actually got my hopes up, and even bought the founders package. I only hope that whatever Trion comes out with next, I'll have the strength to just say No.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 13, 2016, 03:17:45 am
The Red Solstice shares some of the WC3 issues of just being a little to hard and a little to unfun. I wish there where respawn beacons (a.k.a. Helldivers) around the map or the medic had more tools (not that the game bothers very much to tell you that you are about to be rez'd).
Anyway, other extra game - the ungoogle-able "Enemy". It's quite fun
Post by: Majestic7 on January 13, 2016, 03:41:33 am
When I want to relax for 20 mins or so, I tend to play one mission for just that.
Post by: Eek-A-Mouse on January 13, 2016, 04:57:00 am
Post by: Mephisto on January 13, 2016, 08:18:11 am
That's Party Hard.
Post by: Bouchart on January 13, 2016, 09:09:41 am
I played a little of it. The English is incomprehensible, and I attacked a tree with an axe and it dodged. I attacked that tree again and scored a headshot.
Post by: Zangi on April 25, 2016, 10:31:11 am
TEW2016 demo is gonna drop sometime today. You'll be able to play 2 months and the save can be carried over to the full game. The full editor will be available too, I think.
Forum: http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=239
Post by: Parsely on April 25, 2016, 11:12:33 am
There are a couple alternate endings but, though this game has no sequel and thus no need for a canonical ending, none of them actually happen at the end of the game, so they're more like a bonus if you decide to take the treacherous path, but I respect the fact that the game does more than pay lip service to your choices by actually acting out the consequences for you in-game and in cutscenes. Not to mention the campaign has a huge branching path full of choices for you to make. I'm fairly sure that there are even missions that you have to play the game multiple times to experience, but I'm still only on my first playthrough because I've been spending so much time going back and trying different choices, as well as trying to complete optional objectives to see how they influence future missions.
Another huge thing is that in the campaign missions, almost all of the human units have their own dialogue. Even in Fire Emblem there are mooks here and there, but not in Original War. Everybody's got a name, a job, and a personality. It's amazing I tell you.
I haven't even gotten to the premise. You're an American soldier who is part of a special force assigned to go back to prehistoric times to seize this priceless mineral before those dirty Communists even exist, and move it to America for it to be discovered two million years in the future. Did I also mention that you can teach ape men to use M16s? Be careful with them though. Ugg could be your great-great-great-grandfather!
Post by: Yoink on April 25, 2016, 11:23:34 am
Have you ever been in your room trying to sleep but the residents somewhere around you demand on partying at 3AM? Have you then wanted to sneak around with a large knife and fix the problem?I remember really liking that game's art style and kinda wanting to play it... but the premise was just too awful for me to swallow. :-\
That's Party Hard.
I think I'd feel less uncomfortable/evil playing a gosh-darned Hitler simulator.
Now if they made a flipped version of the game where you track down the neighbours who called the cops and ruined your party and apply to them a most totally glorious horrendous cascade of serious-nasty beatdowns, well I would buy that for sure. Hell, I'd probably even pre-order it. :P
Survive Me Miolhr is one of the most unbearably awful games I've seen on Steam in a long time.That's amazing. You should post the second line as an actual Steam review for massive damage.
I played a little of it. The English is incomprehensible, and I attacked a tree with an axe and it dodged. I attacked that tree again and scored a headshot.
Post by: Gigalith on April 25, 2016, 02:13:02 pm
The basic premise is simple: thwack each other with weapons and use armor when being thwacked. But it's got this understated slightly bizarre Japanese style. There's a typical elemental alignment system to the weapons/armors, but then there's Dark Weapons, which are instant death if they hit. Most cards are one-use, except for Miracle cards, which cost MP but stay with you. Some cards can reflect attacks, or "flick" them at some random hapless player, which might be you. You can summon Gods for meatshields. There's bunch of wacky status effects, one of which heals every turn, with the increasing risk of instant death.
There's also an economy--you can buy and sell cards to each other. In fact, you can force another player to buy your stuff, and if they can't afford it, it absorbs MP and then HP. Yes, that's right. You can sell someone to death. You can call it capital punishment.
I'm sorry.
It's got plenty of weird interactions for my inner Johnny, with 0% of the price of actual M:TG. It's also chaotic enough that it's still fun just against the AI.
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 25, 2016, 07:48:00 pm
Post by: nenjin on April 25, 2016, 07:52:43 pm
God Field (http://www.kongregate.com/games/guuji/godfield) is flash not-CCG game. There's no deckbuilding--It's sorta like that Magic variant where everyone shares the same deck. If you can get past the engrish, it's a darn cool game. I've played it on and off for years.
The basic premise is simple: thwack each other with weapons and use armor when being thwacked. But it's got this understated slightly bizarre Japanese style. There's a typical elemental alignment system to the weapons/armors, but then there's Dark Weapons, which are instant death if they hit. Most cards are one-use, except for Miracle cards, which cost MP but stay with you. Some cards can reflect attacks, or "flick" them at some random hapless player, which might be you. You can summon Gods for meatshields. There's bunch of wacky status effects, one of which heals every turn, with the increasing risk of instant death.
There's also an economy--you can buy and sell cards to each other. In fact, you can force another player to buy your stuff, and if they can't afford it, it absorbs MP and then HP. Yes, that's right. You can sell someone to death. You can call it capital punishment.
I'm sorry.
It's got plenty of weird interactions for my inner Johnny, with 0% of the price of actual M:TG. It's also chaotic enough that it's still fun just against the AI.
I think I'm sold.
-edit-
Ha, or not. Definitely was not the format I expected.
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 26, 2016, 10:53:58 am
After a long period of minor updates, Yandere Dev is within months of adding the first rival to the game. (https://yanderedev.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/indestructible-rival/)
Quote from: YandereDev, emphasis mine
I’ve been very satisfied with my progress recently! I’m really happy with what I’ve been able to add to the game over the past 11 days. I feel confident that the next build will probably be ready on May 1st. After that, there are really only one or two other elimination methods I can implement without a rival present at school…in other words, I won’t be able to continue adding new elimination methods without adding a rival. So, within the next few months, it will become necessary to add the first official rival in order to continue development! She’s coming soon!
I've long since stopped downloading builds of Yandere Simulator, so the news that it might actually be a game soon is pretty exciting.
Post by: Anvilfolk on April 26, 2016, 12:46:41 pm
(http://img.squakenet.com/snapshot/7037/17102-LordMonarch.jpg)
Lord Monarch (http://www.falcom.com/monarch/index_e.html) is an old, freeware hands-off real strategy game about territory control. The core gameplay is always the same: build bases to control adjacent tiles to have more minions to make more money and expand expand expand.
You can command all of your units, but are likely better off setting some default orders and doing some fairly occasional important meddling, like blocking off a bridge or building a new one, to access new areas.
Also, depending on the map, you're either in feudal japan, building a fast-food empire, in space, or whatever weird tileset that map has!
I've come back to it every few years for over a decade now :) And if the game freezes every now and then, just disable music and sounds.
Post by: Parsely on April 26, 2016, 01:43:03 pm
Sounds like Populous.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Lord Monarch (http://www.falcom.com/monarch/index_e.html) is an old, freeware hands-off real strategy game about territory control. The core gameplay is always the same: build bases to control adjacent tiles to have more minions to make more money and expand expand expand.
You can command all of your units, but are likely better off setting some default orders and doing some fairly occasional important meddling, like blocking off a bridge or building a new one, to access new areas.
Also, depending on the map, you're either in feudal japan, building a fast-food empire, in space, or whatever weird tileset that map has!
I've come back to it every few years for over a decade now :) And if the game freezes every now and then, just disable music and sounds.
Post by: Gigalith on April 26, 2016, 02:40:16 pm
(nitpick: The feudal tileset is actually Three Kingdoms period China.)
Another free game by Falcom is actually a complete full retail game in Japan, released for free in English online. Vantage Master! (http://www.falcom.com/vantage/index_e.html)
It's an isometric tactics game similar to Chess, in that you have a "king" piece (the Master) and you're trying to kill the other dude before he kills you. You summon monsters to take Mana Stones, to get more Mana, to summon more monsters, to eventually smash the other Master's face. Except what's more likely to happen is that the other master will have gotten that Ae-Farrion in range and NOO INSTAGIBBED! Yeah, it's hard.
It's remarkably well balanced, and the extremely important elemental rock-paper-scissors keeps the monsters in check. The best monsters aren't necessarily the most powerful in combat, but the most useful for the current situation.
Another odd feature is that the game is almost completely or completely (I forgot which) deterministic. There's just so many tiny factors (experience, position, day/night cycle) that influence attacks and make it interesting.
By the way, the "easy" mode campaign is not actually easy. It just means that the enemies will be slightly underleveled. It's better to just tough it out on Normal. (It builds character, ding dang it!)
Post by: Frumple on April 26, 2016, 03:08:33 pm
Sounds like Populous.It's almost nothing like populous :P
Definitely pretty fun for a short go at it, though. Also yes, the later levels get brutally hard. Feels good when you figure out how to
Post by: Anvilfolk on April 26, 2016, 03:26:02 pm
(nitpick: The feudal tileset is actually Three Kingdoms period China.)
Another free game by Falcom is actually a complete full retail game in Japan, released for free in English online. Vantage Master! (http://www.falcom.com/vantage/index_e.html)
Thanks for the heads up on both counts! Will have to look into Vantage Master!
Post by: Nighthawk on May 03, 2016, 08:51:56 am
I've been playing for three hours or so, and goodness me the combat in this game is better than 90% of games I've played, requiring you to actually string together a variety of moves via directional inputs + attack button rather than jamming one button to perform easy-bake combos. Each attack is easy to pull off, but they function differently enough to make them all useful in particular situations, so combat becomes more of an art than rote memorization of powerful combos.
It's also very lighthearted, unlike most dungeon crawlers; You're not a hero on a quest to save a world - you're just an adventurous little girl who wants to find a magic stone so she can do magic with her classmates.
Fun stuff all around. It's very likely to go on sale again at some point, at which point you'll be able to grab it for $5 like I did, though if I'd known it was this good, I might have grabbed it sooner for $20.
Post by: Frumple on May 03, 2016, 09:25:42 am
Also N may be downplaying the challenging combat bit a lil', heh. Game gets freaking brutal in relatively short order. Lovely game, though, and I would also totally recommend it to just about anyone that can stand the gameplay, particularly if you can get it on the cheap.
Post by: Sanctume on May 03, 2016, 01:27:19 pm
It's early access off steam.
Kinda like Craft The World, but you only control 1 guy.
He's a norse guy, but looks like a dwarf to me, so good enough.
Graphics are nice enough.
There's multiplayer co-op but I play solo while watching Netflix on the other monitor.
It looks slow from walking around the side scroller to get from the free chest in the base, but the slow pace is actually nice for that casual play.
You do the usual gathering of resource to upgrade home, walls, tower, 2 coop/farm, carpenter, forge, kitchen, and alchemy.
There is mining, spawning of monsters, some mini-bosses, wild animals, herbalist.
You attack in range if you have arrows, or melee with your sword, or even axe or pick.
You get armor pieces: helm, shoulder, chest, bracer, belt, skirt, boot, shield.
You gain health from food, and/or potions.
There is a central town with a temple, small kitchen, and store merchant.
There are sigils you find that gives small buff to specific skills, i.e. 5% change ore drop when mining, etc; 5% better trade.
An arena is in development.
I think dev is russian, but there is an English forum in steam now.
Post by: Niveras on May 03, 2016, 04:25:23 pm
I haven't played it much though. Didn't even finish the initial series of missions that teach you about the game; I was about four in? I think I stopped because I expected it to end completely once the story missions were over, with only rote vs AI, or multiplayer, available for further playing.
Kyn (http://store.steampowered.com/app/314560/). Somewhere across between Black Isle D&D RPGs (adventuring party) and ARPGs/Diablo et al (real-time combat, gear, abilities). Seems more story heavy than ARPG-ish. Haven't gotten far (again) but gameplay seems mostly linear; that is, you can only advance to the next zone/mission and not backtrack or farm old zones/missions. Combat is also a little weird because I felt overwhelmed controlling even just two characters in (difficult) combat, where there appears to be space for two or four more (I don't remember). There is a "slow time" option to give yourself more time to
Dawn of Magic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_of_Magic) and Dawn of Magic 2. ARPG (Diablo-likes) games, pretty traditional fare, buggy and poorly received. But the games had one major innovation: the types of magic you spec in to changes how your character looks. Like, spec'ing into various Nature/Earth flavours made your character look more like a rock or tree. I don't recall if it was purely cosmetic but it was innovative enough that it did make me remember the game. I think I stopped playing because of either a bug in the main quest or the power-to-difficulty curve was off, feeling like I had to farm old boring areas to grow strong enough to advance.
Been thinking of looking Around for these to try them out again, just to see if they are as bad/suck as I remember.
Post by: Damiac on May 04, 2016, 09:03:30 am
The energy system ruins it for me though. I understand why it's there, but I need to be able to play a game when I want to play it, and not play it when I don't want to, and the energy system prevents that. Still, it's the best game with such a system that I ever played.
Post by: Gigalith on May 04, 2016, 12:57:58 pm
Post by: Folly on May 23, 2016, 08:28:59 am
Free on Steam, it's a base-defense game where the player controls a troll avatar. Players build up the fort, and upgrade the troll, to fend off increasingly difficult waves of enemies.
Fun game, especially for a freebie, but it could use some work. In particular there doesn't seem to be enough time between waves, causing me to inevitably fall behind a little bit more with each wave until I inevitably lose, after which I'm allowed to keep going and the waves just get easier for a while...not the most satisfying gameplay. Also the troll controls are just a bit rough for my taste. Still, overall, it's fun for a while and well worth the download.
Post by: Zangi on August 24, 2016, 03:04:41 pm
Apparently people got into some of the data files and made it somewhat moddable. http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/3269/t2097474-gangsters-organized-crime-modding-xtx-files/
The first page has people talking about getting into the data files and the 2nd page has the latest cracked data files.
It definitely works far as I can tell. Now I can go into total war mode without having upstanding citizens get gunned down by 20some pigs swarming in after the dust clears.
Post by: Yoink on September 15, 2016, 09:51:50 pm
Looks like a pretty cool little adventure/RPG thang. I haven't actually played it, mind you, but I'm thinking of buying it.
Not sure why but it just appeals to me somehow.
Post by: Frumple on September 15, 2016, 10:59:36 pm
There's not really much too it, just a rather impressively engaging battle system and basic loot/grind/repeat mechanics... but the battle system really is engaging and quite nice for a pick up and play, put down and come back sort of thing. Plus it's free, so there's that.
Various other considerations... there are ads. Small banner at the bottom, video ones you can opt to do for extra loot, the rare push to review (or "revue", as the game calls it). Overall pretty unobtrusive by mobile app standards, but it's there. Beyond that, the overall gameplay and whatnot is pretty shallow and definitely same-y, and even the considerations added by your ever increasing menagerie of weapon skills doesn't do much to change that -- what you get an hour in will probably be mostly what you get ten or twenty later, too. And the writing... well, it's pretty obviously translated. And the translation is... not good. I've definitely seen worse (much worse) but if spelling/plot/grammar/etc. problems trouble you this is definitely something to avoid. You're not here for the plot, regardless.
Anyway, tiny thing, surprisingly engaging/well done combat of a style I've not seen much of, wrapped in a light crust of RPG, served cold on your mobile. Decent way to burn a few minutes if you feel like doing something fun and fun to watch that doesn't take much in the way of thinking.
Post by: Yoink on September 23, 2016, 12:48:56 am
Seems like a pretty decent XCom/Jagged Alliance-alike. Looks like it's far too flash for my computer to run, but I figured I'd share it here in case anyone might be interested. I only watched the one trailer on Steam, though, so I know very little about it.
Post by: Cthulhu on September 23, 2016, 12:59:43 am
At least in Warcraft 3 it was called "Night of the Living Dead" or "NoLD", and it used a starcraft Marine model (presumably fan-made?) for the player characters. Warcraft 3 had the inventory system for hero units which made it possible. I didn't even know something like Red Solstice existed in Starcraft.
I found that style of game to be pretty cool, controlling a single guy RTS style. I didn't even know what DOTA was until League of Legends came out, even though it was pretty much the only thing that showed up in Use Map Settings and I had to sift through pages and pages of that crap to find the interesting maps. Probably would have preferred it to be more like what Alien Swarm became in terms of controls, but it's close enough.
But yeah, I have a group of friends to play this and other games on rare occasions when we all feel like it. (We also sometimes do things like Guns of Icarus Online, sometimes Interstellar Marines, and we're thinking of doing Polaris: Lost Colony at some point when it gets a bit more features and polish.) The problem with doing these kinds of things on Bay12, in my experience, is that interest is high near the start but we all have different schedules and tastes so interest wanes pretty fast. Unless you manage to find a group that's really dedicated and interested in playing.
On a side note, I have a copy of Red Solstice available in the Christmas giveaway thread if you're interested in a free copy.
There wa salso one called I think Operation Raccoon City, which was a lot more RPG-esque with more dramatic character progression and powers.
My favorite warcraft 3 map was Parasite though. If you played Parasite at all in the 2005-2007 region there's a pretty good chance I was the host.
Another good one was Ragos ORPG, which was basically the same as the other ORPGs with a couple unique features that made me like it. Level cap was only ten but there were big skill lists which meant you could specialize your class, all of which were lifted directly from world of warcraft. Then since the level grind was so short most of the main map was dedicated to endgame dungeons which were actually pretty well done. And the best feature was a bunch of raid dungeons which were completely separate maps that shared the same password feature. Finding groups for it was pretty hard though, of course.
Post by: Zangi on September 23, 2016, 10:09:56 am
I don't remember any specifics about NoLD, since it fit in the same genre as Raccoon City, shoot up zombies and get stronger.
Anyone know how the online community of Red Solstice is doing these days?
Post by: Xardalas on September 23, 2016, 07:00:32 pm
Post by: Shadowlord on September 23, 2016, 07:57:22 pm
Post by: Cthulhu on September 25, 2016, 10:36:56 pm
Also, my contribution, been playing through the god of war series now that I have a ps3.
Is it weird to say I actually kind of like the god of war storyline? I mean it's not the most complex or deep, but I feel like there's some interesting ideas floating around in there. Almost every notable character in the storyline is fucked over by a deal that bit them in the ass. I also think there's some political commentary you could reap from the first game. Powers granted can't be taken back. You give a guy the power to kill gods, don't be mad when he kills one you didn't want him to.
And god of war 3 is the original genocide run. I think we've talked on bay12 before looking for games that let you play the villain and do it uncompromisingly, God of War 3 is pretty much exactly that.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Yoink on September 26, 2016, 02:45:11 am
Perhaps it's because spelling is one of the few things I'm good at, but I'm very much enjoying it. Nice art style and sound effects, a fun puzzle at the game's core, and it seems like there's a lot of stuff to complete. It's challenging, too- when you're not getting your party's health worn down in a constant battle against the clock, you're having to come up with a devious assortment of words to get treasure/avoid traps.
Some of the harder words are downright mean; good luck getting them unless you're some sort of history major/total nerd. :P
Definitely worth three (US) bucks in my opinion. I can see myself playing this quite a lot.
Post by: Folly on September 28, 2016, 05:00:45 am
Well, today I reinstalled and made some new characters and played through about half of the campaign, and it has actually been a lot of fun so far. Weapon animations feel smoother. Enemies feel more threatening, but also manageable. Setting up defenses feels easy to learn, but hard to master. There are still some rough edges, and from what I hear the endgame is still a bit of a mess(though the dev's say that's next on their to-do list), but overall the game is fun. I'm now optimistic for the future of DD2 and would finally recommend it to others.
Post by: smirk on September 28, 2016, 03:30:35 pm
Post by: Cthulhu on October 09, 2016, 02:25:27 am
I was completely shocked by Doom 2016. A reboot of a classic franchise with piss christ looking (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Piss_Christ_by_Serrano_Andres_(1987).jpg) cover art that's so generic you can put any title on it and it wouldn't look out of place? Great, this is gonna be your standard linear shooter with a female voice holding your hand and telling you what to do and lots of canned animations and some stupid storyline, right?
Nope. Surprise! I'm sure the trvest of the kvlt will find a reason to disagree, but if you gave the original Doom team a crash course on all the game design lessons of the next 23 years and then let them make a game with modern technology, this is what they'd make. It knows it's a 2016 game but it bleeds 90s. Wide, non-linear levels with big 3d arenas, powerups, secrets that give you early weapons and shit instead of useless collectibles (A few collectibles, I'll admit), and the best video game storytelling in history. Fuck The Last of Us.
The full lore is too stupid to describe but that's a good thing. Unlike Doom 3 which tried to be a horror game and had a lot of tension and slow buildup this one starts like a cannon and totally reverses the power dynamic between player and enemy. You're not trapped in hell with the demons, the demons are trapped in hell with you. You're so bad they had to seal you away.
The game starts with you waking up in a sarcophagus and immediately declaring war on all motherfuckers, and that pretty much describes the entire game. It's pure mindless action and no matter how difficult the game gets you never actually feel outmatched. It's fast and crazy and you're constantly switching weapons to respond to different threats, bouncing around the map, blowing shit up. The canned-animation executions are done very well, the repetitiveness blunted by the fact that there's a tactical purpose to them when you get extra health but sometimes have to jump right into the middle of the demons to get it, not to mention the animations are fucking great. Beating a possessed soldier to death with his own leg never gets old.
As a bonus, berserk packs also give you special animations and they're even more ridiculous. Punch straight through an imp's chest like it's Mortal Kombat. Kneecap a hell knight and then just pull his fucking head off.
Put it all together and the game's playable sugar, as Penny Arcade put it. No lengthy intro, no long exposition sequences, no cutscenes, no story to speak of, just good-ass game. Within two minutes of starting the game you're killing demons.
Despite playing like it came out in 1995, and despite having literally the most generic cover art possible, it's a much fresher and more innovative experience than anything triple-A I've seen come out this year.
Post by: Gigalith on October 15, 2016, 11:38:29 am
You build a castle on wheels and put dudes on it. Then you watch as it rams into another castle, while your dudes and their dudes fire at each other. Last castle standing (rolling?) wins.
There's both a single player campaign and a provide-your-own castles sandbox multiplayer. Mind you, the single player campaign is hard. I'd like to see a non-cheesy victory in level four.
Post by: itisnotlogical on October 15, 2016, 07:12:28 pm
Post by: JimboM12 on October 15, 2016, 09:19:31 pm
Unfortunately Eddie Guerrero seems to be missing from the initial roster, which is too bad, I remember him being a skillful heel in his time. He lied! He cheated! He stole! (our hearts). Booed but not hated. Chris Benoit is also missing, which is sad considering his 20-something year career but not surprising considering his death.
This game is bringing up so much nostalgia.
Post by: Folly on November 09, 2016, 08:53:18 pm
Post by: Chiefwaffles on November 10, 2016, 12:03:35 am
It isn't exactly stellar in gameplay, but by god does it get across the message. The menus, the music, the aesthetics, they all add up to an amazing feeling as you direct your team through an abandoned city full of mutants, and watch over the situation in the geosphere. It's the best example I can think of when it comes to tone in video games.
Post by: Yoink on November 10, 2016, 03:58:19 am
Unfortunately in the end I came up against enemies who were suddenly much, much more powerful than anything I'd faced before... I think I was so attached to my characters by then that I wound up giving up on the game. >.> Should probably get back into it at some point. Can hardly remember what it was like, just that I liked it.
Edit: Whoa, just discovered a game called Demons with Shotguns (http://store.steampowered.com/app/370940/?snr=1_5_9__300).
It looks like it actually lives up to the badass name! Multiplayer competitive gore-soaked ass-kickings and what-have-you.
Maybe it does deserve its own thread, it seems awesome enough, but I don't know as I haven't yet played it due to it not being on sale and how I've been haemorrhaging money. Otherwise it'd be like, an instant buy, maaan.
Post by: Aoi on November 29, 2016, 04:34:26 am
Atlas Reactor. Picture arena-style (modern) X-COM matches with specific customizable characters (a la MOBAs, Overwatch, etc) where everybody's turn is played out simultaneously.
What's that last bit again?
There's a few more layers than just this, but there's basically a planning>action>movement phase. You decide what actions you're going to take, including where you want to move after the action, and confirm it. Then it executes everybody's turn simultaneously with some split-second allowance for what would be rational behavior. For example, somebody can throw out a few landmines and, in the same turn, somebody else pushes another unit into the mines. Or more likely than not, you're trying to catch somebody in a trap that springs later, and you find you just lobbed a bomb into an entirely empty sector of the map. Deaths occur at the end of the action phase, so no worries there. Then everybody gets to move as was ordered, and repeat.
Matches move fast, with a 20-sec timer and a 5-kill/20-turn match limit. My longest game so far has been in the vicinity of 15min, and my shortest about 5min.
I had a pretty good time with it so far, maybe 20 matches, and it's sort pf F2P; you're limited to a rotating roster of units unless you want to pay a flat charge, but certainly enough to decide if you like it or not.
Post by: JimboM12 on November 29, 2016, 09:03:50 am
http://store.steampowered.com/app/340050/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/340050/)
It's a small zombie survival sim with really basic but fun mechanics. You start as a rich executive who survived the initial zombie outbreak by hiding out in a bunker in the middle of the desert for months and eventually you can recruit pretty much every npc in the game to be part of your faction. Building is simple, farming is simple, combat is simple (there aren't any melee weapons i know of, which kinda sucks) and most repetitive tasks can be automated. The plot depends on what you choose to do after the initial tutorial plot, but I chose Love because im romantic at heart and because the person this plot focuses on has one of the highest potential medic skills so i figured its important to keep her around.
Post by: Parsely on November 29, 2016, 02:05:36 pm
I got a small one i wanna put on here: Survivalist!It's pretty OK. Diabetes is an absurd mechanic.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/340050/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/340050/)
It's a small zombie survival sim with really basic but fun mechanics. You start as a rich executive who survived the initial zombie outbreak by hiding out in a bunker in the middle of the desert for months and eventually you can recruit pretty much every npc in the game to be part of your faction. Building is simple, farming is simple, combat is simple (there aren't any melee weapons i know of, which kinda sucks) and most repetitive tasks can be automated. The plot depends on what you choose to do after the initial tutorial plot, but I chose Love because im romantic at heart and because the person this plot focuses on has one of the highest potential medic skills so i figured its important to keep her around.
Post by: JimboM12 on November 29, 2016, 07:20:00 pm
It's pretty OK. Diabetes is an absurd mechanic.
I know, it's the weakest part of the game tbh. I like the fact that I intimidated one bandit into joining me as the exec and the rest of them followed suit so I put them all up as farmers and freight carriers for materials. For the 2 bucks I paid, i feel its alright. I'm content, i wish modding was a thing so I can replace the diabetes thing.
Post by: Aoi on November 29, 2016, 09:04:24 pm
It's more interesting than I expected, and much better than its rather silly banner on Steam would indicate (an old timey sailor running from a giant ball of tentacles with a Sarlac pit?)... though, to be honest, I'm not sure if I would've gone in on it if I didn't already have an eye towards RymdResa in the bundle.
Post by: Frumple on November 29, 2016, 09:13:15 pm
Post by: Aoi on November 29, 2016, 09:23:45 pm
Man, let me just say. If you haven't seen it yet, and it sounds like you haven't. That last stage. That game's final boss is freaking incredible. Look forward to it. I would recommend getting the game strictly to experience that.
Yep, haven't yet. I think I got 6 missions in, before I was engaging a rather large boss with hit and run tactics... and promptly slammed into the edge of the map, letting everything chasing me catch up and pound me into oblivion. -_-
Edit: It does seem to crash distressingly often though. Third time I've had it crash 6+ stages in, which means upwards of half an hour lost.
Edit 2: Hnnnnnng. Yes. Epic final hunt. Very, very easy fight though, compared to the stuff in Desert/Abyss. Also: Failed to get the 60min unlock by eight seconds. Because the timer doesn't stop when the boss is dead, but when the cutscene ends, tacking on about 15 seconds. -_-
Post by: FallacyofUrist on November 30, 2016, 09:50:01 am
Y'know, the game with the 2-d battlefield. And stickman. And oh so many kinds of
Like revolvers. Uzis. Assault rifles. Sniper rifles.
Multi-state pellet blasters. Disc launchers. MAGIC. Fire Uzis.
Post by: Robsoie on December 06, 2016, 07:14:04 am
I've spent a couple of days downloading the humongous files , the 1.69 "critical rebuild" patch (as it's apparently still recommended to patch it to avoid some missing files from the GOG install) , fetched the premium-now-free modules and the recommended dat generator for them, i was ready to try this one.
And so far i had lots of fun, even despite i'm playing the original campaign everyone said to be boring as it's a bit generic , i decided to play a neutral evil rogue and after leveling to meet the prestige class requirement, biclass it to assassin and trying to roleplay the gal up to her alignement that the campaign surprinsgly allowed in some instance despite not being able to actually work against the main plot "heroes".
So now i just ended the Chapter 1, after defeating (fortunately he surrender after a while has they gave him stupidly high health) the last enemy of the chapter after the little twist (that everyone saw coming, as said the campaign is too generic to make it a surprise)
But since a couple of hours from before that last fight i find that i have a very hard time hitting anything , missing nearly 80% of my strikes
My character stats in case someone can spot the problem :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
while my demi-ork mercenary nearly hit at any strike he does.
I really can't figure out what's going on since those few last hours, i could understand when facing bosses (that fortunately i can buff myself to the max with tons of potions before fighting them), but it happens even against lowly peons .
Is it just really bad luck in the roll or is there something i'm not paying attention to.
Post by: Frumple on December 06, 2016, 09:59:40 am
Beyond that, if that weapon description is entirely accurate, those are +0 weapons with a neat bonus -- basically they're not helping you hit things at all. And beyond that, I'm pretty sure I remember NWN having damage reduction, which may mean you're trying to hit things with them you very literally can't damage with those particular weapons. Though checking, the daze version for both is +1 -- still not helping that much, but more than nothing. Don't remember what enchantment level was normal for that part of the game, but I'm fairly sure a level 8 character should be at like +2 or 3 at a minimum, if my memory's not completely shot. Also probably want to keep an eye out for +dex items, as that'll help your accuracy if you get finesse (alternately continue getting strength up). Add on some basic buffing (Bless, cat's grace, etc.), and you should start hitting significantly more often.
Basically, if that half-orc is using a +3 or up weapon* and not dual-wielding, has high strength, and is a higher BAB progression class (fighter, whatev'), it's definitely going to be hitting (a lot) more than your rogue/assassin dual-wielding +1 weapons and pinging its to-hit off its low-ish strength instead of its high(er) dex.
*E: Ah, and can't forget any weapon specialization feats it may have. That can be a few more points of accuracy, iirc.
Also, I'm like sixty percent sure you can turn on more detailed roll information one way or another. If you can do that, it'd make it a lot easier to see what's going on.
Post by: Robsoie on December 06, 2016, 10:17:33 am
Your mention of Weapon Finesse made me look at my current feat list and ... it's NOT there , oops i was so sure i had it with the class that i never bothered to check when i was offered a new feat .
That's embarassing, good that i didn't let strength to stay at its default 8 when i spend point at character creation, the poor character would have never hit anything.
I know which feat i'll take once i level up, thanks for reminding me :D
I found an additional reason , i was misunderstanding the feat i took (Ambidextry) in order to lower the dual wield malus.
In fact Ambidextry only lower a bit the off-hand malus, it does nothing to lower the main hand malus :
http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Dual-wield
So i was still having -6 , -6 instead of -6, -10, that was not really helping at all with my lack of weapon finesse, so i'll have to single wield until i get Weapon Finesse online.
Thanks for pointing this :D
Post by: Frumple on December 06, 2016, 10:23:18 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 06, 2016, 10:48:59 am
On the chapter 1 end-castle the one filled with mage/priest skeletons and a few mummies, on some room a floor before the last, there were way too many of those guys for my (at the time as i wasn't aware i was crippling my character with no finesse and dual wield) incapable to hit anything character, i left my mercenary behind and simply stealth sneaked around all the monsters without any problems at all.
With the very high (i have items with +bonus , and dexterity helps there) Hide and Move Silently skills such character have it's like i'm a ghost as i don't even have to care about torche or light source, it's like Garrett is an amateur in comparison to NWN rogues stealth abilities :D
Post by: Drakale on December 06, 2016, 01:13:51 pm
I am not the biggest fan of the music in general. It's not bad, but it has a certain harshness to it that I find irritating, hard to describe.
Very much recommend it overall.
Post by: Robsoie on December 08, 2016, 07:58:28 am
Too bad it is still the strength bonus/malus that influence damage, but finally hitting things is already great.
Wish i had noticed this feat wasn't coming by default, would have made some of the boss fights a lot more manageable instead of "mercs dead , time to teleport back to temple, heal and take mercs back, come back, fight until mercs is dead , teleport back to temple, etc..." boring sessions.
Now my problem is that i have too much items i have no idea if i have to keep them for some further quest or if i can sell them without a problem.
By example after playing for much more hours than i should have , i'm currently in Luskan and i collected the 2 heads and kept them for a long long while before finally searching on google what was their point, and noticing that instead of killing both guys i could just have got a quest from one to take and bring back their enemy head to the other.
The thought of that woman carrying 2 severed heads around a whole town while talking to everyone and reporting for quests done is hilarious "oh no that's that maniac woman, she came back to talk to me, must not point to the severed heads she's carrying in case she takes it badly" :D
Looks like the merchants available do not want to buy those heads.
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on December 08, 2016, 11:23:27 am
If you like soccer/football then you will waste much of your life getting mad at the match engine in these games.
Post by: JimboM12 on December 15, 2016, 10:42:38 am
http://store.steampowered.com/app/534500/
It's like....this strange combination of Mount and Blade, Dynasty Warriors and a little bit of Battlefield and War Thunder/World of Tanks. Srsly, its this Chinese made game that's in early beta and it plays alot like Mount/Blade and Dynasty Warriors where you get to lead a band of soldiers in a Battlefield/Dynasty Warriors style conquest map and it's strangely addicting. It's also Free-2-Play and it seems legit so far. It takes place during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period but strangely/awesomely, you have the option of going Roman. Which I did, cuz Romans during that age were badass. The Roman troop tree isn't in yet, sadly.
Post by: Persus13 on December 15, 2016, 10:52:34 am
Post by: JimboM12 on December 15, 2016, 10:55:34 am
Post by: Sanctume on January 16, 2017, 03:43:25 pm
There is a downlodable demo off Steam, and it has potential.
I mean, I already spent 4 hours playing around this demo, and it's pretty entertaining learning the basic and following the tutorial quests.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on February 07, 2017, 11:30:23 am
It's because I see Mass Effect 3 the ending of the series. The whole game serves as a conclusion to the arcs and stories of the prior two games. Tuchanka and the Krogan, Mordin, and more. Reoccurring characters' plots finally coke into fruition, and you just get to witness the conclusions to many different plots.
And it's all done quite well. Yes, the actual ending does falter, but that's only a small part of the actual ending - Mass Effect 3. The fact that I feel the gameplay is better in each subsequent Mass Effect helps, too.
I'm also hyped for Mass Effect Andromeda. I was considering making a tgreed for it, but I don't think many people on the forums see Mass Effect too favorably.
EDIT: Oh, and I also realized that Mass Effect 1 uncharted missions are essentially just No Man's Sky, complete with the boring.
Post by: Frumple on February 07, 2017, 06:08:38 pm
Post by: Chiefwaffles on February 07, 2017, 08:52:51 pm
Not that their opinions aren't allowed. It's just that at the moment I don't want to deal with it. I may still make a thread if no one else does at some point, though.
Post by: Haspen on February 09, 2017, 05:17:53 pm
YYAAAAAAAAAAAAAYY!!
Post by: Jopax on February 09, 2017, 09:08:10 pm
It reminds me of Grey Goo in a way, and Act of Aggression. Attempts at reviving the genre somewhat, all good attempts but none of them able to capture my attention like any of the old school giants, and I still can't figure out the exact thing they're missing. I guess it's an uncanny valley sort of deal, it's oh so close to being great and fun and able to keep me playing for years but it falls short in some way that just makes it all the more dissappointing and depressing.
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on February 10, 2017, 01:47:11 am
Post by: JimboM12 on February 10, 2017, 12:50:11 pm
Fun MOBA with clash of clans style unit deployment.
The microtransactions and timegates suck, but the gameplays fun.
Also playing Mount and Blade warband with various mods. Currently in Prophesy of Pendor.
Post by: Robsoie on March 08, 2017, 01:08:47 pm
http://www.fpwarena.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=16
Though it's steam only unfortunately, but i guess with their business plan (release an early work in progress build then patch it until completion) , it makes some sense for them to go with the steam early access stuff.
Post by: Folly on March 10, 2017, 05:23:24 pm
I've mentioned this game before, but the recent Trials patch mixed things up so I feel it deserves another mention. There's now a very satisfying endgame grind, with lots of powerful shards to collect and upgrade, and several new enemies with unique abilities to overcome. And being able to customize heroes to simultaneously build towers and also fight enemies is much more fun than how it was before. I've put a lot of hours into DD2 since this patch, and definitely recommend it for anyone interested in a tower-defense/ARPG hybrid.
Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)
This game is basically the spiritual sequel to Elder Scrolls. I can't find any direct link between the developers...but the GUI is almost a carbon-copy, and many of the game mechanics feel identical. In particular, the map is littered with shiny collectibles, pretty vantage points, and unique challenges, which offer a lot of hours of fun for completionists.
Basic combat involves simple quick and heavy melee attacks, stealth techniques, sniping vulnerable points, and playing with a variety of toys including explosive traps, tripwires, and a few interesting gimmicks I won't spoil. Surviving a fight involves equal parts study and planning, and quick reactions.
There's a little bit of monster-hunter feel, with rare loot from strong enemies being needed to trade for shiny new weapons, and more common components being used to restock your ammunition and recovery consumables, and modify your weapons and armor.
The setting is a post-apocalypse world with tribal cultures who are beset by hoards of robot-animals. I am finding myself extremely interested in the setting in lore; finding out about the history that led up to the current state, learning about the world as it is now, and dealing with the personal affairs of my character and the people she interacts with. It's all very enjoyable.
I absolutely cannot recommend this game enough for anyone with a ps4.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on March 10, 2017, 05:50:14 pm
Post by: Gabeux on March 10, 2017, 05:58:40 pm
I think last time I played was 2 years ago. The game is better now, feels more solid, and there's even a DLC out if you've ever finished the original game.
Post by: Jiharo on April 10, 2017, 10:58:48 am
Implementation of DND rules is a lot skimpier than in, say, Incursion, e.g. pool of spells is pretty limited(and casting is cooldown-based), there are only four classes and there are feats but no skills. But you still get things like attacks of opportunity, sneak attacks, varied bestiary and nice touches like being able to set pool of grease or spiderweb on fire with fireball. Interface is clean and tiles come from the same tileset as TOME.
Currently the game consists of making a party of up to six, fighting random combats, leveling up, finding/buying new equipment, rince, repeat. Numbers on characters and equipment scale a lot more than DnD and there is no level cap. Game gets updated once every week or two and, though I'm not holding my breath, I hope that campaign mode might actually get there sometime.
Post by: Zangi on April 26, 2017, 12:10:50 pm
The Power-up Pack(basically huge/game-changing DLC) on steam has been translated to Engrish.
Its just one of those game series I mindlessly throw money at and play for hours. And really, I have been waiting for an Engrish PUK for this since I learned it was a thing.
They've really expanded on playing as an officer/free officer.
Initial look-see, switching between 'titles'... if you have a private army, you lose the whole batch of troops if the title you are switching to doesn't have the ability to control a private army, for example, the transition from ronin to officer. There are other things you can accumulate too, unknown yet if they are saved or not.
It'll take me awhile to get to see if anything is fundamentally broken... since in Nobunaga's Ambition, 'your' Ruler AI is horribly gimped.
Post by: Jopax on April 27, 2017, 06:39:34 am
Don't bother. It's a goddamn mess with no direction or thought put into it. A lot of the stuff is either bugged or seriously stupidly balanced and RNG based, after they claimed that they weren't doing the WoT school of RNG based gameplay.
Spotting is kinda random with pop-ins and outs, PvE is retarded because your spotting range is barely a 100 meters, in any vehicle, and while it's done to make the maps feel bigger, the bots don't necessarily suffer the same issue, so you're getting shot at by ninja tanks sitting in a bush a 100 meters away.
They changed ammo too, simplified really, and randomised. Before you had to pick stuff according to targets and their armor, and certain types were balanced by having lower pen or being defeated by various defenses. That it still true to an extent, but they added a random component of armor thickness affecting the damage dealt which means that you shouldn't really bother with anything but AP since it's the most reliable and your damage would vary by over 20% regardless of ammo type so might as well deal damage on a regular basis.
APS is useless now, it has a minimum activation range of 200-250 meters, and even then certain types have only a chance of maybe working. Combined with the PvE bots all spamming ATGM's in higher tier games you get hit for a third or more of your HP and the system that's supposed to prevent that won't even fire because the bots are less than a 100 meters from you since you can't really see them otherwise.
DMG and HP have been standardised across tiers, now it's mostly the samey 2k+ HP and about 500 DMG per shot, and as armor seems so random with the new round shattering mechanic, there's little difference in driving most tanks at higher tiers, just a slightly different looking model for the most part. A light tank can bounce just as well as an MBT simply because you can't influence RNG.
The retrofit system has been gutted, instead of the earlier, somewhat complex and interesting system where you had to choose and pick from a number of stuff to customize your vehicle however you wanted, you get the bog standard 3-4 slots like in WoT with the same handful of boring upgrades like +10% reload or viewrange. Making it essentially the same 3-4 upgrades on every tank (and while the old system had elements of this if you wanted to min-max, there were a lot more viable choices for various things you wanted to do). They also made the prices the same across all tiers instead of scaled like before. So now your 250k T3 tank needs to pay 3 million for a top tier upgrade, just like your 22 million T10 tank. They did this they say so the gap between new players and those with all the upgrades is smaller and less punishing, by making the upgrades extremely expensive and boring so that people don't bother with them for the most part.
Autocannons are useless, not because they were nerfed but because they seem to be buggy in how they pen, when you have 140mms of pen and shot at the side of a poorly armored light tank you don't expect to see over half your shots to not do anything.
There's a bunch of bugs too, like the menu opening when you hit enter after writing something in chat, crashes, overall worse visuals for whatever reason.
And all this after over half a year of delays and tests where people told them not to implement some of these changes because they would make the game a shittier clone of WoT instead of something merely similar but with a lot of potential to be it's own thing.
Post by: Folly on May 10, 2017, 07:28:04 am
http://store.steampowered.com/app/499470/Decksplash/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/499470/Decksplash/)
It basically looks like a ripoff of Splatoon with skateboarding motif. I signed up for the Alpha playtest and got 2 spare Steam keys, so first-come first-serve.
7QH8I-3HE0R-5NHK4
9CZNG-EBFJ7-ZIYXN
Post by: Chiefwaffles on July 08, 2017, 07:48:06 pm
In some ways, I want to call the game a 2D walking simulator, but I don't think that's giving it enough credit. It's strange. There are platforming elements and light usage of minigames (all of which feel natural and embedded within the game's world) but ultimately, the game's about dialogue and narrative. So I wouldn't call this a walking simulator, but definitely wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for gameplay first.
I've seen it compared to Life is Strange, but I can't really make my own comparison here as I haven't played Life is Strange.
Plot-wise, you open as a college dropout returning to her parents' house in a "crumbling former mining town", with some supernatural elements.
The story's tone is interesting. It all feels depressing throughout the story, and more-so at certain points. The crumbling town, the problems of the main characters (and especially your character), and more all contribute to this. There are themes of existentialism as well. Yet I wouldn't say the story's a downer.
Actually, an interesting comparison I thought of while playing it was the webcomic Broodhollow (http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/), which is about strange horrifying things going on in a small town. Of course, it's not too similar, but contrasting the two is something.
I'd definitely recommend it; it's roughly 9 hours and is $20.
I just kind of wish I could talk about it with other people! That's my problem with this kind of narrative-focused media. I always really like discussing it with others and feel very mildly depressed (in a way) when it's over. And with NitW it's not the most popular of games, which makes this even worse.
Post by: JimboM12 on July 11, 2017, 01:03:46 pm
It's this minecraft/dark cloud combo with dragon quest paint over it and its surprisingly addictive. It's broken down into maps a la Dark Cloud, where nothing but some gear and blueprints transfer between maps, but each map could take forever depending on what kind of constructor you are. I like building neat little villages with my own personal tower near the center of each, so it took me forever and a day to complete the the first map alone.
If you can get it on sale, I could recommend this little gem.
Also, I got Yakuza 0. I won't go too much into this, but Yakuza 0 brings up some good memories from my early childhood about the 80s/early 90s and it's a solid Yakuza entry as always.
Post by: Parsely on July 11, 2017, 04:20:59 pm
Dragon Quest Builder: I got this little game from a sale for 20 bucks last saturday and somehow its already tuesday.I didn't hear that Dark Cloud comparison yet and it seems really apt. Makes me actually want to get it now!
It's this minecraft/dark cloud combo with dragon quest paint over it and its surprisingly addictive. It's broken down into maps a la Dark Cloud, where nothing but some gear and blueprints transfer between maps, but each map could take forever depending on what kind of constructor you are. I like building neat little villages with my own personal tower near the center of each, so it took me forever and a day to complete the the first map alone.
Post by: Folly on July 11, 2017, 04:43:27 pm
Post by: JimboM12 on July 11, 2017, 05:43:22 pm
I saw some compelling twitch streams of DQ:B shortly after it released, and have been watching for a sale. Haven't seen it drop under $40 until now.
Craigslist yo~ the only edition you can get from stores is the day one edition with some minor dlc stuff, the guy i bought it from used those already but I did get the game for a good price.
Post by: ZeroGravitas on August 08, 2017, 10:29:50 am
I've played it for a few hours and it's quite good. I haven't played many such games since Symphony of the Night but I like this one a lot.
Initial load time is a little slow but otherwise it's very enjoyable. It has rooms that are generated procedurally to fill in large areas between significant rooms, which makes returning to boss fights or difficult areas much less tedious (no more memorizing the exact layout of trivial rooms for optimum progress).
There's a significant mechanic around resisting vs embracing madness so it's probably good for at least two playthroughs.
Post by: Frumple on August 09, 2017, 06:53:45 pm
... basically, the game's initial enemy? It's faster than you. It's faster than you, it basically never comes alone, and it can climb walls. And ceilings, I think. Basically everything. Once they aggro, they do not appear to stop chasing until you kill them, do not care about your paltry room boundaries, and will happily pile thirty of 'em into the same room with you, more combat dropping from above as they do it.
It's kinda' amazing to watch. Less sure I'd want to actually play it, but it's a helluva thing to watch.
Post by: Egan_BW on August 10, 2017, 12:44:35 am
Post by: Gabeux on August 31, 2017, 03:59:43 pm
It mixes some GTA with some Minecraft. You can build a city (even using preset buildings) and then do missions on it, fight on it, steal its banks, kill bandits, troll the police and whatnot.
This is super indie and all that, might be a bit wonky/weird for most people, but I've been wanting to see a game like Minecraft or GTA in which the game world reacts to you in some way.
In the game's 'strategy mode', enemy gangs will try to expand, and like most 4X/Strategy games, being too aggressive will make the whole city turn on you.
Again, pretty light game with wonky physics and programmer graphics, but playing the demo I loved it for its concept.
Post by: ZeroGravitas on September 01, 2017, 06:38:09 am
Watching a vid of that... I have to say, that game may have the most doggedly persistent base enemies I have ever seen, in a metroidvania at the absolute least. Those little zappy shits get around like holy crap. I don't think I've ever encountered this type of game where you could straight up run a train on literally dozens of enemies.
... basically, the game's initial enemy? It's faster than you. It's faster than you, it basically never comes alone, and it can climb walls. And ceilings, I think. Basically everything. Once they aggro, they do not appear to stop chasing until you kill them, do not care about your paltry room boundaries, and will happily pile thirty of 'em into the same room with you, more combat dropping from above as they do it.
It's kinda' amazing to watch. Less sure I'd want to actually play it, but it's a helluva thing to watch.
They do eventually stop chasing, and while they charge faster than you walk, they're pretty easy to outmaneuver using wall-jumps (and the standard double jump ability comes relatively early). But yeah, the game has taken a lot of flak because it doesn't have traditional metroidvania rooms/screens which means no pre-placed enemies; waves are spawned dynamically (with an audio cue). There are some challenge areas where the waves are continuous. People looking for something like Symphony of the Night or La-Mulana were pretty thrown. Especially when the enemies that float through all walls and terrain start coming...
The powering-up curve is much more dramatic and by the end of the game your mobility options are pretty extreme and you're required to use them well; boss fights are often several screens in the air. The key element is that hitting an enemy resets double-jumping, and you eventually gain additional in-air mobility options.
Ultimately the game is an interesting evolution of metroidvanias that throws out a lot of the standard rules and does its own thing.
Post by: Zangi on September 12, 2017, 11:09:36 am
So yea, Mars Simulation Project (http://mars-sim.sourceforge.net/) is still alive and kicking.
Last time I messed with MSP was 2015. Had to update my java for this, cause it wasn't working otherwise.
It has a fancy new UI and some other random things you can read up on in the changelog.
EDIT: Screwed up the fancy url thing.
Post by: Robsoie on September 12, 2017, 06:59:32 pm
LackeyCCG is a free program that allows you to play any card game (as long as someone created a plugin and if you look around there's a lot of them) either existing ones or even ones you may want to create with the plugin system.
It's either play by yourself or online, there is no rule enforcement and no AI provided by the program, so you'll have to know how to play the particular card game you're running through it.
By default, LackeyCCG comes with 3 plugins already so it can be usefull for those learning how to create their own : a "normal" traditional 52 cards system so you can play rummy, poker or whatever card game involve this kind of card, a chess system with the card provided being the chess pieces to show an example on non-card system, and 2 examples of a custom made CCG one with a few cards involving cats pictures and another involving some medieval stuff.
Post by: Antioch on September 18, 2017, 06:56:03 am
It is an ok platformer but it really suffers from its gold collection mechanic being very tedious and it doesn't really do anything to stand out.
There are a lot of old and new platformers that I enjoyed a lot more.
Post by: SomeKindOfGnome on September 18, 2017, 07:50:00 am
God bless whoever makes the trophies, because I did not want to kill everyone to get that Platinum.
And you don't have to.
You just have to have a bunch of money.
Oh yeah, I really liked it. Undertale gets a solid 10/10 from me.
I tried out shovel knight and it seems extremely......ok.I love Shovel of Hope, but the two expansions are way better, in my opinion.
It is an ok platformer but it really suffers from its gold collection mechanic being very tedious and it doesn't really do anything to stand out.
There are a lot of old and new platformers that I enjoyed a lot more.
They're more creative and fun.
Post by: Jopax on October 25, 2017, 11:51:49 am
Basically third person team based tactics with mechs a la Front Mission/Armored Core. Still in Alpha but the few gameplay vids look pretty damn neat, if a bit clunky and slow. Still, mecha game, for PC!!
Post by: nenjin on October 25, 2017, 01:32:15 pm
http://store.steampowered.com/app/464060/RUINER/
It's a Devolver Digital published game, so of course it has "that style."
Ruiner is essentially an isometric version of Hotline Miami, with corridors for levels instead of larger, room-based levels. It focuses on fast, frantic combat. It's less technical than HLM in that, there's skills and moves and upgrades. So it's not "pure gameplay" like HLM. It wasn't especially difficult or long IMO, only took me about 10 hours to finish. It's been likened to Hyper Light Drifter as well due to the dash mechanic, which is central to gameplay and survival.
That said, there's a lot to like about the game. Visually it punches you in the face. It's a dank, 80s inspired cyberpunk neon dystopia. There's a dash of anime in the character portraits, and has that obvious love of Japanese culture like Blade Runner did. The story is interesting but fairly standard, and there's no voice acting. It's kind of casual game on all fronts even though the combat feels hardcore.
So the game's strongest point is its presentation, but the combat is fun and polished enough that you don't feel ripped off, even if the story is light and overall gameplay loop feels a little limited and cloying.
Oh and of course the beats are heavy and dank as hell. Not nearly as catchy as HLM 1 and 2's soundtracks but it fits the game very well.
Post by: Egan_BW on October 25, 2017, 01:58:56 pm
Post by: JimboM12 on October 25, 2017, 04:56:19 pm
made by the same devs as risen and the gothic series, this game is very much those games meets fallout. they're fun but extremely hardcore. you start as the weakest thing on the map; even 'feeble' wolves will annihilate you.
weapons and armor are something earned and are milestones to mark your progress. enemies start out with alot of health and do assblasting amounts of damage. you need to exploit every advantage you can to survive.
but man, once you reach enough skill/attribute points to wield a decent weapon it all clicks into place. you can hold your own but if you're not careful you'll still get your shit slapped. and once you can wield an endgame ready weapon and have max faction armor you're basically a demigod amongst peasants. and what's best about these games is usually by that point you can start rubbing that in a few peoples faces, some games more than others.
some tips for all the games:
do not rush to join a faction, gain some levels and build up some money first
hold on to your skill/attribute points until you find a good weapon or skill you want to learn and start working your attributes towards them
keep everything except obvious loot items like gold chalices (if they're important gold chalices, they'll have a unique description)
work the environment to your advantage always: do not be afraid to run back to a town to get some guards to help you kill stuff
for the gothics: learn how to skin/take animal trophies as early as possible, you'll be killing animals everywhere and if you take the time to loot them with these skills, you can make mad gold
i love these games, they scratch that same masochistic itch that the dark souls games do but with extra early game "fuck you".
Post by: Egan_BW on October 25, 2017, 05:20:26 pm
Post by: JimboM12 on October 25, 2017, 05:30:21 pm
I really don't understand some RPGs obsession with making you the weakest human ever to start with.
its so you compare yourself at the beginning to near the end and go "heh, i feel badass".
its probably one of those acquired tastes things.
Post by: nenjin on October 25, 2017, 05:32:11 pm
Post by: Egan_BW on October 25, 2017, 05:35:24 pm
Post by: nenjin on October 25, 2017, 05:38:19 pm
Post by: Frumple on October 25, 2017, 07:59:01 pm
That said, weak to strong is just... standard. Freakishly standard, as in I'm pretty sure that's literally the trope name (or at least the tag on novelupdates :V). There's high falutin' literature dongles about why it slots into storytelling archetypes and blah blah blah, but it's mostly just a done thing. Contrast or somethin' makes the power high of later bits more noticeable, plus some of that hero saga thing what has a term for I can't remember. Folks are just used to it, used to working with it, and so on.
... that said, game wise it's probably half because they want progress but don't want mid/late game amount and quality of content in the beginning, too. Imagine if you had the normal RPG scaling, but your start was end-game and the finish was sweet zeus. Friggin' post macguffin punch wizard territory* at that point, with sky fingers exploding mountains and the protag beating people with literally a river and crap. Then think about having to make models and animate and code and etc., and realize your funding is not actually the entire US GDP.
Anyway, bunches of reasons it happens so much. Some good, some habitual, some economic. Not just RPGs that do it, it's varyingly standard in a lot of genres and storyboarding styles.
* Martial arts fantasy stuff, less colloquially. Think crouching tiger hidden dragon direction, except intermittent laser eyes and blowing up the occasional planet or whatever. Dunno how much gets officially localized but there's freakish amounts of amateur translation efforts for written stuff and even more freakish amounts of junk to translate so *shrugs*
Post by: Aoi on October 26, 2017, 04:16:19 am
Also, I actually really like reading that stuff, until the point where it's painfully obvious where the writer can't even seem to fathom a situation where the beloved hero may possibly be at risk. It's kind of fun seeing how they write themselves in and out of random situations.
Post by: MoonyTheHuman on November 01, 2017, 07:58:14 pm
Yes, a Mario Kart clone. Whats nice is the following:
1. Free
2. Open Source
3. High Quality
Seems like a good exchange to me, and its fun too!
https://supertuxkart.net/
Post by: Folly on November 02, 2017, 06:16:37 pm
Got through tutorial and was unleashed at the first town.
Ran around said town stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. Ended up with several nice weapons that I could not use due to stat requirements, and absolutely no armor.
Went outside and figured out how to fight, which was not easy due to no armor and only a rusty pipe as a weapon. Discovered the hard way killing gives practically no xp, and would take years to level up that way.
Snuck around nearby enemy encampments, found more weapons I could not use, and still absolutely no armor.
Back into town, started doing quests for xp. Gained a couple levels, still not enough stats to use any of my new weapons. I do have enough stats to learn some new skills, but can only find one trainer in town and he doesn't teach anything interesting.
Ran out of quests to do except for one, which tells me to gather mature roots around a lake near town. I spent about 2 hours finding the lake because there was no clear direction, and then four hours running around the lake, unable to find more than 6 of the 8 roots that I need.
Pretty much all of the positive reviews that I've read agree that the early game is underwhelming, but it gets much better later on. Right now, I'm having a hard time believing that it will be worth the effort.
Post by: JimboM12 on November 02, 2017, 09:14:32 pm
My experience in Elex so far...
Pretty much all of the positive reviews that I've read agree that the early game is underwhelming, but it gets much better later on. Right now, I'm having a hard time believing that it will be worth the effort.
no pb game has ever had a decent early game.
some basic armors can be bought from merchants but for real armor you gotta join a faction.
the minimap can guide you to the general area of quests (yellow blips) but usually you gotta find the stuffs when you get there
the weapon balancing compared to earlier games is kinda weird; you used to have a solid progression of stats/weapon scaling as you level but now it felt a little weird with the new crafting mechanics being able to upgrade those basic weapons to t2 and 3 and shit. feels like they did only one pass to even out the stat curve for faction weapons so you can run into some more powerful weapons needing less stats than a competing factions equivalent weapon.
right now you're getting your shit kicked in by random animals (which can continue to happen to the endgame: pb does not know how to scale monsters well) but most found rare weapons are ment for mid/endgame (i assume you're talking about a certain poison weapon found in a certain store just left out for the taking? yeah thats a mid/endgame weapon)
a good rule of thumb: once you can glass cannon cuz you minmaxed to handle a rare weapon early, the game opens up. protips: save your handgrenades to stunlock crowds and certain heavy enemies and get a companion asap (duras is pretty easy to get and helps greatly)
i think the biggest weakness of the game is the lack of any direction to help you learn anything about the game. the main quests? yeah those ain't directions, more like hurdles. if you don't get shipshape quick, one of those early main quests will kick your face in and steal your tinder girlfriend.
Post by: askovdk on November 07, 2017, 06:09:07 am
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1491793990/autonauts/description (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1491793990/autonauts/description)
It a nice project that I've supported on itch, and I plan to pledge (even if I doubt it will reach the goal).
The core 'game' play is programming small robots, - at the basic level just by showing them what to do, but more advanced procedures can be edited.
I.e. it's a bit like Factorio for people that takes pleasure in observing automated processes they made. :)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
There are many good youtubes, - I just pick a random that looks ok:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+autonauts&qpvt=youtube+autonauts&view=detail&mid=57B9D3EC44F69817272757B9D3EC44F698172727&FORM=VRDGAR (https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+autonauts&qpvt=youtube+autonauts&view=detail&mid=57B9D3EC44F69817272757B9D3EC44F698172727&FORM=VRDGAR)
Post by: Jopax on November 20, 2017, 10:09:23 am
Putting it here since it's in early access and I haven't played it yet, but it seems hella interesting. What is it? Well, for the most part it looks like somewhat simplified economy and base managment of stronghold paired with a zombie survival mode, all with a really neat looking steampunk aesthetic on top of it all. From what I've seen of the gameplay it seems pretty fleshed out for an early access game, not sure what's left for them to implement, probably more stuff, more stuff is always good.
Post by: Sanctume on November 20, 2017, 12:20:33 pm
They are billions. (http://www.numantiangames.com/theyarebillions/)
Putting it here since it's in early access and I haven't played it yet, but it seems hella interesting. What is it? Well, for the most part it looks like somewhat simplified economy and base managment of stronghold paired with a zombie survival mode, all with a really neat looking steampunk aesthetic on top of it all. From what I've seen of the gameplay it seems pretty fleshed out for an early access game, not sure what's left for them to implement, probably more stuff, more stuff is always good.
I saw a bunch of YT plays on They Are Billions.
I am just not sure if I pay for the game via their website that I can start playing the beta build right away, or if it be like a pre-order and I would need to wait until it is steam released.
The game looks good, maybe because there is a lack of RTS game. Maybe RTS still be back in fad with the zombie genre.
Post by: JimboM12 on November 23, 2017, 12:12:02 am
it's a good game for people who are a little tired of people but still love planetside 2.
still early access, lots of potential to grow and if it doesnt its still a solid little battlefield game, and i enjoy it better than the bit of battlefront 2 i played at a friends.
protip: if you're leading a squad of bots, remember to issue orders using c, otherwise they just freelance and if you order them to freelance when the commander gives you an order, they'll autotarget that objective and operate independently.
Post by: askovdk on December 14, 2017, 06:49:41 am
http://store.steampowered.com/app/698640/Deep_Sky_Derelicts/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/698640/Deep_Sky_Derelicts/)
It's a kind of 'Darkest Dungeon' with deck building.
I.e. your equipment (and equipment modifications) gives action cards to use in the battles, and this customization of your squad works very well.
Pictures (nice comix style):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Farce on December 14, 2017, 03:05:16 pm
I randomly had a dream of a boss from this slam me through a wall a while back and went to go look it up. It's a cute little brawler with some pretty (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-JH5pgUWik) good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=japmyDBACxc) music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0oNDqNyrDY). Good times.
Post by: askovdk on December 30, 2017, 06:56:59 pm
http://store.steampowered.com/app/544550/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/544550/)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Grayduster has an excellent walkthrough on youtube, and if that doesn't give you appetite for spending hours on what would take seconds in other games, then this is probably just not something for you. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su1t-yqhrQs&list=PL1O9Dza23T3RTsfJO4CYEkWz9kq6_2u1D (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su1t-yqhrQs&list=PL1O9Dza23T3RTsfJO4CYEkWz9kq6_2u1D)
It remains to be seen if the developer can put a game into this simulation, but I'm impressed with the quality already available.
(And yes, - the way you have to juggle your two hand slots is controversial, but it quickly stops being a problem.)
Post by: Robsoie on January 05, 2018, 12:38:53 pm
https://www.njpw1972.com/19722
Looks like the game will recieve the whole NJPW roster officially and feature new game modes like a story mode involving the various events that happened in that promotion in the years.
No idea though if this will be part of the default game or if it's going to take the format of a commercial dlc
Post by: Zangi on January 24, 2018, 01:40:08 pm
The demo (http://greydogsoftware.com/world-of-mixed-martial-arts-5-trial-released/) for it is already out if you have any interest. Plus a few patches for the demo.
Demo is limited to 2 months in-game time, but you can freely transfer the save to the full game. Demo is basically open beta right now.
Post by: Jopax on February 02, 2018, 07:04:15 am
Post by: JimboM12 on February 04, 2018, 04:45:25 pm
its 20% off right now on steam.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/773951/Freeman_Guerrilla_Warfare/
Post by: Enemy post on February 04, 2018, 04:49:05 pm
Post by: JimboM12 on February 04, 2018, 06:02:17 pm
Freeman sounds interesting.
it is. before i continue i want to append my initial impression to include the STALKER series.
depending on your preferences on early access, i could recommend it on sale. im already leading 40 armed volunteers (independent of the factions militiamen) and i find myself planning waypoint patrol patterns to find and engage the enemy while i wander around and bolster the squad that hits first contact. i then crouch and let them get on with it while i order the other squads to the battle.
its also rather hardcore; you can get put down easy if you're hit with rifles out of cover. you have to worry about restocking ammo between battles; it doesn't autofill after each battle like in m&b. your ai and the enemy both have aimbot levels of awareness. you start the game with some clothes and a marakov with a few magazines.
but the game is forgiving on one point; your squads have infinite ammo and decent starting gear. also volunteer militia guys start with semi auto hunting rifles and are dirt cheap, they're more than a match for the starting looters.
it is new, but they have released some patches. i applaud the idea heartily. i don't think ive seen anyone try to make a mount and blade singleplayer campaign clone.
Post by: Akura on February 04, 2018, 09:32:30 pm
Things I want to see:
- Vehicles. Up to and including tanks. The devs had said they're considering at least light vehicles.
- Larger squad sizes. 5 men isn't really a full rifle squad.
- Less randomness. Start positions and red-zones are randomly placed, as are enemy spawn points. My second battle, my start point was right in the red-zone, and the enemy was behind us.
- Better trooper AI. During one battle, I see one guy sort of shuffle a long distance away from the rest of his squad during combat. Lucky he wasn't killed.
- Mods. Seriously, mods are what made M&B great. Devs are at least considering Steam Workshop support.
Post by: LoSboccacc on February 05, 2018, 03:19:36 am
can you expand upon that? I hated hated hated how arma implemented visibility, specially in forest close quarter combat was a mess as bush etc provided zero concealment against the ai while still blocking 100% of the player view.
Post by: JimboM12 on February 05, 2018, 08:27:09 am
Also, bushes act as hard cover and stops bullets. Hey, its early access.
Post by: Gabeux on February 05, 2018, 12:54:31 pm
Post by: Mephisto on February 07, 2018, 08:31:07 am
Eco (http://steamcommunity.com/app/382310) was released yesterday. I'm trying not to buy it.
Post by: MCreeper on February 07, 2018, 08:53:45 am
This probably does deserve its own thread but I don't think I'm the right person to manage it.Everyone on Steam is raging about unability to play in singleplayer, then about disappearance of main menu after patch that was supposed to fix this.
Eco (http://steamcommunity.com/app/382310) was released yesterday. I'm trying not to buy it.
::) 1. It's just temporary bugs.
::) 2. It's quite monstrous bugs indeed.
Post by: Mephisto on February 07, 2018, 08:59:26 am
Post by: Jopax on March 01, 2018, 02:07:24 pm
Post by: Folly on March 01, 2018, 07:56:24 pm
You have 60 seconds before a meteor destroys everything. What will you do? Kiss a dog? Punch a kid? Steal a rocket ship? Or just wait for it all to end?
The game is free, it's short, small download size, and comes with a twist ending. Play now!
Post by: Jopax on March 13, 2018, 10:47:23 am
Here's one that might be good: Iron Harvest (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingartgames/iron-harvest)
Kickstarter campaign just started today and they're a third of the way there. Stretch goals are more stuff and multiplayer/coop but I'm not that interested in those, gimme a good singleplayer and I'm a happy camper. And this looks rather promising as far as the setting and cool stuff go.
Post by: Mephansteras on March 13, 2018, 10:31:53 pm
Post by: JimboM12 on March 24, 2018, 08:20:57 pm
Stay Alive: Apocalypse
http://store.steampowered.com/app/622420/Stay_Alive_Apocalypse/
it's another zombie survival game but with npcs you can work with! it's got this weird indepth cooking mechanic as well.
apparently you can have a spouse.
i only just bought it, i'll let ya know how it is after i play it a bit. first impressions so far is a bit like 7 days to die in cell shading.
Post by: Egan_BW on March 24, 2018, 10:57:59 pm
Post by: askovdk on March 27, 2018, 02:56:25 am
is now on Steam. :D :D
This digital version of one of the best boardgames ever came out for pads and phones some months ago but has now been ported well.
It’s hard to describe. It’s a competition game where you produce two kinds of resources and have two kinds of action points. So you try to get more action points and resources, but that takes actions and resources, so there is never enough to everything you want, - but at least your opponents are in the same situation.
I have enjoyed discovering the many small design decisions that indicates that this game has been made by people loving the original game. E.g. it will keep track of cards future event cards you have played and tell if you can deduce what will happen.
The AI doesn’t cheat, but it plays very well. I’ve only had two games yet, where one was lost to a beginner AI. (I’m currently being decimated by two medium AIs). It can be played quite fast with a full game in about 1˝ hour.
To give us limited humans a change the game do give you warnings if you are about to end your turn while there is something you may have forgotten (e.g. Ocean liner service), and there is an undo functionality that let you roll back your action phase.
Two of my friends have had good experience with the asynchronous multiplayer, where the rules have been tweaked slightly (the auction for colonies has been replaced with a onetime bid, - highest wins).
http://store.steampowered.com/app/758370/Through_the_Ages/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/758370/Through_the_Ages/)
It even has a significant launch discount 16EUR -> 10EUR until April 2.
Post by: Mephisto on March 27, 2018, 12:57:04 pm
(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/000/151/n725075089_288918_2774.jpg)
Post by: Wiles on March 27, 2018, 02:24:37 pm
Through the Ages
is now on Steam. :D :D
If you like digital boardgames then this game is fantastic. I have it on android and I love it. I have never played the physical version but I'd love to try it.
Post by: lastverb on May 04, 2018, 04:55:03 am
X-COM in zombie infested world. I'm surprised how no one has done this before. Amazing idea, mediocre craftsmanship (quite polished, but not on QOL things - reason in next sentence). The HUUUGE glaring issue is that it was meant for mobile devices. Haven't played mobile version but it must be impossible to control 4 soldiers in real time without active pause. It's annoying even with keyboard and mouse on PC without configurable keybinds and stupid defaults. Overpriced for what it is.
Now I'm waiting for someone to pick up an idea and make a proper PC game out of it.
Post by: Dorsidwarf on May 04, 2018, 05:18:42 am
Post by: lastverb on May 04, 2018, 05:37:46 am
Post by: Parsely on May 04, 2018, 01:06:50 pm
Post by: Folly on July 21, 2018, 06:21:30 pm
Currently in kickstarter. As of this posting, 109k funded, 8k remaining to meet their goal, 3 days until the deadline.
Fractured is an MMO ARPG sandbox, which seeks to set itself apart by making 3 seperate worlds inhabited by three different races, the humans, demons, and furries. Furry world is carebear mode, with no PvP and minimal penalties on death. Demon world is full PvP and full player looting. Human world is a balance, with PvP enabled, but limited looting and tracking of criminals. Many crafting materials are exclusive to certain worlds, so trade between the worlds is required.
Fractured also promises to recycle a bunch of old ideas, such as entirely player-crafted equipment, spells that interact with eachother and the environment, player-built towns, skill-based character growth, and food/clothing/sleep requirements. Some of these ideas have worked well in other games, some...not so well.
The thing I find most dubious about this is the projected timetable. Alpha is expected to be in 2019, beta in 2020, and full release in 2021. That's a long wait for a game that looks like it's already in a playable state.
Post by: Folly on August 01, 2018, 07:38:11 pm
Anyway, today Steam recommended Rend for me. Early Access currently priced at $30.
A very brief look into the game, it appears to be Planetside with a Norse-Fantasy motif and PvE elements mixed in with the PvP, fort-building elements, and gameplay cycles lasting roughly 6 weeks after which one of the three factions is declared winner and everything resets. Some character progress is carried over to the next cycle, others start over from scratch. Feedback is very positive, with particular note of highly active development team who update regularly and actually join in games with the players.
All of this sounds very much interesting to me, and the only thing stopping me from diving right in is the fact that Fortnite, Project Gorgon, No Man's Sky, and a slew of mobile games are really leaving me with no daylight hours to spare, and I would have to give up at least one of them before starting something new. Still I am tempted...
Post by: Folly on August 30, 2018, 05:51:34 pm
Post by: Frumple on August 30, 2018, 06:25:44 pm
... it's also not a game. Probably the wrong thread on like every possible count.
Post by: Kagus on September 04, 2018, 01:10:53 pm
... it's also not a game. Probably the wrong thread on like every possible count.I'm not sure if it deserves its own thread though, so there's that.
Post by: Zangi on September 04, 2018, 02:14:17 pm
Anyways, I've been kinda playing Phantom Doctrine (http://www.goodshepherd.games/games/phantom-doctrine). In short, it is a spy game, with overworld map similar-ish to NuCom and turned based battles/stealth.
You send agents out and about to check out suspicious activity and thwart enemy agent actions/lay the ground work for missions, usually to eliminate or capture enemy agents.
As for the missions, you start in stealth and have run of the place till you screw up and get spotted in the wrong place or doing something suspicious in front of others. Once you gear your people out with silencers, it becomes much easier to do stealth the missions.
Once a mission goes hot, fog of war is basically lifted for the enemy AI. If you can see them, they can see you and shoot you from straight across the map if they have a long range weapon like a rifle/lmg/sniper rifle.
So the traditional tactic of taking cover next to a window or something that has a wide view over everything will get the character shot many times. It also makes overwatch harder to properly set-up, because the AI can and will shoot before they get into the overwatch kill field, unless they have short range weapons, usually not the case, usually not the ones you want to kill first.
Post by: Mephisto on October 29, 2018, 08:32:41 am
It feels like a mobile game with the microtransactions removed. Crops take time to grow and can only be planted in certain seasons. Trees are planted fully-grown and can be harvested once in the relevant season (apples can be harvested 4x a year, lemons only in the fall, for example). Most structures build instantly when you've got the required resources but houses take tons of time and money - the treehouse thing I'm currently constructing takes 15k gold and 16-ish hours for each of the four stages.
And then there's the "together" part. You can take your world online and let other people come tool around. There's apparently a big Discord server and Reddit community at the moment. They're focusing on growing cursed pumpkins for the Halloween event.
There's even evidence of micro currency - you can do all of the tilling, planting, watering, and harvesting by yourself for free (minus the 10 gold per till and whatever the seeds cost) or you can hop on your tractor and do a 3x3 area for the cost of a bit of gas. Gas is free but you've got to fill up at filling stations. These generate 1 gas per second for the low-tier one or 3/s for the higher one. And the second micro currency - when your farm reaches certain levels, you can unlock another big plot of land using some quantity of gems. I've not had an issue with gems yet - you get them for completing quests, selling resources at specific buildings, or growing specific crops.
Despite the apparent mobile nature, I haven't detected a shop of any kind.
Post by: nenjin on October 30, 2018, 04:08:24 pm
Pretty good, so far. I didn't play LA Noire, or any Telltale games, but that's essentially what this is, even if it doesn't do either style as fully or effectively as one might hope.
It plays very much like the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. There's next to no action; it's all talking to people, discovering clues and walking around the dank scenery. There's a vague RPG skill system that mostly boils down to "what can you notice, what can you learn."
The story is an original though, as original as any story using the Cthulhu Mythos can be. It's part murder mystery, part occult investigation.
The graphics and atmosphere are pretty great, except for the character's faces which I find kind of ghastly looking.
While the game so far has almost no stealth or combat sections, when compared to Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of Earth, it's also a lot less janky or bogged down by these elements. At first blush one thought the wound system in DCoE was neat, but in practice it was tedious nonsense that just slowed the game down. CoC 2018 doesn't have any of that. It's got a dirt simple inventory system and limited interactivity with the environment or characters. (There's no Jump button, for example.) While that doesn't sound great and maybe it isn't, it really does put the game's focus on the environments and the exploration. And while none of these things are truly all that deep (there's a Mass Effect style dialog system, where options can be added or removed based on what you know or what you've learned, areas look great but are basically just rooms with things to look at an examine and the occasional hidden object to find or puzzle to solve), it works. Especially if you're going in expecting a detective story first and foremost.
All that and it's by Cyanide Studios. I sort of swore after Bloodbowl I wouldn't buy any more of their games but I didn't really research this before buying it. S'alright though, I don't see anything egregious in CoC 2018 that makes me regret giving them money for it.
Really I'm just stoked to be playing another CoC game where I don't know what's going to happen. DCoE was a great experience to play through an existing CoC story.....but having read and re-read Mythos stories for years, it's a real treat to play a game with a detailed story where they clearly give a shit about it, and I don't know what's going to happen next.
Post by: JimboM12 on November 02, 2018, 06:46:37 pm
Outpost Zero!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/677480/
its this survival sandbox game where you are a robot sent to claim and harvest a planet for this megacorp. there are robobandits as well and hostile wildlife. to help you in this hostile world, you can make a number of helper drones and assign them to do things.
heres the awesome part; it actually works and you can see them run off to do the thing. ask them to help build? you can just place the skeleton and the little eyebot helper will run over and help build it with its zappy multitool. ask them to harvest? you can set what you want them to collect and they'll run off to harvest the nearest sources of it and bring it to the nearest AI-allowed storage box. you can set what gets stored in each box and whether the AI can access it or not so you can save things you dont want used. with this it's easy (if a bit tedious if you're a neat freak) to manage the resource collection for your ai helpers. this includes a simple input/output pipe system that lets you use remote harvester buildings that can pump their harvests into these pipes to bring them right to your base. its extremely finicky but once you get the hang of it, its very useful. i recently unlocked nuclear reactors and i have 2 uranium drills pumping uranium from their distant fields right to a box near the generators. pretty damn cool. whats cooler is my closer iron drills is hand hauled by a helper who on the side also keeps my generators running.
once you get set up, its real easy to collect insane amounts of resources that the robobandits want to take. you'll get raided every once in a while, i haven't tweaked the settings yet but at the default level they're kinda easy once you have a few helpers and a gun.
lots of potential. endgame sucks as usual but im playing singleplayer, in a serious MP game im sure there could be some cool war moments when your corp fights another corp with all your wardrones in tow. the reviews are mixed, of course, but i haven't had any of those issues other than some AI issues with my helpers (they do get stuck but i planned for this so it happens less).
Post by: JimboM12 on November 08, 2018, 04:57:48 pm
its not out yet but i was watching one of my favorite streamers who got a beta testing key for an upcoming roguelike/stationbuilder: Genesis Alpha One!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/712190/Genesis_Alpha_One/
i can't talk much for it but that idea sounds so legit and even the small amount of gameplay i saw looks intriguing for someone as addicted to combat builders as me.
Post by: Zangi on November 09, 2018, 01:14:47 pm
Depends if going into FPS mode is optional during combat or not. (In a not really a choice if it is between taking unacceptable random losses and total win.)
Post by: Kagus on November 10, 2018, 07:53:20 am
They've added a new trailer to go with the launch of the game, and it still reuses some of the exact same clips that they've been recycling since the game's inception. At least it was mostly new footage, but that's still pretty hilarious.
Judging from reviews, they've actually managed to make a real game, one that can even be played... Which, I have to say, vastly exceeds my expectations for the project. I fully expected them to simply vanish in a puff of nothingness, especially considering the multiple years they've spent making and "re-imagining" this game have resulted in zero progress updates through its entire process. I legitimately didn't think they had anything to show beyond those prerecorded clips.
It's changed a bit from its initial outset, and seems to be a bit more focused on story and character personalities than the original "do procedural stuff, don't die" ethos indicated. You play as GRUFFY MCSPIT, real name "Johnny Dice", who woke up on the wrong side of the gravel pit this morning and seems to have stolen Crocodile Dundee's hat. There's even a cute little cutscene in the trailer where he eats a balanced breakfast of PILLS HERE!, so I feel like he's got an interesting and complex backstory that builds up into the multifaceted individual he is today.
But that's not important, let's shoot ghosts. Promotional images show off all sorts of actual equipment you can play inventory tetris with, so that's cool (no really, I like having a variety of different things to customize kit with. I'm a hopeless packrat). Different scopes, flares, a gas can, you can even buy accessories like a bottle of whiskey or insoles for your boots. And weapons! Different guns, weapon mods, ammunition types including specialized rounds for dealing with... dealing with... oh god, they didn't actually-...?
Yes. They did. Underworld's curse of stupidity lives on.
Ammo box:
9x19 Ultra-Violet
Ammunition designed to release small bursts of UV light upon impact.
I give up.
EDIT: Wait, no, Johnny Dice appears to be someone else, the pictured conversation box just made it look like you're him. A different screenshot showing inventory management seems to place your name as Jack Steel, which is much more reasonable.
Post by: Kagus on November 11, 2018, 04:56:47 pm
SAVAGE: The Shard of Gosen
Just... Just watch the trailer (http://www.planettobor.com/savage).
Post by: nenjin on November 12, 2018, 07:53:30 pm
Post by: Kagus on November 13, 2018, 04:51:04 am
I haven't tried it out, personally, so I have no idea how much or how little is included in the alpha.
Post by: Mephisto on November 26, 2018, 10:03:26 am
One part Stardew Valley, one part supernatural horror, possibly one part Town of Salem. Pretty much all you need to know.
Post by: AlStar on November 27, 2018, 05:15:08 pm
Well, Youtube shows that the last posts on the account were 8 months ago - the same videos I'd watched way back when.
It really is a shame: the game presented in those videos looks great and sounded like it'd be amazing to play.
Not holding my breath, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that maybe he'll return from the depths to post again.
(Note: not a Kickstarter backer, so not nearly as bitter as most.)
Post by: Egan_BW on November 27, 2018, 06:23:47 pm
Post by: Kagus on November 27, 2018, 07:17:37 pm
Post by: Frumple on November 27, 2018, 07:24:27 pm
E: Yes, yes it did. Back in march.
Post by: nenjin on November 27, 2018, 07:30:41 pm
Post by: Frumple on December 06, 2018, 08:04:08 pm
Another neat bit is the two-fold win condition: Your default is to get to the end of the run, going through all the rooms and killing the last (currently third, so far as I've been able to tell) boss. Your alternative win condition is killing the 666 hp grim reaper that (usually) shows up 3-4 rounds into each and every fight to try to murder everything there (including the enemies... which isn't always to your favor), with its HP persisting over the course of the game. Along the way you bash heads with a pretty decently sized host of varyingly difficult opponents in variously irritating combinations, gather your ever increasing pile of cards, and generally do the normal card game things.
Anyway, if you like slay the spire you'd probably enjoy it fairly well, and it's pretty cheap so hey.
... as a parting tip: Any card that automatically or indiscriminately damages enemies, in any way, shape or form, do not put it in your deck. You can conceptually use the things, but by and large they're functionally traps of self-ownage that will eventually get you beat in the face with an integer overflow joke level damage hammer (and that's not an exaggeration; I've seen one particular enemy reach 65535 projected damage). There's quite a few enemies in the game that react to being damaged in ways that not being in pretty tight control of what you're hitting, when, will cause you to get hard fucked.
Incidentally, difficulty wise it seems pretty up there, or at least random enough consistent performance is tough to manage. You can figure out some tricks or rules of thumb to get by (and luck out with the easier bosses -- my first "win" was killing Death during the first floor boss fight :V), but it's real easy to get beat into the ground if you run into the wrong enemy combination. I lost 20 something times before I managed my first victory, heh.
Post by: Aoi on December 06, 2018, 10:48:52 pm
So Blood Card (https://store.steampowered.com/app/930780/Blood_Card/) is a pretty neat Slay the Spire style card game, with a couple fairly unique mechanics going for it. It's relatively standard so far as card effects go, but the big twist is pretty straightforward: Your health bar is your deck. Damage discards cards, and when you run out of cards in your draw pile it's game over.
Pretty significant note: You get your cards back after each combat. Also, by nature of how it works, it also means that equipment-heavy decks are really difficult to work with. Get hit before your steamroller gets going? Hope your key equipment didn't get thrown into the discard pile. And for every piece of equipment you put on... you just lost 1maxhp.
Edit: Just fired this up again... and hooboy, it is just as heavy on the RNG as I remembered. And, despite recent patching, some extremely cheesy strats still work to kill Death ludicrously early (like the 6th room...):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on December 07, 2018, 12:49:31 am
... still yeah, killing death is probably easier than trying to fight through to the third boss a lot of the time. 'Till you hit death level five or six, anyway (I just now hit four, heh). 5's when hamstring et al stops working, 6 when it starts stacking attack+ when damaged. No clue exactly what max level means, but I can guess it means slow kill strats stop working all that well :P
E: Oh, though far as equipment go, I will say I'm developing a pretty serious appreciation for necromancer robes. You really want more than one pick, but if you can get three (or more) in play it's pretty stupidly sexy. Basically makes it so you can fire off 1 cost cards indefinitely, which is... nice.
Post by: Aoi on December 07, 2018, 01:58:45 am
I think my exact loadout would've been okay with a fairly high level Death-- if it managed to get started; with all of my card duplication effects, by the end of the fight, I was getting something like 9 attack, 50 armor, and 10 energy every turn, on top of 100% evasion, 8 cards back at the end of my turn, and who knows what in reflect damage.
Post by: Yoink on December 07, 2018, 05:27:33 am
...You play as GRUFFY MCSPIT, real name "Johnny Dice", who woke up on the wrong side of the gravel pit this morning and seems to have stolen Crocodile Dundee's hat. There's even a cute little cutscene in the trailer where he eats a balanced breakfast of PILLS HERE!, so I feel like he's got an interesting and complex backstory that builds up into the multifaceted individual he is today.You should write gaming reviews. No, really. I'd read 'em.
It would be nice to read articles on gaming and actually have a good chuckle whilst being informed, rather than scraping through clickbait-ridden muck for any shreds of actual information whilst gritting my teeth and sweating from the heat of the blazing hatred I feel towards the author... actually the weather might just be hot, I'm pretty sure I don't get that worked up over sub-par games journalism. Probably. :P
Fractured (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dymstudios/fractured-the-dynamic-mmo)I just can't help getting excited about this, never mind that they're highly unlikely to deliver on so much as half of their lofty promises, not to mention even if they did I wouldn't be able to play it without a computer upgrade and I probably wouldn't end up enjoying it half as much as I expected after all that anyway.
But still.
Hype.
I want to assemble a motley crew of demonic sleep-deprived powergamers and built huge, gruesome temples to the dark god(s), forged primarily from the bones of the peace-loving furry degenerates whose painfully cheerful world we can apparently teleport into with a li'l bit of magic.
I'm gonna have a name with, like, twelve syllables and as many horns and spikes as I can jam onto my body during character creation. 'Sgon be sick.
Post by: Kagus on December 07, 2018, 05:59:18 am
Well that snippet actually was a pretty good example of modern games journalism, since it was almost entirely based on just a few screenshots I saw of the game without having played it, and it included false information (you're not forced into the specific boots of someone named Johnny Dice or Jack Steel, you actually name and create your own character to some extent... Those were just the examples the devs managed to think up for showing off the game)....You play as GRUFFY MCSPIT, real name "Johnny Dice", who woke up on the wrong side of the gravel pit this morning and seems to have stolen Crocodile Dundee's hat. There's even a cute little cutscene in the trailer where he eats a balanced breakfast of PILLS HERE!, so I feel like he's got an interesting and complex backstory that builds up into the multifaceted individual he is today.You should write gaming reviews. No, really. I'd read 'em.
It would be nice to read articles on gaming and actually have a good chuckle whilst being informed, rather than scraping through clickbait-ridden muck for any shreds of actual information whilst gritting my teeth and sweating from the heat of the blazing hatred I feel towards the author... actually the weather might just be hot, I'm pretty sure I don't get that worked up over sub-par games journalism. Probably. :P
I did end up starting an LP (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172690.0) of Hellsign to give it a proper chance, and it's... Well, it's honestly about as bad as I'd expected it to be, but it's at least playable.
You should definitely take a look at the LP though, I make sure to horribly mangle as much strine into it as possible, just for the sake of making any Australian readers uncomfortable.
In other news, has anyone looked at Occupy White Walls (https://www.oww.io)? It's a free, multiplayer sandbox where you design and build an art museum and then populate it with real-world paintings and sculptures.
"Free, multiplayer sandbox" immediately sets off all number of warning bells, but it's miraculously got a reasonably good response on Steam. I'm starting to wonder just how bad it is, and how much renaissance-herpes I'd get from logging in to someone's museum.
Post by: Yoink on December 07, 2018, 06:36:33 am
I totally thought you were gonna name 'im Steve Irwin for a moment there.
Post by: Kagus on December 07, 2018, 06:46:42 am
I totally thought you were gonna name 'im Steve Irwin for a moment there.'Twas naught but trickery! Trickery and misdirection!
Post by: scriver on December 07, 2018, 06:54:38 am
Here's Obsidian's next game, "the Outer Worlds" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGLTgt0EEqc). Described by Kotaku (https://kotaku.com/obsidians-next-game-the-outer-worlds-is-basically-fal-1830918400/) as "Fallout New Vegas in space".
But honestly, all I see is Borderlands.
Or rather Borderlands 2 because that is the only one I played.
Post by: Yoink on December 07, 2018, 07:19:06 am
Post by: Egan_BW on December 07, 2018, 07:38:03 am
Post by: LoSboccacc on December 07, 2018, 07:40:57 am
This might very well get it's own thread down the line but whatever:
Here's Obsidian's next game, "the Outer Worlds" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGLTgt0EEqc). Described by Kotaku (https://kotaku.com/obsidians-next-game-the-outer-worlds-is-basically-fal-1830918400/) as "Fallout New Vegas in space".
But honestly, all I see is Borderlands.
Or rather Borderlands 2 because that is the only one I played.
I like how it talks about "worlds", hopefully it'll become a setting for something larger
Post by: Kagus on December 07, 2018, 07:49:59 am
more games need a dedicated "shoot the person you're talking to" button.I had an idea a long time ago for a first person game where you play as a recently discovered and scientifically thawed caveman, and despite having an entire set of keybindings (and associated screen prompts), your only method of interacting or communicating with the world is by punching it.
"Press E to push button", punch it.
"Press G to hack mainframe", punch it into a critical systems failure.
"Press F to pay respects", punch the casket, respectfully.
"Press T to talk to scientist", punch them in the face, prompting conversation.
Eventually you'd end up having to save the world after a series of incredibly complex and advanced tasks such as disarming a bomb (by punching it) and cunningly entrapping the criminal mastermind during an interrogation (by punching him), and everyone would think that you're a lot smarter than you actually are.
Otherwise, play Westerado: Double Barreled. It has that button.
Post by: Mephisto on December 07, 2018, 09:42:46 am
Post by: Aoi on December 07, 2018, 02:01:22 pm
In other news, has anyone looked at Occupy White Walls (https://www.oww.io)? It's a free, multiplayer sandbox where you design and build an art museum and then populate it with real-world paintings and sculptures.
I am now. That sounds fascinating.
I had an idea a long time ago for a first person game where you play as a recently discovered and scientifically thawed caveman, and despite having an entire set of keybindings (and associated screen prompts), your only method of interacting or communicating with the world is by punching it.
"Press F to pay respects", punch the casket, respectfully.
So you're basically fistbumping it? I could see it.
Reminds me of an interface somebody I knew in college made-- there was basically a pressure sensitive jelly bubble with a microphone in it. You were basically screaming at it, or punching it.
Post by: JimboM12 on December 07, 2018, 03:29:47 pm
In other news, has anyone looked at Occupy White Walls (https://www.oww.io)? It's a free, multiplayer sandbox where you design and build an art museum and then populate it with real-world paintings and sculptures.
I am now. That sounds fascinating.
im almost want to be that one guy who fills the museum with nothing but Jackson Pollacks and "Origin of the World". do not look that 2nd one up, its nsfw.
Post by: Aoi on December 08, 2018, 03:50:17 am
In other news, has anyone looked at Occupy White Walls (https://www.oww.io)? It's a free, multiplayer sandbox where you design and build an art museum and then populate it with real-world paintings and sculptures.
I am now. That sounds fascinating.
im almost want to be that one guy who fills the museum with nothing but Jackson Pollacks and "Origin of the World". do not look that 2nd one up, its nsfw.
L'Origine du Monde? I think that may find itself a better place mixed in among a Banksy gallery.
Post by: JimboM12 on December 08, 2018, 12:09:33 pm
Post by: Aoi on December 08, 2018, 02:47:22 pm
isn't banksy a street artist with a strong anti-establishment tone tho? and his dark humor might clash with the teenage silliness of filling a pro museum with nudes and sexual imagery.
Banksy's anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist... come to think of it, maybe he just likes being contrary. Two of his more high profile events was Dismaland, the Bemusement Park a few years ago, and, more recently, an art piece that self-destructed right after bidding on it closed at auction.
Pollock, on the other hand, does the stuff that mostly looks like random paint splatter.
I was thinking that the sharp juxtaposition of Banksy's more typical work, framing another highly controversial piece that it done in a traditional fashion, on a traditional medium, in a gallery filled with everything else being Banksy, is, in itself, something jarring.
Post by: Aoi on December 15, 2018, 12:22:32 am
It plays like an ARPG on rails, somewhat literally and metaphorically.
Rail 1: Instead of nice large open expanses (or at least hallways) to traverse, you're stuck in little ruts about as wide as you are, moving forward or backwards (and branching), while the mobs run around freely.
Rail 2: The game organizes itself into gameplay sessions with an estimated length of completion based on your prior play. Having just finished Act 1, I'm looking at times ranging from 10-33min (with one more option longer still locked to me). More importantly, each session increments a progress bar towards endgame. No backtracking. No grinding. You're on a one-way trip down (excluding pitstops in town).
You have a set number of equipment slots, starting at 3, and up towards 10, that have to be purchased in-game. Equipment ranges from passives (reserves mana), spells (consumes mana on activation), items (limited charges, but they can drop or be purchased). Equipment (including items) is effectively a one-time drop, can be upgraded, and can (fairly rarely) be found in enchanted forms. For example, one magical item I pulled gives the normal effect, plus +1 mana.
RNG is nasty. I started my first game on normal... first piece of equipment I got basically lets me hit two targets at once. Second item gives me a 40% chance of dropping restoratives when I get hit. Third item is a health potion. Over the next hour or so, I get a weapon that has a chance to set the place burning every attack and a piece of equipment that gives temporary immunity to burning. So this is pretty easy... lets try hardcore difficulty: Resistance to slow. Resistance to ice when standing in fire. Chance to slow on attack... which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't cost more mana than I had to equip. Invisibility potion (which I used a lot, constantly running away). Sigh. (Note: It's not all those items do, but they're kind of awful starter items.)
Leveling lets you pick extra life or mana. Also a freebie restore, and more importantly, particularly for hardcore... once you hit L10 or so, you basically get a free chance to die, once per level. It varies by class, but when the warrior 'dies', you get temporary invulnerability and a knockback.
Spoiler: "A few tips." (click to show/hide)
Post by: AzyWng on December 16, 2018, 10:37:17 am
I had an idea a long time ago for a first person game where you play as a recently discovered and scientifically thawed caveman, and despite having an entire set of keybindings (and associated screen prompts), your only method of interacting or communicating with the world is by punching it.
"Press F to pay respects", punch the casket, respectfully.
So you're basically fistbumping it? I could see it.
For added emotional impact, have your meetings with this character always begin and end with a fistbump or a friendly punching.
Post by: Kagus on December 20, 2018, 12:38:31 pm
Asymmetrical multiplayer, 5 survivors versus 1 killer. Rather than a Dead By Daylight clone, this seems to play a bit more like L4D, except the only zombie is one souped-up special infected. You can swap between killer types as the situation requires.
Post by: Mephisto on December 20, 2018, 01:37:24 pm
Shit, thought I was in the deals thread. Whatever. This will remain as a testament to my folly.
Post by: nenjin on December 26, 2018, 11:35:03 am
Is in Early Access on Steam, and a family member bought it for me for Xmas.
It's...good!
It's a roguelike 2d fighter. Think "Secret of Mana", because this game sure as hell is. Consider it "Secret of Mana" meets "The Binding of Isaac."
You get like 6 characters with their own move sets and special abilities, and have to fight your way up a tower, beating various procedurally generated levels, beating bosses, random challenges, etc...
As you play you collect Gold that you can spend between games on each character class's upgrades. In game, there's also these shrines which give you one of two options to upgrade your basic abilities do crazy stuff. Doesn't last between games. There's also hats to collect, and pets to liberate during gameplay, which provide small bonuses to you while you play.
Many games go for that nostalgia factor with the graphics, the music, the stories.....so does this one. But it actually manages to strike the right chord with me. The sprite art and music really nail that era of games perfectly, and the story manages to not be insultingly derivative either. That said, some of the references may be a little too on point. The boss death animation is almost a frame for frame copy of the way Secret of Mana bosses die. There's Castlevania treasure-in-candles, Thwomp Traps and just a lot of other stuff that feels very inspired by stuff from the golden age of RPGs. But it's all done very tastefully and feels like a proper homage rather than blatantly copying.
Gameplay feels a little on the looser side than tight. I struggled starting out with M+KB, which is weird because I've put hundreds and hundreds of hours in to the Binding of Isaac. But as soon as I went over to a controller, the game got a lot easier.
So yeah. I feel like this game deserves more attention than it's getting, but I admit I haven't played many of this most recent wave of 2d roguelike beatem ups. So maybe it isn't all that special. But it got my attention and kept me playing pretty quickly, because again, it hits all the right nostalgia notes and is a decent roguelike on top of it.
If I have one minor criticism to level at the game, it's that I _hate_ the fullsize character art. It looks like awful "Westerner-who-wishes-they-could-draw-anime-like-the-Japanese" stuff. The sprites and all that are good, even great. But their full size character art has these horrible giant anime eyes and cartoony faces with expressions that....honestly remind me of gross amateur hentai.
But that's a minor quibble on an otherwise interesting and well executed game.
Post by: Frumple on December 26, 2018, 02:24:36 pm
... which is to say playing the game is pretty sodding unpleasant, sadly. Good to hear the PC version handles better.
Post by: nenjin on December 27, 2018, 12:51:47 am
There's also just a lot of nice variety in enemies and exploration type thingies, like little random set pieces of challenges sprinkled in every play through. Lots of palette swapping for levels to keep them feeling fresh. All in all it's quite a nice package.
Post by: NullForceOmega on January 02, 2019, 10:26:22 am
In either direction of the starting portal are puzzle doors, those weren't too hard to figure out, but beyond each of those doors is a boss. One of the bosses, a giant worm that flips back and forth, was not difficult to kill, but that leaves me locked in its arena with no apparent way out. I think that I am supposed to jump on top of the worm (while it is still alive) and let it throw me out of the arena (there is another portal just past the door that won't open), but I have not been able to get that to work. The other boss is a stalk with an eye and four arms that throw rocks at me and kills me before I can really do anything.
There are some pretty cool mechanics at play here, but they are completely unexplained, and I've only gotten one of them to work in a way I understand. There are three obelisks/altars in the starting area which allow you to spend harvested souls. One of them (marked with a sword graphic) lets you use souls up to three times to enhance picked up items to make them more durable and useful as weapons (some items change appearance), and some of the items are pretty useful, you can rip the wooden palisade directly to the right of the gate when you exit out of the ground and then turn it into an extremely effective shield through this process. You can also turn the candlestick in the 'sanctum' into a sword, pretty cool. The second altar (marked with a demonic skull) lets me use souls once or twice but I have no idea what it is doing. The last altar is marked with a giant and I have been unable to get it to do anything at all, even when I have enough souls for it to display a green bar.
I can't really call the game "good", because it is completely inscrutable, you will take damage (when you start smoking heavily you are close to death) but you often will not know what is actually damaging you. Sometimes the physics goes nuts and you end up dead for no perceptible reason. Progress is reset when you die (and death will be frequent) though you can sometimes regain souls you were carrying (if they are in an accessible location). I don't have problems with games that intend you to learn by trial and error, but there comes a point when the player feedback is so lacking that figuring out what you are doing becomes a chore, and this game really rides the edge of that line hard.
Post by: Egan_BW on January 02, 2019, 11:10:24 pm
A launcher which gives you one small game and accompanying quote/description every day of the year. Each game made by a different contributor.
Also it's completely free, of course.
Worth a look if you're into small or experimental stuff, I think. I've only played the game for today, but I like the idea of having something new to try every day of 2019.
Post by: Cthulhu on January 05, 2019, 02:52:17 pm
https://lastyearthegame.com/the-game/
Asymmetrical multiplayer, 5 survivors versus 1 killer. Rather than a Dead By Daylight clone, this seems to play a bit more like L4D, except the only zombie is one souped-up special infected. You can swap between killer types as the situation requires.
The discord angle is pretty bizarre, not having steam feels like a way to dodge reviews. The fact that this game has been vaporware for years is also a little concerning, but I've got all the other slasher games so why not.
I've been playing Bastard Bonds, which is pretty cool. Its steam page (https://store.steampowered.com/app/486720/Bastard_Bonds/) makes it look like a porn game, and the developer's others games make it clear the fixation on bears (big hairy dudes, not ursines) is not a one-off thing (the other games actually are porn), but Bastard Bonds isn't porn. There's nude sprite monsters but not much sexual content or graphic nudity. I still don't think I'd play it at an airport or something.
You play as a convicted criminal (you can pick from a huge list of crimes, along with whether you're innocent or guilty) who's been marooned on a prison island full of other convicts. The goal is to travel across the island to the eastern port, where you hope to find a ship that can take you to the orcish homeland where nobody gives a shit about human laws. The world map consists of interlinked location maps, over 200 of them, and each one plays out episodically, mostly killing monsters and slowly expanding your band of merry bears. It plays a lot like fire emblem, a very simple combat system that's still engaging thanks to the "risk" mechanic. Each character gets one action per turn and anyone (including monsters) can choose to "push" the action, which lets them act again in that turn but increases risk. The higher the risk, the greater chance to fumble, which instantly ends your turn and doubles damage taken until your next action. It's weird at first, but when you get the hang of it it makes the combat more fun, taking advantage of fumbles and trying to push your characters as far as you can.
The other cool feature is the stronghold, once you've cleared a defensible map you can make it your hideout, hire people to take care of inventory, merchants, etc. and go back to talk to your dudes and manage their inventories. Over time you can handle bigger strongholds and recruit more dudes. The biggest strongholds can hold like 40 or more dudes but take a shitload of manpower to claim.
Tons of sprite customization, you can do almost anything with the default customization features, and monsters also have a lot of visual variations so it doesn't feel samey fighting groups. The storytelling is also fun. There's some degree of interpersonal character development, you can build friendships with your companions, etc. but don't expect big branching dialog trees or romance subplots. Aside from that there's not really a linear narrative, it's more like Dark Souls (ugh, dark souls comparison, ugh) with ambient storytelling, figuring out the history of the island by exploring its locations and occasionally finding a book or two.
Overall I'd definitely recommend it to people who like exploration and tactical RPGs, and don't mind the pixel nudity and general bear aesthetic. You don't have to be a bear, but the majority of your companions will be.
Edit re: last year: Wew lad. It's getting skewered, for all the things I knew would be bad. Hard left swipe on this one.
Oh, I also forgot to mention in Bastard Bonds, enemies have a small chance to hesitate when near death, and if you can speak to them you can recruit them or extort them for items that are hard to get anywhere else. You can recruit almost anything in the game if you've got the right skills to communicate with it. I have a cyclops on my team, with insane HP and damage and huge carrying capacity. Now if only I could get him to put some clothes on.
Post by: Kagus on January 05, 2019, 04:17:47 pm
The chargen options were great though, especially if you had the patience and vision to actually make the most of the clothing and whatnot. Was quite entertaining making a fellow with no pants and making his backstory be that he was imprisoned for the crime of indecency.
Post by: Akura on January 12, 2019, 05:37:31 pm
Looking at the store page, the game, My Time at Portia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRw5hTQo8Pc), leaves Early Access in three days, and the price will subsequently increase by 50%.
Played the first 15 minutes or so, but the first impression was pretty positive.
Post by: Wiles on January 12, 2019, 06:55:55 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/853550/Equilinox/
It is a lovely little simulation game where you cultivate biomes by placing down plants and animals that go well together. You get an income of points (From having animals who are satisfied with their environment I think?) and you use these points to selectively breed new traits into your plants and animals so you can unlock new evolutions. Unlocking a new tree for example usually involves selectively breeding your current tree to be of a certain height and colour. Once a tree has met the pre-requisites you can "evolve" it and a new species of tree will eventually grow and now you'll be able to plonk the new variety of tree down whenever you want.
I found it to be a very relaxing experience, it wasn't too hard to set up a a biome to be self sufficient so I didn't feel like I was constantly micro-managing everything. At the same time I always felt busy enough for things to remain interesting. At points where the game did lull I would just fast forward for a short time to get enough points to work on new evolutions.
It is not an expensive game at around 11.50 CDN. I got about 8 thoroughly enjoyable hours out of it. I feel like I've experienced most of what the game has to offer at this point and I probably won't play again for a while, unless there's new content added (which is possible, there have been small content updates since release).
Post by: Mephisto on January 19, 2019, 02:49:45 pm
The latest entry in the series? Age of Wonders: Planetfall. Basically Beyond Earth or Pandora: First Contact. The faction they've advertised is basically space humans, with the requisite "feel good" American president quotes and diplomacy bonuses.
It'll probably deserve its own thread when it comes out. But for now, here we are.
Post by: Frumple on January 19, 2019, 05:53:46 pm
It'll probably be pretty decent, but... still. Still.
Post by: itisnotlogical on January 21, 2019, 01:30:42 pm
Post by: Niveras on January 21, 2019, 01:44:05 pm
... man, I can't help but be immediately disappointed they went sci-fi instead of spelljammer/explicit fantasy-in-space. There's like bloody no interplanetary magic-y stuff out there, far as I've noticed.
It'll probably be pretty decent, but... still. Still.
I gave it some thought and I have to wonder what it would even look like. Well, apart from spelljammer (which I'm not familiar with), and warhammer, which is mostly fantasy in space except the magic is either warp or psionics.
I figure space "fantasy" makes use of dimensions rather than planets. How would a fantasy culture that runs on magic handle space travel and colonization? I guess they can teleport things around, and in some cases terraforming exists - Age of Wonders even provides the example where you could change tiles into ice, or fertile, or dead, etc. What about completely barren planets? Would they just be ignored due to a lack of magic to manipulate? Demons and eldritch creatures (thinking again of the shadow demons from AoW: Shadow Magic) still tend to have ecosystem and lifestyle, surely they can't exist on a dead planet. Even the undead need an existing living system to live on parasitcally. Or maybe these questions are simply the areas where such a game would have room to answer and grow?
Post by: Mephisto on January 21, 2019, 01:48:19 pm
How would a fantasy culture that runs on magic handle space travel and colonization? I guess they can teleport things around, and in some cases terraforming exists - Age of Wonders even provides the example where you could change tiles into ice, or fertile, or dead, etc. What about completely barren planets? Would they just be ignored due to a lack of magic to manipulate?
Now you've got the plot for a 4x take on Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
Man. If I weren't absolutely bogged down in about eight other things right now...
Post by: Frumple on January 21, 2019, 02:58:03 pm
Though depending on the setting dealing with barren planets can be pretty easy, if perhaps riskier. Just rip open a hole to a hell dimension or a few elemental planes or somethin' and clean up the mess once it's done infesting the planet :P
...also yeah some sort of galaxy scale arcanum 4x could be friggin' crazy interesting. Especially the interplay between magic and tech lean, writ solar system plus scale.
Post by: scriver on January 21, 2019, 03:02:19 pm
Post by: Kagus on January 21, 2019, 03:29:17 pm
Yeah, spelljammer has magic sea-going vessels (mostly) sailing between crystalline spheres (which had planets or whatever inside) kinda' things. Not necessarily different dimensions, iirc, but close enough in concept to match. Similar fiction plays around with star-gate sorta' stuff or magic equivalent of wormholes, sometimes doing stuff like ripping off chunks of planets/dimensions and chucking them into the distance. And then you have, y'know. Nanoha, which goes high level magi-tek style nonsense. There's all sorts of stuff to play with, heh.
Though depending on the setting dealing with barren planets can be pretty easy, if perhaps riskier. Just rip open a hole to a hell dimension or a few elemental planes or somethin' and clean up the mess once it's done infesting the planet :P
...also yeah some sort of galaxy scale arcanum 4x could be friggin' crazy interesting. Especially the interplay between magic and tech lean, writ solar system plus scale.
Aboard Dwarf Corvette 99-Echo
Captain Broddok, the gruff yet practical commander of the ship, straightens his space tunic before addressing the assembled crew.
"Alright gentledwarves... We're coming up on the coordinates of the enemy mage-vessel. It's a massive spell-slinging fortress with reinforced warding against enemy incursion and the hazards of space itself. Intelligence says it's crewed by no fewer than a hundred battlemages, all of them bristling with magical energy and bad tempers."
He inhales deeply, continuing.
"I needn't tell you how dangerous this encounter is going to be, and how horribly outmatched our wee ship would be in a fair fight against this monstrosity. Luckily, we've got a secret weapon."
He reaches into the weapons crate at his feet, grunting slightly as he hefts a large silver oblong and holds it aloft.
"This is the X-27 torpedo. It's a highly classified design, and the most expensive piece of equipment currently on this ship. It's equipped with twin-linked gyroscopic navigational safeguards, 360 degrees of thruster adjustment, a self-contained molten salt atomic power plant, a backup Bose-Tesla quantum generator coil in case of primary power failure, five guidance computers with tandem processing, a miniature class 3 biohazard research laboratory, and it runs DOOM."
The gathered crewmembers gasped with hushed awe. Then Lt. Tagrum, the weapons officer, raised his scarred and weathered hand.
"What kind of payload is it equipped with?"
"None. And it doesn't need one. The sheer technological alignment of this thing should disrupt any magical influence within 200 meters. Our plan is to maneuver past the initial enemy barrage, and then fire the X-27 directly into the heart of their shields. The spells and glyphs holding the whole damn calamity together should unravel in moments, and the spellship will collapse into pieces as its crew are sucked into space."
The crew cheered. Broddok concealed a smile of his own beneath the curly mane of his beard, and dismissed the crew with a curt nod. They all had their orders, all that remained was to see if their plan was good enough... or, perhaps, insane enough.
Post by: Stench Guzman on January 21, 2019, 10:11:46 pm
Post by: Mephisto on January 24, 2019, 01:56:13 pm
But now you're in a post-apocalyptic future where people have forgotten how wheels work, so you've got to build humongous strandbeests to get around. The apocalypse means that the world has stopped spinning, leading to year-long days as you migrate across the surface staying in the habitable zone.
One, the wheel thing.
Two, "woodpunk". *sigh*
Three, ginormous trees grow in less than a year, huh?
Post by: scriver on January 24, 2019, 02:11:32 pm
Quote
woodpunk
sigh
Post by: Kagus on January 24, 2019, 04:13:20 pm
As for the trees, think about it... One year-long day would technically count as closer to 2.5 years' worth of sunlight, since there's no night or dusk time with reduced sunlight. So you get closer to three years of delicious photosynthesis in a single day! See? It makes perfect sense!
Anyways, on a different note... Counter Spell (https://store.steampowered.com/app/351230/Counter_Spell/)! Multiple classes with more-or-less unique gameplay, detailed worlds (I believe there's also a random map generator), single player, co-op, competitive multiplayer... It certainly sounds like it could be a fun time, but I haven't played it myself and gameplay videos are rather few and far between.
The "Reforged" update supposedly added a lot of new content and functionality, so there's that too. I think the game is mainly unknown because of the unfortunate situation involving its name and how it basically doesn't show up anywhere unless you specifically know that you're looking for it.
Post by: JimboM12 on January 24, 2019, 07:31:14 pm
Legends of Ellaria
https://store.steampowered.com/app/621070/
its this rpg/rts/citybuilder thats in early access. the building part works ok, you can order some militia to follow you and theres multiple classes to choose for your avatar. animations are kinda wonky and so is the construction ui, but it works. i just started with this game: chose to be a warrior for the start and im leading my militia to find some lost people.
Post by: itisnotlogical on January 30, 2019, 03:21:28 pm
You know what my favorite part of Aurora Engine games is? All the left-clicking and awkward combat animations. We really needed more of those. Throw in a completely non-interactive action cutscene and some exposition worthy of a young-adult fantasy novel and you have yourself a recipe for a grand old time.
Post by: MCreeper on January 30, 2019, 03:27:43 pm
I've had The Witcher for a while and finally decided to try it today.Not sure if it's negative or positive review. :P
You know what my favorite part of Aurora Engine games is? All the left-clicking and awkward combat animations. We really needed more of those. Throw in a completely non-interactive action cutscene and some exposition worthy of a young-adult fantasy novel and you have yourself a recipe for a grand old time.
Post by: itisnotlogical on January 30, 2019, 03:31:46 pm
Post by: Kagus on January 30, 2019, 03:56:53 pm
There's still a chance it could turn things around once I'm out of the tutorial/exposition area and actually playing, but so far I loathe this game.God no, get out while you still can!
It's not worth it! The combat only gets worse, the signs are overpowered when they work properly (which is half the time), and the exposition and character development doesn't even make any fucking sense. It's not worth the carryover saves... Just skip over to Witcher 2 if you've got it (I haven't played it yet myself, but the combat system is different), or Witcher 3 if you want the juicy good stuff.
The original Witcher burns minds and twists souls. And for the love of all that is holy, don't pick hard difficulty!
Post by: Levi on January 30, 2019, 04:01:29 pm
Post by: nenjin on January 30, 2019, 04:18:04 pm
Post by: AlStar on January 30, 2019, 04:24:15 pm
There's still a chance it could turn things around once I'm out of the tutorial/exposition area and actually playing, but so far I loathe this game.The original Witcher burns minds and twists souls. And for the love of all that is holy, don't pick hard difficulty!
"I don't think I've spent enough time in this swamp" said NOONE WHO'S PLAYED WITCHER 1, EVER.
Post by: Levi on January 30, 2019, 04:48:25 pm
Post by: AlStar on January 30, 2019, 05:29:51 pm
Post by: Levi on January 30, 2019, 06:21:20 pm
I'll get to the third one in 2020 maybe. :P
Post by: Kagus on January 30, 2019, 07:45:32 pm
You can't just do that and expect me to be fine with leaving well enough alone!
Anyways, I played a bit of Witcher 3, thought "...man, I should accept the consequences of my actions and just suck it up", and then I did some shit with some pretty serious consequences and just went "...okay, fuck it, this is the 'bad' playthrough", and got a fucking horrible ending with a horrible Geralt because of course I was gonna play it a second time.
And then I thought "there's a lot I didn't quite pick up on, I should play the rest of the series to get a better understanding of Geralt and the other characters", and then I tried to play Witcher 1 because I was gonna do things in order.
Haha no.
But, CDPR is good people... I mean, sure, one of the lead writers just jumped ship for fucking Actiblizz, but they're generally good people. I'm pretty sure.
...Witcher 3 is great though. Beware the balcony.
Post by: nenjin on January 30, 2019, 08:36:19 pm
For me Witcher 1 still does something better than all the other witcher's: the alchemy and preparation phase. Even if potions are unbalanced, it felt worthwhile to do. It gave a ton of context to how you spent your time. In W2 and 3 they kept dialing it back, simplifying it. And it seemed less and less useful with every game (except the times it was damn near mandatory.) I remember in W1 using Blizzard potions and boss fights that were legitimately almost too hard suddenly becoming a blur of "whack whack whack ye dead." But that actually made me sit up and take notice of alchemy, and I spent a lot of time collecting and brewing and what not because it felt fun and right for the game.
In W2 and 3 it becomes almost an optional thing that you don't have to pay attention to unless you really want to maximize/optimize.
Also I kinda miss W1's whackadoo character progression. Each new Witcher game has tried to capture that 'it's not just another skill tree' feeling, but nothing comes close to just how bizarre W1's skill tress were.
So yeah. I think W1 was good enough that it warranted a sequel, because you just kinda knew they were going to make it better, make it feel more cohesive. Even if I feel like each new installment, while being shinier and more fluid, got more pedestrian, it's still a net gain to me.
Post by: Egan_BW on January 30, 2019, 10:15:41 pm
(Which is to say I played Witcher 2 and gave up on the first combat because it didn't feel "right" to me.)
(But I'm still looking forwards to Cyberpunk 2077.)
Post by: nenjin on January 30, 2019, 11:00:25 pm
Post by: Iduno on January 30, 2019, 11:22:33 pm
But, CDPR is good people... I mean, sure, one of the lead writers just jumped ship for fucking Actiblizz, but they're generally good people. I'm pretty sure.
Their response to being called out on sexism, homophobia, and transphobia was that they won't be shy about their politics, so...
edit: worse, that means there still isn't much for usable alternatives to Steam.
Post by: Mephisto on January 31, 2019, 03:24:05 pm
Post by: itisnotlogical on February 05, 2019, 10:51:39 pm
Post by: Frumple on February 06, 2019, 12:42:02 am
... that said, if you're looking for an extra romp in oblivion you might consider checking out nehrim (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehrim:_At_Fate's_Edge). It's a total conversion, and though it's been a good few years since I messed with it, I remember it being pretty great. Also recall the installation (and removal) being fairly painless.
Post by: LoSboccacc on February 06, 2019, 01:14:21 am
it's a mix of vehicle building with randomly generated rescue missions. mission go from somewhat stale (there's a lot of carry people around) to watering fires to whatever the workshop can throw at you, changing weather keeps them somewhat fresh but there's not really enough variation. it can be nice and it has some interesting visuals.
the building system varies from pretty simple to quite convoluted, controlled by an in-game option, which I like: allows everyone to get the difficulty they want out of it. the physics of water and such are quite good, the damage model is ok for what it needs (just don't bump into things and you'll keep afloat) but the need for engines to breathe air in the advanced building mode does complicate things a little and makes handling rough weather properly challenging, so I'd suggest that.
overall it's not for everyone but if you liked from the depths for building ship this is more of the same minus the combat.
Post by: Iduno on February 12, 2019, 02:28:47 pm
You walk around, exploring an area, picking up weapons when nobody is looking (or just using the silenced pistol you started with), find ways to separate people, steal their clothes, and then kill off some target in the weirdest way you can manage while disguised. The targets are jerks (bombing civilians, killing slightly more people than you, or being a druglord), or high-ranking employees of jerks, so it's okay.
The complicated deaths are mostly scripted (you need to call a particular character in to the office for a medical treatment that you poison, and say pretty funny scripted things while doing so), but you can manage quite a bit with environmental hazards and your trusty silenced pistol.
The main issue I've had is the game not warning you fast enough if you're doing something wrong. Walk into a hallway, suddenly get shot to death by guards for trespassing. Try again, stop a few feet away, and get a warning that you're not allowed in. In a game where timing is important, having to guess when you need to stop walking to find out if it's okay to go a particular way or not isn't great. At least most of the levels are replayable. They have been introducing one-time missions, which means more frustration from bug-related deaths.
Post by: Mephisto on February 13, 2019, 11:32:54 am
There's a really neat picture on this oddly-titled Medium article (https://medium.com/@topgames/worth-to-buy-early-access-games-well-and-unknown-titles-part-1-5a42278c66c3). You'll know it when you see it. Lots of blues and greens.
Post by: Parsely on February 13, 2019, 11:45:57 am
Be a space colony man. Ferry people and things around on your space colony vtol thingy. (https://www.humblebundle.com/store/frontier-pilot-simulator)Oooh that looks unique, thanks for the recommendation.
There's a really neat picture on this oddly-titled Medium article (https://medium.com/@topgames/worth-to-buy-early-access-games-well-and-unknown-titles-part-1-5a42278c66c3). You'll know it when you see it. Lots of blues and greens.
Post by: Kagus on February 13, 2019, 11:47:38 am
Be a space colony man. Ferry people and things around on your space colony vtol thingy. (https://www.humblebundle.com/store/frontier-pilot-simulator)Could it be?
Has SimCopter returned, after so many years?
EDIT: In other news, GladiaBots! (https://store.steampowered.com/app/871930)
Design a team of robo-warriors to mince and perforate your foes, and customize the way they do it by programming their AI using a node blueprint system!
Of note is the fact that the dev recently released an update that put a cap on how many nodes you were allowed to put into a multiplayer AI (yes, the game features online battles and ladders)... Apparently, a few peeps were causing the matches to crash and burn because they'd built AIs with thousands of nodes and hundreds of different conditions being checked and evaluated every tick. Which I think is kinda funny, because I just know that there were at least a few people out there who specifically designed their AI to do something like this.
Post by: itisnotlogical on February 15, 2019, 06:38:35 pm
Post by: Kagus on February 15, 2019, 06:42:22 pm
Oblivion's main quest is pretty evil to new players. If you just bumble along the main quest it basically encourages you to destroy Azura's Star, one of the best items in the game. As a new player it's very easy to overlook the importance of soul gems, and even if you know what they're for it can be hard to figure out how to get your own and charge them.Oh hello my first playthrough, it's funny seeing you here...
Yeah, I had no idea that the star was a soul gem. I couldn't hit people with it, therefore it must be pretty useless.
Post by: Folly on February 20, 2019, 04:18:34 pm
Anthem comes out on the 22nd, and I'm considering picking it up. They did the head-start thing a week early, so there's already some early reviews floating around. Here's what I've gathered from reading around:
Flying is super fun.
Combat is a bit simple, with limited enemy types and limited AI.
Graphics are pretty, but loading times are much too long and frequent.
Story is needlessly complex and tedious early and for most of the game, but leads up to a strong finale.
Interface fails to explain many basic concepts, such as what stats on gear actually do and how basic combat mechanics function.
Endgame is light, currently consisting of diablo-style increased difficulty playthroughs with better loot. Raid-style content has been promised, but is yet to be dated.
Post by: Niveras on February 20, 2019, 04:29:47 pm
- Electronic Arts
- Origin platform
Post by: Iduno on February 20, 2019, 04:35:14 pm
Any thoughts on Anthem?
Anthem comes out on the 22nd, and I'm considering picking it up. They did the head-start thing a week early, so there's already some early reviews floating around. Here's what I've gathered from reading around:
Flying is super fun.
Combat is a bit simple, with limited enemy types and limited AI.
Graphics are pretty, but loading times are much too long and frequent.
Story is needlessly complex and tedious early and for most of the game, but leads up to a strong finale.
Interface fails to explain many basic concepts, such as what stats on gear actually do and how basic combat mechanics function.
Endgame is light, currently consisting of diablo-style increased difficulty playthroughs with better loot. Raid-style content has been promised, but is yet to be dated.
So it's half-finished, and what's finished isn't particularly good? Bad tutorials are also a warning that there was no outside playtesting, which usually means you're paying to find the many bugs that will probably never be fixed.
Post by: nenjin on February 20, 2019, 04:38:54 pm
It looks like it's more fun to move around than in Destiny, at the cost of basically having no interesting verticality to it. If you want to be reductive, there's essentially little difference between it and Destiny in terms of what you do: go to a place, some guys spawn, you shoot them, go to another place, etc...but Anthem seems to think that flying through huge caverns or gorges is enough. Destiny levels weren't amazeballs but there's variety in the looks and the layouts that managed to impress me. (The first couple zones anyways, the rest started to get very samey.) What little I've seen of Anthem, everything looks pretty samey. Pretty! But samey.
Melee combat looks more fluid than Destiny though, by half. But it's half as good as Warframe, since it appears a lot of melee is canned animations designed to be launched from being airborne.
There are also complaints that mid way through the story, story missions get put on hold so you have to do some serious MANDATORY "free play" collectathons/achievement whackamole so you can progress through the story. Everything from "Kill x enemies using every method in the game" to "hunt down collectibles" to "rez teammates X times." Pretty goddamn bizarre considering most games relegate that stuff to daily quest grinds or strict achievement farming. Anthem be like "yo dawg, can't finish the story until you do all dis."
Frankly both games are flogging a dead horse IMO, that is the MMO-lite 3PS. Once the novelty of the enjoyable movement mechanics wears off, people are saying there's not much else to hang your hat on.
And this on top of all the normal AAA big game woes. I think they've solved the server disconnect issues. But major quest bugs, ill-conceived matchmaking (lvl 3 players joining the last boss fight of the story, for example), umpteen million loading screens, a shit and lifeless hub, leaked MTX schemes where skins are going to cost $20.....given all that, if it doesn't sound like a trainwreck, it at least sounds like a "give it 6 months to pull its head out of its ass" kind of thing. Just like Destiny. Plenty of people are enjoying Anthem I suppose. But it's not the "anything" killer. It sounds like 20 to 30 hour of play before you're out of things to do. And if Destiny is their guide....whatever comes next is going to be as equally bland and repetitive.
Post by: scriver on February 21, 2019, 12:53:56 am
Post by: Kagus on February 21, 2019, 12:50:13 pm
Although it's worth noting that penguinz0 was also part of the early access demo event, and is likely carrying a bias based on the 3 hours he spent trying to play 5 minutes of the demo.
As an aside, anyone have recommendations for first-person multiplayer RPGs? Any sort of co-op RPGs are fine actually, but I've got a particular soft spot for first-person perspective ones. I'm thinking specifically about session-based multiplayer, not MMOs like FO76 or (yippee!) Atlas.
Hexen 2 is a classic example of this game type, and it's a rather interesting case study in its gameplay experience. Other titles that come to mind are Barony and Counter Spell, and there's quite a lot of Counter Spell that I'd like to enjoy, but the game as a whole is so early-access lateral development that it boggles the mind. Borderlands also works, although I do have a soft spot for more fantasy-esque themes.
Post by: nenjin on February 21, 2019, 12:57:15 pm
Post by: Kagus on February 21, 2019, 01:00:44 pm
Post by: nenjin on February 21, 2019, 01:05:14 pm
I kinda meant the Borderlands series with "Borderlands also works", not just the first game. I probably should have specified though, especially seeing as I've played about 118 hours of Borderlands 2 and roughly 0 of Borderlands 1...
BL1 isn't worth it if you've sunk that much time into BL2.
Been playing a lot of 7 Days To Die with friends. It's more on the FPS Minecraft Survival Crafting side of things, but it's got some RPG progression.
This might be better in the "Recommend me a game" thread.
Post by: Kagus on February 21, 2019, 01:07:14 pm
This might be better in the "Recommend me a game" thread.It definitely would, and it shows how wonderfully I'm functioning today when I thought that I was actually in that thread.
Post by: Mephisto on February 21, 2019, 01:32:54 pm
Post by: Zangi on February 21, 2019, 02:16:34 pm
First-person, session-based, and co-op. Lighter on the 'RPG' end, but hey, it is more about player skill growth then character growth. Though, character growth obviously helps you along.
I suppose you can say Warframe also nominally fits that bill, but there is far less personality to it then the mentioned alternatives and is more of a treadmill.
EDIT: Oh right, reckon this sort should be in the recommend me a game (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134552.0) thread.
To clarify, it is ok to talk about homeless games for awhile, we can usually expect most discussion to die in a day or so.
It is when its popularity and collective want-to-type-about-it survives beyond a day or two is when it should move on over to it's own home.
Post by: Kagus on February 22, 2019, 01:53:08 pm
EDIT: Oh right, reckon this sort should be in the recommend me a game (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134552.0) thread.I know, I just managed to get confused partway through typing up the post and legitimately thought that I was in the other thread.
In other news, there's an upcoming RTS game on Steam called Taste of Power (https://store.steampowered.com/app/758250/Taste_of_Power/), and it... Well, I think they do the best job of explaining the game themselves.
From the store page/trailer:
Quote
Taste of Power is a RTS game about the world of alternative medieval.
Quote
Nowadays Taste of Power is in the early access.
Quote
RAISE REBELLION
ENGINEERING CONSTRUCTION
LEARN TECHNOLOGY
LEAD THE TRADE
AND FEEL THE DYNAMICS OF THE SMART ACTION
I suppose it's bad to judge a title purely on the quality of its Engrish, but the demo download button doesn't appear to be working and I'm not quite brave enough to shell out the time and money necessary for the Nowadays version.
Traditional RTS market has been... Kinda dry the last few years. Homeless man not also decisions, I guess.
Post by: Levi on February 25, 2019, 06:31:49 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Sounds like it'll be pretty customizable and scriptable too. No release date or payment model info yet unfortunately.
Post by: nenjin on February 25, 2019, 09:07:44 pm
*ducks*
Post by: Mephisto on February 25, 2019, 11:41:19 pm
Post by: Aoi on February 26, 2019, 03:18:44 am
Anyone else miss the Army Men franchise? (https://store.steampowered.com/app/523660/HYPERCHARGE_Unboxed/)
I always felt the field of toy gaming could use more asymmetry-- like 12" classic GI Joe vs 2" Army Men, as opposed to everybody being approximately the same size. His machine gun rounds are the size of your head-- and good luck getting out of range from a rocket launcher explosion...
Post by: Parsely on February 27, 2019, 11:10:51 am
That's a really good idea, toys really do suit the idea of asymmetry because... Well... They're all so different!Anyone else miss the Army Men franchise? (https://store.steampowered.com/app/523660/HYPERCHARGE_Unboxed/)
I always felt the field of toy gaming could use more asymmetry-- like 12" classic GI Joe vs 2" Army Men, as opposed to everybody being approximately the same size. His machine gun rounds are the size of your head-- and good luck getting out of range from a rocket launcher explosion...
(I just remembered that I made some kind of toys war ISG back in the day, good god)
Post by: nenjin on February 27, 2019, 11:46:21 am
Post by: Kagus on February 27, 2019, 06:13:18 pm
"Which one?"
"What if we made, like, a more complex version of that?"
"...what?"
And thus, UBOAT (https://store.steampowered.com/app/494840/UBOAT/) was born!
Post by: Stench Guzman on March 06, 2019, 02:00:39 pm
Post by: Mephisto on March 07, 2019, 03:11:17 pm
Got an email saying that I've got a key waiting for the weekend event. So I guess I'll be doing that tomorrow after work.
Post by: AlStar on March 07, 2019, 03:37:32 pm
Doesn't deserve its own thread yet, but I bet there'll be one soon for Satisfactory. Basically 3d Factorio, if you absolutely must have a trite description.Ooh, I've been eyeing that one - definitely create a thread and post your impressions when you get a chance to play.
Got an email saying that I've got a key waiting for the weekend event. So I guess I'll be doing that tomorrow after work.
Post by: LoSboccacc on March 07, 2019, 03:51:16 pm
Doesn't deserve its own thread yet, but I bet there'll be one soon for Satisfactory. Basically 3d Factorio, if you absolutely must have a trite description.Ooh, I've been eyeing that one - definitely create a thread and post your impressions when you get a chance to play.
Got an email saying that I've got a key waiting for the weekend event. So I guess I'll be doing that tomorrow after work.
definitely, that game is on my watchlist, didn't know it was closing on alphas.
Post by: Parsely on March 07, 2019, 11:48:39 pm
if you absolutely must have a trite description.Isn't that the whole point of this thread?
Post by: Yoink on March 08, 2019, 03:07:15 am
Looking at the store page, the game, My Time at Portia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRw5hTQo8Pc), leaves Early Access in three days, and the price will subsequently increase by 50%.I obviously haven't checked this thread in a long while, but I get the feeling something rather strange happened to this link. :P
Post by: Niveras on March 08, 2019, 06:37:57 am
I'm somewhat concerned that although it looks very good and has a good concept, that the control scheme might be shit. Eco has this problem right now (both in terrain destruction and in placing building blocks), Subnautica had a bit of it but it was excusable because building wasn't freeform or a major aspect of the gameplay (important and extensible, but it was largely to support exploration).
Is it still possible to get into a free alpha/beta/demo etc? I'd rather not drop $30 on it just to find out I can't handle the controls.
Post by: Akura on March 08, 2019, 06:42:39 am
Looking at the store page, the game, My Time at Portia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRw5hTQo8Pc), leaves Early Access in three days, and the price will subsequently increase by 50%.I obviously haven't checked this thread in a long while, but I get the feeling something rather strange happened to this link. :P
That is indeed strange, since I'm pretty sure the post I meant to put that link into(which I never wrote... I think) was not anywhere near the same time I made the quoted post.
Here's the link to game. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/666140/My_Time_At_Portia) I'm guessing that right-clicking a page in the Steam store browser to copy the page URL doesn't work properly, since when I tried to paste the link here again, it pulled something else from the clipboard instead.
Post by: Kagus on March 08, 2019, 07:06:05 am
Looking at the store page, the game, My Time at Portia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRw5hTQo8Pc), leaves Early Access in three days, and the price will subsequently increase by 50%.I obviously haven't checked this thread in a long while, but I get the feeling something rather strange happened to this link. :P
That is indeed strange, since I'm pretty sure the post I meant to put that link into(which I never wrote... I think) was not anywhere near the same time I made the quoted post.
Here's the link to game. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/666140/My_Time_At_Portia) I'm guessing that right-clicking a page in the Steam store browser to copy the page URL doesn't work properly, since when I tried to paste the link here again, it pulled something else from the clipboard instead.
Yeah, Steam really, really does not like URLs for some reason. Can't tell you how many times I've had issues with copying the wrong game or some completely unrelated other link...
Post by: itisnotlogical on March 08, 2019, 09:52:32 pm
Post by: Aoi on March 08, 2019, 11:10:58 pm
EDIT: You'd think I'd remember the "recommend me a game" thread considering I made the bloody thing.
Nah, that line of thought istoological. I'm sorry.
Post by: askovdk on March 11, 2019, 07:10:25 am
Never heard of Satisfactory before. Very interesting. Art style kind of reminds me of Subnautica, very polished, at least what we see in the trailer.
I'm somewhat concerned that although it looks very good and has a good concept, that the control scheme might be shit. Eco has this problem right now (both in terrain destruction and in placing building blocks), Subnautica had a bit of it but it was excusable because building wasn't freeform or a major aspect of the gameplay (important and extensible, but it was largely to support exploration).
Is it still possible to get into a free alpha/beta/demo etc? I'd rather not drop $30 on it just to find out I can't handle the controls.
I was in this final free test-weekend, and it plays well and is very beautiful.
I don’t fully know what you mean by ‘control scheme’. The placement of buildings is ok (and has a ‘snap to grid’ option if precise alignment is important), the placement of conveyer belts is very nice, but the option for conditional automation logic wasn’t present (at least on the 3 lowest tiers available in the free weekend).
There are already some good youtube videos that may show the controls, Blitz’s enthusiasm is always good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8S_qcsFH_c (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8S_qcsFH_c)
The coolest feature I found was the automated vehicles.
I built two truck stops far apart and set one for unloading and another for loading (including fuel). Then I entered the truck and drove manually the wanted roundtrip with recording on, and then I could exit, set the truck to auto and watch it drive of and later return with the wanted cargo again and again. :-)
Post by: Mephisto on March 11, 2019, 10:56:07 am
Post by: Stench Guzman on March 11, 2019, 08:55:29 pm
And there was a game called XS, which tried to do both at once and looked ridiculous.
Behold. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlYRH7CEuPw)
Post by: itisnotlogical on March 12, 2019, 12:28:59 am
I just found out Diablo 1 is on GOG. I already own it on CD, but maybe this means a re-release of Warcraft 1 & 2? Maybe even Lord of the Clans, the Warcraft adventure game that got cancelled?
Post by: Akura on March 12, 2019, 05:32:38 am
Some games from the 1990s used primitive CGI. Some other games from the 1990s used actors doing live action video.
And there was a game called XS, which tried to do both at once and looked ridiculous.
Behold. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlYRH7CEuPw)
Ghen War, which did terrain deformation long before Red Faction came along, did something similar, though I don't think it had both on screen at the same time except in the ending as well.
Post by: itisnotlogical on March 17, 2019, 02:44:10 am
Post by: Aoi on March 20, 2019, 03:56:54 am
It's basically a post-apocalyptic world (the moon's split in half and is looking larger every day...) and on my first day, you're looking for shelter from a an oncoming swarm of locusts with a pseudo-timer ticking down. Most actions other than walking around the local area, picking up loose items, or looking around will cost you time, and your immediate goal is to secure a shelter and not die. At the end of the day, you're effectively scored on how well you prepared... for example, if you forgot to nail down the insect netting on the windows, that'll cost you. Left the back door to the house open because you were too busy staring at the front door? Whoops.
So far, it doesn't seem too hard; I finished off the first day with about half an hour to spare, and I did a lot of unnecessary stuff on the off-chance it would be useful later on (why yes, I am going to walk back to the gas station to refill my fuel jug, just to avoid spending the pint of gas it'll take me to drive there). It has a kind of charming feel to it though, and, allegedly, the narrative is actually pretty good, and there are variations on the kind of problems you'll face. And I also kind of regret reading more in-depth reviews about. Sigh.
Give Don't Escape (above link is to Newgrounds) a shot if it sounds remotely interesting; the concept is similar. (Though DE:4 is more classic point and click adventure, not the pseudo first-person.)
Post by: Iduno on March 20, 2019, 08:17:15 am
Looking at the store page, the game, My Time at Portia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRw5hTQo8Pc), leaves Early Access in three days, and the price will subsequently increase by 50%.I obviously haven't checked this thread in a long while, but I get the feeling something rather strange happened to this link. :P
That is indeed strange, since I'm pretty sure the post I meant to put that link into(which I never wrote... I think) was not anywhere near the same time I made the quoted post.
Here's the link to game. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/666140/My_Time_At_Portia) I'm guessing that right-clicking a page in the Steam store browser to copy the page URL doesn't work properly, since when I tried to paste the link here again, it pulled something else from the clipboard instead.
Yeah, Steam really, really does not like URLs for some reason. Can't tell you how many times I've had issues with copying the wrong game or some completely unrelated other link...
I don't get what I want half of the time clicking Steam links though the Steam application.
Some games from the 1990s used primitive CGI. Some other games from the 1990s used actors doing live action video.
And there was a game called XS, which tried to do both at once and looked ridiculous.
Behold. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlYRH7CEuPw)
Is that the guy who played Edison Carter (from Max Headroom)?
Post by: Aoi on March 21, 2019, 08:26:47 pm
The art is pretty nice, if the style doesn't put you off immediately; it's very polyagonal in a way that reminds me of Out of This World, albeit with a vastly higher 'resolution'. Also has tones of This is the Police, with being dragged back and forth with decisions you don't want to make.
The gameplay gives me pause-- the first section, you're mostly dealing with court cases which involves a lot of reading dialogue and linking ideas to statements to interrogate whoever's on the stand. Except I can never seem to pass that phase cleanly. (Good thing that it's easy to reload to the start of the day, but... meh.) In the second section, there's also a layer where you're trying to build influence throughout Paris and defending your... turf. The problem here is that it largely comes down to deciding what exactly you want to do, and setting it up such that you achieve what you want with a minimum of collateral damage, which isn't particularly interesting since, for the most part, it shows you exactly what the results of a given action are (if not the first time, then subsequent times). This kind of drops it to something more like Democracy, where you're just balancing a bunch of bars and calling it good.
It feels like there's a decent chunk of historical railroading. Sure, you could pardon Marie Antoinette instead of sending her off to the guillotine as history did, but you probably can't afford the penalties involved. (I sure couldn't. Who knows, maybe the course of the game would've shifted.) And it kind of bugs me that everything's in English, despite it being, ya know, the French Revolution. It comes across to me as being in an uncomfortable place where it's attempting historical realism, and just straight up isn't.
Edit: Halfway through Act 2, some rather disturbing design decisions finally clicked: Generally speaking, you get better rewarded for executing people. Looking at my records, 21 executions and 22 acquittals, but I was only trying to balance my favor among factions... executions also give you a boost to your reputation. Also, unlike pretty much every other courtroom game out there, you're actively discouraged from fully pursuing the details of a case... asking the bare minimum to sway the jury to a decision and sentencing them is ideal.
Post by: Jopax on March 22, 2019, 03:22:40 pm
Post by: Kagus on March 22, 2019, 04:03:15 pm
Somebody is making a turn based tactics game where the premise is "What if SWAT, but with WIZARDS" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYJR4Ts-ylE)The witch cop's outfit is pretty adorable, but I do have to wonder how compelling the finished product will be.
Post by: Mephansteras on March 22, 2019, 04:18:27 pm
Post by: Aoi on March 22, 2019, 08:33:06 pm
Post by: scriver on March 23, 2019, 08:38:45 am
When I first saw the Commit and Rewind buttons I was excited as I thought it would mean another "phase based" combat game, where you plan your actions up ahead and then every character's actions play out at simultaneously. It was a bit of a let down when it proved not to be the case.
I also don't get the design choice to have both the player character's actions take place immediately during their own turns, but have almost every enemy (except the one that is an enemy version of a PC class) need both their turn AND your next turn to take effect. It seems like a really good way to ensure nothing is ever really going to happen to any of the PCs.
Post by: Egan_BW on March 23, 2019, 05:01:16 pm
Post by: scriver on March 24, 2019, 08:39:05 am
Post by: itisnotlogical on March 25, 2019, 03:14:27 am
- Besides losing out on the rewards and notoriety, is there any downside to ignoring the various missions?
- Is there any use for peasants or castaways outside of the combat? The airbus is so small you really can't afford to bring anybody that can't pull their weight.
- How am I supposed to tell if somebody is a harmless civilian/neutral or another enemy? A lot of people on one mission looked like they were carrying weapons, but I lost points at the end for killing them.
Post by: cider on March 25, 2019, 06:46:27 am
Somebody is making a turn based tactics game where the premise is "What if SWAT, but with WIZARDS" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYJR4Ts-ylE)
And I'm very much looking forward to it! Tom Francis is great at coming up with interesting gameplay concepts and features and making them work in a game, as made evident by his previous games Gunpoint and Heat Signature.
Post by: Folly on April 03, 2019, 10:11:25 am
Notably, the PC release will be timed-exclusive to the Epic Games Store. BL3 will be available in other digital storefronts April 2020.
(https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16005159/zJppPCFI.jpg)
Post by: Levi on April 03, 2019, 01:24:46 pm
Oh well, it just means I get to play with the bug fix patches all installed. :)
That said, that box art is a thing of beauty. :o
Post by: Kagus on April 03, 2019, 01:37:30 pm
But I want to play the girl with the abs nooo....
Oh well, it just means I get to play with the bug fix patches all installed. :)
That said, that box art is a thing of beauty. :o
I mean, I'm a little sad that it isn't post-enlightenment Krieg, but it works.
Some folks are disappointed it's not a psycho pointing three finger-guns at his head.
Post by: Mephisto on April 03, 2019, 03:40:48 pm
Post by: Mephisto on April 03, 2019, 07:07:50 pm
Paranoia (https://store.steampowered.com/app/858030) of tabletop RPG fame will soon have a CRPG. The worst aspect of Paranoia is the insufferable fanbase that makes it impossible to have an actual discussion.
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 04, 2019, 02:07:48 am
I love almost everything about the game, but it has the absolute worst implementation of speech/charisma in any RPG I've seen. I'm not a big fan of the FO3/NV style, where having enough Speech gives you the best ending on a silver platter while apologizing for ever being in your way; OTOH an actual dice roll is just as stupid with the added frustration of being unpredictable. The speech check options aren't even that interesting; they just amount to the Sole Survivor saying "pretty please" rather than any sort of lying or convincing.
Post by: Kagus on April 04, 2019, 03:59:20 am
Paranoia (https://store.steampowered.com/app/858030) of tabletop RPG fame will soon have a CRPG. The worst aspect of Paranoia is the insufferable fanbase that makes it impossible to have an actual discussion.How... How does one even do this? How can you convert Paranoia into something that can actually be run by a computer?
The first trailer's a bit dry, but hopefully they'll put one with a bit more personality out once the development has actually progressed a little bit.
Post by: Mephisto on April 04, 2019, 10:57:23 am
How... How does one even do this? How can you convert Paranoia into something that can actually be run by a computer?
You make it asymmetrical multiplayer. X people playing troubleshooters, 1 person playing Friend Computer. Add some kind of tech currency stuff so FC can throw limited spanners into the works. Sort of like Arma III Zeus mode, maybe?
But the thing I linked is singleplayer. Part of the Paranoia fun (at least when playing Zap) is gathering enough justification to be able to off your fellow troubleshooters with no negative consequences. That's... not a thing in a singleplayer tactical strategy game where you control the whole party.
Post by: AzyWng on April 04, 2019, 10:26:25 pm
I'm not a big fan of the FO3/NV style, where having enough Speech gives you the best ending on a silver platter while apologizing for ever being in your way
I remember in Dead Money (you know, the one about letting go even though several players tried to ignore the lesson as hard as possible by carrying out an item that most vendors wouldn't even have the caps to fully pay you for?), there was one character where a speech check would actually be a dialogue trap of sorts in that, when you were separated and reunited with them later, they'd try to kill you rather than, if you were the one being subservient to them, being willing to help you. This dialogue trap would occur whether you had the skill points to succeed or not, if memory serves.
While that does make speech a more interesting option than the NV/FO3 style (and certainly not some luck-based "pretty please" like FO4), that does come with the problem of potentially pissing players off by making them pour skill points into something that either doesn't work or actively works against them. Making speech a challenge of choosing the right dialogue would mean that, short of SPECIAL stats preventing you from saying certain things (the way low intellect in 1 and 2 would cause your character's speech pattern to be dramatically different than normal speech), any character could smooth-talk their way out of a scenario that could be smooth-talked out of, with enough save-scumming. Combining the two would likely take additional time in either programming, writing, or both - and if memory serves, Fallout New Vegas's development was somewhat rushed.
Post by: Persus13 on April 04, 2019, 11:07:15 pm
Post by: Kagus on April 05, 2019, 01:21:10 am
the variety of stuff used guaranteed you wouldn't be able to do all the dialogue trees with one character.Except you totally could, as it was entirely possible to build your character so that every single skill would hit 100 long before the level cap.
As for the skill points dialogue trap, yeah, that was a thing. Now, mind, it's still pretty much the one singular place in the game where a dialogue skill check was actually a "bad" choice, and in fact every dialogue choice with that character besides "yes master" will lead you to the same bad end (something you won't know unless you've done it before or are following a walkthrough).
Not that it's even really a bad end though, because Dean is a rotten little dick and killing him is honestly a-okay with me.
Also you talk about "an item" as though I didn't walk out of there with every last one of the things, proceeded to sell three of them and then used the rest as decorations...
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 05, 2019, 01:33:13 am
I quite like Mass Effect's Paragon/Renegade system. Early-game choices didn't have any requirements, but very important choices later in the game (and later in the series as a whole) required you to reach a certain score on either side. It meant that you had to act consistently to use it effectively, unlike KOTOR or earlier Fallouts where your character could pick and choose when to be good or evil. Of course, such a system only works for good/evil dichotomies.
... and now that I say that, I'm going to learn that I was doing things horribly inefficiently and there's some way to get 999,999,999 in both Paragon and Renegade before leaving the tutorial in the first game.
Post by: Egan_BW on April 05, 2019, 05:36:10 am
Post by: scriver on April 05, 2019, 06:41:05 am
I remember in Dead Money (you know, the one about letting go even though several players tried to ignore the lesson as hard as possible by carrying out an item that most vendors wouldn't even have the caps to fully pay you for?)
Hah, I'm such a compulsive hoarder that I hadn't even considered this point before. I too would very every single one of those out, as well as one of every kind of weapon and armour unique to this area, and every other kind of new misc item that felt meaningful and put them all in my
My only regret is that I also weren't able to bring back the npcs, as the true treasures are the friendships we make along the way. (Cut to all the companion characters hanging out in my bunker for ever and ever and ever...). "Let go" my arse, I'll have none of that!
Post by: Robsoie on April 05, 2019, 07:22:04 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmosx2NZnZQ
one of the most awaited mod for old WWF No Mercy on n64 emulators finally got a release after the near 7 years of development :
http://akilive.boards.net/thread/397/wcw-ftb-version-1
you need to make an account to their board to actually see the thread unfortunately.
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 05, 2019, 10:00:31 am
My only regret is that I also weren't able to bring back the npcs, as the true treasures are the friendships we make along the way. (Cut to all the companion characters hanging out in my bunker for ever and ever and ever...). "Let go" my arse, I'll have none of that!
I personally could do without Dean constantly telling me to sneak, right as he charges into a group of high-level enemies with his tiny, useless pistol. The Think Tank's terrible GLADOS impersonations can stay in the Big MT as well.
Post by: scriver on April 05, 2019, 10:06:33 am
Post by: Kagus on April 05, 2019, 10:11:49 am
I did have one of my best Fallout moments in Dead Money, actually, but that was mainly unrelated to any of the characters or objectives.
Post by: Persus13 on April 05, 2019, 10:22:38 am
Good luck having 100 in all stats and going for the options that require you having only 1 in Intelligence to get.the variety of stuff used guaranteed you wouldn't be able to do all the dialogue trees with one character.Except you totally could, as it was entirely possible to build your character so that every single skill would hit 100 long before the level cap.
Also you talk about "an item" as though I didn't walk out of there with every last one of the things, proceeded to sell three of them and then used the rest as decorations...I usually had enough caps and other cash to buy New Vegas by the time I got to the vault in Dead Money, so frankly I never left the vault with more than 1 bar. Playing blackjack in a game where high luck means you're more likely to win is pretty fun. And once you understand how caravan works, it can make you quite a bit too.
Post by: scriver on April 05, 2019, 10:36:54 am
My main disappointment with it was a lack of closage regarding Powerfistgirl, her madfather, and her ex.
Post by: Kagus on April 05, 2019, 11:01:04 am
My main disappointment with it was a lack of closage regarding Powerfistgirl, her madfather, and her ex.
This would be slightly ratified by giving Powerfistgirl some actual goddamn functional code.
But I kid... It wouldn't be a proper Fallout without horrendous and mind-boggling script fuckups.
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 05, 2019, 01:03:53 pm
Post by: Kagus on April 05, 2019, 01:09:10 pm
IIRC, you can give Veronica a holotape found in Dead Money to get something regarding Elijah.You can, yes. It gives her a perk, too.
She can't use the perk though, because it's made the wrong way around.
I think there was also an issue with some of the dialogue fucking up as well, where she'd think you'd kept the holotape for yourself if you gave it to her, and think you gave it to her if you kept it for yourself.
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 05, 2019, 02:57:43 pm
Post by: ZeroGravitas on April 05, 2019, 06:45:22 pm
best puzzle game i've played in a long time, up there with some zachtronics stuff
basically you manipulate the puzzle by pushing nouns and verbs around, which then define how things work in the puzzle. like most puzzles say "baba is you" so you control the "baba" (a bunny thing). but if push the block "baba" or "is" or "you" out of sequence, you lose; you're no longer baba. but if you pushed the word "rock" in place of "baba", you would make it say, "rock is you", and then you'd control the rock on the screen. etc for other verbs.
it's pretty nice on switch but also available elsewhere
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 09, 2019, 03:23:09 am
On Survival, it's become a week-long guerilla war against the very concept of raiding itself. I never thought much about Lexington moving through it, but I've picked out several landmarks, places to sleep, raider spawns and sniping positions in order to expedite returning after a death or retreat. I'm diseased, exhausted, shot full of holes and have been on fire at least once, but I persevere.
I can only imagine how annoying some of the late-game encounters can get in this mode.
Post by: Mephansteras on April 12, 2019, 02:55:24 pm
Sappho made a review video about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJkjmhfgjcY) which is where I learned about it.
Game is only $5 on steam right now, and I had a lot of fun playing my first run through. Well worth the price tag.
Post by: Aoi on April 30, 2019, 06:56:56 pm
Xenomarine: A not particularly interesting scifi roguelike, despite how the reviews seem to be glowingly positive, for the most part. Maybe there's something in there I'm not seeing, but it sits as a hard pass for me. (On the other hand, Dungeons of Dredmor also didn't seem particularly worthwhile to me, and it seemed to be an indie darling at the time.) Also: "You fail to spot a secret door."
Deck of Ashes: Another entry into the list of deck builders, a la Slay the Spire, Blood Card, and who knows what else has cropped up recently. This one distinguishes themselves from the rest with a slightly more interesting world map, camp upgrade system like Darkest Dungeon, and some new card management shenanigans...
Your life and draw/discard decks are persistent across battles; at the end of a combat, you have an amount of time units that you can spend pulling cards out of discard, restoring life, or crafting cards (not recommended; you can do that without spending time in town). If your draw deck runs low in combat, you get free cards that trade life to shuffle your discards into your draw... which isn't necessarily a good thing: There's a lot of passive cards that are only active when in your discard, and there are debuffs that you might end up pulling again. There's a pretty good amount of RNG mitigation too: While you're forced to take a card recipe, you don't have to craft it; you can sell it. If you rely on cards in your discard, you can move them there in town for a nominal fee. Events that spawn recipes on the map let you see what the recipes are (and, I think, always include the resource used to craft cards, if you don't like any of them).
Gameplay itself feels kind of clunky; I have some trouble dragging and dropping my cards and it doesn't feature comprehensive keyboard controls yet. Over all, while it lacks the polish of some other titles, it's not bad, especially considering it's still very much EA. Either I'm really bad at it or it could use a bit of balancing with the bosses.
Undead Horde: ARPG-lite for somebody who likes playing a summoner. Kind of reminds me of Pikmin and Little King Story, to some degree. First impressions are surprisingly entertaining, but I feel like it'll come across a bit shallow with more time. Art's kind of cutesy and over all worth a look though, I'd say.
Post by: Folly on April 30, 2019, 09:30:19 pm
PO is an ARPG in the vein of Diablo and the like. First major notable downside, the Online portion of Pantheon Online is not yet implemented. Which is to say that you have to have an internet connection to play, but there's absolutely no interaction with other players. Co-op PvE is expected to be added soon. Another noteworthy issue is the design decision to use WASD movement, rather than click-to-move. There also seem to be some class balance issues, with some classes being significantly OP and others UP. And the skill tree is apparently a very early pass, with a much more elaborate version in the works.
All of that being said, amongst the mixed reviews seem to be some people having a lot of fun, and it's been far too long since I played a decent game in this genre.
Post by: itisnotlogical on April 30, 2019, 10:06:09 pm
Post by: Aoi on April 30, 2019, 10:27:40 pm
Post by: Kagus on May 01, 2019, 02:36:40 am
Isn't that just the "big game" version of Right Click To Necromance?
Undead Horde: ARPG-lite for somebody who likes playing a summoner. Kind of reminds me of Pikmin and Little King Story, to some degree. First impressions are surprisingly entertaining, but I feel like it'll come across a bit shallow with more time. Art's kind of cutesy and over all worth a look though, I'd say.
As a quick aside, I actually quite enjoyed some of the mechanics of Victor Vran. I thought it took an actually different route than a lot of the clones out there, and I found wall-jumping up to secret stashes actually quite fun.
But... Something just wasn't right. Maybe it was the lack of character customization? The slightly-too-much comedy aspects? I don't know... But it's kind of a shame, because I think they had some good ideas here and there.
Post by: Folly on May 04, 2019, 06:40:32 pm
KurtzPel is an anime-styled action game with pvp and pve modes. PvE is akin to monster-hunter, where the idea is to kill one big monster with lots of health and a variety of telegraphed moves.
I haven't played long enough to get much of a feel, other than to say it suffers a bit from being a small studio and early access, but may have some potential. Mild fanservice. Free to play.
Post by: Cyroth on May 04, 2019, 11:23:32 pm
KurtzPel (https://store.steampowered.com/app/844870/KurtzPel/) recently entered Steam Early Access.
KurtzPel is an anime-styled action game with pvp and pve modes. PvE is akin to monster-hunter, where the idea is to kill one big monster with lots of health and a variety of telegraphed moves.
I haven't played long enough to get much of a feel, other than to say it suffers a bit from being a small studio and early access, but may have some potential. Mild fanservice. Free to play.
Also region locked. EU doesn't get to play for another month at least.
I'm so fapping mad about that, I've been looking forward to this game for months and now I can't even download it. >:(
Because of a goddamn region lock... what is this? 2005?
Post by: Aoi on May 05, 2019, 02:20:31 am
I played through the first few missions, and based on that, I think Dauntless did better MH-esque combat. There are two opening weapons to start from, a sword and a bow, and I grabbed the bow... it mostly comes down to shooting a few times when there's an opening, hitting one of your specials if you have a chance, and running around in circles until your stamina's restored so you can keep attacking. Lots of clicking. The sole male NPC I've seen so far was decked out in full shaman/tribal gear and has a mask on, so the gender is indistinct anyways. So far, it's been mostly been duels against humanoid characters, though one had a panther-ish pet. No bodypart destruction yet.
Isn't that just the "big game" version of Right Click To Necromance?
Undead Horde: ARPG-lite for somebody who likes playing a summoner. Kind of reminds me of Pikmin and Little King Story, to some degree. First impressions are surprisingly entertaining, but I feel like it'll come across a bit shallow with more time. Art's kind of cutesy and over all worth a look though, I'd say.
Looks like. Wasn't acquainted with RCTN.
Post by: Aoi on May 09, 2019, 02:03:34 am
Skills are interesting*. You start off with a base class, and after levelling a bit, you spec into one of three branches of it, with their own passives and active skills (of which you have five slots to insert 10-15 skills into). Each active skill then has their own passive tree. While you can use skills that you haven't chosen to activate their passives for, they are unequivocally weaker, though their unique effects still work (teleports, for example). Skills can be respec'd freely, though it takes an hour or two to grind them back up to max level at endgame.
The specialized skills can change quite a bit too; there's one skill that basically sends out a fan of homing bolts that does direct+DoT. You can change it such that it triggers-on-damage and launches a single giant bolt that does extra damage and debuffs. There's another whose default is a cyclone/whirlwind attack; you can choose to trade movement for increased damage/range and a pull effect. Golems have four pretty divergent specs: Lifedrain, Tank/Retal, PBAoE/DPS, and a fourth one that's slipped my mind. All skills are supposed to have equally flexible trees, though I'd estimate only a third are currently implemented.
Item crafting is something I'd say they definitely got right. All items have base stats and up to four affixes. Items can be broken down for something like one shard per tier per affix. (Or find shards as drops.) You can then throw shards onto other pieces of equipment to give them one tier of that affix... though the more you do so, the more that the item will eventually break, preventing you from modding it further, or if it's already heavily modded, it may downgrade. You can mitigate the risk, though not eliminate it entirely.
*Especially right now in beta for theorycrafters; with careful attention to the order in which you take skills and liberal use of respecs, you can get skills from other subclasses and use passives you don't have the prereqs for.
Post by: Mech#4 on May 10, 2019, 01:33:59 am
Scratch that. Apparently there's been 2 expansions released for Titan Quest in the past 2 years.
Titan Quest: Ragnarök (https://store.steampowered.com/app/741350/Titan_Quest_Ragnark/)
Spoiler: Details: (click to show/hide)
Titan Quest: Atlantis (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071200/Titan_Quest_Atlantis/)
Spoiler: Details: (click to show/hide)
It's not a game I've been looking at particuarly closely, since Grim Dawn has replaced it for my currently played ARPG. Still, it's nice to see a game still getting content so many years after its initial release.
Post by: Mephisto on May 10, 2019, 07:52:14 am
I'm going to say it looks sort of like Windforge but without the story (such as it was) and with infinitely-more ground-based vehicles.
Should you decide you want in, they do beta key waves using subscribers to their mailing list. (http://www.mechanicminer.com/subscribe) It's called a mailing list but they seem to just be using it for key distribution if you're worried about spam - I vaguely recall signing up many months ago, maybe receiving an email saying "beta is coming", and then today receiving my key.
Post by: itisnotlogical on May 14, 2019, 03:58:39 pm
It's a lot like Bastet in that you have to take what lines you can clear even if it's not the most optimal. If you try to get fancy or are waiting on a particular piece, you'll get owned in about ten seconds. It's all about clearing lines as fast as possible.
The highest I've gotten is 19, although I think there weren't many people playing when I scored that.
Post by: Niveras on May 14, 2019, 06:36:43 pm
Here's something I had no idea was in the works or was expecting at all. An expansion has been released for Titan Quest...
Scratch that. Apparently there's been 2 expansions released for Titan Quest in the past 2 years.
Titan Quest: Ragnarök (https://store.steampowered.com/app/741350/Titan_Quest_Ragnark/)Spoiler: Details: (click to show/hide)
Titan Quest: Atlantis (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071200/Titan_Quest_Atlantis/)Spoiler: Details: (click to show/hide)
It's not a game I've been looking at particuarly closely, since Grim Dawn has replaced it for my currently played ARPG. Still, it's nice to see a game still getting content so many years after its initial release.
...
Huh.
Kind of expensive, though.
It'll be interesting to go back to it. I never did like the ultra-end game of it. Archer mobs (the dragon archers in the china area) always seemed to tear me up no matter how I built myself, even with max pierce resist. Still, might get them on sale.
Post by: Trolldefender99 on May 14, 2019, 07:36:48 pm
What they are (My Colony and Antiquitas), are city building games that are on steam but mobile ports. Before that scares you away, it isn't like playing a mobile game at all but kinda like an economic simcity 4 city builder. There are no microtransactions or pay to win at all. There aren't exactly timers, though there is waiting for people to arrive from launch pads (my colony, but you can build a bunch of launch pads for faster colonists) or houses "breed" people in Antiquitas. And there is waiting to get enough resources to do stuff, and can take time to progress because of that. Definitely a more slow paced kind of game with building up slowly (a lot more so in Antiquitas, My Colony is a lot faster). Though the regions (Simcity 4 style and they all semi-interact) are big enough that you can have regions entirely focused on industry/resources and it speeds up as city grows)
Antiquitas (3 USD) -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/935750/Antiquitas/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/935750/Antiquitas/)
My Colony (5 USD) -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/964130/My_Colony/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/964130/My_Colony/)
My Colony is a space colonization game, and I'm positive you can colonize other planets though I haven't reached that part so I'm not 100% sure on that. It says there is space features, so I assume so. You build pretty fast compared to Antiquitas, get huge amounts of people and even has an optional online mode. There is no battling (same with Antiquitas, no rts/strategy stuff). Antiquitas has no multiplayer currently and not sure if there will be put in), but for My Colony its all co-op stuff helping each. In My Colony you can join federations and be part of a large player group, or one of the AI federations. And singleplayer too of course for those not wanting the online aspects.
My problem with My Colony is things seem to...not look as good as far as the city goes. Its a lot harder to make a beautiful city than Antiquitas. But it is possible, just harder for me so could be a personal issue. You consume a lot more resources, and need power, much bigger and more population buildings and things tend to get cluttered in my regions. In both games you do get regions as I said above, and its good to specialize regions to different things and that helps a lot. But My Colony is still great, and both games have a lot of neat features I haven't seen in a city builder before.
My Colony has 3 races, Humans (two factions), Draconians (evil aliens) and Zulag (insect/hive race kinda ant-based). Draconians are newest addition and haven't been fully developed yet, the creator is making a tech tree for them though.
Antiquitas is based on ancient period with Rome, Egypt and Gauls currently. Gauls being new and not fully developed yet. I suggested they add carthage at some point, as I think that be a good addition. Its much slower paced and slower to grow, more of starting with a village and slowly getting to city stage (I played a few hours and not even 100 people yet). But it is the ancient times, so things are smaller in scope than futuristic based My Colony. I like this one a lot especially because you can make such a beautiful city/village
Here is my small village in Antiquitas https://i.imgur.com/4SLv53n.jpg
My city in My Colony https://i.imgur.com/lFWZ6Mo.jpg
For the cheap price, and continual quite often updates its definitely worth it. Both games are updated a lot and to me that surprised me a lot, the creator(s) put in a lot of substantial updates without too long periods of no updates. Though some people find the lack of in-depth tutorial the game can be confusing. I figured it out easy enough though, but everyone is different in that regard. Since you got to build certain units to get new resources to unlock new buildings+research technology. It doesn't really flat out tell you what to do in that regard.
Also to add, my friend has a 4k monitor (its a huge tv monitor pretty much) and both games work fine and out of the box. So he/she/they (dunno how many people work on the game, maybe its just one person) ported it amazingly considering it came from mobile origins and supports 4k without any tweaks or problems.
Post by: Aoi on May 14, 2019, 10:45:14 pm
Missions take place on a grid map where you roam from room to room, interacting with the equivalent of traps, treasure chests, or a few things, or combat.
Combat is turn-based, with each unit getting an action each turn. Units have shield/life, which is kind of important since shield regenerates for free quite easily, but there are very few ways to restore life in the middle of a mission, and you have to pay to restore it outside. There's a base attack (which varies in some interesting ways) that reduces Heat, 3/6 selectable skills that generate heat on use, and a super which generates a lot of heat and has a long CD. When you max out your heat, you lose your next turn and get a hefty defense penalty. Buffs and debuffs play a pretty large role... ostensibly. It's hard to tell.
If your units die, they permanently die, and you lose anything you have equipped on them. Thankfully, you can pay for replacements outside of missions and they come in at the same level as the rest of your team... though they probably won't have the classes you like.
Plot is nothing special, usual man abuses machine, machine wants legal protection kind of a deal. It plays well enough, and based on level caps, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through while still being entertained.
Post by: Trolldefender99 on May 16, 2019, 05:36:22 pm
They also get a lot of immigration (so far mostly humans, haven't had zularg/insects show up yet). Which is interesting. Though draconians themselves don't need to work, so you can focus on getting draconian citizens and not worry too much that their is more population than jobs. Since draconians are actually lazy and don't like to work, so they don't get unhappy about it.
But here is my city
https://i.imgur.com/AzbjwqC.jpg
Post by: Mephisto on May 17, 2019, 10:47:55 am
Post by: Niveras on May 18, 2019, 05:32:38 pm
Feels like it could be a sci-fi Monster Hunter, but it would need work - Monster Hunter had 15 years to define and refine itself, Eden Rising would need a lot of time and resources to match the depth and refinement of MH.
Similar concepts:
- There's a variety of weapons, each with their own attributes and movesets, and you upgrade them with things you find out in the world, or drops from creatures. However, the movesets are far less complex and because you carry them with you everywhere (I guess in some kind of quantum hammerspace, considering your inventory is limited otherwise), you're probably going to be switching in the weapons best against the toughest things you're fighting at the time, rather than specializing. (It is also a far smaller variety than what you find in MH.)
- Likewise, defeating enemies is more about learning patterns and when it is safe to attack than it is overpowering them, since the weapon upgrades aren't significant in terms of increased damage. That said, monster AI is extremely simple and combat is very easy. No enemy that I fought tracked you during an actual attack, and most enemies leave themselves wide open for long periods of time during their attacks. Some of the bigger, more dangerous enemies, you simply avoid attacks until they faceplant themselves and are open to attack.
- Running around harvesting bits and ores to make your consumables felt the same, although again the selection of consumables is very limited. In particular, the basic healing item is found pretty much everywhere uncommonly, and can be upgraded to heal more using other found items. Overall, the selection of consumables is, like weapons, comparatively limited.
- Health feels limited compared to the amount of damage enemies do, and armor has tradeoffs to mobility/stamina vs. protection.
I didn't actually meet any significant "holy shit" type enemy encounter that would be even the slightest match for any kind of Great Beast from Monster Hunter. Just that the game they have, if given a slightly different focus or taken in a different direction, could join that genre.
The tower defense mechanics are mediocre so far as I saw. Towers are simple, weak (damage and defense), and slow - it is clear that the player is the one expected to do all the damage output. Maybe with a lot of turrets in a single lane they could handle a wave or two by themselves. It's somewhat nice to be able to use a tower or two out in the world if you need some help with something difficult, but again it only supports your damage, they don't deal much themselves. Maybe if the defense areas were made larger, towers made more important - something like an Orcs Must Die balance between player and tower output - and have the siege waves made fairly larger.
Combat is slow, stiff, and simple. Movement is more open than in MHWorld but also somewhat buggy - the jump is fairly liberal but sometimes jitters/teleports and slides on certain surfaces. Enemies regenerate health immediately if they cannot reach you, and usually just dive into the ground and blip back to their spawn point (or path circuit) when they reset - except during TD segments. Even outside TD, sometimes you can still 'exploit' pathing by using ranged weapons in areas that you can cross much easier than enemies, who have to circle around a more traditional valid path - ranged weapons are mostly weaker and slower than melee.
Crucible (the tower defense areas) upgrades are somewhat nice to limited some of the manual farming, but only one can be active at a time - I presume this disables the passive item generation in disabled crucibles. The tech tree is simple and serves only as a means of gating player power progression by limiting access to resources (some techs unlock the ability to harvest different resources from existing nodes). Although, I guess, I'm not sure what a tech tree might functionally do otherwise than gate player power.
The art direction is nice.
Disclaimer: I got around to activating the Fungal Preserve tower before quitting. I saw only potential in the gameplay, but nothing realized. There's some complaints about it being listed as "free to play" but certain areas are locked behind the ~$30 "ascended" pack, with people saying that the FTP version is basically just a demo. The devs counter that if you were to play on a server hosted by an "ascended" player you could still access all content. I'm not sure how true that is, because some of the weapons said they were only available to ascended, even though I could kill and get all the drops necessary to build them.
Post by: Mephisto on May 24, 2019, 08:01:17 am
So. What do you think the next feature is going to be?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on June 08, 2019, 02:33:25 am
You're the last survivor in a space ship at the end of the universe, trying to figure what's going on by picking through the logs of derelict ships via remote controlled drones. Gameplay is either by manual control of the drones, coupled with a lot of console commands to the ship you're exploring, or entirely via console commands (barring a few finicky moments where your drones are too stupid to mode aside to let its buddies pass...).
Its one of those games where you basically constantly lurch on the edge of catastrophic failure, or things are going so swimmingly that nothing can take you down except a stupid mistake that's lurking right around the corner. Your drones can hold various tools, as can your ship, but wear and tear is a constant threat as you flit about space trying to make sense of things before you fall apart.
It's NOT combat-based at all. While you can use your drones to kill the beasties that roam the ships, direct combat pretty much means you've exhausted every other option and you happen to have a spare gun lying around. It's more about reading the map and making the best of the tools you have at the moment. For example, only have a motion detector? Use it to open and close doors to slowly shuttle hostiles on the ship to an airlock before venting them out into space. Last ditch effort to check a room's safety? Open and close the doors a few times. Maybe the doors will throw up an obstruction warning when you try and close it.
Failure is pretty much always a player screw up-- 20 ships in, "What are the odds that something is going to kill me in this room before I can slam the door shut? OHNOIT'STHEFASTSWARMTHING--bzzzzzzt
Post by: Aoi on June 10, 2019, 01:03:40 am
Superficially, it resembles a deck-based RPG (a la Slay the Spire), but it's closer to a traditional turn-based RPG. Each of your characters has a deck of up to 8 cards, and you draw to six cards every turn. You play up to 3 cards every turn, with a special bonus card if all three are from the same character. More powerful cards require you to charge up by using basic attack/buff cards. Characters have their own stats, equipment, etc.
Visually, it looks pretty good. Nice and solid design that fits in well with the rest of the Steamworld universe. There's some kind of weird dithering going on with some of the portraits that I can't decide if it's sloppy scaling or just a design thing. Music is great. The writing is... interesting. The sense of humor in it isn't quite my thing, but it has its moments; to each their own.
But it's lacking the polish I'd expect from being attached to the Steamworld brand, especially vaguely similar stuff being released in the last few years. For example, you can't get the detailed info on the bonus cards in-combat (only out of combat; you can view the other icons). There's no explanation for a lot of little icons. (What's that red angry face ailment? Sure, it's berserk, but you should still be able to see it.) Hold shift by default to speed things up, and the toggle option in the menu toggles the default speed of the game; no keypress toggle for normal/fast. No turns remaining indicator on buffs unless you view detailed stats. Oh, and no explanation on exactly how stats work. (Does luck influence drops?) Damage is somewhat variable when it doesn't look like it should be. Unfortunately, it feels like it was designed for the Switch first, with the general feel of the interface and presentation.
I think part of my problem is that with how it looks kind of like StS, I expect StS-style information and precision when it's really more of a traditional RPG with a funky mechanism for determining your actions for the round.
Post by: Haspen on June 10, 2019, 09:42:38 am
It's full of humor, and 100 endings. Some hilarious, some gruesome, some are both. It has plenty of unlockables, secrets, shortcuts and shout-outs innit.
Lovely pixel graphics included, although on certain small rooms the game zooms on those pixels and the blur is just a bit eye-jarring. Soundtrack is full of nice chiptunes - Pirate's Cliff is my favorite of all!
Currently at 64/100 endings, and finding new ones actually became challenging (after all, you can stab everyone only once).
Post by: Akura on June 10, 2019, 01:31:38 pm
It actually took me a while and several broken bottles to figure out that you have to take the blender's container off the machine and set it on the counter to pour things into it the "easy" way, instead of the hard, but entirely possible, way of manually rotating the bottle to pour out the contents into the blender. So, yeah, the tutorial it shit but learning things the hard and possibly-on-fire way is part of the experience I guess.
Post by: Aoi on June 10, 2019, 02:44:03 pm
Post by: Folly on June 12, 2019, 11:06:03 am
And for you readers out there, the website has a bunch of free manga providing lore for the game!
Post by: Folly on June 15, 2019, 06:51:48 am
Trover is a very mediocre platformer/collectathon, with stale dialogue that becomes annoying at times and an overall game length that doesn't quite match the purchase price. I can not recommend.
Post by: Frumple on June 15, 2019, 08:05:17 pm
Post by: Iduno on June 17, 2019, 07:47:03 am
I just finished 100%'ing Trover Saves the Universe, a video game from the makers of Rick and Morty.
Trover is a very mediocre platformer/collectathon, with stale dialogue that becomes annoying at times and an overall game length that doesn't quite match the purchase price. I can not recommend.
I mean, that's what I would have guessed from "makers of a mediocre [not game]."
Post by: CABL on June 18, 2019, 05:10:31 am
Crypt of the Necrodancer apparently got a legend of zelda DLC, uh, recently? Probably will never play it and I don't feel like necroing one of the old threads, but it looks (and sounds) pretty neat so folks might be interested?
It's not a DLC, it's an entirely new game called "Cadence of Hyrule". I've seen one of the streamers I watch speedrunning it, and it's definitely fairly different from the OG CotN.
It's only on Nintendo Switch, though.
Post by: Frumple on June 18, 2019, 07:21:51 am
... but yeah I didn't notice 'till a bit later it was a standalone crossover thing. I've never played CotND or watched much video of it, so how similar the gameplay was(n't) wasn't something I recognized. Still, as said, it looks pretty good for what it is. Definitely have to check speedrun vids if they're already faffing about. Those are usually fun.
Post by: Mephisto on June 20, 2019, 08:22:18 pm
Fast forward, it... does not have good reviews. It's maybe a completely unchanged version of their last game. It may or may not have one piece of stolen music.
So what is it? Think Morrowind but just slightly shit. You start in a jail cell. but not really. You're just kind of in the side of a house, surrounded by weird bars that you could simply sidle through if you were not apparently in an upper body brace.
Spoiler: No, seriously. (click to show/hide)
You find yourself poisoned somehow as two guards talk near you. For some reason their conversation played twice in my game before the event trigger happened. Possibly because, like an idiot, I approached one and hit the talk button. Spoiler - the poison just knocks you out instead of killing you. You start with a knife but you find so many better weapons before you even get out of the little tutorial area that it doesn't matter at all. You rekill a few skeletons, find some weird penguin things that I guess are the developers' attempts at humor, and find yourself in a mine with human enemies. And that's about where I left off.
Post by: Kagus on June 21, 2019, 02:12:55 am
Post by: Aoi on June 21, 2019, 02:42:39 am
I bought Wytchsun: Elleros Origins last night. It looked janky but sort of fun so I put it on my wishlist a while back. It came out yesterday and had good reviews.
...Spoiler: No, seriously. (click to show/hide)
... find some weird penguin things that I guess are the developers' attempts at humor ...
Between the screenshots and that comment about weird penguin things, I had to search for this post that seemed kind of familiar recently that was either in the Own/Die thread recently that may have been the same game...
And lo and behold, it's a different game, but from the same poster. You must have a thing for first person RPGs with middlin' reviews. :D (Aforementioned post here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70414.msg7981455#msg7981455) for the curious. And yes, that pig is freakin' terrifying.)
Oh, and can we get a shot of the weird penguin things? Just to compare with the pig.
Post by: Mephisto on June 21, 2019, 06:56:30 am
You must have a thing for first person RPGs with middlin' reviews. :D
Hey now, Dark and Light was a licensed Ark game. It at least had some potential. But yes. Yes I do.
Spoiler: Discount prinny within; Also massive image so you can see ALL the details (click to show/hide)
Post by: Kagus on June 21, 2019, 07:35:39 am
Hey now, Dark and Light was a licensed Ark game.Honestly, this should be your first warning that something is wrong.
Post by: Mephisto on June 24, 2019, 10:02:16 pm
The main things pictured, sort of in order - a coke oven producing coke and some kind of liquid out of coal. An ore washer that uses mechanical power and water to clean dirty gravel/dust into 1.5 clean gravel/dust. A drying thing that turns ore sludge from the washer into clay dust, clay bars into bricks, and other miscellaneous drying tasks. An auto hammer turning steam and one ore into 1.5 dirty gravel. A macerator turning mechanical power and 1 ore/[dirty|clean]gravel into 1.5 dirty dust. A steam boiler turning water and heat into steam.
These are all the copper variants. There are multiple levels of machine you get to tech up through. Pretty sure I'm almost to the next tier - steel.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on June 25, 2019, 07:40:26 am
I bought Wytchsun: Elleros Origins last night. It looked janky but sort of fun so I put it on my wishlist a while back. It came out yesterday and had good reviews.
Fast forward, it... does not have good reviews.
I've been bit by that twice myself. People around here like to jump on me for saying sometimes you buy something and regret it too late for Steam to let you refund it (unpatched bugs after first level, etc.), saying the reviews will save you. Sometimes a few people just give a game good reviews, especially right before it goes on sale. It sucks, and I've got to get better at expecting people to lie on Steam.
Evospace looks interesting. I'll have to look into that one.
Post by: Zangi on July 02, 2019, 12:53:42 pm
It is all about running a soviet era region from the ground up basically.
Can definitely say that this is a hardcore city builder, if you tick the difficulty options for it. (Hard population management is brutal.)
You basically manage everything, including the population.
Your only source of income is exporting stuff.
Communists do not charge their own peasants for anything, but must still satiate the needs of the people. 2 currencies to manage also.
One quirk I hate though is stuff like bus stops, no through traffic, that includes foot traffic, despite it having 2 road slots on opposite ends.
Post by: Kagus on July 02, 2019, 01:02:41 pm
(Hard population management is brutal.)This is why you need to make long-term plans for these sorts of things. Like, say, five years at a time.
Post by: MCreeper on July 02, 2019, 01:43:02 pm
Balance is still being kicked out of scyscraper's window, though, for the sole reason of 5 stories tall, 126 defence abominations hulking around. At least that can be more or less fixed easily.
Also, in the old version Essence of Tarm is random bug thingie instead of freakish moving platform that shoots Should-be-visible Giant Buggy Laser Of Death. And head necroskeleton looks like a bald Joker. Okaaay.
EDIT: Yeah, it appears to be actual total war now, although i didn't checked with open map yet. I have seen river zora raiders capture hylia lakeport. And when i captured first settlement in proper world as twili, i immediately got sieged by 1.5 Gerudo stacks AND Ordona stack AND passing by Darknut stack. Gerudo stacks included 126 def Twinrova. Seriously, who thought it was a great idea? I can at least try cannons, but bot can't. Imagine that 80% of factions in TATW have Sauron from the beginning and Sauron is three times stronger. That will be this.
Post by: Aoi on July 08, 2019, 01:32:18 am
Which basically explains the core gameplay; you're picking up random junk, whacking monsters with it to see what it does,/encyclopedia entry, and then using it until it breaks (which is quite often-- highest durability I've seen so far is 4 hits). There's some loose narrative about finding a McGuffin, but it's not really the point.
The pixel art is perfectly fine, though the portraits/cut scenes are kind of... artistic? But that doesn't really matter that much.
Also, Robot Wants It All was just recently released. Which is basically an enhanced collection of the Robot Wants (x) series of Flash games that first came out... phew... a decade ago?* Which are fantastic mini Metroidvanias. Not sure what's new in here, but I have positive memories of the originals.
*2011.
Post by: Mephisto on July 08, 2019, 06:54:20 am
Intended to come out around Q3 2019 is Nanotale, something that sounds like it would be cyberpunk but is not.
Post by: Zangi on July 09, 2019, 09:39:32 am
Epistory is a fantasy game wherein you fight insects as a lady on a wolf in an origami world... with the power of TYPING! It's pretty good.Hmmm... gonna have to get my niece some sort of typing games once she gets smart enough to use computers. But that is still a few years off, still in the keyboard smashing phase. The tiny blighter can somewhat use a smartphone for youtube videos though.
Intended to come out around Q3 2019 is Nanotale, something that sounds like it would be cyberpunk but is not.
Post by: Cthulhu on July 09, 2019, 11:35:55 pm
Fighting in a more realistic environment in VR makes you feel like a fucking badass though, moreso than Gorn. Fought an enemy wizard, walked up on him with my shield up to absorb his lightning, until he was backed into a corner and I just shield slammed him over and over until he was dead, while warding off his friend with my sword. Then bashed the friend so he fell back against the wall, grabbed his sword hand, and cracked his head against the wall, feels good man. Full collision makes things so much better, you can chokeslam people, grab two guys and knock their heads together, catch an enemy's wrist and make him stab himself, pretty much anything, and when you're actually doing it with your body instead of pushing a button and watching a canned animation it feels so cool.
If you've got VR you gotta get it. It's apparently even cooler with the Index controllers, full body tracking including fingers so you can grab things more naturally, throw your weapon up and kick it at somebody, ridiculous shit.
Post by: Akura on July 10, 2019, 05:03:23 am
Post by: Mephisto on July 10, 2019, 01:50:22 pm
Post by: nenjin on July 10, 2019, 06:40:44 pm
Post by: Aoi on July 11, 2019, 12:43:51 am
Ostensibly, you're a god that has only loose, indirect control over your worshippers, and you're trying to build up a city of followers. It sounds kind of like a Populus or Black and White thing going on. I mean, during creation, you get to set color themes, a light/dark alignment or something like that, key ethos (I went with Lust...), how you and your followers are described, and how you're depicted. Pretty cool stuff. Not particularly groundbreaking here, but could be used for some nifty stuff nonetheless.
Then the game kicks in and it's really just party management RPG with depth that's more reminiscent of a wading pool. Having said that-- there's certainly room for additional complexity. Maybe it just doesn't rear its head until later. But even then, it'd be more toward just being finicky-- either building teams to minmax for fun, or because the difficulty spikes up to enforce it. Six basic stats, an elemental type, up to four(?) passives, a... birth sign with other bonuses, a hodgepodge of classes, a set of skills that are dependent on what class a unit is and where you train them, and even more stuff that makes each character technically unique. Like how unit sexual preference actually matters-- as a Lust-based faith, I primarily deal Charismatic-based Mental damage... which gets major penalties/bonuses depending on if the opposing unit likes my main damage dealer or not.
Which brings up what the results of all your party management is: You pick three of your units and wage... ritualized war with other tribes. Your three units use one of their skills at random, on some target that's picked through who knows what process, and repeat until one side takes enough damage that the battle is resolved. Yep.
City building is mostly just a matter of picking what stats you want upgraded since that's done at one of your limited building slots.
Post by: Mephansteras on July 14, 2019, 01:45:52 pm
It's diverting, and probably a good game if you're not in the mood to have to think too hard. But it does feel like it might get dull after a while.
It is still in early access, so hopefully they'll add some stuff in that makes it a bit more engaging. Right now the core game is decent, just not spectacular in any way. I think one thing that does bug me is that you can end up with 9 disciples, but can only tell 3 of them to do something each season. So you're constantly feeling not only short on various resources, but it feels like you *should* be able to be doing more and can't for unexplained mechanical reasons. They don't even go do little stuff without you. They just sit around.
Not recommended right now. Maybe once it is out of Early Access it may be improved. As it is, I'd say it's an ok game to get on sale and sink a bit of time into. It isn't *bad*. It just falls a little short of *good*.
Post by: Aoi on July 14, 2019, 04:03:31 pm
It needs...something, yeah. Right now it is kind of a nice casual party manager game. Think Darkest Dungeon, but if you didn't actually control your guys at all in combat.
It is still in early access, so hopefully they'll add some stuff in that makes it a bit more engaging. Right now the core game is decent, just not spectacular in any way. I think one thing that does bug me is that you can end up with 9 disciples, but can only tell 3 of them to do something each season. So you're constantly feeling not only short on various resources, but it feels like you *should* be able to be doing more and can't for unexplained mechanical reasons. They don't even go do little stuff without you. They just sit around.
I actually kind of like the hands-off style of combat; it does some interesting things to planning how they have to develop, and adds a bit more... godliness? to the feel when you're not actively mucking about.
I think I stopped when I ended up with five disciples, but I thought they did actually do a random job on their own, depending on how fervent a believer they were? You just can only order("inspire") three to a specific job. Otherwise, that seems kind of weird.
Post by: Mephansteras on July 14, 2019, 04:34:12 pm
Post by: nenjin on July 14, 2019, 08:19:28 pm
Quote
Godhood
This is how I felt about Reus, immediately. There's something so......passive about Abbey Games and the stuff they make. Like someone really doesn't want you to ever feel overwhelmed, or worked up, or even going down the rabbit hole of making too many decisions. I feel like someone is very sweetly trying to lull me to sleep when I play their stuff. They make very casual games, which is fine, that keep hitting areas I'm interested in. But the game play just doesn't deliver.
===
Played an...interesting game during a 3 day LAN party.
The Red Solstice (2015) (https://store.steampowered.com/app/265590/)
It feels like if a moba, Diablo, and an Aliens wave survival game had a baby. Add a dash of DOOM in there with undead and alien-looking demons or demon-looking aliens.
It's 8 player coop, click to move, click to shoot style thing. Sounds straightforward on paper.
But man, it took all 5 of us a good night to even figure out WTF we're doing. The game is rich in features but many are poorly explained if you don't play the SP campaign first.
Maps are basically randomized open areas broken up by pre-fab buildings and streets. Open areas are littered with and buildings are packed full of objectives to interact with, loot containers, hazards and the like. You have multiple primary missions, multiple secondary missions and an hour to do the whole thing, while enemies are constantly spawning and making a beeline toward you, in ever increasing numbers and difficulty as time goes on. After an hour all hell breaks loose and you have to evac or die. Limited rezzes on low difficulty and no rezzes on normal difficulty.
After 11 hours we never managed to go the full time just with us (some veteran randos almost finished it) and have never actually beaten the first mission on recruit difficulty. You still earn XP and unlock shit no matter how early you fail so you're encouraged to just keep throwing yourself in to it.
It's bananas, frankly. There's tons of cool little things going on though. Limited ammo drives a lot of game play. You can turn on auto aim so your guy aim bots everything while you move along, but you take a big accuracy and damage penalty vs. manual shooting. Shooting your replenishable flares or found flares or activating building power to turn on lights drastically increases your accuracy. You can auto follow people, or find NPCs that you can then order to follow you around while they shoot enemies. Multiple combat suits (classes) you can unlock with various weapon and ability unlocks as you level it up. A few ways to tweak the suits' strengths and weaknesses or tailor it to your specific playstyle. Friendly fire on explosives, a wound/de-buff system, a moba-style consumable inventory system for everything from artillery strikes to sensors to traps to heals and cures to all sorts of stuff. Some of the way you do things is a little clunky and/or needlessly complicated (like there are tons of different kinds of explosives in game that you need a detonator item or skill to use, or having to click shit out of your inventory then click on a person while everyone is moving and everything is going crazy), and I can't say the game ever exceeds these problems enough to not notice them.
It's a lot to take in just dropping in to the game. It's the kind of game that, after an hour or two I figured I could probably learn all its ins and outs given enough time. But during a LAN party we learned it by the seat of our pants, with a lot of shouting and "HOW THE FUCK DO I USE THIS THING?!"
You can tell a lot about a game from going straight to the keybinds, and my first reaction when I saw it was "Oh boy."
Veteran players seemed to traipse through the level with no problems by themselves for the most part but we found we have to play very tight like scared little newbies, coordinate our fire and support each other with our combat suit specialties (I played Medic), communicate and constantly move forward as a group. It was fun and pretty challenging, and I feel like we had to make each mistake at least once and wipe the party to understand how to play the game. (Our explosives guys kept blowing us up in the heat of combat, the party leader called down a quest-based thermonuclear weapon and killed us all, I called down a saturation arty strike with an item that wiped the whole party, getting split up being greedy for loot, not paying attention and wandering off by ourselves, all these things got us killed and ended our game.) Many of our deaths came directly from trying to figure out how to use items.
I can't call the game great despite a lot of its positivies because it's a first title from a Croatian studio and has that indie feel and some indie problems. Bad translations, opaque mechanics, story bits you don't care about, occasionally sloppy feeling balance. But by and large it looks good, most sound effects are good (voice acting is kinda eh) and, like I said, it's surprisingly feature rich and deeper than you'd think at first blush in the way everything comes together.
And seriously, 8 player coop that isn't a survival or building sim, in a land where 4 player coop is King. Some people didn't like it as much due to the fact we hot dropped in to the middle of multiplayer and it's the kind of game that wants you to really learn everything to be effective. We still did not win because the mega huge fuck off late game monsters we just couldn't stay alive long enough beat. (Mostly because "bosses" seem to require a mega-fuckload of well positioned explosives to truly beat.)
But game play feels quickly paced and you're rarely not doing something, either looting or shooting, while still retaining some of that sorta tense bug hunt experience, deflated a little bit by the horde monster mechanics. It's generic yes but there's a fair amount of obvious love that's gone in to it. Despite the failing and the learning and some people not being super hot on the game, I think we all had some good fun with it.
Apparently they're making a sequel that's supposed to be out this year, and based on the first game I'm honestly kind of curious about it now based on the first one.
Post by: Frumple on July 14, 2019, 10:18:37 pm
Post by: Aoi on July 19, 2019, 05:37:58 am
Opening with the bad: There's meta progression. And it's not like StS, where you get progress for a good try, and it only takes a few hours to fully unlock a class. No, your progression is via treasure cards that you pick up in a run, which occupy spaces in your deck and can be played, and you only get credit for them if you win/escape. I got 30 gold off my first run-- which was a winner. Cards on the first class range from 50 to 300. New classes range from 100 to 300. It's also kind of expensive, clocking in at 15$ right now (I'd peg it at 7.50, or a T2 bundle). With that out of the way...
You draw 5 cards each turn, and can play as many cards as you can get your hands on. No energy system. Your deck is shuffled at the end of a turn when cards run out, but not when changing rooms. Deck changes are permanent-- 'one-use' cards are permanently removed, unless you get a fresh copy. Combat is fairly stock to the genre (I'm frankly not sure how many novel ways to iterate on this formula are left...); kill stuff with your cards, get new cards. People seem to be dinging it for graphics; you're staring at cards, not critters like StS. No 'artifact' system, though after every boss, you basically get to pick one bonus and either an HP restore or removing two cards from your deck; bonuses range from fairly interesting options like a +CritChance/DrawOnCrit passive to drawing a legendary-rarity card... or +2hp, yaaaay... (A sizeable increase, actually. First class has 18.)
This game is really about risk management and deck management: Since the loot you keep at the end is represented by loot cards that you only get if you keep the unplayed at the end of a run, they are deadweight, sucking up space in your deck. Or, even worse, the first class's specialty is cards that have bonus effects when it's the last card in your hand. The enemies towards the end get more interesting-- they'll banish(exhaust) cards on death or insert debuff cards. Which is a much bigger deal here, than in StS, since you keep your deck from battle to battle, not a fresh one each time.
It's also pretty easy, despite RNG complaints (and I've only gotten to Ascension 5... on the way OP Slimebound.), unless you do something downright stupid, like I did on my second run: "Hey, this card says 'Summon a dragon. Draw 5 cards.' Fun times!"
You can also 'break' your deck fairly readily, though some bosses are designed to counter that-- I managed to pare my deck down to two cards: Two "Deal 2 damage, draw one card from discard."... which worked out great, until I had a boss that dealt damage every time you played a card. That hurt.
Post by: Frumple on July 19, 2019, 06:31:02 am
Post by: Aoi on July 20, 2019, 01:42:40 am
Which lives up to its name, though some of the encounters go past the edge of 'hard' into downright ludicrous-- 3 2/12 goblin totems, 2 3/7 gobbos, and some shielded 1/2 that buffs +2/0 on death. And, I know it says that they spawn random goblins, but what was with spawning 2 3/7s and a 2/5 with +1/0 teamwide passive every single time? Thank goodness I managed to last until the reinforcements arrived because a single dragon is easier than that mess.
Post by: JimboM12 on July 23, 2019, 01:39:21 pm
First Feudal!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/733460/
its like a medieval, top-down version of rimworld but if you had permanent control over one person, your feudal lord in this case. you build a base, task your peasants with farming and mining, build meadhalls, and defend yourself from bandit raids which get more numerous and better equipped. like real life, food doesn't last for more than a season without refrigeration, so your food stocks are constantly besieged even as you research cellars to store your food in to help with degradation, so you have to plan around surviving winter when you cant farm. also, don't go crazy with taming animals, given time and space they will explode in population.
Stellar Tactics!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/465490/
this one's been mentioned a few times on here, but its this combo of turn based squad combat (like xcom, with APs and stuff) and space exploration and combat (which plays a bit like rogue galaxy or star trek online). i only just got this during the space exploration sale steam did a little while ago, so i dont have much to say except the map is huge and it pretty well simulates being a squad of space mercs.
Mist Survival!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/914620/
theres not much to say about this one, i got it real cheap. its this singleplayer zombie sim where the gimmick is every so often, a mist will roll in and during this mist the zombies/infected/whatever will roll out of houses where they're hiding and roam around to hunt you. they are strong, without decent gear you could not fight more than 2 at a time. but fear not, you do have help in the form of random npcs who you may run into. they'll help defend your base and you can equip them with some gear and stuff. its not bad but its very, very rough at this stage, so your mileage may vary.
Post by: itisnotlogical on July 23, 2019, 04:05:33 pm
If such a strategy is cheating or unintentional, why even have the game be real-time at all?
Post by: Kagus on July 25, 2019, 06:18:38 am
Something that's apparently a topic among fans of Dungeon Master and clones: is it cheating to dodge enemy attacks by dancing around them?What, strafing? Heavens, that's a core gameplay mechanic. Whether or not it was originally-originally intentional is somewhat moot, it's absolutely standard in everything since.
If such a strategy is cheating or unintentional, why even have the game be real-time at all?
Just look at stuff like Grimrock (I think I remember Anvil of Dawn also doing the same, but I'm a bit fuzzy on it) where if you're moving after the enemy has already started their attack animation, at the animation's conclusion the attack is automatically considered a miss.
All the calculations for accuracy vs. defense/dodge are carried out before the animation gets to that point. The only reason for them to include the "miss if they moved away" caveat is if that was intended game behavior, otherwise as soon as they started the attack it could just "stick" to you and moving away would only be wasting your own time.
Strafing is an important part of the game, and it's not a get-out-of-combat-free card either, as you need to pay attention to your environment and not fall into a pit or get surrounded.
Post by: Mephisto on July 25, 2019, 08:12:58 am
Re:Legend (https://store.steampowered.com/app/823950/ReLegend/), a game I've been following on Kickstarter for two years, is coming out on August 30, assuming that doesn't get pushed back. They've been lovely people and, despite being about a year late, they've been doing loads of interactive things to help drive development.
If you want a short blurb, think Story of Seasons meets Monster Rancher.
Post by: scriver on July 25, 2019, 08:16:35 am
Post by: Folly on July 25, 2019, 01:22:11 pm
Re:Legend (https://store.steampowered.com/app/823950/ReLegend/), a game I've been following on Kickstarter for two years, is coming out on August 30
I literally just checked on that game yesterday and was disappointed at still no release date. :o
Post by: Aoi on July 26, 2019, 12:58:31 am
Narratively, you're some necromancer killing your way out of whatever hole you were sealed in, or something like that. Not something that really matters.
Similarly to DD, you've got a town layer and a map layer. The town layer is pretty important, mostly giving you post-combat buffs like healing up your units or extra items. The map layer consists of one-way branches and you can see what's there, which is where a bunch of comparisons to Slay the Spire come in. No backtracking, no resetting. You're on rails to advance.
Unit creation is fairly interesting-- there's like ten different units, each of which have 5+1special skill. Each skill can be upgraded once: For example, one skill, by default, is a knockback. The upgrade either raises its damage or changes its knockback to a stun. Units are assembled from pieces, and each piece has its own stats which buff the finished unit (which you can upgrade later on, but you lose the piece currently installed). Units also have their own levels, which determine how many skills can be upgraded (and maybe stats; not sure). Then they have two equipment slots, of which items can be fairly potent-- regen whenever they change position, for example. On top of all this, you, necro boss, have your own levels which unlock active skills and passive buffs, and your own set of equipment. There's also a semi-rare drop that instantly allows you to upgrade a unit's level. So if a unit dies, you can bring them up to speed fairly quickly. However, if you spent a ton of resources upgrading their parts... you're out of luck there. (Imagine playing DD if you had to do the most advanced areas without leveling fresh units first... the quick boost is a tidy idea.)
Mechanically, the combat is nigh identical to DD, with two additions and a few tweaks. You've got a rage meter that goes up with actions that lets units use their specials, and a mana bar that goes up by completing battles that allows for non-unit spells. It's still 4v4 fights with positioning, buffs, etc.
So, the downside: It's early access. Balance in act 2 is kiiiind of iffy. I lost my party to a group that could drop a stacking party-wide effect that does like 20+ damage per turn. My tankiest unit had 90hp. Related to that, their nomenclature could use cleaning up, because that effect that killed me? Was actually classified as a debuff, despite not being marked as one, so I could have recovered if I used my debuff clearing skills earlier. Looking around, most of the complaints are based on balance issues, so... normal EA stuff.
Post by: itisnotlogical on August 01, 2019, 12:12:22 pm
Post by: Frumple on August 01, 2019, 01:06:24 pm
Post by: Mephisto on August 01, 2019, 01:19:48 pm
Post by: itisnotlogical on August 01, 2019, 01:32:21 pm
Post by: Jopax on August 04, 2019, 12:40:03 pm
Post by: Kagus on August 04, 2019, 02:01:25 pm
somewhat successfully from time to time.Ho ho ho
Post by: Jopax on August 05, 2019, 10:46:15 am
Post by: Robsoie on August 17, 2019, 12:48:10 pm
I tried it during this free offer and was at the same time very impressed by the game (as it was decades i didn't played any game from the Myst serie, the "walk everywhere" from Obduction was a really nice and very immersive improvement) and very disapointed because it just was running horribly laggy and slow regardless of the settings.
I read that since then there were finally some performance optimisation done on it, one update having been done this month so as i noticed the updated version was available on my GoG library, i gave a try.
And playing in a 1024*768 window is very playable now, so in case you were fans of the Myst serie and were interested by this game but gave up due to horrible performance, maybe give it a try again.
Still no key rebinding in the menu ... can't believe there are still games with first person view navigation with forced keys, especially when there are so few keys actually used.
It's APPARENTLY possible to edit the (empty by default) Input.ini located in
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Obduction\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor
It's explained there :
https://forums.cyan.com/viewtopic.php?f=131&t=1272
but you need to make an account to see the actual thing? apparently it's not working for everyone too from what i read on other board with the latest version
Alternative is to use Autohotkey
Post by: Iduno on August 17, 2019, 10:24:21 pm
The GBA games are good; they just don't allow as much exploration as say, Super Metroid, possibly due to the smaller game worlds. Zero Mission in particular has a very rigid "Get powerup, overcome this specific obstacle, get next powerup" structure. There's not been many moments where I felt like I had more than one, maybe two options as to my next move.
It's a remake of the original, so hopefully they've improved on the formula since then.
Post by: Stench Guzman on August 18, 2019, 09:54:10 pm
It's like a cross between Diablo and The Witcher.
Post by: Aoi on August 19, 2019, 09:19:02 am
Either way, it's actually a lot better than I epexted when I got it.
Post by: Mephisto on August 19, 2019, 10:02:29 am
Post by: Aoi on August 22, 2019, 09:59:51 pm
Spoiler: "It's not bad, but there are similar and cheaper options out there." (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on August 24, 2019, 11:23:53 am
A party system in a roguelike done completely right as you create your party members, they have AI, they have the same skill/inventory/leveling system as your character, you can switch to control any of them at any time, etc... It's just fantastic and refreshing from those heavy majority of "lonely hero" roguelikes.
Post by: forsaken1111 on August 26, 2019, 08:26:21 am
https://store.steampowered.com/app/812040/Shortest_Trip_to_Earth/
Crew management, ship upgrading, path-choosing. Lots of events, some interesting humor, and you can have a cat as your shield specialist but the cat might decide to fuck off and wander the ship mid-battle.
I've gotten some good fun out of it.
Post by: Ulfarr on August 26, 2019, 10:50:56 am
A party system in a roguelike done completely right as you create your party members, they have AI, they have the same skill/inventory/leveling system as your character, you can switch to control any of them at any time, etc... It's just fantastic and refreshing from those heavy majority of "lonely hero" roguelikes.
How does the game/add-on handles the party in areas like the cave (in the coast) with the sandworms (I don't remember their name right now) where the tunnels collapse on themselves?
Post by: Zangi on August 26, 2019, 11:07:08 am
Bigger party, closer you gotta stick to that worm's arse.
Post by: Robsoie on August 26, 2019, 11:21:11 am
So if they die, wait in a safe location (as rooms are relatively far from each other in that sandworm dungeon and aren't going to be connected often) and revive them.
It also work for your character, when your character die you are automatically given control of the next party member (if all are dead, you lose an actual life as if you played normal te4 ) so if you still manage to keep the party members to survive , they can also try to revive/summon you.
Post by: Ulfarr on August 26, 2019, 11:42:51 am
Post by: scriver on August 26, 2019, 11:54:04 am
Post by: Zangi on August 26, 2019, 11:55:09 am
Post by: Robsoie on August 26, 2019, 12:00:43 pm
Post by: scriver on August 26, 2019, 12:04:32 pm
Post by: Blastbeard on August 26, 2019, 02:46:38 pm
Post by: wierd on August 27, 2019, 01:46:26 am
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/news/stalker-anomaly-150-beta-30-is-here
I am pulling the rather large package now... I get tomorrow off, and will report what I think about it.
Post by: scriver on August 27, 2019, 07:30:47 am
Unfortunately I found Adventuring Party mod to be very annoying to use... If there'd only be an option to have party control automatically switch on when enemies are spotted and then switch back to off and back to the main character afterwards.
So, a new stalker mod got released a few days ago...
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/news/stalker-anomaly-150-beta-30-is-here
I am pulling the rather large package now... I get tomorrow off, and will report what I think about it.
Very interested to hear what you have to say about it!
Post by: Robsoie on August 27, 2019, 11:29:03 am
for the adventuring party, i never take control of the other guys as i always found the AI to do the job on their own, probably depend how good/weak the AI is with some class you assigned your party members to be.
Post by: wierd on August 27, 2019, 05:17:50 pm
Uses a 64bit game engine...
Controls are still clunky. (One thing I kinda detest about STALKER in general)
Vastly improved static meshes, but still not top quality.
All spoken dialog is in Russian. (But meh. whatever. The majority of interaction is still text based.)
Radically expanded crafting, health item, and food item selections. Also includes many recreational drugs, including weed.
Expanded weapon selection.
Option for "random start", and customized faction alignments for new games. (interesting feature that..)
The FOV is a little odd. I see noticeable aberration at the edges of the screen; I may need to reduce view angle from the defaults.
I'll have to play more to get a better feel, but so far, it feels like CoP, but with some extra goodies.
Post by: Iduno on August 31, 2019, 11:10:17 am
Post by: Mephisto on August 31, 2019, 11:12:28 am
Post by: JimboM12 on August 31, 2019, 01:53:38 pm
So, a new stalker mod got released a few days ago...
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/news/stalker-anomaly-150-beta-30-is-here
I am pulling the rather large package now... I get tomorrow off, and will report what I think about it.
downloaded this as well, thanks for the heads up wierd. i spent a while tweaking it, especially increasing the stalker population factor to the full 1 and mutants as well to full 1. i enjoy that they brought back clear sky but sadly they're not the focused group they once were but they're still my favorites.
I'll have to play more to get a better feel, but so far, it feels like CoP, but with some extra goodies.
i agree with this assessment as well
Post by: Mephisto on August 31, 2019, 02:03:50 pm
Post by: scourge728 on August 31, 2019, 05:16:16 pm
Post by: Yoink on September 01, 2019, 01:12:03 am
Post by: JimboM12 on September 01, 2019, 08:21:48 am
its kinda entertaining but there's this STALKERnet and you'll see pings for tons of stuff including obituaries for notable stalkers who die, people reporting on gunfire/mutants and people finding loot.
Post by: nenjin on September 01, 2019, 07:08:58 pm
Tis a silly little game about Ancient Greeks getting mad and having themselves a little riot and killing all the gods.
It's basically an Adult Swim game on steroids. You steer a guy using one joystick and steer a mob of very irate Greeks with the other, smashing them in to stuff to destroy it like enemies, props, and if they're exquisitely angry, buildings.
It's a rogue-lite action game so you play through and die, unlocking new "heros" which are special members of the mob that have unique abilities, stat boosts, modifiers and the like. The mob itself is made up of a few different varieties of citizens, like slaves who can carry consumable items, attack soldiers, defense soldiers, and most importantly, philosophers, who basically act as the player's lives. Every member of the mob has HP and stats all modified by the heroes. As the player you only have HP, you direct the mob to do all your work for you. When you lose your HP, you die and the next philosopher in the mob, if you have one, becomes playable by you. Citizens in the mob come and go as you fight through soldiers, monsters, wizards and bosses.
It's a pretty addicting little loop once you get the hang of it. The heroes you pick up along the way give the game a sort of Binding of Isaac quality although much more muted. Each time you complete an area of a level (Athens 4-1, Athens 4-2, etc...) you get a chance to buy a new hero for the mob by trading in some of your existing mob. And as you unlock more heroes from each playthrough, you can start choosing increasing numbers of them to start a run with, and start playing with different combos.
It's got pretty good music, as is to be expected from games published by Devolver Digital, and it clearly likes Greek Mythology. It's very tongue in cheek throughout but smart enough and restrained enough to not become obnoxious.
There's even a decent degree of skill mastery in learning how to weave your horde around and keep them alive. Various bosses are like little puzzles with their own quirks and challenges to figure out. I can't say the game is exactly visually readable. You can have up to 150 members of the mob racing around the screen bashing stuff, which can sometimes make it hard to see yourself (since you're the one that actually needs to worry about taking damage) or the onscreen cursor which tells the mob where to move and what to attack.
All in all, for a silly little game about rampaging Greeks taking down the gods, it's surprisingly good.
Post by: Sirus on September 01, 2019, 10:33:22 pm
Post by: wierd on September 04, 2019, 05:17:58 am
playing STALKER anomaly still, its not bad; all the features of the previous games but with tons of new stuff. its also rather hardcore.
its kinda entertaining but there's this STALKERnet and you'll see pings for tons of stuff including obituaries for notable stalkers who die, people reporting on gunfire/mutants and people finding loot.
Well, the Zone is supposed to be crazy-deadly, but I do think it's a little overboard to be two-shotted by a freaking housecat...
The comm-center updates are quite amusing though. I love how the bandits report on themselves on open comms about the people they kill, and what they took. Such jerkwads doing that. :P
Post by: JimboM12 on September 04, 2019, 07:55:59 am
Petruska Deadly: "Checked his pockets, he had a book of matches. I ain't even mad."
about the game itself tho; the damage is a bit crazy, but armor is very very important this go around. i was lucky enough to find a very damaged suit of CS-1 armor and a sphere 12 helmet off a dead fellow clear sky. its so damaged it provides less protection than my minorly used leather jacket but its an investment for the future. im playing it on medium (stalker i think) difficulty with easy progression difficulty which influences your drops and overall income. it feels like a good balance, i can take small groups of renegades with a salvaged AK74 i found off a dead renegade but if i see heavier armor when i scout a base at a distance, i run away. income compared to call of pripyat is much much lower due to me not knowing where to look for anomalies and artefacts.
Post by: Ulfarr on September 04, 2019, 08:49:55 am
i was lucky enough to find a very damaged suit of CS-1 armor and a sphere 12 helmet off a dead fellow clear sky.
Wa..wait you can loot armor from those that you kill or did you just found them in one of the "corpse" stashes? By the Wish Granter please tell me it's the former
Post by: wierd on September 04, 2019, 08:51:28 am
I carefully sniped the shit out of the military bozos at the Cordon side of the Garbage checkpoint, and they had some broken, but useful stuff.
Post by: Ulfarr on September 04, 2019, 09:05:23 am
Post by: JimboM12 on September 05, 2019, 12:12:08 am
for real, if you liked the earlier stalker games, try anomaly, its hardcore and fun.
Post by: Ulfarr on September 05, 2019, 02:59:36 am
I've been reading on Anomaly's F.A.Q.
1) There are some references to the Call of Chernobyl mod, are the two mods related? I used to sink a lot of hours in CoC but I lost my interest some time after it's development was put on hiatus.
2) I just hope my pc can handle Anomaly, they said about it needing ~8-12gb ram :( :(
Post by: wierd on September 05, 2019, 03:15:16 am
There were some AI fixes and such that might be no fun to play without. (Apparently, the active stalkers turn braindead after an emission because they do not take shelter without the patch.) Also apparently fixes some crashiness. I wonder if it fixes the crashiness I experienced using DX10 renderer during an emission... I should find out.
Post by: itisnotlogical on September 05, 2019, 04:09:42 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Ulfarr on September 05, 2019, 06:28:36 am
1) holy shit, I need to get some decent armor. Pretty much everything can one shot me right now. Surprisingly the traditionaly useless makarov proved to be quite decent against a couple of bandits, although it did jammed a couple of times.
2) economy seems to be Misery tier, but the one job I’ve done so far payed well.
3) I really like the start menu, that allows you to choose your starting equipment. I’m not sure if I had the choice but I should really have gotten a pair of binoculars.
4) I really need to tweak the visuals. Everything is.. I don’t know how to describe it.. too muted? There is so much on the screen and at such colors that I find it very tiring to look at. I ve died at least 3 times to some anomalies because I simply couldn’t see them.
Post by: wierd on September 05, 2019, 06:47:02 am
Looking for areas that mutants cannot easily path in, but you can get to, is very useful. Especially with house cats. damn.. Those cats are super deadly.
Post by: JimboM12 on September 05, 2019, 07:36:17 am
Post by: Ulfarr on September 05, 2019, 08:03:03 am
animals are rather unbalanced. i got a quick swipe from a psydog and it knocked 12% condition off my armor and a third of my health.
That's unfortunate :( My go to approach on most mutants was to jump into melee with them, otherwise I would just spent all my ammo trying and failing to hit them.
Spoiler: minor info on stashes (click to show/hide)
Post by: forsaken1111 on September 05, 2019, 09:32:47 am
Post by: Ulfarr on September 05, 2019, 10:01:13 am
Post by: Frumple on September 06, 2019, 06:37:48 am
Post by: Iduno on September 06, 2019, 08:58:08 am
... what about going out of your way to climb the building like a monkey because you're trying to loot everything to the ground? Some of us do that, y'know. I once cleaned out morrowind's starting town in its entirety. Stole and sold literally everything that wasn't in a NPC's inventory (and some things that were, iirc. Think you had to murder some people to get at everything...). It's good to know there's a stalker equivalent :P
I'd like to see a game where the thief character isn't as good as other classes (or thief skills take a lot of starting resources in point-buy), but accumulating an excessive amount of money lets you buy weapons and armor for the thief that make them amazing. When my stuff costs the same, I don't have any reason for the thief to thief stuff. They're just a slightly-different fighter.
Post by: Ulfarr on September 06, 2019, 10:27:46 am
Some of us do that, y'know.
I get it :)
It just kinda broke the immersion.
I'd like to see a game where the thief character isn't as good as other classes....They're just a slightly-different fighter.
I'd say Gothic, did a good job at that, both throughout the game and especially in the early chapters. Having limited skill points/level meant that each choice had an opportunity cost. Investing in thieving skills early on meat that you had to postpone getting combat skill which made fights more difficult despite having access to arguably better gear. Of course your character would eventually be able to become a master in most skills, but certain choices you had made up to this point would have a lasting effect in your gameplay, ie a master fighter might never learn how to use spells or even if he did, he would never get access to the best spells or have enough mana to sustain heavy use of magic, on the other hand a master mage would still be too squishy for melee combat and too weak to even equip the best melee weapons.
Post by: nenjin on September 06, 2019, 03:58:06 pm
Post by: Kagus on September 07, 2019, 12:45:03 am
Blasphemous (https://store.steampowered.com/app/774361/Blasphemous/)Oh hey, Drillhead. I remember seeing some of the old graphics and design teases. Been looking forward to this one!
Post by: Chiefwaffles on September 08, 2019, 10:50:33 am
Deserts of Kharak was actually surprisingly fun and a very solid RTS in addition with theme and atmosphere! Though very easy to cheese the campaign, since being attacked is very easy to predict:
1.) Enemy AI has a few production cruisers spread around the map that produce the occasional strike craft raiding party. So long as you don't have any spread out units, you can defeat these raiders without casualties. Said parties also never have AA, so you can bomb them to hell before they ever see your units as well.
2.) Substantial enemy attacks always occur as you finish specific objectives. So while an enemy carrier may arrive mid-mission and pose some challenge, you can fill your fleet to max and mine all the resources+artifacts on the map before doing the next objective to be overprepared.
That and abusing your own carrier for attacking. That's always fun. By the last few maps I relied mostly on excessive amounts of artillery cruisers, my carrier, and a few attack/support cruisers for good measure (as well as a moderately-sized group of strike craft I built before offensive cruisers were unlocked).
But yeah. Actually really fun, and I always could have played on harder difficulties or just avoided cheesing it but I am a coward who gets anxious around this kind of economy with limited resources on the map.
Homeworld has been fun and surprisingly... inventive? But it comes at the cost of so much micromanagement jesus christ I am not good at micromanagement send help. Just how all the systems work from docking, to especially formations (how you select them as a whole group is a really neat mechanic, actually) and the 3d nature as horrible as my brain is at anything regarding spatial logic.
It's tricky since I love the presentation of the game, the theming, and just the mechanics as a whole but it feels like everything in the game has managed to single out the things I'm worst at in RTSs. Hopefully I'll be able to manage it, and hopefully my current tactic of "letting the enemy send single attack frigates at a time to the mothership for me to yank via salvage corvettes" will work out.
Overall though, I definitely am happy with the choice to play through the games.
Post by: Kagus on September 08, 2019, 12:11:42 pm
so much micromanagement jesus christ I am not got at micromanagement send help.Hello! May I suggest Men of War for your next RTS indulgence?
Post by: Parsely on September 08, 2019, 12:14:43 pm
Hello! May I also suggest Men of War Assault Squad 2? I will play with anyone who'd like to play. It's co-op and PVPso much micromanagement jesus christ I am not got at micromanagement send help.Hello! May I suggest Men of War for your next RTS indulgence?
Post by: scriver on September 08, 2019, 12:33:08 pm
Post by: Mephisto on September 10, 2019, 02:08:04 pm
A new thing. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/metalweavegames/hld-rpg)
Aaand I'm done. No more internet for today. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colonel_Sanders_A_Finger_Lickin_Good_Dating_Simulator/)
Post by: Folly on September 10, 2019, 07:30:31 pm
I am hype!
Post by: Iduno on September 11, 2019, 12:57:25 pm
The creator is trying to keep if from being too serious of a game while also researching how birds move and balance. The twitter (https://twitter.com/skatebirb) has some videos of the devs messing around trying to see how well/poorly they can do to see what the game's limits are.
Post by: xaritscin on September 14, 2019, 10:10:31 am
as of latest devblog they seem to be reaching the requirements for moving the game development towards Multicellular Stage (AKA Aquatic stage and beyond). there's a lot of cool studies and mockups in the article, the engine was already making 3D Cells in a 2D POV so i guess it wouldnt take much hassle to swap that towards a 3D navigation POV but we'll see. it got me curious but it seems the devevelopment team has grown significantly or has improved their capabilities significantly.
it will probably take a lot of time before we see the first Multicellular organisms in the game tho, but still, im getting some hype and hope for it.
Post by: MCreeper on September 14, 2019, 11:44:25 am
Looks at steam page.Hello! May I also suggest Men of War Assault Squad 2? I will play with anyone who'd like to play. It's co-op and PVPso much micromanagement jesus christ I am not got at micromanagement send help.Hello! May I suggest Men of War for your next RTS indulgence?
Well, that's something i have never seen before. Also, tanks have HP now? WTF?
Speaking of, what's up with the friggin' Fox Hunt campaign(in original)? It's so busted, i don't have any idea what they were thinking, or what i was supposed to think.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Parsely on September 14, 2019, 04:33:22 pm
Uh, what? Which game are you talking about? In Men of War Assault Squad 2 tanks don't have HP, but they can be disabled and the crew can be killed.Looks at steam page.Hello! May I also suggest Men of War Assault Squad 2? I will play with anyone who'd like to play. It's co-op and PVPso much micromanagement jesus christ I am not got at micromanagement send help.Hello! May I suggest Men of War for your next RTS indulgence?
Well, that's something i have never seen before. Also, tanks have HP now? WTF?
Speaking of, what's up with the friggin' Fox Hunt campaign(in original)? It's so busted, i don't have any idea what they were thinking, or what i was supposed to think.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: MCreeper on September 14, 2019, 04:39:03 pm
Post by: Parsely on September 14, 2019, 04:54:36 pm
Whoops, mixed up with this one (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1135240/Men_of_War_Assault_Squad_2__Cold_War/?l=english). For some reason, it goes first in google for me.Oh god, that's horrible. I didn't even know this came out. Yeah that game is not representative of the series IMO
Post by: Akura on September 15, 2019, 06:15:01 am
Just tried it, runs a lot smoother. Had a problem with fine aiming, which has been reported by others as well, but I was able to remedy it with some adjustments to mouse sensitivity.
Post by: Mephisto on September 16, 2019, 03:35:09 pm
Can't vouch for its quality but I'll assume it's as grindy and addictive and fugly as his first several games.
Post by: Aoi on September 17, 2019, 11:04:25 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on September 19, 2019, 06:32:05 pm
B. Watching people play it is apparently mildly infuriating. It took like one or two fights of observation to realize play order is like super important and six or seven more the folks I scoped were still basically friggin' ignoring it. *vaguely insulting muttering noises*
Post by: Aoi on September 19, 2019, 09:54:44 pm
Watching people play it is apparently mildly infuriating. It took like one or two fights of observation to realize play order is like super important and six or seven more the folks I scoped were still basically friggin' ignoring it. *vaguely insulting muttering noises*
It is... the tutorial is basically UI and combo, because that's really the only thing that matters. Particularly if they play with the girl who has a wolf: One of her specials allows you to Chain(stun) an enemy, so triggering her as much as possible is a good way to succeed.
My team that was stomping everything was composed of stage 1 elites-- when upgraded, they give the combined passive of +4 cards on your first turn, -1 cost to all cards on the first turn (or maybe just initial draw). Combo that with cards that draw additional cards, cards that have a chance of drawing free cards, the ability to inflict Chain, one that does 7 damage per card in your hand to the entire enemy party, and pretty much everything falls to pieces.
Except that one battle that consistently does me in and killed me in two turns.
Post by: Aoi on September 20, 2019, 12:39:08 am
Why oh why is it so rare to find a console->PC port (or, worse yet, cross-release) that has controls that actually make sense for KB/M?
Take you, Mistover. (Or anything by NIS.)
It's like Darkest Dungeon (down to the art style, albeit it a cute anime version) meets Mystery Dungeon (or roguelikes in general, if you're unfamiliar with the franchise), with 3x3 grid combat encounters. Sure, sounds good to me.
But why on earth do your controls have to be just that plain annoying?
Spoiler: "Begin rant. (Note: Based on Demo)" (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on September 20, 2019, 11:42:04 am
You're a goose, and your goal is to annoy people until they put up a "No geese" sign. IT looks potentially entertaining, and also potentially gets old quickly. If it doesn't do that second thing, I'm in.
Eh, not sure if I should necro the Pet Peeves thread or toss it here, but whatever:
Why oh why is it so rare to find a console->PC port (or, worse yet, cross-release) that has controls that actually make sense for KB/M?
If it was made for console first, it was made and optimized to fit specific hardware, and put no effort into any other hardware. At the point where they're porting it, they probably aren't putting as much time and effort in (the main devs may have moved on). So they don't put in the effort and code (with associated prior-optimized code removal and bug-fixing) to do the port properly. It's easy to comment out some code so it never gets used, creating code whole cloth is not the same.
Post by: Ulfarr on September 20, 2019, 01:03:14 pm
Post by: auzewasright on September 22, 2019, 10:27:54 pm
Post by: Stench Guzman on September 26, 2019, 04:46:39 pm
Has anyone tried Untitled Goose Game yet?
You're a goose, and your goal is to annoy people until they put up a "No geese" sign. IT looks potentially entertaining, and also potentially gets old quickly. If it doesn't do that second thing, I'm in.
I've seen a couple of playthroughs of it. It's on the short side, at about 2-3 hours for the main quest and then maybe a couple more for the optional stuff. There isn't much replay value after that.
It's the kind of game made for streamers to show off goofy stuff to their audience. You could suffice with watching one or two youtube videos on it if you don't want to spend the money.
Post by: Aoi on September 26, 2019, 07:20:47 pm
Has anyone tried Untitled Goose Game yet?
You're a goose, and your goal is to annoy people until they put up a "No geese" sign. IT looks potentially entertaining, and also potentially gets old quickly. If it doesn't do that second thing, I'm in.
I've seen a couple of playthroughs of it. It's on the short side, at about 2-3 hours for the main quest and then maybe a couple more for the optional stuff. There isn't much replay value after that.
It's the kind of game made for streamers to show off goofy stuff to their audience. You could suffice with watching one or two youtube videos on it if you don't want to spend the money.
Uhm... Could you fix the quote tag suggesting that the review/comment on that goose game is from me?
Post by: Aoi on September 28, 2019, 11:29:15 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Sanity seems to mostly act as an alternative life bar... low sanity can also cause some problems in combat, though I couldn't tell exactly what the effect I got did. It also feels really slow... even when your character is running, it feels like they're ambling about. Combat feels pretty clompy as well.Why oh why is it so rare to find a console->PC port (or, worse yet, cross-release) that has controls that actually make sense for KB/M?
...And elsewhere, there's the commonly used combo of x+esc... and it can't REALLY be rebound, since you're still tied to controller inputs, so changing v or esc changes everything else tied to them. :'(
Post by: Mephansteras on October 06, 2019, 12:16:01 pm
I found it fairly fun, my wife absolutely loves it. I'd say actually interacting with the game is the most important part. You really have to kind of make your own RP fun in the game. We liked yelling at the stupid humans as we did stuff and doing silly things like dragging a favorite item around with us to new areas.
I'd say it is definitely one of those games that will be lots of fun for some people and mediocre for others. Good one to watch a little bit of someone else playing first to see if it is your cup of tea. If it is, I'd say it's worth the money.
Post by: Iduno on October 07, 2019, 08:37:04 am
Goose game is good for what it is. Short if you're just interested in solving the assigned tasks as quickly as possible, but if you are more interested in running around and interacting with the world it has a bit more to offer.
I found it fairly fun, my wife absolutely loves it. I'd say actually interacting with the game is the most important part. You really have to kind of make your own RP fun in the game. We liked yelling at the stupid humans as we did stuff and doing silly things like dragging a favorite item around with us to new areas.
I'd say it is definitely one of those games that will be lots of fun for some people and mediocre for others. Good one to watch a little bit of someone else playing first to see if it is your cup of tea. If it is, I'd say it's worth the money.
Agreed. And don't hit tab (at least until you need to do the boring "collect a list of things in one spot" task). It takes all of the exploration out of the level.
I've only gotten one thing off the also to-do list (???????????), but I have found 3-4 things that make my honk sound different, so I'm feeling good about my exploration.
Post by: Kagus on October 08, 2019, 05:58:31 am
In summary: Noita (https://noitagame.com/) is fun and interesting, Tropico 2 has style but not a functional economy.
Post by: Iduno on October 08, 2019, 08:03:10 am
It's a weird rogue-like with a swingy RNG (at low levels; it's basically the Earthdawn RNG) that has both in and out-of-mech sections, and the difficulty scales based on how many times you've succeeded/failed at missions lately. There engineering skill lets you change parts, and eventually add more parts to other parts (there's a limit, but everything will have wings full of guns) that was way better than other skills once you got it skilled-up. Or you could be a rockstar. I think the plot for your character was also randomly generated. It's a wild game for just messing around in.
Post by: Frumple on October 08, 2019, 08:05:28 am
Post by: Iduno on October 17, 2019, 08:50:06 pm
So optimistic
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: AzyWng on October 17, 2019, 10:44:36 pm
EDIT: Ah. Finally got to the actual part that you mentioned.
Post by: Robsoie on October 20, 2019, 06:00:05 pm
https://champman0102.co.uk/showthread.php?t=13213
rather impressive piece of work.
Post by: feelotraveller on October 21, 2019, 09:08:29 pm
Aalways great championship manager 01/02
Any thoughts on the best patch to use for this, tapani, saturn, none, ? I feel a bit lost. ???
(I'm going to redo my wine-based install anyways since I went with a windows 7, 64-bit prefix and it looks like XP, 32-bit is the better fit - although it may well not matter.)
Post by: Robsoie on October 21, 2019, 09:39:38 pm
https://champman0102.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11661
I don't know if Saturn has a version yet ready for the latest data update (as he also require his own modified data update to go with his patch)
Mostly because of the improved (https://champman0102.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12904) idle cpu sensitivity code patch (that unlike older patches like Tapani do not break a bit money bidding navigation in the transfer screen)
On the patcher option i do not enable a changed starting year (as i sometime read that some starting year may lead to trouble), but maybe it can work nowadays.
Patched like this i have 2 CM0102 installs (one with the October 2019 data update and one with thehuge original 2001 database rework (https://champman0102.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8828) ) and have no problem so far (still in my first season on clubs on lowest divisions).
I also keep the game resolution by default ( 800x600 )
I don't know how it is with Wine, but on my window 10 in order to play CM0102 windowed i need to have the cm0102.exe set to "Window XP SP2 compatibility" and has the executable override High DPI (right click on executable Compatibility tab -> Change high DPI settings -> Check Override high DPI ) to avoid problems (as i have my window 10 text display scaling set to 125% , if one let it to default 100% this overrided high dpi may not be required)
Post by: Yoink on October 22, 2019, 02:34:58 am
I have a soft spot for this one old-as-shit MMO, RPG World Online. Turns out the guy has not been idle over the past decade. His new game is Guild Vale (http://guildvale.com/).Good luck finding any info or screenshots of it through Google, considering the word "Vale" has apparently been used at least once in Guild Wars.
Can't vouch for its quality but I'll assume it's as grindy and addictive and fugly as his first several games.
Hate it when that sort of thing happens.
Post by: Akura on October 22, 2019, 05:24:55 am
I have a soft spot for this one old-as-shit MMO, RPG World Online. Turns out the guy has not been idle over the past decade. His new game is Guild Vale (http://guildvale.com/).Good luck finding any info or screenshots of it through Google, considering the word "Vale" has apparently been used at least once in Guild Wars.
Can't vouch for its quality but I'll assume it's as grindy and addictive and fugly as his first several games.
Hate it when that sort of thing happens.
Digging around the actual forums there, it's essentially a new version of RPGWO. Apparently, the developer thought a new name was necessary because of a naming conflict with another game.
Also played RPGWO. I think one of the moderators/admins once complimented me on how I arranged some flower bushes.
Post by: BurnedToast on October 23, 2019, 04:49:47 am
The main gameplay loop is that you drop down onto a map with your pod which acts as the core in other tower defense games - lose it and you lose the game. The objective is to survive an unlimited(?) number of increasingly difficult waves while loading resources into the pod. Every 10 waves or so (depends on the map) you can launch your pod into space which ends the map, but adds all collected resources into your central pool. You then use the resources to unlock new buildings, add them to your pod to give you a head start on the next map, or horde them
The maps are all premade, though the landing location and direction enemies come from is semi-random which stops it from getting too repetitive. You unlock new maps by unlocking specific technologies and surviving a set number of waves on the earlier maps. There's 12 (iirc) maps in total, and so far they've all been fairly different from each other with different challenges. The game also has a mapmaker tool and steam workshop support, so you can download fan maps if you get bored of the included official maps.
The factory building is much simpler than factorio, don't expect to spend hours calcuating production ratios and optimizing things to work 2% better. However it's still complicated enough, especially when combined with the increased time pressure to hold my interest. It also has some interesting features like different ammo types for turrets - the basic AA turret loaded with lead shoots high damage single target slugs, but loaded with scrap becomes an AoE flak turret for example. You can also build your own units to fight the enemy, or even unlock buildings that let you transform into different mechs to fight the enemies directly.
It also has multiplayer with co-op, which I've tried and works mostly fine aside from some minor desync issues. There's also a PvP mode of some sort though I haven't tried it so I don't know how it works or if it's any good.
Anyway I think it's a lot of fun. It's also only $6 which is really kind of a steal. If you just want to give it a try I think you can get it for free (or rather "pay whatever you want including $0) from the developer's itch site but it's totally worth the low price to support the developer, plus get steamworks multiplayer and steam workshop support.
Post by: Frumple on October 23, 2019, 07:03:41 am
There's also a mobile version, for what it's worth. Both for the fancier new one and an older version that's less fancy. Trying to play on a touch screen is complete ass, though. Waaaay harder to work with than mouse+keyboard.
Post by: Yoink on October 23, 2019, 07:31:41 am
Only played it a couple of times, though. Partially due to the touchscreen controls being a pain, IIRC.
Post by: Frumple on October 23, 2019, 07:43:55 am
Post by: xaritscin on October 23, 2019, 12:51:54 pm
also discovered that there's a remake of Starflight in the works and a Starflight 3 that tried to make a crowdfunding campaign but it didnt lift off so development will probable take a while. never heard of this one but it seems to be an interesting title similar to Star Control (which i also never played before)
Post by: Akura on October 23, 2019, 05:08:03 pm
just found out that Planet Explorers went free due to a technical issue. something about their server systems becoming obsolete so they now only monetize the soundtrack pack. the game is free but apparently there's plans for a sequel starting next year, backers and the people who paid for the game will be able to check the alpha or something like that.
The gist of it, based on what I've seen so far, their servers crashed so hard that they needed to replace the lobby... the source code of which they've lost somehow. So multiplayer is impossible instead of just dead. They're also trying to release the full game source code, but are having some slight copyright issues because of the code for vehicle physics isn't theirs.
I never actually finished the main campaign, though.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Mephisto on October 23, 2019, 06:16:54 pm
Post by: Iduno on October 24, 2019, 08:21:01 am
So this (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1042550/Digimon_Story_Cyber_Sleuth_Complete_Edition/) exists as of last week. It was described to me as Persona meets Digimon, which aligns with my interests.
Pokemon mystery dungeon was a legit good game, so why not.
Post by: Folly on October 27, 2019, 05:55:43 am
Post by: Mephansteras on October 27, 2019, 09:06:21 am
Any opinions yet on The Outer Worlds?
I've watched someone play through the tutorial. Looks like Fallout in Space with some decent humor, at least so far. Seems decent, but I haven't played it myself.
Post by: Jopax on October 27, 2019, 10:31:36 am
Unrelated to that, Hammerting looks fairly interesting, kinda like a spiritual successor to diggles or whatever that one super obscure game was called that was kinda popular for a while around here.
Post by: scriver on October 27, 2019, 12:10:39 pm
Any opinions yet on The Outer Worlds?
Hah, I just came here to ask too
Post by: Kagus on October 27, 2019, 02:43:57 pm
Unrelated to that, Hammerting looks fairly interesting, kinda like a spiritual successor to diggles or whatever that one super obscure game was called that was kinda popular for a while around here.Diggles was popular? Sheeit, I think I've found maybe one or two other people who'd even heard of the game, as either Wiggles or Diggles...
Diggles was fun, if completely fucking broken at times. Shame I can't seem to get the disk to run on modern machines.
Post by: Sirus on October 27, 2019, 02:45:55 pm
Post by: Jopax on October 27, 2019, 02:51:55 pm
Post by: Yoink on October 27, 2019, 11:43:16 pm
Edit: just saw an ad for something called Book of Travels.
Looks fascinating! I'm sure it'll warrant its own thread once it's out, but for now it's a Kickstarter aiming for release next year.
Post by: Aoi on November 03, 2019, 12:17:16 pm
The action takes place from a 2D sidescroller perspective, and you're drawing/playing cards with an StS-esque interface. You've got three major resources-- gold, from a variety of sources, citizens, and, perhaps most important: Physical space. Space is a major limiting factor for your growth, as you can't put up new buildings which'll boost pretty much everything else, in some fashion. (Mostly taxes and citizens, but some will heal combat units, generate new cards, etc.)
Hostiles come in from the left/right edges of the map where your town walls are, and most of your citizenry will probably end up dedicated to various flavors of soldiers. Which is one thing that's kind of driving me mad: There doesn't appear to be a way to redeploy individual units. Combine that with their glacial pace of movement and good luck shifting them from one side to the other in time to deal with an assault once your city expands a bit. The end result if that you basically have to station two full armies at both sides and just park them there which doesn't quite feel right.
Edit: Something intensely frustrating: Your units move reallllllllllly slow, for a species known for scurrying about really quickly. Which is doubly punishing since, if your last wall on either side falls, you can't
redeploy your soldiers to the town hall, and if that gets hit, then it basically falls instantly (best thing you can do is to shuffle units across the center of town where they'll be able to engage enroute. Assuming they walk fast enough.). This is a side effect of soldiers being tied to walls, and without the wall they're assigned to still standing, you can't redeploy them. Also, the builder-class is ridiculously OP if the RNG blesses you. And just really strong if it doesn't.
Post by: King Zultan on November 04, 2019, 05:17:16 am
Place you can download it. (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Malastro) Just gonna mention that you can't play it with the arrow keys and that its easier to play it with the numpad.
Post by: Aoi on November 06, 2019, 12:50:19 am
This is based on a slightly outdated version (forgot to update my travel system prior to getting onto metered internet...), 1.0.3d, I believe it was, so things should actually be harder than they are now.
So the interface still drives me mad. But considering I don't travel with a mouse and using a touchpad is generally a prelude to failure, a pure keyboard interface works out perfectly fine here. But enough about that.
I've done ~10 maps so far, about 2/3rds on easy and 1/3rd on normal, and I'd have to say that the complaints about how difficult it is... are largely unfounded, as long as you're, uhm, playing it right. And by that, I mean utilizing your skills effectively, not blowing consumables, and not wasting too much time.
Utilizing skills effectively: Stuns are your friend. So is board control, as it means you can AoE. Also, manage your own side of the board-- there are combo skills that require units to be adjacent to certain other units, and some are strong. My witch, which deals average damage, can open a fight with a full-board AoE that can knock off about half the life from a tanky mob, plus she gets lifedrain from it into the deal. Combo it with a hit from my spikers (one of which lunges, so it can only be used once without repositioning, the other of which requires a 'rage'-like resource... which is fine, since it can kill all non-boss mobs in one hit after my witch attacks anyways) and most fights are done in one turn.
On not wasting consumables: Remember how paranoid you were when just starting Darkest Dungeon, and you'd go in with twenty torches, forty rations, and a howitzer... for a stroll around the block? And by the end of it, you go into your dungeons with four rations (just in case some idiot didn't eat before showing up and got hungry two steps in...) and an extinguished torch for better loot? Yeah, don't play the former. Running out of light is annoying, but you can deal with it, and running out of food just means you stop regenning out of combat and start to degen. By going light on consumables and using spoiled consumables (low efficiency, chance of debuff), you can cut your costs down a lot.
Not wasting time: Saves resources, and if you're not playing on easy, mobs respawn over time. And don't give extra rewards.
There are still a few weird design decisions-- unlike DD, to teach new skills to your units, you need a unit with that skill in your roster already. Which, in my case, has largely meant recruiting somebody, learning the skill, discharging fresh recruit.* If you've managed to beat Darkest Dungeon on normal/hard, or at least get fairly far in it, you shouldn't have a problem here. (As a point of reference-- I've gotten to the Darkest Dungeon on normal, before I lost my save, and now play on Stygian modded to remove deathcount/timer fail... mostly until mid-tier dungeons whereupon I get distracted, and start a new file a few months later.)
*Literally. As in, the game itself kicks out the fresh recruit. For some reason.
Post by: Kagus on November 06, 2019, 03:19:27 am
On not wasting consumables: Remember how paranoid you were when just starting Darkest Dungeon, and you'd go in with twenty torches, forty rations, and a howitzer... for a stroll around the block? And by the end of it, you go into your dungeons with four rations (just in case some idiot didn't eat before showing up and got hungry two steps in...) and an extinguished torch for better loot?
My main problem with DD was that coming back from a trip packed with spare torches and one-use shovels, you'd look at all your kit and just go "Yep, never gonna use THIS again!" and hurl all that perfectly good equipment into the metaphysical void.
I'd played games before where being equipped to handle eventualities was actually a good idea, with the caveat that you needed to manage the extra weight and space allotment. And I guess I wanted more of that.
Post by: Iduno on November 06, 2019, 09:31:53 am
So the interface still drives me mad. But considering I don't travel with a mouse and using a touchpad is generally a prelude to failure, a pure keyboard interface works out perfectly fine here. But enough about that.
Touchpads are designed to make you miss the old IBM clitmouse (for the uninitiated: the small red button in the middle of the keyboard that used to function as a laptop mouse).
Post by: scriver on November 06, 2019, 09:37:24 am
Post by: wierd on November 06, 2019, 09:45:44 am
So the interface still drives me mad. But considering I don't travel with a mouse and using a touchpad is generally a prelude to failure, a pure keyboard interface works out perfectly fine here. But enough about that.
Touchpads are designed to make you miss the old IBM clitmouse (for the uninitiated: the small red button in the middle of the keyboard that used to function as a laptop mouse).
Touchpad actually came out before the trackpointer.
The predecessor to both was the trackball. (which I hate with a passion hotter than a class 2A supernova.)
As for my solution to needing a mouse; I bought some adhesive velcro. It comes both in nice fat rectangles several inches both directions-- and as small little round pads. I put a big hefty square on the back of the laptop lid (hook side of velcro), and put the little pads on the slide-skids on the mouse's bottom (fuzzy side of velcro). I can then just velcro the mouse to the top of the laptop, and put it in the carry case. Stays put until I need it.
Post by: Mephisto on November 06, 2019, 09:59:37 am
That is all.
Post by: Aoi on November 06, 2019, 03:32:33 pm
On not wasting consumables: Remember how paranoid you were when just starting Darkest Dungeon, and you'd go in with twenty torches, forty rations, and a howitzer... for a stroll around the block? And by the end of it, you go into your dungeons with four rations (just in case some idiot didn't eat before showing up and got hungry two steps in...) and an extinguished torch for better loot?
My main problem with DD was that coming back from a trip packed with spare torches and one-use shovels, you'd look at all your kit and just go "Yep, never gonna use THIS again!" and hurl all that perfectly good equipment into the metaphysical void.
I'd played games before where being equipped to handle eventualities was actually a good idea, with the caveat that you needed to manage the extra weight and space allotment. And I guess I wanted more of that.
Oh sure, and it works in some games, and even some situations in DD... Mistover actually treats it fairly well, in my opinion: Thematically, you're basically wandering around in zones covered in corrupting mist, so, quite reasonably, the stuff you're carrying will end up tainted by the mist. Any leftover perishables will degen into a corrupted state and act at something like 1/4th potency. After that, they don't get any worse. They do, however, take the same amount of inventory space (of which you have 30 at the onset), so if you're taking a lot of this stuff, you may run out of space. (But, small mercy that I've seen unavailable in other games: You can use items to free up space once the overburdened dialogue pops up, instead of being forced to throw them out.)
As for my solution to needing a mouse; I bought some adhesive velcro. It comes both in nice fat rectangles several inches both directions-- and as small little round pads. I put a big hefty square on the back of the laptop lid (hook side of velcro), and put the little pads on the slide-skids on the mouse's bottom (fuzzy side of velcro). I can then just velcro the mouse to the top of the laptop, and put it in the carry case. Stays put until I need it.
Unfortunately, this doesn't solve my personal problem of a mouse taking a fairly large chunk of room in a fairly limited sized bag (Ever spend a week living out of a messenger bag? International lost luggage is fun. I made it home a month before my luggage did, once.) And travel mice are... just... ugh. On the bright side, I seem to have developed an unhealthy fascination with Clicker Heroes (again) of late, so that solves all interface problems. *stares hypnotically at growing numbers*
Post by: Iduno on November 06, 2019, 09:56:55 pm
Post by: wierd on November 07, 2019, 02:34:26 am
As for my solution to needing a mouse; I bought some adhesive velcro. It comes both in nice fat rectangles several inches both directions-- and as small little round pads. I put a big hefty square on the back of the laptop lid (hook side of velcro), and put the little pads on the slide-skids on the mouse's bottom (fuzzy side of velcro). I can then just velcro the mouse to the top of the laptop, and put it in the carry case. Stays put until I need it.
Unfortunately, this doesn't solve my personal problem of a mouse taking a fairly large chunk of room in a fairly limited sized bag (Ever spend a week living out of a messenger bag? International lost luggage is fun. I made it home a month before my luggage did, once.) And travel mice are... just... ugh. On the bright side, I seem to have developed an unhealthy fascination with Clicker Heroes (again) of late, so that solves all interface problems. *stares hypnotically at growing numbers*
Behold, the logitech mini mouse.
(https://dnslonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Logitech_m187_4.jpg)
I have two of these. They are much better for messenger bags.
Post by: Trolldefender99 on November 07, 2019, 03:38:09 am
You ask, a rock mod? just a dumb boring rock re-texture? NO! It was amazing
An actual rock race. Not rock the actor. But a rock you find outside, a stone, a pebble, a boulder.
So here I am, not able to equip weapons or armor or cast spells or do anything at all. All I could do was float around and talk to people. Strangely no one in skyrim thought a sentient rock was strange at all. And bandits were still bandits. The best thing that ever happened while I was a rock...
"Stop! This is a toll road, see? Pay up or else!"
But a rock has no inventory or money. how would a rock be able to pay a toll if they can't even wear a bag? So I said I had no money because I am a rock of course I have no money, so the bandit got angry at a rock and chased me from whiterun all the way to solitude. The solitude guards did not appreciate a rock and chased me too. But as a magical sentient rock I had 999,999,999 hp so I couldnt really be killed. Plus my magic rock could absorb other magic rocks so I was always at 999,999,999 hp
Then I broke the game by every single npc duking it out and my pc died (literally skyrim killed my pc so I had to downgrade to my old pc that I still haven't been able to afford to upgrade lol)
But no custom race in skyrim will ever be good as a sentient rock.
Post by: Iduno on November 07, 2019, 09:14:02 am
I don't know who thought that was a good idea, but they're right.
Post by: xaritscin on November 13, 2019, 10:31:56 pm
Post by: Frumple on November 14, 2019, 10:49:02 am
Post by: Folly on November 14, 2019, 11:32:07 am
Post by: MCreeper on November 14, 2019, 12:16:45 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Doomblade187 on November 15, 2019, 06:52:01 am
Onward is a milsim-style (bit more gamey) VR shooter focusing on squad vs squad infantry combat. Maximum enjoyment is to be obtained by selecting an RPG, molotov, and running into enemy lines, bursting into flames when you die.
Now with community maps!
Post by: Mephisto on November 15, 2019, 11:21:14 am
Post by: Kagus on November 15, 2019, 11:23:38 am
Y'know, in contrast to the original?
Post by: Mephisto on November 15, 2019, 11:30:41 am
I haven't played the original but I'm going to make the claim now that they are only tenuously connected by being developed by the same dude. The original looks like a typical Stardew-Valley-em-up (and I have no desire to install Flash so I can find out). The new one is a voxel game wherein you can do quests for villagers, "research" new items, and build to your heart's content while trying to not get murdered.
Post by: Kagus on November 15, 2019, 11:41:58 am
Post by: Iduno on November 15, 2019, 11:48:54 am
My mistake, I goofed on the names... I was thinking of Rogue Legacy, not Rogue Legend. The leg confused me, as legs are wont to do.
Oh yeah, that game was 1/4 as good as it should have been.
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on November 15, 2019, 04:19:41 pm
Honestly, it looks pretty good--I cant find much legitimate criticism that isnt hate-fuelled cynicism.
Post by: Mephisto on November 15, 2019, 04:24:58 pm
Post by: Cthulhu on November 15, 2019, 04:38:09 pm
Considering it's designed as a story-generator and has robust custom story potential, it might deserve its own thread, but until then Wildermyth is very good and you should get it. Currently casually strolling towards Overwhelmingly Positive on steam, with zero negative reviews. It's a genre-blender, X-Com combat, CYOA comic book storytelling, and crisis-management board game overworld. You start with three random peasants and grow into a company of bad dudes to save the world. Semi-generational gameplay, characters age, retire, etc. and an average three-chapter game will cover 30-50 years depending on how you do. A big part of it is the emergent story elements, as characters' personalities affect what happens in the story segments, and they form relationships or rivalries with story and in-game consequences. In addition to items they can get weirder changes. One of my guys accepted the call of the wolf-god and now he has a wolf head. When he got his arm cut off in a fight, instead of being stuck with a hook-hand it grew back as a wolf-arm for a pretty nice secondary attack. Another character is infected by a tree-spirit and heals faster in travel via photosynthesis.
Magic is also really cool. Though you can apparently get more traditional spell effects from transformations, the base magic class is the mystic, who can possess objects on the map for various effects. Like if you posses a boulder, you can fling rocks at enemies, or possess a campfire to slide the fire around the map, doing damage to everything it passes through. It's a lot of fun. Classes have a ton of abilities too, which you get as you level up and allow them to specialize in weird ways.
Post by: Robsoie on November 15, 2019, 06:40:20 pm
https://gamefish.itch.io/zombie-rogue
Toyed a bit with it and while the page mention making your own team with zombies/human but i couldn't find a single human (out of a shopkeeper at some point) and couldn't find how to get any of the zombies i ran into (when i was in zombie form) into "my team".
I died on the 3rd floor while on a zombie form with an "assassin" insta killing me (well it landed a lot of attacks on the same turn apparently), not sure if it is intended or an impressive bad luck.
Post by: King Zultan on November 16, 2019, 01:49:50 am
It's not running well, I'm considering refunding and getting it on PS4 instead. So far it seems pretty good though. The combat I've seen so far feels a lot like Sekiro, very focused on counter-attacks and dodging, which is a big plus in my book. Even if it's not as good as its inspirations, anything that moves mainstream games away from the Arkham Asylum model is a good thing. I absolutely fucking !!hate!! arkham-style rhythm game combat.What game are you talking about here?
Considering it's designed as a story-generator and has robust custom story potential, it might deserve its own thread, but until then Wildermyth is very good and you should get it. Currently casually strolling towards Overwhelmingly Positive on steam, with zero negative reviews. It's a genre-blender, X-Com combat, CYOA comic book storytelling, and crisis-management board game overworld. You start with three random peasants and grow into a company of bad dudes to save the world. Semi-generational gameplay, characters age, retire, etc. and an average three-chapter game will cover 30-50 years depending on how you do. A big part of it is the emergent story elements, as characters' personalities affect what happens in the story segments, and they form relationships or rivalries with story and in-game consequences. In addition to items they can get weirder changes. One of my guys accepted the call of the wolf-god and now he has a wolf head. When he got his arm cut off in a fight, instead of being stuck with a hook-hand it grew back as a wolf-arm for a pretty nice secondary attack. Another character is infected by a tree-spirit and heals faster in travel via photosynthesis.
Magic is also really cool. Though you can apparently get more traditional spell effects from transformations, the base magic class is the mystic, who can possess objects on the map for various effects. Like if you posses a boulder, you can fling rocks at enemies, or possess a campfire to slide the fire around the map, doing damage to everything it passes through. It's a lot of fun. Classes have a ton of abilities too, which you get as you level up and allow them to specialize in weird ways.
Post by: Folly on November 16, 2019, 02:01:48 am
Considering it's designed as a story-generator and has robust custom story potential, it might deserve its own thread, but until then Wildermyth is very good and you should get it. Currently casually strolling towards Overwhelmingly Positive on steam, with zero negative reviews. It's a genre-blender, X-Com combat, CYOA comic book storytelling, and crisis-management board game overworld. You start with three random peasants and grow into a company of bad dudes to save the world. Semi-generational gameplay, characters age, retire, etc. and an average three-chapter game will cover 30-50 years depending on how you do. A big part of it is the emergent story elements, as characters' personalities affect what happens in the story segments, and they form relationships or rivalries with story and in-game consequences. In addition to items they can get weirder changes. One of my guys accepted the call of the wolf-god and now he has a wolf head. When he got his arm cut off in a fight, instead of being stuck with a hook-hand it grew back as a wolf-arm for a pretty nice secondary attack. Another character is infected by a tree-spirit and heals faster in travel via photosynthesis.What game are you talking about here?
Magic is also really cool. Though you can apparently get more traditional spell effects from transformations, the base magic class is the mystic, who can possess objects on the map for various effects. Like if you posses a boulder, you can fling rocks at enemies, or possess a campfire to slide the fire around the map, doing damage to everything it passes through. It's a lot of fun. Classes have a ton of abilities too, which you get as you level up and allow them to specialize in weird ways.
Post by: Kagus on November 16, 2019, 02:14:23 am
Star Souls sounds interesting enough, but I know I'm never going to buy it. EA and all that. I was also a bit peeved that the review article I read about it seemed to completely neglect the Jedi Knight series when talking about "previous Star Wars games" and how they generally only matched the form of Star Wars jedi-ness, and never the substance...
Fuk u m8, Jedi Knight lightsaber combat is the only one that got it right.
Post by: wierd on November 16, 2019, 02:30:54 am
EA made a promise not to fuck something up, AND YOU BELIEVED IT?
Post by: Kagus on November 16, 2019, 02:45:30 am
wait...
EA made a promise not to fuck something up, AND YOU BELIEVED IT?
I don't think anyone believed it, which is why that statement generated so much attention for the game... Now everyone's watching for the inevitable and colossal fuckup.
Post by: wierd on November 16, 2019, 02:49:32 am
Post by: Folly on November 16, 2019, 06:13:38 am
Path of Exile 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OosC1E8TVM)
Diablo 4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SSYzl9fXOQ)
Sadly, neither game is expected before 2021. Something to look forward to.
Post by: Kagus on November 16, 2019, 06:16:29 am
Something to look forward to.
Possibly.
Considering how Diablo III went, and how Actiblizz has been managing themselves lately, I would be entirely unsurprised if they managed to supremely cock up the admittedly very pretty Diablo IV.
Post by: Cthulhu on November 16, 2019, 08:06:10 am
And in the paragraph before that; Jedi: Fallen Order, the new Star Wars game from EA, which was primarily marketed by having EA release a statement that they promised not to fuck this one up.
Star Souls sounds interesting enough, but I know I'm never going to buy it. EA and all that. I was also a bit peeved that the review article I read about it seemed to completely neglect the Jedi Knight series when talking about "previous Star Wars games" and how they generally only matched the form of Star Wars jedi-ness, and never the substance...
Fuk u m8, Jedi Knight lightsaber combat is the only one that got it right.
Jedi Knight/Jedi Academy combat still feels better, but this is definitely up there. It's basically Sekiro: Star Wars Dies Twice, with some slight modifications. Semi free-roam, you have a selection of places you can go with Zelda-ish progression in them, levels are huge with multiple paths, some of which you can't reach immediately. Combat on higher difficulty feels reasonably lightsaber-ish, humanoids have a stamina meter and are pretty good at blocking but even the tough ones can die in one or two unblocked hits. A stamina-breaking counter allows an insta-kill animation, or with big aliens, several parries in a row.
Not impressed by the story so far, at least the early parts it sprints through the opening narrative and feels like it's skipping stuff to get you into the game. Will have to see if it slows down and takes its time.
Post by: scriver on November 16, 2019, 08:13:55 am
Post by: Sirus on November 16, 2019, 08:35:58 am
It does look extremely interesting, though.
Post by: scriver on November 16, 2019, 08:40:30 am
Post by: Cthulhu on November 16, 2019, 08:59:14 am
I'm trying to figure out if you ever get more than three party members in it. I assume you do, based on the repeated talk about it being an XCOM-like, but the trailer basically just shows three.
It does look extremely interesting, though.
Yes. You periodically get an opportunity to recruit a new guy. I don't know if there's a maximum, in the basic three-chapter story I think I had a maximum of six guys. A single fight can have up to five. Really depends on what you mean by party management though, there's not much resource management or anything like that. At the end of battles and events, or when you capture a settlement, you get one or two items. You pick who gets them, or salvage them for parts, and there's no way to exchange them between characters. At the end of a chapter all your accumulated resources from salvage and captured settlements can be used to make new gear.
If you want a lightweight D&D-ish story generator with satisfying combat and progression, it's about as good as it gets. Still sitting on 100% positive reviews, and that's for an early access game.
Post by: Yoink on November 16, 2019, 11:54:10 pm
Might look into it more and chuck it onto my wishlist next time my internet decides to work.
Post by: Cthulhu on November 17, 2019, 11:14:53 pm
Game is a little easy on normal difficulty, but I feel like the next level will make it much harder, will probably try one of the shorter campaigns on hard to see how it goes. There's a ton of abilities for each class, plus generic abilities, and depending on what choices you roll you can get some good combos going. Sentinel warriors are crazy strong, intercepting anything that moves within two or three squares of them, and mystics get multiple ways to move enemies around, which can force them into intercept range. If you've got the infinite intercept move then your warrior can wipe half the enemy squad in one turn.
Ironically I think the weakest element is the writing. The stories overall are fun, and the writing is usually fine, but some of it, especially the side quests, can be pretty weird. Your character's personality traits influence their dialog, and the writing can swing between people spouting off hokey poetic soliloquies, and weird out-of-place millennial voice.
Post by: Robsoie on November 19, 2019, 01:02:59 pm
It's a "security release" but fixes some bugs too so it's good to get.
https://www.dosbox.com/news.php?show_news=1
And
Quote
Ideally, 0.75 should have been released by now, but some bugs took a lot longer than expected.
Post by: Mephisto on November 19, 2019, 04:11:48 pm
I did not. Now that I know it's a thing, I do.
Post by: Iduno on November 19, 2019, 04:39:42 pm
Have you ever wanted to play Paper Mario but you're a bug? (https://twitter.com/PaperBugDev/status/1171829083849842689)
I did not. Now that I know it's a thing, I do.
Apparently that is a thing I want to do.
Post by: Aoi on November 22, 2019, 02:40:57 am
Have you ever wanted to play Paper Mario but you're a bug? (https://twitter.com/PaperBugDev/status/1171829083849842689)
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Saping... and yeah, it really draws from Paper Mario. Played halfway through the first dungeon, but for an early opinion... graphics feel clean (though some things were obviously done for a specific resolution-- the opening narrative cutscene for example), bright, and vibrant, though it makes me very uncomfortable for some reason... I feel like it's on the verge of triggering my migraines.
Combat is very reminiscent of Paper Mario with the active abilities, for better or for worse (if you don't like 'em, stay far, far away... I'm terrible at them). The starting ones are press-when-in-the-colored-segment and hold-until-full style. There's a hard mode available right off the bat, which is, uh, why this only goes until halfway through the first dungeon. Incidentally, it does not utilize a friendly death system; it's straight up reload from last save.
The writing comes across as targeted towards a younger audience and kind of cutesy, though in an unobtrusive manner (Octopath Traveller, I'm looking at you. If I wanted that many colloquialisms and accents, I'd be reading Mark Twain.). Which is perfectly fitting given the art style and narrative, so all's well here.
I feel like there's something to be desired with the map layouts though. It's effectively 3D, but there's a lot of invisible walls where there 'shouldn't' be, like the loft of the room you start in; there's really no reason why you wouldn't be able to jump down from up top, other than gaming limitations. Related to this, there's plenty of missed opportunities for secrets/hidden that probably could've been taken advantage of... (though, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I've encountered anywhere with multiple z-levels at the same x/y coordinates, which may explain a lot).
So at a quick glance... you're basically getting exactly what it looks like.
Post by: Mephisto on November 22, 2019, 08:35:56 pm
You play as the various members of the Bergson family, each with unique abilities. Your family has historically been the world's protector, gifted a gateway-crystal-thing by some deity-spirit-being that helps you travel to new areas to defeat the corruption that has taken root.
You start out playing as a dude with a sword and shield. You block, dodge, and kill some baddies, pick up relics, learn a divine skill thing, and then find one of your daughters, who ends up being pretty mean with a bow. And that's about as far as I've gotten. I'm kind of awestruck by the art and wanted to come tell people about it.
Post by: scriver on November 23, 2019, 01:18:12 am
Post by: Trolldefender99 on November 26, 2019, 02:38:48 am
https://store.steampowered.com/app/803050/Per_Aspera/
It would deserve its own thread, but there isn't really any info and release date hasn't been announced outside of "2020". And...also the devs are really quiet about it and no advertisement for it at all. Even their facebook doesn't get updates. I am taking it that they are super busy working on it, but hopefully next year they actually talk about it and it doesn't die in the wind.
And here is a PCGamer article I found about it
https://www.pcgamer.com/per-aspera-game-trailer/
Other than that, its gonna get compared a lot to Surviving Mars. I'll keep my opinion to myself though on my thoughts between them.
Unless someone beats me to it, I'll make my own thread probably when they advertise it a bit more or talk about it or anything. Until then, it pretty much belongs here. Looks like it may be a great mars game though. Just...I hope it gets made. There hasn't really been any news on it since its announcement
Post by: scriver on November 26, 2019, 04:55:36 am
Post by: Kagus on November 26, 2019, 08:59:17 am
make the game slightly engaging in any wayI kinda feel like this is asking a lot, to be fair...
Post by: wierd on November 26, 2019, 11:35:57 am
Instead of rival houses on Arrakis, you have rival corporations on Mars, all vying to have the best possible media coverage, and to spoon as much FUD on the other contenders, all for those extremely lucrative launch contracts for satellites and military asset orbits.
See, much more interesting than "Let's study this rock! ooooh! It contains-- HYDRATED FELDSPAR!" (Unless you are planetary geologist, that is not going to be exciting.)
Post by: n9103 on November 26, 2019, 12:33:21 pm
I love that the Mars Sim team is trying to be highly accurate, but man is it dry.
Post by: Iduno on November 26, 2019, 12:46:55 pm
Better Surviving Mars than Mars Simulation Project.
I love that the Mars Sim team is trying to be highly accurate, but man is it dry.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars/ (https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars/)
Post by: Kagus on November 26, 2019, 04:56:20 pm
Better Surviving Mars than Mars Simulation Project.
I love that the Mars Sim team is trying to be highly accurate, but man is it dry.
...I think I tried that out, actually. First thing to happen was a 2-man crew took a buggy out on a research mission, but were getting low on supplies when the buggy broke down a fair distance away from base.
Couple others tried launching a rescue and recovery mission, but that's when a storm kicked up and they had to cancel. By the time things settled down enough to get another buggy out there... Well... There wasn't much left to save.
They just... They just sat out there and died. On their first mission. Dry drowning. At least they had each other in their last moments...
Post by: Trolldefender99 on November 27, 2019, 01:36:22 am
I've tried every java version publically available, even SDK kits.
And my java variables work and are set properly. Except, it keeps saying it can't open mars-sim-main-3.1.0-b1.jar and when I try running the batch file it just opens and closes right away, but if I drag it into command prompt window it gives that error of opening the jar file that I listed. And if I try to open mars sim main, it says JNI error no matter what java version I have.
Post by: Trolldefender99 on November 27, 2019, 02:08:15 am
That or it uses old java no longer available...which would be complete BS. If thats the case, they should make old java available to download. But on the readme, it says JDK 11 for the most recent version. I got that, but it still gives that same stupid error. It also says JRE 11, which must be different than SDK? But JRE 11 isn't available anymore at all, and not going to some shady site that is anything but the official site for my java lol. But I tried the newest Java, and that still didn't work and that is only one they have for download. At least they have older JDKs archived...but I've tried every single java combination you can think of from the oracle website and not a single one has worked.
Its getting really annoying. I've already spent 3 hours tonight trying to get it to work and its not working. I actually thought no one would be able to play, but doesn't seem to be the case.
(edit: Well I found this
https://github.com/mars-sim/mars-sim/issues/236
and this https://github.com/mars-sim/mars-sim/releases
I got openJDK 11 and it gives same error as oracle JDK 11. Both have same exact error, except its a new error "Error: unable to access jar file"
finally after 50 hours of trying to get the sim to work, its a new error! Progress lol
(edit: I made a github account and posted my issue there. Hopefully someone can help. Except it took me 5 minutes literally to pass the github security pass thing to check for bots lol.
Post by: wierd on November 27, 2019, 02:58:26 am
Is it REALLY a .jar? (Not a tar.gz in disguise?)
Does the MD5sum match?
Etc...
Post by: Trolldefender99 on November 27, 2019, 02:59:56 am
5162_swing_java11.jar
Supposedly you are supposed to unpack that? Not sure. I unpacked it though, and it gave same error as before. It too had a batch file in there...and that batch file gives same error but different file
Error: Unable to access jarfile jars/mars-sim-headless-3.1.0-b2.jar
Exit Code = 1
(edit: Here is the full error, I'll put in the github issue I put up
java -jar C:\5162_swing_java11.jar
Command: "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-11.0.2\bin\java" -Djava.util.logging.config.file=logging.properties -cp .;*;jars\* org.mars_sim.main.MarsProject -Xms256m -Xmx1536m -new
Error: Could not find or load main class org.mars_sim.main.MarsProject
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.mars_sim.main.MarsProject
Post by: Kagus on November 27, 2019, 03:33:30 am
Post by: scriver on November 27, 2019, 05:02:18 am
Better Surviving Mars than Mars Simulation Project.
I love that the Mars Sim team is trying to be highly accurate, but man is it dry.
...I think I tried that out, actually. First thing to happen was a 2-man crew took a buggy out on a research mission, but were getting low on supplies when the buggy broke down a fair distance away from base.
Couple others tried launching a rescue and recovery mission, but that's when a storm kicked up and they had to cancel. By the time things settled down enough to get another buggy out there... Well... There wasn't much left to save.
They just... They just sat out there and died. On their first mission. Dry drowning. At least they had each other in their last moments...
They should have spammed you with SOS messages
In the end all you should get should have been a "...please..."
Post by: Iduno on November 27, 2019, 08:56:28 am
Aw, c'mon. Even you won't acknowledge my bad joke?
Post by: n9103 on November 27, 2019, 10:33:10 am
Also, pleasantly surprised by the amount of attention my off-hand remark has garnered. :)
Post by: Kagus on November 27, 2019, 10:33:35 am
Aw, c'mon. Even you won't acknowledge my bad joke?
It was too dry; you made Mars' water disappear again.
Post by: wierd on November 27, 2019, 12:25:35 pm
The batch file looks like this inside.
Code: [Select]
@echo off
call java -jar /jars/mars-sim-main-3.1.0-b1.jar new
echo Exit Code = %ERRORLEVEL%
if "%ERRORLEVEL%" == "1" exit /B 1
It SHOULD look like this inside
Code: [Select]
@echo off
call java -jar ./jars/mars-sim-main-3.1.0-b1.jar new
echo Exit Code = %ERRORLEVEL%
if "%ERRORLEVEL%" == "1" exit /B 1
It is missing the preceding period on the relative path syntax. Without it, windows tries to treat it like a hard path-- and naturally, Java can't follow it.
In my case though, it complains about needing a newer version of the java virtual machine.
Code: [Select]
C:\MarsProject_3.1.0-b1_java9_batch>mars-sim
Error: A JNI error has occurred, please check your installation and try again
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/mars_sim/main/MarsProjectStarter has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime (class file version 53.0), this version of the J
ava Runtime only recognizes class file versions up to 52.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(Unknown Source)
Exit Code = 1
So, the answer to the "Cannot find JAR" error is that they did not put a proper relative path statement in their batch file. A simple 1 character change fixes it. Add a preceding period.
Post by: wierd on November 27, 2019, 12:57:06 pm
Needs Java 9. Works fine now. Needs the preceding period. It will solve all your problems.
Post by: Trolldefender99 on November 27, 2019, 02:09:04 pm
Also for anyone else who is playing on mars sim github version, you need THIS version of java
https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk11-downloads-5066655.html
And get the .exe not anything else or it won't work. No other version works either, it can't be JDK 11 version 11.04 it has to be 11.05
This has been the hardest game I ever did to try to get to work lol.
Thanks for getting it all fixed :) its really finicky sim with getting it setup.
Post by: Frumple on December 02, 2019, 12:25:55 am
Because then you have dozens and dozens and dozens of skeletons and then more and more stuff trying to murder you and throwing projectiles at you and stomping up into your grill with building-sized golems and shit gets pretty hectic also after a few days of getting into the swing of things other shit starts happening and the day time stops being a time of relative rest and... just, look. It's nice and mean, both.
Game's doing a lot of things right, check it out. Also your starting item builds defensive towers, use them like immediately. Towers alone won't really work but they'll help a hell of a lot. Probably hunt down shrines -- not sure about the other ones but the food one can give you the aforementioned artillery ghosts and they can make the early game wwaaaaaaaaaaay easier because they throw around lightning and cluster fireballs and basically just kick all sorts of ass versus the initial skeletons and friends waves. Then the later stuff comes in and they die so don't get too attached (to them, or anything else).
... anyway it's on steam, itch.io, maybe other places. Currently going for about five bucks. I just burnt through the refund period in one go so I'ma go to bed now. Might be the best purchase I made this sale, tho' :P
E: Oh, and if you do try it and run into technical difficulties, check out the steam discussion whatsit. There's some known issues that can crop up with some hardware, and some solutions. I had trouble myself, but fixed it up fairly painlessly (just had to force the program to actually use the graphics card, more or less).
Post by: eerr on December 02, 2019, 03:28:42 pm
Post by: Frumple on December 02, 2019, 09:56:35 pm
Post by: n9103 on December 02, 2019, 11:28:24 pm
Does anyone have star zoo with the dll? The forum download link didn't come with a dll, or it wasn't recognized by windows 10.You mean This File? (http://www.bay12games.com/curses/curses.zip) The one in giant bold letters at the top of the download page (http://www.bay12games.com/curses/) for the various curses games that Our Great Amphibious Lord wrote? The one with its own topic (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=2633.0)already (that was admittedly necro'd recently) :P
Post by: Frumple on December 03, 2019, 11:54:51 pm
Post by: itisnotlogical on December 04, 2019, 12:30:44 am
Maybe after this they can update the Gold Box games, remake the AOL Neverwinter Nights, and give me a pretty pink unicorn and a Lamborghini with flame stickers.
Post by: Iduno on December 04, 2019, 08:40:01 am
I had heard of Neverwinter Nights getting the "Enhanced Edition" treatment from Beamdog, but I didn't know until today that it's coming to consoles as well as PC. I don't care much for NWN, but I'm still curious to check it out.
Maybe after this they can update the Gold Box games, remake the AOL Neverwinter Nights, and give me a pretty pink unicorn and a Lamborghini with flame stickers.
Did the BG Enhanced Editions do that well? From what I heard, it was the same as adding a graphics mod and a few of the lower-end fan-made character mods. I'm guessing it was more than that, but also worth significantly less than they were charging for it.
Post by: Kagus on December 04, 2019, 01:52:57 pm
...and the god-fucking-damn dumbass fully voiced fanmade characters who have a disgusting amount of work put into whole new side campaigns based entirely around them. Almost as disgusting as the characters themselves are.
And Wilson. Don't forget Wilson. Wilson makes it all better again.
Post by: Jopax on December 06, 2019, 07:14:26 am
The graphics are simple and effective and the gameplay is smooth and fairly polished, seems the only thing they're adding now is more stuff like game modes and mod/weapon/ship choices. It's fairly cheap and a good pickup if you're craving some twin stick shmup action. Runs don't take long for the most part and it can be played in short bursts.
Post by: Frumple on December 06, 2019, 08:57:15 am
Post by: Aoi on December 06, 2019, 09:15:58 am
Checking vids, is it actually twinstick or more like astroids in terms of movement? Strafing et al doesn't seem to be a thing. It looks like the latter, and while it looks interesting I kinda' hate that movement schema with a passion :P
Asteroids. The dev has made their position on the matter very firmly.
There is, evidently, a mouse-facing control scheme, but it's still very much fire-forward, thrust-forward. Bleh.
Post by: Frumple on December 06, 2019, 09:36:58 am
Though if the facing is at least mouse controlled that's not as bad as it could be. Probably wouldn't call it twin stick, tho'.
Post by: itisnotlogical on December 07, 2019, 03:38:42 am
As was the case with Redguard, the fun I'm having is inversely proportional to the effort required to play.
Post by: wierd on December 07, 2019, 03:41:56 am
https://sourceforge.net/projects/freej2me/
Post by: itisnotlogical on December 07, 2019, 03:43:22 am
Post by: Jopax on December 07, 2019, 04:52:30 am
Bleh indeed. Call me when someone makes the same game without the clumsy control scheme, heh.
Though if the facing is at least mouse controlled that's not as bad as it could be. Probably wouldn't call it twin stick, tho'.
Yeah, I had no clue there was a substantial difference in the controls, the mouse aiming and keyboard combo is pretty ok once you get used to it, also there seem to be some mods you can get that seem to enable some sort of lateral movement tho I haven't taken them myself much (firepower is king after all)
Post by: Blastbeard on December 07, 2019, 11:11:22 am
It does look nice, and it also features a multi-tile creature, which is something I don't see much of in these types of games. Unfortunately the way the thing paths around lends it to getting stuck on terrain, so much so it dealt with itself by essentially wedging its head into a corner.
I'm not going back, but I can't shake the feeling that I didn't give this one a fair chance. Either way, I don't think it's worth ten bucks.
Post by: wierd on December 09, 2019, 07:40:01 am
Bleh indeed. Call me when someone makes the same game without the clumsy control scheme, heh.
Though if the facing is at least mouse controlled that's not as bad as it could be. Probably wouldn't call it twin stick, tho'.
Yeah, I had no clue there was a substantial difference in the controls, the mouse aiming and keyboard combo is pretty ok once you get used to it, also there seem to be some mods you can get that seem to enable some sort of lateral movement tho I haven't taken them myself much (firepower is king after all)
To properly control the ship with multi-axis thrust, you would need two joysticks. These days you get that with analog gamepads; This was not always the case.
The game was made for arcade uprights originally, and home game system ports had to make due with the expensive costs of consumer electronics in the 80s. Nowdays there is a strong nostalgia demand, which would sour sales of a remake if it did not include the clumsy controls, because that's what people remember. The developers would have to essentially write the ship control code TWICE- Once with modern gamepads with dual analog input so that multi-axis thrust is possible, and once more to favor single 8 direction digital hat input with single vector thrust.
Post by: Jopax on December 09, 2019, 10:02:22 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 11, 2019, 07:52:51 pm
On my current run i went to Highpool, on the upper part of the map there's a house that is in fire after a mortar landed on it , the owner ask you to help him to put out the fire, when i put the camera on top of that fire it suddenly lag horribly for no obvious reason.
I had read from googling that people have even worse problems with this game that i noticed at that point with stuttering and lag on other locations , some pointing finger to the unity engine not being great on term of performance, some on various hardware/driver thingy or OS differences.
Checking around, there are some solutions that can make the game running smoothly in case you're running into trouble :
- lowering visual option and resolutions obviously
- disable the shadows that are apparently very taxing
- running Wastelands 2 instead of Wastelands 2 Director Cut (at the time when you claim W2DC there is also the original W2 in your library) as W2DC use a newer version of unity (that may deliver worse perfomance on some system possibly)
- instead of using the default DirectX11 render that unity use with Wastelands 2 but use the alternative DirectX9 one by adding to your shortcut command line :
Code: [Select]
-force-d3d9(this will also disable all those nice looking normal maps all around unfortunately)Anyways, that said up to where i am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The actors that do the voice acting are also very good and make everything believable.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Oh and when playing be sure to check every containers (worth getting/upgrading a guy to have the lockpicking skill) , you really want as much ammo and healing kits as you can.
Post by: Iduno on December 12, 2019, 09:13:03 am
Anyways, that said up to where i amIt feels very good in the post-apocalyptic genre, it's like a very good variant of Fallout 1/2 but with much better tactical combat (way way better than Fallout Tactics on the tactical combat too) , very worth a play for Fallout 1/2 fans.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The actors that do the voice acting are also very good and make everything believable.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Oh and when playing be sure to check every containers (worth getting/upgrading a guy to have the lockpicking skill) , you really want as much ammo and healing kits as you can.
The first half of the game is trying to keep combat skills as low as possible to max out everything else first because you don't have enough skill points (which feels right). I think part of the reason people lose interest in the second half is that you have all of the skills, and a few extra skill points. Still, it's a decent game.
Edit: I love the head developer's comments for Skatebird (not the devlog, which is mostly the bird talking in annoying child-voice). They've moved way past the obvious jokes about Tony Hawk, and are now saying the Switch version should have you lead with the opposite foot. Also, making fun of their past self for making stupid programming errors (which are the errors most programmers make. I remember my program that absolutely should have worked, nobody could find the error, then we noticed it started with "Porgram.") and taunting their friends.
Post by: Robsoie on December 12, 2019, 12:38:46 pm
Too bad it's not greatly optimised as some people have performance/stability problems from what i read (though the tips i posted previously should help a lot in those cases) with some systems (apparently it even has problems on its ps4 console version), the game is really good for people that loved Fallout 1 and 2.
Post by: Stench Guzman on December 12, 2019, 05:11:08 pm
Also the font is too small in that game.
Post by: Robsoie on December 12, 2019, 06:16:34 pm
It sure could have been made better, like the performance optimisations too.
Post by: Ulfarr on December 12, 2019, 06:35:46 pm
giving the medic role to a melee fighter didn't help either
Post by: nenjin on December 12, 2019, 06:45:24 pm
That and I felt like all the environmental interaction and dialog options meaning something was all front loaded in the first big quest, and it just got thinner the further through the game you got.
I've tried about 3 times to get deep into it, and right about the Cultist part, after cleaning up and doing everything prior to that, is where I too just simply stop playing for more engaging things.
Hard to argue with free though.
Post by: Aoi on December 13, 2019, 02:54:51 am
Without getting into spoilerific territory, you're the son of Hades in a Greco-Roman setting, and you're trying to get back to the world of the living. And, as Kratos has long since taught us, there's exactly one way to do it... in here, you're killing your way out, room by room. Each room has up to three exits, the reward of which is denoted by the icons on them.
Dying is pretty much required, to advance the gameplay and the narrative. And hey, it makes perfect sense here! Every time you die, you just pop back up at the end of the queue of souls awaiting judgement, shove your way past the line, through your bedroom, and back into the underworld.
The narrative unfolds slowly through play, mostly via dialogues, all the major characters of which are voiced. (Sadly, not as alluring as the voice of the narrator, or even the Ancestor from Darkest Dungeon.)
The combat plays a bit like Bastion. You've got your weapon, 4 so far, with its basic combo, charge attack, and special, a ranged cast, a god power, and a dash. Pretty much everything ties into these moves. It kind of ends up a giant clickfest, which is a bit of a downer.
The upgrade system is clearly where they're focusing.-- there's maybe eight gods, each of which have ten or so powers they can give you, each of which can be upgraded. Upgrades stack, unless they're conflicting (generally, modifiers to your base attack, cast, dash, or god power). And some of them combo really nicely-- my favorite of which is with the best ranged option so far... the shield. You go Captain America with it, it ricochets from target to target; an Ares special upgrade makes each target hit with your special take a a pretty heavy hit after a few seconds, and an Artemis general upgrade makes all your direct attacks fire a homing bullet. There's a nice assortment of abilities, and I'm having a lot of fun playing with combos.
Oh, and the fourth boss is quite something.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: "A few tips I've figured out." (click to show/hide)
Edit: I think I've been calling the Nectar Ambrosia this whole time...
Post by: Kagus on December 13, 2019, 03:47:57 am
Post by: Aoi on December 13, 2019, 04:11:29 am
I hadn't played Pyre, so this special offer was extra nice for including the free copy (it's just the one, far as I can tell, but it can either be gifted or added to your account). Transistor was ace though, definitely play that.
Double checked-- according to other sources, it was allowing the double dip only for a few hours, and the devs admitted that it was an error in how they set it up. If you bought it early and got two copies of Pyre, you got lucky.
Post by: Robsoie on December 13, 2019, 07:32:03 am
I guess it's not helping that the locations you get into are rather linear, so you can't avoid running into the scripted enemy that is waiting on those specific places.
It's also very annoying that the soldiers can't move while in crouching position, so you have to crouch again everytime you finish moving a guy.
Jagged Alliance 2 is still the undefeated king of tactical combat.
Post by: Iduno on December 13, 2019, 10:23:23 am
https://youtu.be/IGpB8aULB_g (https://youtu.be/IGpB8aULB_g)
Post by: Mephisto on December 13, 2019, 02:00:45 pm
Last I've heard, you need 12 gigs of RAM and a CUDA GPU. If my server had a GPU, I'd probably consider throwing a copy on there to fuck around with. But it doesn't so I'll continue dreaming.
Post by: Iduno on December 13, 2019, 04:50:20 pm
Post by: scriver on December 14, 2019, 05:51:45 am
Post by: Ulfarr on December 14, 2019, 06:50:41 am
-okay folks, here’s the plan. There are about ten mutant bugs in the next room and only one way to get there. So we are going to set up an ambush in this here room. Everyone spread out, find some cover, and be ready to blast anything that comes out of that damn door. When everyone is in position, our big boy Uri is going to draw their attention and then run back to us. Ready? Go!
*encounter begins*
*angie deth goes rogue*
*rose goes rogue*
*A scream echoes in the hallway*
“LEEEROY JENKINS”
Post by: Robsoie on December 14, 2019, 07:22:39 am
It was then i decided i should get one of the character invest points in leadership.
Anyways, you something find great informations when exploring
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on December 15, 2019, 06:14:10 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on December 15, 2019, 07:36:58 pm
Absolutely gorgeous pixel art, with some interesting graphical effects that I think are trying to modernize with some varying degree of success.. One you'll see a lot of bloom and distance blur. Both of which I personally think detract from the art, since it kind of turns everything into an impossible to see mess.
It kind of uses the SaGa formula, where you pick one of an assortment of characters that you get to recruit later, and each have their own primary storyline. Also plenty of skills. There's a bit of Bravely Default feel in there how you can bank Boost points and expend them to attack harder/multiple times, and enemies have specific weaknesses where, if you hit them with it enough, they get stunned for a turn and take extra damage.
Each character has a personal special: The merchant can buy 'personal' items from NPCs (and while most are just vendor goods, some are rare items, and others are things you wouldn't be able to get until way later), another lets you see their history, which is mostly for flavor, but also can be the main thing in resolving sidequests, etc. You can also 'tame' monsters... or NPCs.
PC controls are obviously for controller, but they're among the best I've seen. Keys make sense (generally speaking, escape drops a menu as far as reasonable, backspace is a one-step cancel, enter accpets, etc.), and functions that are not inherently obvious tend to be marked (Boost, for example). There's a healthy amount of voicing, in both English and Japanese.
The big problem? I can't help but find it crushingly boring. It is just plain not interesting. To the point that I actually stopped and decided to start making colorful patterns on my plate with my M&Ms.
Post by: Iduno on December 16, 2019, 09:41:20 am
SquareEnix...
I can't help but find it crushingly boring. It is just plain not interesting.[/b]
Yeah. 2 great companies who shat the bed joining up. At least they aren't EA, but...
Post by: JWNoctis on December 16, 2019, 11:07:43 am
The most resource-intensive text adventure you'll never play, AI Dungeon 2. (https://pcc.cs.byu.edu/2019/11/21/ai-dungeon-2-creating-infinitely-generated-text-adventures-with-deep-learning-language-models/)
Last I've heard, you need 12 gigs of RAM and a CUDA GPU. If my server had a GPU, I'd probably consider throwing a copy on there to fuck around with. But it doesn't so I'll continue dreaming.
That's actually 8GB of RAM and a fast CPU /or/ GPU with 12GB of VRAM. It's actually simple to run local if you already know how to set up a server and it's good fun.
Otherwise...I've just got Freedom Planet off a sale. Now I feel like quoting one of the more recent TPS strip out there (http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/forty-or-fight).
it's excellent, but nothing makes you feel exhausted and old quite like ultra-fast-pace action platformers, and that one's not even supposed to be particularly hard. :-[
Post by: Robsoie on December 16, 2019, 07:06:34 pm
I'm now at the point in which the game enemies are moving from various variants of raiders to mad robots of various kind and ability.
I was starting to wonder if it was going to basically forces the player to invest precious skill points in energy weapon only (as those weapons are supposed to double damage against materials like the ones from robots, but less damage to other materials) or in heavy weapons like the various explosives and launchers.
Fortunately i found out that energy weapons aren't really better against robots (i guess because at that point of the game your characters are probably very nicely leveled in their main weaponry) as their base damage is lower than regular weapon and their damage bonus somehow makes them dealing roughly similar damage as the best "normal" weapons you have and have chacaters with good level in.
Good as it still allow various weapon styles instead of forcing everyone to invest skill points in energy weaponry.
But what surprised me was that i have a guy that seriously invested in computer science amongst other skills ... and computer science can actually be used in combat against robots !
Meaning you can neutralize / convert to your side nearly every enemy robots ! (though they also self destruct once the remaining enemy robots are dead) if you have some good computer scientist, unfortunately does not work on those nasty resilient huge spider-like robots (it's a very good idea to focus fire on those threats as they're capable of dealing serious damage)
That's truly fantastic use of this skill as some of the robots can be a real pain (like the ones that generate fields that halve your character accuracy, or the ones that auto-shoot laser) and getting that pain be unleashed on the other robots that are still enemy is a great way to transform a defeat in the making into a fun victory.
Post by: ZeroGravitas on December 21, 2019, 12:04:23 pm
Post by: Aoi on December 21, 2019, 06:39:00 pm
So its main gimmick is that all the walls are destructible... in terms of layout though, they're not really walls, but a pile of snow and ice. (And later impenetrable rocks, or you can buy an upgrade to dig through them too.) Basically, you have to dig through stuff. In-run currency is dug out of the walls (or shot out, if you have upgrades) and can be used to purchase upgrades... and the upgrade selection is randomized per station. There's also stats and perks into the mix.
The meta system is a bit more interesting; each unlocked upgrade gives a passive perk (dig speed, health, etc.) and allows it to show up in the random pool, which presents the question of passive perk vs getting junk in the upgrade pool.
Downside is that some of the upgrades/perks are way too powerful-- getting an early cash on damage/dig opens up your options by a lot, and some kind of health on kill/crit/damage is practically required. (And some combos are quite exploitable, since, much like RoR, stuff spawns infinitely.)
Replayability doesn't feel all that good though... I felt like I was falling asleep 3/4ths of the way through (on Normal/Normal difficulty). Thank goodness I managed to take out the boss because I actively don't feel like doing that again.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: nenjin on December 22, 2019, 02:28:02 pm
thinking about getting Blasphemous because of the steam sale; anyone know if it's better or worse on switch? i doubt there's a switch sale but i wouldn't have dig my steam controller out if switch is better.
I don't know if it's better or worse, but they did just release a big patch focused on the platforming mechanics to fix a lot of bugs and make it a little more fluid and forgiving.
Post by: Robsoie on December 26, 2019, 02:27:02 pm
I had read from googling that people have even worse problems with this game that i noticed at that point with stuttering and lag on other locations , some pointing finger to the unity engine not being great on term of performance, some on various hardware/driver thingy or OS differences.
It looks like this has been reported so many times that the devs even made it a joke ingame
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Thats said i completed the Hollywood vs Griffith cities storyline (tons of quests to do in this one), and i think i'm now getting close to the end of the game.
Some observations on my run :
Wastelands 2 DC has an insane amount of things happening, much more than what i experienced back when i was playing Fallout 1 or Fallout 2 , it's really packed with events, dialogues and side quests, for something i got free i was very pleasantly surprised by how much things the devs put in that game especially as there are not only 1 way to solve nearly all those quests, ton of good voice acting too that build the atmosphere.
The battles while better than Fallout 1/2 are getting repetitive unfortunately, the complete lack of stealth play (both from player or the enemy) is very detrimental as it is lowering the amount of options during combat (probably adding to the repetitive thing) so in the end battles feel like they're all the same, some weapons type are also much more effective than other at any range so by focusing a character on handgun or energy weapon you're not getting your squad firepower a favour, shotguns (i recruited an old drunk hobo with good shotgun skills and it was unimpressive).
Assault and Sniper rifles have been dominating on my run (explosives stuff are good when you need area damage too, they're also good on some doors and barrier when your lockpicking skill fail critically or isn't enough)
There's not much enemies with conductive armor, meaning energy weapons are only usefull in a few battles (and even they don't do very noticably better than your assault or sniper rifles against such enemy) while doing subpar against nearly every enemies.
In opposition, most of the best armors you find/buy seems to be all very conductive, meaning if you meet anyone wielding an energy weapons you must remove all armor or die in a couple of hit (as energy weapons do lot more damage against your characters when they're armored).
Quite hilarious that my whole high level squad was utterly annihilated in a few turns by cyborgs wielding energy weapons in a random encounter, while after reloading that battle but getting all my squad naked we wiped them out without much damage ...
Part 2 of the game (California) does not require water anymore, very odd as Arizona water management was too easy (as there are regular oasis around and some items that allow to bring more water) i thought part 2 would have increased this difficulty instead of removing it completely.
Post by: Jopax on December 26, 2019, 04:17:02 pm
Haven't played the original in years, and it was a pretty fun RTS that managed to pull off space and ground combat to a competent degree. This mod looks to revamp the graphics and add a bunch of stuff, and tbh, from a few videos I've seen the graphics do look pretty fucking great, the explosions are especially pretty.
And seeing as the game itself is on sale on pretty much every platform atm and is like 6 or so € no reason not to give it a shot. Will report results once the whole shebang is downloaded and running.
Post by: Persus13 on December 26, 2019, 04:43:12 pm
Post by: Iduno on December 27, 2019, 02:54:12 pm
Post by: scriver on December 31, 2019, 09:40:47 am
Post by: Frumple on December 31, 2019, 09:58:58 am
Which. I guess could be a bad sign for the consumer. Not so much the business, heh.
Post by: Iduno on December 31, 2019, 10:17:02 am
Eh... from what I understand most purchases happen in a pretty short time frame. Lot of emphasis gets put on the first few weeks. Starting sales up a month or two after release or somethin', particularly smaller discounts, is probably less a bad sign and more that marketing et al is getting more canny and optimizing where to put their price point and when for maximum (short-ish term) monetary extraction.
Which. I guess could be a bad sign for the consumer. Not so much the business, heh.
It's not good for newer developers, which is also bad for the consumer. It's fine if you want Call of Duty 18.
Post by: scriver on December 31, 2019, 12:19:23 pm
I need to start doing more brain exercises. Crossword puzzles or seppukus or something.
Post by: Robsoie on December 31, 2019, 01:38:49 pm
Oh and it seems to be very (in comparison to other games with better visuals) demanding on the system, i had to lower a lot all the default settings to finally get something playable.
Anyways it was not for me, but considering it's free for now maybe worth a try for people that can like this combat system.
Post by: nenjin on December 31, 2019, 03:19:50 pm
I love me some Binding of Isaac. But it was distinctly not that. Some kind of puzzle game or game show-based thing? I put it on my wishlist because it was in the "Isaac Universe" but didn't have any real intentions of getting it. Just didn't seem quite like my game. I tend not to go for Puzzler games liike Bejeweled and what not.
And therefore a friend got it for me for Xmas.
It is......a strange beast.
You play Bumbo, a minor character from the Binding of Isaac. Bumbo want coin. Bumbo's brother take coin. Bumbo get coin back.
Gameplay is a combination of several different things.
You have a dungeon with multiple rooms, with enemies in them, a shop and eventually a boss.
Kill all the monsters in a room, automatically move to the next. Clear all the rooms, fight the boss.
To fight guys, first, you get a tile matching grid. Each tile represents some kind of move. Bones and Teeth are attacks, Snot and Poop steal enemy moves or block their attacks respectively, Piss gives you an extra action. By default you get two actions to shift tiles on the grid around. Match up at least 4 tiles, and you get an "attack" you can do.
Meanwhile, above the tile grid are enemies in 3 x 4 space. There's guys in the back ranks, guys in the front ranks and they can move forward, use ranged attacks, special abilities and so forth.
You match tiles on the grid to get you attacks, which you then use on the enemies in the battle space to knock down their HP or delay them. Once you use up all your moves and take all your actions, the enemies go, then you go, etc....
On top of all this is the "Spell" system. Bumbo has a few spells that run off of "Mana" that correspond to the tiles you matched. So if you match 4 Bone tiles, not only do you get an attack to do against the enemies in the battle space, you get 4 Bone Mana to cast one of your spells with. You can have up to 5 spells, some of which are passive buffs or buffs with cooldowns or actual attacks, and you can find new spells in the shops as you progress.
It's a lot to juggle. Making the right choices on the Tile Grid is the meat of gameplay, but beyond that, knowing where to throw your attacks for max effectiveness, or which spells would help you the most, makes for a ton of decision making turn per turn. With the right cascade of clearing tiles, you can go from doing maybe 2 attacks and one spell on your turn, to doing 5 or 6 or 7.
There's multiple types of Bumbo each with their own stats and set of starting spells, all very carefully geared toward a particular mechanic. Regular Bumbo has a spell that completely re-rolls the tile grid, while Nimble Bumbo has a spell that selectively destroys one tile on the grid, allowing you to semi-game the grid and try to get the tiles you want.
In the BoI style, each win you get with a Bumbo unlocks a new dungeon to progress through, and a new Bumbo to try out.
Bosses tend to be more like puzzles where they do specific things and you have to figure out the best way to win against their variety of mechanic, whether that's regeneration or damage negation or what have you.
I didn't expect to get very far in to the game, but 5 hours later I found myself with over half the Bumbo's unlocked and several wins under my belt.
I haven't actually lost a game yet. What seems like a crazy amount of variables to juggle is actually quite manageable as long as you really think before you act and really pay attention to the tile grid and your spells to get the most out of every turn you can. Bumbo's abilities are quite powerful when used correctly.
Between the very strange "cardboard cutout" visual style, Ridiculon's music and some very over the top voice acting by Ridiculon, it comes across as a very odd duck of a game. And yet for all that, it's got some depth and some carefully thought out gameplay.
I can't say it's "as good as Binding of Isaac" because they are two very different games despite the visuals and content bits looking very similar between them. There's enemies and items from BoI you'll recognize by sight if not by function. Playing LoB though I sort of felt an absence of a goal or something to work towards. In BoI it was very apparent. Tons of unlocks and secrets to be found, lots of characters to unlock, bosses to get better at fighting and eventually beat. LoB doesn't seem to have that same loop. There's not really any unlocks to speak of other than new Bumbos or levels, and not being particularly challenged didn't entice me to play aggressively like I did with BoI. I'm sure there's more bosses to work toward fighting like Mom or the Devil. It's just LoB doesn't feel like this vast web of content quite like BoI did, even when it first released.
All it all it's not a bad little puzzler game, and if you're wanting more stuff in the BoI universe but don't feel the desire to actually play BoI, LoB is a reasonable substitute.
Post by: Iduno on December 31, 2019, 04:47:49 pm
Bumbo's brother take coin.
You have a dungeon with multiple rooms, with enemies in them, a shop and eventually a boss.
Please tell me the joke is you can't afford the items at the shop because you do not have a coin.
Post by: Sirus on December 31, 2019, 05:34:46 pm
Post by: Kagus on December 31, 2019, 08:27:01 pm
Post by: Aoi on January 01, 2020, 02:34:47 am
Welp. Shorter version: It's a bit like what you get if you tossed Slay the Spire-esque play with a more traditional jRPG system.
Basically, you have a roster of 2-4 characters, and each character has their own set of possible cards (and passives, stats, equipment slots, etc.) and their cards go into a global pool which is drawn every turn. Cards have their own mana cost, and you're encouraged to use cards from different characters each turn as most cards will cost +1 per card from that character used that turn. Healing is pretty generous as, in addition to a lot of possible healing, there's some mechanic that 'reserves' your HP, healing you if you end the battle before the damage settles in. You can set a character's card to be permanently available (one per turn, across your entire party) at the cost of +1cost. All in all, it has some interesting mechanics worth faffing about with.
Coupled with a lot of downsides-- it feels really slow to me, despite not being actually that slow. The font selection kind of screams 'low budget localization', and is suffers from a number of other localization issues ('switfness' is an easy one... not being able to understand WTF the 4th boss' gimmick mechanic means when it takes over an hour to get there is bad). The English version by default launches into Korean. The bosses largely boil down to knowing how to manipulate their mechanics-- and prepping for them accordingly. Except there are multiple possibilities for each boss, and you don't know which it is until you begin the encounter. There's a turn counter to keep things from dragging out... and it's kind of BS. In section 2, you start getting summoners. Which can take over a turn to summon, and the battle stays live until the summoned mobs die-- I had one combat where everybody died in turn 3 and they showed up in turn 5... in a 5-turn battle. And in section 3, there's a 3-phase tank mob that can regenerate, at full strength, to its previous phase.
Post by: Aoi on January 02, 2020, 02:06:22 am
It's reminiscent of Desktop Dungeons, in that each level is more of a puzzle than a murderfest; you want to make it to the next floor in the most efficient manner, balancing hp vs gold.
The 'hook' is that you've got 20 equipment slots, in more or less reasonable places, and you can only put one item in each. They form the bulk of your stats, though there are a fair amount them that spawn randomly.
It's actually pretty easy; anybody with experience in the genre should be able to finish normal mode readily (Did it on my third try; one to figure out stats, the second to the boss where I died) whereupon you'll end up in Nightmare mode, which is an RNG test to see if you'll be OP by the end of the first ten floors, whereupon you can steamroll, or if you'll get slaughtered. Seriously-- I had one game start where I had to walk through 4 mobs before the path forked. Barring extreme luck, you'll take 2 damage per mob at the start, which means it was nigh impossible.
So... fun for a time, but shallow.
Bumbo's brother take coin.You have a dungeon with multiple rooms, with enemies in them, a shop and eventually a boss.
Please tell me the joke is you can't afford the items at the shop because you do not have a coin.
It might be my persistent sleep deprivation for the last five nights, but I found that far too amusing.
Post by: Iduno on January 02, 2020, 09:13:11 am
Basically, you have a roster of 2-4 characters, and each character has their own set of possible cards (and passives, stats, equipment slots, etc.) and their cards go into a global pool which is drawn every turn. Cards have their own mana cost, and you're encouraged to use cards from different characters each turn as most cards will cost +1 per card from that character used that turn.
I can't tell if this is stupid or genius. Making classes only matter for choices you get, and everyone can do everything in the end is...interesting.
It sucks that the game is bad, though.
Post by: Aoi on January 02, 2020, 01:13:29 pm
Basically, you have a roster of 2-4 characters, and each character has their own set of possible cards (and passives, stats, equipment slots, etc.) and their cards go into a global pool which is drawn every turn. Cards have their own mana cost, and you're encouraged to use cards from different characters each turn as most cards will cost +1 per card from that character used that turn.
I can't tell if this is stupid or genius. Making classes only matter for choices you get, and everyone can do everything in the end is...interesting.
It sucks that the game is bad, though.
I was trying to find a way to keep the description succinct (and it didn't help my original writeup got wiped), so it seems I cut it a bit short:
There's an non-com fifth member of the team that you play as, and their personal skills are all related to card draws; you're commanding the others to use their skills. Every turn you can choose to toss one card in the discard and draw a fresh card, and variations of this mechanic are crucial to a lot of specific boss mechanics.
Each combat character has their own hp bar, stats, a unique passive, and each time you level, you get to add one (or two, for the first level up) of their personal cards to your draw pile, and those cards are unique to them.
For example, one support character's passive gives you -1 card draw, but in return, you get to pick one of 2-4 cards to be added from your draw pile to your hand (so you get the same number of cards per turn, just one of them you pick), and a lot of her personal cards get a major buff if you choose them. Some effects include it playing for free, getting to pick another card, forming a barrier, etc. Another character gets a defensive boost and counters any attack with her topmost attack card in your hand when she's hit. And, one weird character that I can't quite figure out how to properly use, is literally invincible, but it's a game-over if they're the last survivor and their cards are deadweight unless you keep feeding them food... which is in fairly short supply.
There are also neutral skills that can be learned from books in-run, and you can actually transfer those between characters freely (so long as they have the requisite 5-skill minimum).
Another feature I forgot to mention-- you're also prohibited from infinitely chaining skills since there's a counter on mobs that show how long you have before they act (it's kind of like Time Eater's limit, except it doesn't end your turn). Kind of annoying, coming from StS, but I think it actually feels better this way.
(As far as it being bad... Steam likes it; it's clocking 90% positive after 200 reviews. I just think there's enough roughness to elements that it can't get wholehearted support and is instead, like most of what I feel like commenting on, a tentative positive. Though that's because anything strongly negative I mostly just bin and don't feel inclined to say anything about, unless it's a flaming dumpster fire.)
Update (01/06/2020): So having spent some more time with this, and having finished the available stages a few times, I have to amend myself that the major problem seems to be that some of the mechanics are just godawfully phrased, and when it can take upwards of an hour and a half* to reach a boss, you're not very generous when it comes to losing due to a poor description.
And sometimes the descriptions are downright inaccurate:
"Instantly shoots the enemy twice when he deals damage on a single enemy with his skill from the hand twice in a row" (quote and emphasis directly from the game)... Based on that, it sounds like he's all about deck manipulation to draw/use as many of his cards in one turn. Not. At. All. He's actually a chaser; have somebody else attack, and him follow up to trigger his special.
And for fun, a more complex multi-line mess of a description (less relevant bits cut): "Dark Heal" "Deal the maximum damage of (X) equal to the enemy's lost health." "Heal for the maximum amount of (X) and increase Pain resistance if the recipient is an ally." "Target : Pain Resist Decreased ... Pain resist -12%"
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
*I never managed to finish it in less than ~90min (I think my best was 1:26), even though there's a few guys on Steam who're like 'What? It takes you over 40min a run? Well, it's cool if you like playing slow.'
Post by: Iduno on January 06, 2020, 02:15:03 pm
Post by: Iduno on January 08, 2020, 01:24:32 pm
How is it we've never put together a shmup/danmaku thread?
Yeah, threads about types of games might get more people involved, even if they are about one type of game for a week or more. Otherwise we're just clicking on threads about games I've never heard about or played, and if I happen to see something interesting, I may get interested in the game.
Post by: Robsoie on January 08, 2020, 04:52:41 pm
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59674.0
I think the last shoot'em up i played were the freebie Warning Forever and ESP De Ra on a Mame derivative lot of years ago
Post by: Aoi on January 09, 2020, 03:10:02 pm
Post by: Chiefwaffles on January 10, 2020, 12:59:03 am
It was actually pretty fun even if fairly short. The game feels solidly put together and while I was at first skeptical of the 70s sci-fi theming the game's atmosphere is a goddamn masterpiece. Walking through the "pleasure port" as the malevolent AI tells the forced-obedient citizens that they are eternal and everlasting? Amazing.
Story is better than I expected as well. But it actually feels... too good for the game? They manage to set up -- in my opinion -- a fairly intriguing plot and world for the game but just don't explore it well enough. Feels like the setting they made has a lot more potential than just the ~6-7 hours of gameplay in Headlander.
I naively hope that another game in the setting is released, though I doubt it'd happen. At least it feels like it'd be prime material for Microsoft's game pass and now that MS owns Double Fine, that could be more of a better consideration.
Post by: nenjin on January 13, 2020, 04:44:58 pm
As always, the perennial struggle was to find a game that 5 people can play together that isn't just MAN SHOOTER ONLINE.
So someone found Baldur's Gate EE and Icewind Dale EE, and that they supported Coop.
.....5 hours later we gave up playing it. Despite it working....people could only stay connected to the game server for less than 30 minutes, and regularly the host client would crash.
Damn shame. Would have been a lot of fun to AD&D the weekend away, but the damn thing simply wasn't stable no matter what we tried or who hosted.
Post by: Zangi on January 13, 2020, 06:16:50 pm
Post by: Folly on January 13, 2020, 06:24:15 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
After reading some positive feedback, I decided to give Gods of the Fallen Land a try, and have to say I'm disappointed.
Firstly, it's a roguelike with all of 2 unlockables, so very little replay value.
Extremely simple AI and limited unit variety means there is practically no tactical gameplay. You build melee, rangers, healers, and towers in fairly even proportions and simply hurl them all at the enemy and hope for the best, with no real opportunity to specialize or get creative in your methodology.
The highly touted boss fights are simply larger versions of the basic enemies who serve as damage sponges. That's all. The only exception is the final boss, which is only mildly challenging if you don't know to save your big cooldowns for when things get really ugly. And losing a roguelike after a 3 hour session just because you were not expecting the fight to work slightly differently than everything that came before it is not at all satisfying.
Beyond the stale gameplay, the GUI is also disappointing. My expectations for an indie game are pretty low, but there are some basic things like sorting the building menu into categories, making combat orders easily accessible, and making clearly identifiable icons for consumable items, which should be relatively easy to implement and obvious in their needfulness.
Post by: Frumple on January 13, 2020, 11:39:15 pm
Specialization wise, there's not a huge amount -- the game's indeed fairly small as these things go -- but there is some in the way of relic upgrading and choosing how you go up the tech tree. Base difficulty indeed isn't that complicated, though. I enjoyed it more on the aesthetic front than most things, I think. Gameplay wasn't even remotely "stale" to me, though. I spent most of the time running around pretty frantically and I still got beat fairly hard as the starting character (second felt easier in a lot of ways, but it also ramped up difficulty a good bit faster). Was fun on that front, more or less.
Combat orders are also like... two button presses, iirc. On the keyboard, anyway. Not as obvious as they probably could be -- it took me a few games before I started using them much -- but they quite easily accessible. Consumable icons were all pretty identifiable to me, too. Only ones that approached same-y were the little healy gem things, and they were still pretty distinct. Building categories could be a thing but I'unno if they're particularly necessary with how many buildings there are. UI's not super great, basically, but I think it's more serviceable than you're giving it credit for. I've certainly ran into much, much worse, so maybe its just my expectations are even lower than yours :P
Post by: ZeroGravitas on January 14, 2020, 09:51:05 am
Hades, by Supergiant, the same guys who did Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre (the last of which you evidently get a copy,plus a giftable copy, if you buy it on Steam... formerly EGS exclusive), is pretty solid, though I'd say it's coming across a bit shallow so far. Note that I haven't actually played the latter two, so comparisons will be to Bastion when applicable. Numbers are approximate.
Without getting into spoilerific territory, you're the son of Hades in a Greco-Roman setting, and you're trying to get back to the world of the living. And, as Kratos has long since taught us, there's exactly one way to do it... in here, you're killing your way out, room by room. Each room has up to three exits, the reward of which is denoted by the icons on them.
Dying is pretty much required, to advance the gameplay and the narrative. And hey, it makes perfect sense here! Every time you die, you just pop back up at the end of the queue of souls awaiting judgement, shove your way past the line, through your bedroom, and back into the underworld.
The narrative unfolds slowly through play, mostly via dialogues, all the major characters of which are voiced. (Sadly, not as alluring as the voice of the narrator, or even the Ancestor from Darkest Dungeon.)
The combat plays a bit like Bastion. You've got your weapon, 4 so far, with its basic combo, charge attack, and special, a ranged cast, a god power, and a dash. Pretty much everything ties into these moves. It kind of ends up a giant clickfest, which is a bit of a downer.
The upgrade system is clearly where they're focusing.-- there's maybe eight gods, each of which have ten or so powers they can give you, each of which can be upgraded. Upgrades stack, unless they're conflicting (generally, modifiers to your base attack, cast, dash, or god power). And some of them combo really nicely-- my favorite of which is with the best ranged option so far... the shield. You go Captain America with it, it ricochets from target to target; an Ares special upgrade makes each target hit with your special take a a pretty heavy hit after a few seconds, and an Artemis general upgrade makes all your direct attacks fire a homing bullet. There's a nice assortment of abilities, and I'm having a lot of fun playing with combos.
Oh, and the fourth boss is quite something.Spoiler (click to show/hide)Spoiler: "A few tips I've figured out." (click to show/hide)
Edit: I think I've been calling the Nectar Ambrosia this whole time...
I think Hades will deserve its own thread. It's definitely one of the best action roguelikes in a long time. There's a new god coming out next week so it might be a good time to start it.
Post by: Kagus on January 14, 2020, 03:42:45 pm
I'm also curious how they're going to solve the endgame, especially considering... Well... They've already got voice lines recorded for how it ends *now*.
Cripes, the amount of time and energy (and money!) they must have spent on getting all the voice lines put in... I mean, I can't complain, it's as excellent as one would expect from Supergiant! It's just... damn.
Post by: Aoi on January 17, 2020, 09:37:27 am
Generally, they're turn-based survival games with a narrative ending where your limited squad has limited time to do things to keep themselves from dying a premature death. Put uncharitably, they're spreadsheet simulators where you're lurching from one stat on the edge of death to another, desperately hoping for a break.
For example, gathering water costs stamina, boiling water requires wood, harvesting wood costs stamina and mood, and both activities cost a character action that day... And spread that out across all potential options and stats.
DiV adds some Darkest Dungeon-ish combat (which I found to be a surprisingly intriguing element, despite being put off by it at first) and, I think, the ability to actually create a self-sufficient colony.
The latter bit is counteracted by how the main narrative element is that there's a warlord on the island that's extorting you. So, unfortunately, it plays very similarly to its predecessor DiB in that you're in a desperate race to solve the various puzzles and take advantage of what little the RNG sees fit to bless you with as you explore the island.
It seems like a promising expansion to the same formula and the character interactions are fun. And it's a fairly cheap and accessible title, being bundled a few times. (I evidently had it for years... Only found it digging through backlogged keys.)
One huge caveat though-- you can very easily end up in nigh unwinnable situations hours before you slide into your inevitable failure due to how the game is a giant drawn out battle of attrition. I ended up around day 90 before I threw in the towel on my first real attempt, unable to keep up with the penalties from failing to meet extortion requirements, largely from being a spendthrift with early resources and godawful build order.
Post by: ZeroGravitas on January 17, 2020, 03:24:14 pm
I do hope they tweak some of the gameplay loop though... It can get incredibly tedious going through everything again with very little variation, when the keys to more variation are locked behind vast amounts of repetition and grinding.
I'm also curious how they're going to solve the endgame, especially considering... Well... They've already got voice lines recorded for how it ends *now*.
Cripes, the amount of time and energy (and money!) they must have spent on getting all the voice lines put in... I mean, I can't complain, it's as excellent as one would expect from Supergiant! It's just... damn.
they give you some tools to control the variation with the god trinkets, but if you aren't smart about Nectar use in the early game you can block yourself off from new stuff quite a bit. which, naturally, most people don't know. plus something like the fated list of minor prophecies is really important for speeding up the resource and unlock cycle, yet it doesn't seem like a big deal when you first unlock the renovations table.
Post by: Folly on January 21, 2020, 06:38:26 pm
Anyone played it?
Initial reviews give high praise to visuals, music, and innovative combat. The only significant criticisms I've seen are with network issues, which are expected for an MMO launch.
Post by: Iduno on January 30, 2020, 01:38:32 pm
The only specifics I heard were stolen fan-made maps, and being unplayably buggy for many people.
Post by: Mephisto on January 30, 2020, 01:49:33 pm
An MMO Pokemon clone by the name of Temtem just appeared on Steam.
Anyone played it?
Initial reviews give high praise to visuals, music, and innovative combat. The only significant criticisms I've seen are with network issues, which are expected for an MMO launch.
The salt from a certain type of gamer is delicious. Some people are up in arms and review bombing over the mere presence of a pronoun chooser.
The game looks neat and the devs seem pretty cool for not backing down. They also blasted out a minor discount coupon. I'd give it a go if I weren't already mired in a bunch of games.
Post by: Sanctume on January 30, 2020, 01:51:55 pm
I hear Blizzard remade Warcraft 3, and also that fans are...unhappy with it.
The only specifics I heard were stolen fan-made maps, and being unplayably buggy for many people.
I bought it blindly on 1/28 being a fanboi. I <3 Blizzard.
Played Prologue Horde mission, it went ok. But the same UI size. I can't zoom out to see more of the map. What kind of remake is this keeping circa 2000 UI?
Finished Prologue, ok cool, keep going.
Started main campaign, Humans. Defeat after loading. Repeated several times, same shit. wtf?
Ok try 1v1 match up. Was on queue for 5+ minutes, gave up.
Ok try custom maps. It downloaded some TD. But that was it, error.
Tried Dota map, error also. Wtf?
Then, I started going to reddit to see what's up. Shit.
Custom map making is a crappy experience. And, now all your custom maps are
Oh, and those who have been playing Classic all the past ~20 years, are forced to download the reforge client even when they did not want to buy Reforge.
Reforge has no LAN menu. And you are
1.29.20 I asked for a refund.
Denied. I played too length of time. W T F!
I appealed basically saying that I did not get to play 1v1, or custom maps. If I don't get a refund, I will just charge back. Let them take issue with Amex lawyers.
edit typos; I can't find my original War3 CDs, but I did find War3 Frozen Throne (referred to as DLC nowadays).
Post by: forsaken1111 on January 30, 2020, 05:10:02 pm
Blizzard is in a big stink again, apparently violating refund laws of several countries as well as falsely advertising or misrepresenting the final quality of the remake.
Post by: Frumple on January 30, 2020, 08:35:09 pm
Got less than zero interest in reforged, anyway. The only thing that possibly could entice me would be an engine overhaul (that was substantial... and backwards compatible), and that doesn't actually seem to be in the works if crossplay between TFT and reforged is on still on the table.
... all that said, most of the wc3 vids I've seen lately (been on a bit of a custom game watching spree) that used reforged looked... okay. Not, like, amazing or anything, and overall less... I'unno, soulful? Colorful? Distinct? It's new-style mobile adjacent art stuff, which isn't super appealing to me, and as I've watched some one say, the models basically bully the hell out of the rest of the game. But it seems a'ight when it's working.
This surprise decagig thing is pretty horseshit, tho'.
Post by: Aoi on January 30, 2020, 08:55:44 pm
Yeah... I'unno, I've currently been waiting like. Three days. For whatever they did to the TFT update to finish downloading. Idle check suggests it's whatever the fuck has dumped like ten gigs into the data files, which holy shit I did not ask for give some goddamn warning update box.
Got less than zero interest in reforged, anyway. The only thing that possibly could entice me would be an engine overhaul (that was substantial... and backwards compatible), and that doesn't actually seem to be in the works if crossplay between TFT and reforged is on still on the table.
... all that said, most of the wc3 vids I've seen lately (been on a bit of a custom game watching spree) that used reforged looked... okay. Not, like, amazing or anything, and overall less... I'unno, soulful? Colorful? Distinct? It's new-style mobile adjacent art stuff, which isn't super appealing to me, and as I've watched some one say, the models basically bully the hell out of the rest of the game. But it seems a'ight when it's working.
This surprise decagig thing is pretty horseshit, tho'.
From a third party source, but listed as recommended specs:
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 1.3GHz / AMD Duron 2.0GHz
Graphics: AMD Radeon 7000 64mb or NVIDIA GeForce 7100
System Memory: 256 MB RAM
Storage: 550 MB Hard drive space
I like how the new system requirements for TFT has evidently grown by 20x. ._.
Post by: Frumple on January 30, 2020, 09:01:36 pm
My wc3 folder, which has none of the custom maps in it, is currently 21.8 gigs in size. And the update still isn't finished.
what the hell did they do and how did they come to the conclusion it was a good idea
E: hey update finally fini- what the hell is this passive 1.5 gig ram leech login bullshit holy goddamn hell
Yeah, okay, I can see why people might be pissed about this. This, ladies and gents, is how you fuck up backwards compatibility, bloody hell. I just wanted a round of friggin' youtd and now there's a mountain of system resource sucking horseshit between me and it goddamn :-\
Post by: Aoi on January 31, 2020, 02:03:02 am
Post by: Frumple on January 31, 2020, 06:14:29 am
Post by: Iduno on February 03, 2020, 09:21:29 pm
It looks like a platformer where you can move parts of the game around to solve puzzles. It looks interesting, but I have no idea about how difficult or long it might be.
Post by: Aoi on February 04, 2020, 08:02:19 am
Recently picked up Nova Drift. Early access twin stick shooter with a pretty neat upgrade/leveling system akin to a roguelite where you keep stacking various mods and buffs on top of each other to get some stupidly powerful builds, while having a meta progress that unlocks different stuff like more rerolls of offered mods on level up, different mod trees, new weapons or ships, game modes, etc.
The graphics are simple and effective and the gameplay is smooth and fairly polished, seems the only thing they're adding now is more stuff like game modes and mod/weapon/ship choices. It's fairly cheap and a good pickup if you're craving some twin stick shmup action. Runs don't take long for the most part and it can be played in short bursts.
Following up on this: The Asteroids-style controls aren't nearly as annoying as I recall them to be in Asteroids. Messing about with mod combinations is fun.
Runs can get fairly sizeable if you're getting good-- my last few games have taken upwards of 30 minutes, courtesy of messing with really powerful combinations out there. (Halo shield and drones...)
The progression system is kind of stupid though. Usually, things are unlocked via achievements or some kind of score-alogue that provides advancement by massive leaps once you've shown you've got a really good grasp of the content... this still proceeds at a fairly glacial pace. And, considering what you're unlocking are pieces of a build, rather than base improvements or whatnot, it's kind of irksome. At my current pace, assuming it doesn't take any longer for the last 25 or so ranks, it'll be another 10 hours.
(Edit: Oh, and at least it's easy to edit your rank in your save so your stuff gets unlocked. Seems to have no ill effect.)
Post by: Mephisto on February 06, 2020, 09:51:40 am
Post by: Aoi on February 06, 2020, 10:58:12 am
Yall remember Tremors (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1166940/Dead_Static_Drive/), or were you not born yet?
I admit, I even watched (and liked) the Tremors TV series...
But I find the game concept fantastic-- plays somewhere between survival and twinstick, and you're constantly on the move to keep ahead of whatever deadly MacGuffin is on your tail. Stick around and loot a few more buildings, or grab the low hanging fruit and move on? Tack on multiplayer, and-- HEY! COME BACK!-- maybe hop a bike and catch up with your
Different monsters act differently-- the graboids are a fast constant threat, never more than a few minutes behind you, even if you drive off in a truck, but can be fended off for short times with small arms; zombies basically sweep the map in a solid wave and destroy everything behind them, but are easy to deal with individually... n; War of the Worlds aliens radiate out from cities and are easy to avoid and hide from, but nigh unbeatable if they get their eye on you.
...This rolled deep into that 'games that should exist' or whatever it's called thread, so I'll just shut up here.
Post by: Aoi on February 07, 2020, 10:10:40 am
So lets start with the good: Pretty nice graphics; vaguely reminds me of Battle Brothers. More detailed health management than a typical roguelike; you've got a paper doll body with limbs that can bleed, get injured, etc. Injuries decrease your max hp, and unmaintained injuries will accrue pain, which decreases morale and has various other negative effects, including eventually making you pass out (and straight up dying from being killed while unconscious... hello, URW). Skills a few hours in are fairly interesting, though they're all pretty stock for people familiar with the genre. Character growth is more focused on gear/skills than stats. You're not a hero, but a regular combatant... getting caught 2v1 is pretty much a death sentence. Combat against bosses (...all one I've encountered) is fairly interesting-- involves a lot of positioning, tile-based dodging, and a grasp of their attack patterns (which you can get info on with rclick). Corpses left on the ground will get birds picking at them, which a nice visual touch.
And the bad... which is kind of extensive. Some are fixable though:
You save at the inn... which costs in-game money. (A minor amount, but still.) There appears to be no 'suspend' option.
There's no fast travel. Which wouldn't be a problem, but see above. Corollary: Movement over long distances feels kind of slow.
Oh, and there's no minimap or automatic mapping, but you do get a rough 'sector' map when you start the game. Which wouldn't be a problem, except after 30 minutes slogging through a dungeon, you might forget where you are relative to your
...Yeah, the save system is kind of infuriating and leads to a lot of irritations.
The game graciously shows what containers you've looked at when you mouseover them. Which is good, because there's like eleventy-billion empty cupboards, shelves, racks, etc. Except 90% of them are empty in the actual game. (Unlike the tutorial/prologue, which has stuff in about half of them.) Oh, and item highlight doesn't show them. There's also a ton of 99% empty crates and barrels, though these actually obstruct movement, so there's tactical value.
You don't see quest deadlines until after you accept them.
What appears to be total lack of autopickup. Please, pick up the dropped gold. And arrows, if I already have an incomplete stack in my inventory. (Assuming no hostiles around.) And while we're at it, automerge items with limited charges. And coinpurses.
And the awkward... mostly things that are to taste:
Tetris inventory! Especially if you're an archer/melee hybrid, because that takes a ton of space. Pure spellcasters have it easy.
Lots of trash loot. If you're dedicated, I guess you can pick up every junk sword and spend a few minutes running back to town.
Not sure what to consider this, but it's kind of silly: I walked out of town and found myself standing at the center of a triangle with three wolves. Nope'd it right across the map boundary and reentered elsewhere. Where I was basically face to face with bandits. So I entered between the bandits and wolves, aggroed them towards me in the middle, hopped across the boundary, walked a bit, crossed back in, and picked off both groups while they were fighting each other.
Detect Traps is a freebie skill you get at the start that costs nothing other than a turn to use and is incredibly useful. Given it costs nothing to use, you should be spamming it whenever there's no hostiles around. ...Why do we have to do that manually?
I mean, the gameplay itself isn't shabby. But there's a ton of annoying stuff. Like it's easy to accidentally target an open door instead of a hostile unit standing in the doorway. Or if you use mouse to move (no numpad and trying to go diagonally), you'll end up trying to pick stuff up in the tile first. And you can't hold items in your hand from the floor-- trying to figure out if that's a 1x2, 1x3 2x2, etc. item when dealing with a full inventory? Can't see it that way.
Edit: Oh, and I evidently have an extra 15% off coupon on Steam for owning DD, if anybody wants it.
Post by: nenjin on February 07, 2020, 11:47:33 am
Post by: Aoi on February 07, 2020, 11:57:39 am
So where does that leave your overall recommendation? I've had the prologue on my wishlist for a while but the comments always made me go yyyeeaaaaahhhhh maybe later.
On a 4-point scale, I'd probably drop it in at a 2: Tentative negative. (Yes, it's a weird scale, but I do it with cause.)
I don't actively regret playing around with it, there are certainly lots of worse options, and there are small bits and pieces that are quite well done... but the experience as a whole kind of... not good. But evidently it's just made it to EA, after like a year and a half of glacial development, so give it another two years and it might be something worthwhile.
Unfortunately, it seems that the saves are an engine limitation thing, and people are defending the save mechanism by basically saying, "Well, at worst, you're 40 minutes away from a save point, so it's not like you're HOURS away." (...Yeah.)
Take the combat system, toss it on top of something else (I inclined to say Dungeonmans.) and you end up with pretty solid gameplay.
Oh, and you can't drag items to the quickbar. Just skills.
Post by: Kagus on February 07, 2020, 12:34:54 pm
That said, I have heard that the cohesion the game has during that prologue dungeon more or less falls apart in the full-version open world. And the survival aspects get even more tedious, which is a shame because there was some real potential there if they'd put some more weight on that side of things rather than the casual hack-and-slash it mostly is otherwise.
Also I have no idea why the saving is an engine limitation thing, considering the prologue can be interrupted and recovered at your specific point... But hey, there's a lot of stuff I don't know!
Post by: scriver on February 09, 2020, 07:25:37 am
I agree that the save system is annoying too. I get the point of it but it's incredibly annoying to have to start over back in town every time you die -- I wish they'd at least had made the game autosave when you enter a dungeon so you'd be able to load at the start/outside of that.
Item juggling is a pain. Being able to inspect/compare items that are on the ground to the ones in your inventory would be a big plus. Aoi was wrong about arrows not autostacking, though, they do -- but if you've got more than one stack of arrows they default to the one that isn't equipped. Which is an annoying pain in the butt if you're playing the ranger dude.
Post by: Aoi on February 09, 2020, 08:22:14 am
You'll also want bandages; bleeding is less common, but can fairly readily lead to bad situations too... Salves, on the other hand, I found to be an unnecessary luxury. Just pack extra food and rest.
Post by: scriver on February 09, 2020, 11:36:56 am
Post by: Aoi on February 09, 2020, 11:47:47 am
Post by: Aoi on February 11, 2020, 12:08:08 pm
So you've got your unit, a 1x2, running around on a fairly narrow Hugex10 grid. You can use the resources you have as either buffs, or to recruit units on the grid, which have their own respective stats, skills, 'runes', and position on the grid. You move around on that grid and initiate autocombat by bumping into other units on the grid, with your now not-1x2 blobtacular army.
However, only units that touch the enemy attack... unless they've got the ranged rune. Each 1x1 can hold up to 4 copies of one type of rune, and blocks of the same rune that are adjacent to other units combine totals.* A unit can share one of its runes with an adjacent unit if the receiver's slot is empty... This basically means you either want small units so you can more selectively choose what you want to combat, or large units, since you can stack a ton of buffs onto them.
One thing that's kind of awkward is that the more you heal in a single battle, the less effective it becomes. And, since the bosses are one long battle, it basically meant that against the last boss, I was smashing his face in for the first 80% of the battle until my heal-based defenses caved in and everything fell apart. -_-
Spoiler: "*" (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on February 11, 2020, 10:56:03 pm
Does anyone know anything about The Pedestrian (https://www.gog.com/game/the_pedestrian)?
It looks like a platformer where you can move parts of the game around to solve puzzles. It looks interesting, but I have no idea about how difficult or long it might be.
There's a demo on Steam or at itch.io (https://the-pedestrian.itch.io/the-pedestrian)... I didn't find anything in the demo to be remotely confusing, though they did say it's mostly tutorial so it's fairly simple.
It comes across as Framed meets platformer, but that's a disservice to Framed (which is a fantastic puzzler, might I add). You can't really rearrange the 'rooms' after you've started, so each screen is basically two bits: Figure out how the rooms are connected, then do a platforming segment. Pretty much all the screens in the demo had only one solution (the section introducing the rearranging has two options... there may have been another tutorial that could be done differently, but I don't think any of the real puzzles could), which was kind of disappointing. Some of the puzzles in the video for the full game look more interesting... but, given what I've seen in the demo, I'm definitely not touching it for full price... maybe in a bundle in a few months.
Edit: Fixed the itch.io link, courtesy of n9103; thanks!
Post by: n9103 on February 11, 2020, 11:21:12 pm
itch.io (https://the-pedestrian.itch.io/the-pedestrian) linkFixed that link for you.
I do disagree with your conclusions, but that's as viewer watching the GOGcom twitch stream.
Post by: Aoi on February 11, 2020, 11:39:28 pm
itch.io (https://the-pedestrian.itch.io/the-pedestrian) linkFixed that link for you.
I do disagree with your conclusions, but that's as viewer watching the GOGcom twitch stream.
Fixed the link, thanks... you need quotes for spoiler titles and not for URLs, whoops. -_-
It probably picks up later on in the main game, seeing as the puzzles in the trailer looked a lot more dynamic, but the demo (itch.io version) never got there, unfortunately. It looks slick and it's definitely not bad, but I'd hold out for at least a 25% off sale (and just for funsies, I'll guess there'll be one within the next four months... anybody want to bet against? =D), and there'll probably be more.
I admit, I'm also not the best for commentary on platformer-esques as I've played maaaaybe 20 of them since the SNES era, of which they're mostly Kirby and Castlevania. And, on the puzzle side of things, I spent more time trying to wrangle the connections into position with my touchpad than trying to solve them. Once I grasped the basic rules to start from, everything else fell into place.
Post by: Mephisto on February 16, 2020, 02:55:15 pm
Veloren (https://gitlab.com/veloren/veloren)
How not-CubeWorld is it?
(https://i.imgur.com/yBy26jc.png)
Post by: Aoi on February 18, 2020, 05:29:13 pm
It's good. Not sure about late-game play which tends to be less polished for stuff in EA, but it's a surprisingly solid experience so far.
Narratively, you're a victim of weird experiments, got broken out, and now you're roaming a kind of post-chthonic Mad Max wasteland looking for a cure for... whatever affliction you got from the experiments.
Mechanically speaking, you start off with a squad of three, which rapidly grows, which is good, since you're limited to six combatants. And death is easy. (Not that death in combat is inherently death-- you just sustain injury, and when you fall when injured, you permanently die. And medicine is pretty rare and valuable.) You're on a hex grid with height, obstruction, terrain, etc... all the stuff we come to expect from a reasonably detailed combat layer. Personally, I like using my tanky shield guy to bumrush people into walls to stunlock them, or a monk to fling people off cliffs into toothy pits of doom. My last battle featured a max of six player characters, 6 enemy units, and 4 friendly immobile NPCs. Who hit surprisingly hard for being emaciated slaves in boiling oil... they kept killstealing.
Some interesting features:
It costs a bit of resource, but you can basically rip out traits from enemies you defeat and equip them on yourself... my crossbowman, for example, recently acquired one that gives him the ability to fire 'through' friendlies at no risk. One of my frontliners heals for 40% when he kills somebody.
Perk get unlocked conditionally, and they get stronger the more the conditon's met-- the Strong vs X perks give an extra 10-50% damage, and an extra 10-50% chance to doubletap, and when maxed, it guarantees a crit. (And considering how many strong abilities trigger off of crits, that's a huge deal.)
Battlefield factions-- you'll occasionally run into combats with multiple sides (in addition to friendlies) who focus on each other if they're in range, which leads to some fun, easy, and chaotic battles... one of mine featured myself, two opposing forces, and a third hostile to everybody team.
You might end up with some BS fights though-- I walked into one map village combat map to find there was exactly one way into the main battlefield of the map for non-jumping (of which I have one class) meleers... against four ranged targets. Retreated immediately. There's a small cash penalty, but nothing else for that, at least.
Post by: Mephisto on February 19, 2020, 02:08:34 pm
Post by: Niveras on February 19, 2020, 06:56:19 pm
It could work. Viscera clean up detail was a bit more chill, though. And multiplayer, for antics. Does that have multiplayer?
Post by: Jopax on February 23, 2020, 01:32:48 pm
And it kinda is. Far from perfect, has some issues with clunky UI and performance but it's a fairly neat little 'take things apart then put them back together' game, besides it's fairly cheap so expectations aren't super huge of it. Seems they'll be adding more stuff to it down the line too, which is also nice.
Post by: Kagus on February 23, 2020, 02:38:57 pm
Tank Mechanic Simulator. Another in the line of 'fix shit up' sims recently got the 1.0 release so I picked it up because why the hell not, seemed like fun.
And it kinda is. Far from perfect, has some issues with clunky UI and performance but it's a fairly neat little 'take things apart then put them back together' game, besides it's fairly cheap so expectations aren't super huge of it. Seems they'll be adding more stuff to it down the line too, which is also nice.
You mean, this masterpiece (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKi8sQdInuQ)?
Post by: Mephisto on February 23, 2020, 03:27:34 pm
Tank Mechanic Simulator. Another in the line of 'fix shit up' sims recently got the 1.0 release so I picked it up because why the hell not, seemed like fun.
And it kinda is. Far from perfect, has some issues with clunky UI and performance but it's a fairly neat little 'take things apart then put them back together' game, besides it's fairly cheap so expectations aren't super huge of it. Seems they'll be adding more stuff to it down the line too, which is also nice.
You mean, this masterpiece (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKi8sQdInuQ)?
Yes, Josh is a masterpiece, damn it.
(I hope that reference fits; may have been from another cutesy-named game player)
Post by: Aoi on February 24, 2020, 05:32:28 am
So, narratively, there's some Ancient Evil stuff going on, and you're investigating the odd things happening around town, trying to keep from getting killed by various horrors or go insane from it... pretty stock, conceptually. If you're familiar with Junji Ito, the influence is unmistakable. Manage to finish five missions, you have a token final mission and Sir Cosmic Horror presses the snooze button on waking up.
What I find particularly interesting here is that the case is over when the issue's resolved... good or bad. For example, there's a nice straight forward one: [spoiler]The details of the story are up to interpretation, but basically, there are these kind of funky hypnotic eels that only lay their eggs in people. Depending on your actions, your friend either disappears after you drop them off at the hospital or, well, you rip their eyeball out, then drop them off at the hospital, and they thank you after.[spoiler] Either way, case resolved, move on to the next mission. Some missions are very combat focused, whereas some don't have any (fixed) combats at all. Missions can interact with each other-- one notable example is that you can burn down the school... which, for obvious reasons, will change how other missions (and even just exploration) play out there. (As a point of reference, on my first win... I got one 'good' ending out of five, or at least I think it was the good ending. All my other missions were like, "So... everybody in the village died that night, and nobody knows what happened, but you somehow woke up on the bus back to town. GOOD JOB, A+++, WOULD INVESTIGATE AGAIN!")
UI in combat kind of sucks, but it's retro-styled, and I suspect it wouldn't be so bad if I was on a mouse and not a touchpad.
Also, there are some superbly broken ways to play that have a negative effect on enjoyment, I'd say... like how by taking advantage of stacking effects, I managed to spend -2TUs dodging. Which is somewhat less useful than it sounds because you can only do like 10 actions a turn, but a free dodge each turn will cut down the hits you take by a huge amount.
So yeah-- I wouldn't recommend faffing about trying to finish the default starter mission, despite how it's a souped up version of the demo and is a pretty decent tutorial. Once you know your way around the UI, I'd say to just jump in with a full random game.
Demo: https://panstasz.itch.io/world-of-horror
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 25, 2020, 10:18:17 am
Post by: Mephisto on February 25, 2020, 10:22:35 am
Caster of Magic.
I see GOG calls it DLC. Is it really, or is it a packaged version of the old mod of the same name?
Post by: n9103 on February 25, 2020, 10:32:01 am
Official post from author regarding latest development: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=9846
I mirrored/had indexed the current CoM dowloads, just incase the author decides to pull down the old versions. http://archive.is/OU168
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 25, 2020, 03:41:16 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1250690/Master_of_Magic_Caster_of_Magic/
Post by: Iduno on February 25, 2020, 04:55:15 pm
It feels kind of like if you tossed RPG-esque combat onto Deja Vu, or any of the old point-and-click adventure games from the 80s
Quest for Glory-ish?
Post by: Aoi on February 25, 2020, 06:31:20 pm
It feels kind of like if you tossed RPG-esque combat onto Deja Vu, or any of the old point-and-click adventure games from the 80s
Quest for Glory-ish?
QfG's more 90s. The 80s ones were more like IF with a graphical representation of the room, and sometimes inventory.
Spoiler: "Screenshot of Deja Vu... might be updated." (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: "World of Horror, for comparison purposes." (click to show/hide)
Post by: Folly on February 26, 2020, 03:47:14 pm
Free in Early Access on The Epic Store, paid through cosmetics in a Battle-Pass format.
The Cycle is a PvEvP Battle Royale, where 20 players are dropped into a large arena littered with various PvE objectives which may be completed for points, with the ultimate goal of finishing the 20-minute match with more points than the competition. Ranking high will yield resources which can be spent to unlock and customize new weapons to be used in future matches.
The words 'Battle Royale' can be highly polarizing, with most people either diving right in or immediately tuning out. Personally I tend to be in the latter category; the BR's I've tried in the past tend to be a lot of setup just to face overwhelming odds just for a slim chance at some fleeting glory. In my opinion, The Cycle has done a lot to break from those trappings. For one thing, The Cycle allows queueing as teams, with 10 teams of 2, or 5 teams of 4 being offered in addition to the traditional 20 person free-for-all. You have to split your bounty, but this can greatly increase the odds of winning. Also you can get significant rewards for second place, and some rewards for third and below, so it's never a complete waste of time if you end up getting foamed before reaching the evac ship.
I've sunk 30 hours into The Cycle so far, long enough for me to feel justified dropping $10 for the current season of Battle Pass. But it's free to try, so I'd recommend it to anyone looking to scratch that FPS PvEvP itch.
Post by: Blastbeard on February 26, 2020, 04:40:28 pm
Post by: Robsoie on February 28, 2020, 05:27:32 pm
My choice went to The Last Days , a big LOTR mod for both old M&B and Warband. A mod i didn't played more than a few minutes many years ago in which i had spent time visiting the Minas Thirit location, i don't remember why, probably i had something else taking my PC attention.
And wow what an excellent mod, i was expecting it to be just another mod with units, factions and world map replacing the default Warband ones but still playing the same gameplay flow but oh much wrong i was.
The Last Days has some unique system regarding ressource and ranks with all factions that change how the game is flowing.
Factions are belonging to the 2 sides of the LOTR lore (Good and Evil) without some random stuff leading into "let's make peace for months without reason" that happens sometime in other mods between factions of those 2 sides.
And after a (customisable) time , it depends on your level, the actual war between the 2 side will really start (they even made ingame cutscene for it that was a nice touch), each factions is getting a strength level , said strength is getting lowered or increased depending on battles being won or lost (or with actions from the player various quests results), allowing at some point major locations to be able to get besieged.
And player after gaining enough rank within a faction will then be able to be part of the war council (and so have their strategy ideas being heard instead of being disregarded, after all at the start you're just a nobody in the chain of command before you will be able to climb the hierarchy, you're not going to tell lords what to do).
Ranks and ressource points accumulation allow you to unlock some stuff in the factions you're working with, special items and etc...
It's a much more interesting mod than i thought at first.
Running for Gondor i've been helping where i could, questing around and jumping into some large battles when several lords where fighting the enemy.
At some point i ran with my +/- 45 troops (some had been nicely upgraded but none was at the high end status) into a Mordor War Party of +/-22 orcs. At first i thought it was going to be easy like in other battles in which i was outnumbering the orcs like that.
But oh boy i was wrong, after some minutes a Nazgul scream could be heard, repeating at some interval, when it happened the whole army (and my character too) were affected and were covering their ears while kneeling, not helping at when fighting.
Sadly it looks like said Nazgul have no physical presence in the mod out of that scream thingy :/
It was getting hard, but still i thought we could probably win the day as orcs were falling left and rights to my archers defended by a wall of infantry and the cavalry charges .
Until i spotted an unit that was towering over everyone, an Olog Hai (an armored troll).
Not only that big thing was incredibly resilient but his strikes were hard and had noticable area of effects sending troops flying (from a distance it was as if i was watching the opening scene of the LOTR movie with Sauron playing baseball with soldiers), the animations were very well done to make that beast a really convincing threat.
The thing managed to take out everyone in the end, fortunately i managed to retreat with the wounded and lots of losses without being captured, lesson learned : Mordor War Party -> Avoid until i get high end units :D
Post by: Persus13 on March 01, 2020, 01:21:17 pm
Post by: Mephisto on March 01, 2020, 01:28:20 pm
In the annoying manner of describing a game using other games, it's Stardew + Pokemon + Harry Potter.
Post by: Egan_BW on March 01, 2020, 09:22:05 pm
Post by: Frumple on March 02, 2020, 08:23:58 am
Post by: Iduno on March 08, 2020, 07:02:01 pm
That game looks great.
Post by: Aoi on March 08, 2020, 07:06:50 pm
Combat is pretty much rank and file, with two tweaks off the standard turn-based: Most skills take varying amounts of time to activate, so if you're trying to get off that heal in time, remember that you'll probably have to look a few notches lower on the turn order list, and basic skills generate temporary MP, which makes your MP economy a core mechanic. Combat kind of feels like it moves at a glacial pace though-- all abilities have animations that are in the seconds-long territory, and the way combat is here, you're unlikely to be able to just basic attack your way through everything unless you're way overpowered in gear and level for the area.
All hostiles show up on the map, so you can also use exploration skills to, say, throw a bomb at them which will do damage and have them start the battle with burning. Something I really appreciate here that isn't seen nearly enough: Damage a mob in battle, run away, heal, reengage, and it's still injured. Note that you won't get xp/loot from stuff you killed before fleeing though. Similarly, a lot of combats (even 'linked' groups) can be split up with careful play, so you can sneak through dungeons you're otherwise unprepared for.
The storyline's nothing to write home about (based on unlocks, I'm around halfway to 2/3rds through); it's the typical "we got stuck here, we want to go home, and to do so, go kill
Graphics aren't bad, but are kind of oddly system intensive on my laptop... at least I can keep my nachos warm.
So: The aforementioned 'funky randomization'... dungeon maps, which forms upwards of half the play, are modularly randomized. For example, a given dungeon may have like 10 rooms, which are drawn from a pool of 30 different ones, which will then have randomized features within. There's different difficulty levels (mob levels), the highest of which resets the dungeon if you wipe. Which isn't quite as bad as it sounds, since you can freely leave and head back to town to heal up, though it is an exercise in frustration if you die in the second to last room. On one run, I had a puzzle room that was based on figuring out which door timers were longer, so you could run through them before they shut. Same dungeon, a different puzzle cropped up which involved moving platforms around. And, rather unusually, the later dungeons have much more interesting variations. (My most recent dungeon had a special crafting station and a locked event on the first run... the second run gave me a choice event for a unique item, a miniboss that's tougher than the actual boss, and the key for the locked event from the previous run, orz.)
By extension, this means that loot is randomized... but, thankfully, pretty much anything can be crafted, given adeqaute grind for resources... though I have yet to find the recipes for one of the most useful mods, mana regen every turn.
Less thrilling is that character growth is also partly locked behind grind: Killing bosses or other notables give special currency that can be used to purchase ancilliaries (skins, etc.), but also extra perk points, which are your form of build customization.
Post by: Iduno on March 10, 2020, 03:03:48 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: nenjin on March 10, 2020, 03:06:27 pm
Post by: pikachu17 on March 10, 2020, 03:21:39 pm
Why do the instructions for games, when they even exist, suck now?Also, because the story no longer has to stay in the manual, and there is more room in the game itself for a tutorial, so manuals are not as necessary still.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on March 10, 2020, 05:45:38 pm
Post by: Robsoie on March 10, 2020, 08:48:39 pm
Funnily further re-release of that same game had that manual simply removed from the package and replaced by a pdf on disc, yet said re-release was the same price...
Post by: Iduno on March 11, 2020, 08:17:55 am
... sucks now? Do you people not remember actual instruction booklets from back in the day? 'Cause, like, sure, there were some good ones but most were pretty shit. I don't think they've gotten worse, just harder to lose or be eaten by your pets or something.
I mostly remember the ones with interesting stories, like MW2 Mercenaries, and Legend of Zelda. Although I also remember a few games that I couldn't play anymore, because you needed to input a code every time you played them, and if you lost the book, you were boned.
Post by: Zangi on March 11, 2020, 02:32:12 pm
I played the first game a bunch. I did not realize it was already released somewhere else till now.
Post by: Mephisto on March 11, 2020, 02:38:30 pm
Post by: JWNoctis on March 12, 2020, 03:04:06 am
Could only hope it'd be available in a DRM-free form somewhere soon, but I don't expect miracles.
Post by: Iduno on March 12, 2020, 08:04:28 am
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is out on Steam. Haven't spoiled myself to this one yet, but the previous title in the series was an artful metroidvania/platformer on the same track as Aquaria or Trine 1/2, had excellent music, a sweet little story, and was challenging enough to entertain without too much frustration for someone who's not a platformer junkie - In fact it'd have been about perfect if not for a bit of performance problem at places, which had limited impact by not demanding pixel precision.
Don't worry, from what I've heard, they learned from the last game and really leaned into the imperfections with the new one. Had to get rid of some of the things you liked to make space, but at what cost, progress?
Edit: Hopefully it's not true, but probably check some reviews before paying money for it.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on March 12, 2020, 02:13:33 pm
Edit: Hopefully it's not true, but probably check some reviews before paying money for it.Not true? Is there something bad going around about the game? Because by all indications -- my experience and reviews -- it seems like it has pretty universal glowing praise.
Though also of note is that the game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, is on Game Pass for PC too. So if you subscribe to that it's effectively free to download and play (of course "free" is subjective since you're paying for the subscription). And I believe there's still the really good first-time deals for game pass at $1/month for first three months or something like that, for those who haven't messed with it yet.
Post by: Iduno on March 13, 2020, 08:32:57 am
Rolling saves. If I’m doing something I expect to take a lot of time, 3 save files used in sequence until they’ve all been used, then overwrite them as necessary in the same sequence.
On top of auto-saves. Because the auto-saves that haven't been overwritten are useful 1% of the time.
Oy to that. I remember one game (which, unfortunately, I don't remember which one game...) where the autosave somehow got corrupted at an autosave point. So it sequentially overwrote all the autosaves with equally corrupt versions.
I recently tried to play Pathfailure: Kingmaker. I am now playing Star War: Knights of the Old Republic and loving how much more modern it feels. Skill checks out of combat just automatically take 10 instead of rolling, save slots are done reasonably, mechanics aren't hidden, and enemies have appropriate strengths and weaknesses. It's tough to say if KOTOR 1 or 2 is better; 1 certainly had the better and more challenging end boss fight, 2 was a bit too easy but had a pretty good crafting system and mostly tightened up the mechanics while allowing a few more options.
Edit: ProZD has some very good (and quick) YouTube videos about vidya games. Sadly, it forces you to see how annoying YouTube is.
Post by: pikachu17 on March 13, 2020, 07:47:54 pm
Continuing the autosave discussion doesn't fit the how did you die thread, so I'll move it here.How does it force you to see how annoying Youtube is?Rolling saves. If I’m doing something I expect to take a lot of time, 3 save files used in sequence until they’ve all been used, then overwrite them as necessary in the same sequence.
On top of auto-saves. Because the auto-saves that haven't been overwritten are useful 1% of the time.
Oy to that. I remember one game (which, unfortunately, I don't remember which one game...) where the autosave somehow got corrupted at an autosave point. So it sequentially overwrote all the autosaves with equally corrupt versions.
I recently tried to play Pathfailure: Kingmaker. I am now playing Star War: Knights of the Old Republic and loving how much more modern it feels. Skill checks out of combat just automatically take 10 instead of rolling, save slots are done reasonably, mechanics aren't hidden, and enemies have appropriate strengths and weaknesses. It's tough to say if KOTOR 1 or 2 is better; 1 certainly had the better and more challenging end boss fight, 2 was a bit too easy but had a pretty good crafting system and mostly tightened up the mechanics while allowing a few more options.
Edit: ProZD has some very good (and quick) YouTube videos about vidya games. Sadly, it forces you to see how annoying YouTube is.
Post by: nenjin on March 13, 2020, 08:03:12 pm
Post by: Jopax on March 17, 2020, 06:01:35 am
Either way, can't really recommend it now despite being around 15$ but it's something to keep an eye on I guess, it might become decent or it might get dropped, I know it's a nice thing to see since pretty much nothing has managed to recapture the magic of Generals despite a couple of efforts being made.
E: Messed up the name, that's what I get for posting before coffee
Post by: Frumple on March 17, 2020, 07:24:14 am
Post by: Iduno on March 17, 2020, 08:17:34 am
Edit: ProZD has some very good (and quick) YouTube videos about vidya games. Sadly, it forces you to see how annoying YouTube is.How does it force you to see how annoying Youtube is?
His videos are short enough that you end up with way more ads than content, and are nearly constantly closing ad windows so you can see what the second half of the thing he said was.
Post by: AzyWng on March 18, 2020, 08:10:16 pm
It's... very clearly rough around the edges. The plane can be a bit difficult to get off the runway at times, and I find it very hard to gauge where bombs will land.
Still, though, it's got its own charm of sorts, and blowing things up (and hearing your gunner, Natasha, congratulate you for doing so) is pretty fun. Since it's free, I don't think there's really any reason to not give it a shot.
Post by: Iduno on March 26, 2020, 09:14:02 am
I also don’t really like the fact the founder is a machine, and doesn’t draw a salary.
They could do so much more with that. Realistically, the founder take money not as salary but as dividends from the company and live off that. If they don't have any money, then they would be sleeping in their office and sponge bathing in the sink. They would use their money to rent an apartment or buy a house. If the founder is basically the player, then the player could make those decisions, with consequences such as a cheap bed at home means the founder sometimes oversleeps and arrives late to work, etc.
EDIT: Hey, even if the founder was a machine, than it would probably syphon off funds for its world domination and other plans.
Thank you for reminding me of this: http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/ (http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/)
Post by: pikachu17 on March 30, 2020, 12:26:00 pm
Post by: n9103 on March 30, 2020, 12:57:35 pm
Or perhaps you mean DLC? That's a tab in the game properties.
Post by: Frumple on March 30, 2020, 01:51:35 pm
Post by: Iduno on March 30, 2020, 02:02:37 pm
I am trying to install mods on a Steam game, and all the guides say something like "Open the Game Launcher -> Mods window to see the list of available mods. To activate a mod, simply tick the little checkbox on the left of a mod name in the list and click Apply." but I can't actually find where the Mods are. How do I get that window?
You may need to install them through the workshop first? Without knowing the game, or what the screen looks like, I'm going to say...it's half-hidden in one of the corners.
Post by: Aoi on March 30, 2020, 07:25:39 pm
I am trying to install mods on a Steam game, and all the guides say something like "Open the Game Launcher -> Mods window to see the list of available mods. To activate a mod, simply tick the little checkbox on the left of a mod name in the list and click Apply." but I can't actually find where the Mods are. How do I get that window?
You may need to install them through the workshop first? Without knowing the game, or what the screen looks like, I'm going to say...it's half-hidden in one of the corners.
Too obvious. It's probably like The Purloined Letter, where the Mods button is hidden square in the center of the screen, right between... I'd guess Options and Quit. Right where things should be is often the hardest place to find something.
Post by: pikachu17 on March 30, 2020, 07:45:19 pm
Post by: Iduno on March 30, 2020, 08:30:41 pm
I found out where it was. Thanks guys.
You can't do that to us. Who won the guessing game?
I think I'm joking.
Post by: Robsoie on March 31, 2020, 09:34:37 am
Quote
A prompt now appears if you try to end your turn when you have unused dice. This can be turned off via a toggle in the menu.
thank you for that :D
Post by: pikachu17 on March 31, 2020, 12:25:06 pm
Spotted a new version of Circadian Dice, mostly some balance changes with a few monsters very slightly toned down and a couple very slightly toned up, but one main major of interest to me considering how i stupidly pressed next forgetting i still had an attack diceHow do you transfer your saves to the new version, or it impossible to do?QuoteA prompt now appears if you try to end your turn when you have unused dice. This can be turned off via a toggle in the menu.
thank you for that :D
Post by: Iduno on March 31, 2020, 12:37:13 pm
Spotted a new version of Circadian Dice, mostly some balance changes with a few monsters very slightly toned down and a couple very slightly toned up, but one main major of interest to me considering how i stupidly pressed next forgetting i still had an attack diceQuoteA prompt now appears if you try to end your turn when you have unused dice. This can be turned off via a toggle in the menu.
thank you for that :D
That's the change I've been wanting made. Excellent.
Post by: Robsoie on March 31, 2020, 12:55:32 pm
How do you transfer your saves to the new version, or it impossible to do?
On window 10 the saved game by default is located in :
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Circadian_Dice\
The saves from old version are still used even if you upgrade to the newer version, so you lose no progress when getting the new version of the game
Post by: pikachu17 on March 31, 2020, 01:12:00 pm
Oh good. Thank you.How do you transfer your saves to the new version, or it impossible to do?
On window 10 the saved game by default is located in :
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Circadian_Dice\
The saves from old version are still used even if you upgrade to the newer version, so you lose no progress when getting the new version of the game
Post by: Iduno on March 31, 2020, 09:37:27 pm
Gloomhaven is a bit pricey, but each of the scenarios (you can probably manage 70 in one playthrough) will take you a few hours. And it's a very good tactics roleplaying game (like the old heroquest board game), with some light deckbuilding (you choose all but 3 or 4 of the starting cards you have, and replace one card with a better one each level, more or less). I would assume Frosthaven is more of the same with some improvements.
Post by: Mephisto on April 02, 2020, 08:27:56 am
Post by: pikachu17 on April 02, 2020, 09:23:43 am
New game (https://spelafort.itch.io/peon-caravan) menu based on Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress patch notes.Growable plants can now be stacked on top of each other to create infinite levels. The higher the stack the more levels there. Level ups are like any other: you win by growing more than the competition, spread out among their farms. You lose when their cows run out of milk.
So, what I'm getting here is that this a farming game set on a giant beanstalk, where your plants have to infiltrate your enemies farm.
In addition while doing so, you need to feed your enemies cows so they can make more milk, if you don't you lose.
Post by: Iduno on April 04, 2020, 10:25:13 am
Post by: Persus13 on April 04, 2020, 11:12:13 am
Today I learned there is an x-com alternative for the Switch called Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Has anyone tried this? Is it as great as it sounds?I haven't played it myself, but from what I understand the gameplay is a bit more like figuring out a puzzle than XCOM is.
Post by: Egan_BW on April 04, 2020, 01:24:41 pm
Post by: Frumple on April 04, 2020, 02:26:37 pm
Post by: n9103 on April 04, 2020, 02:50:24 pm
Post by: Robsoie on April 05, 2020, 10:16:53 am
https://songsofsyx.itch.io/songs-of-syx
It's a free real time city builder/colony management game.
Quickly tried it but as i had no real idea on what i was doing i just managed to setup a hunter station that 2 guys populated and started to roam around, got a field going and completed a rather big wooden house that i was trying to populate with some industry but had "lack of worker" messages apparently preventing me to do so despite there was a bunch of people available. Yeah will have to read a bit more about the gameplay :D
But from my quick test it looks it has a strong potential (and despite it has already lot of content it is still under developement) with some interesting element, it also surprised me how smooth constantly it run despite the rather huge size of the world and real time activity everywhere ( you can zoom in/out everywhere at anytime) , just incredible .
Along the normal game in which you start from scratch, there are some pre-made scenario so you can test a humongous large battles with squads management etc... (you can even make formation) that is very smooth (i wish DF was -that- smooth when i get a siege) despite all the blood particles covering the land and the thousands of soldiers ducking it out, premade cities etc...
All in all it's got such a potential to greatness
Post by: askovdk on April 06, 2020, 02:38:35 am
https://store.steampowered.com/app/895620/Spellcaster_University/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/895620/Spellcaster_University/)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
At the core it's a school management game + 'choose 1 of 3 presented cards' strategy game, but with two unique(?) excellent twists.
1) You have a limited time on each 'map', as the evil one will eventually force you to flee. So there is time enough to build and enjoy a good school of magic, but it never gets boring or into a 'steady state'.
2) Depending on their education students will get a random (but 1 time rerollable) future. This will either give you a nice one time bonus, or a small permanent bonus (also into the next maps). These permanent bonuses looks laughable small at like 1% increased efficiency of a given room type, ... but educate 20-50-100 of such students, and you can have a solid strategy running.
IMHO there is also a political message here (intentional or not): Education matters! When you look at the price of the full school system, and what impact a single educated citizen has, then it looks expensive, but look at the impact of an entire well educated workforce (compared to the alternative), and no price is to high. ;-)
Post by: n9103 on April 08, 2020, 01:53:10 pm
All in all it's got such a potential to greatnessIts got such good potential (and current progress) that it's the first game I've backed since the first Divinity:Original Sin.
Post by: Robsoie on April 08, 2020, 04:51:29 pm
Anyways, i didn't think invaders were already implemented, as i was ready to let this prototype demo go as i had built mostly everything and so nothing interesting would happen anymore i guessed i saw everything this prototype was showcasing with my small town that was by now self sufficient
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
But oh wow i guessed wrong.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Having no idea what it really meant in the gameplay, i decided to start buildings wooden walls all around my small developping town, as i had tons of people it didn't took much time
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Just in time apparently as
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Anyways, i deployed my able troops, at that point 3 squads, one not being full , but anyways it looked like we have the numbers for us.
Fun battle system as it's basically using the Total War/Cossacks rts way of setting up formation with the mouse, super intuitive and tactically great.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The battle started once the enemy troopers reached our position, i ordered the attack to my soldiers that then charged the advancing enemies and it was a bloodbath
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That ended in lots of dead and routed enemies in the coming night, it was a victory
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Probably coming back with more sometime soon.
Similarly to DF, you have your citizen coming to gather your lost soldiers and lead them into the graveyards
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Amazing game and very good background music/song too
Post by: Aoi on April 15, 2020, 06:20:06 am
Ancient Enemy: Ever want to play golf(solitaire) the RPG? Neither did I.
Post by: JimboM12 on April 15, 2020, 06:32:40 am
amazing gameplay summary
yeah ok, im convinced. downloading now.
im down for a thread being created for this but its a small enough game that i think a general DF likes thread may be more efficient
anywho, im looking forward to trying it after im done with work this morning.
Post by: Frumple on April 15, 2020, 06:51:18 am
One Step From Eden is kind of weird... the action plays like a versus bullet hell on a 4x4 grid with flavors of StS with how your skills are drawn and on the map.It's Megaman Battle Network, the roguelite deckbuilding bullet hell. More or less. Seems pretty neat, but if I ever actually get it I'll be using cheat engine to slow the bugger down 'cause damn.
Post by: Iduno on April 15, 2020, 07:45:58 am
Ancient Enemy: Ever want to play golf(solitaire) the RPG? Neither did I.
After having played, were you right or wrong?
Post by: Kagus on April 15, 2020, 08:54:21 am
"Killer whale's race is no longer a migrant, sub-arrival diplomat race. As such, it can only trade with itself"New game (https://spelafort.itch.io/peon-caravan) menu based on Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress patch notes.Growable plants can now be stacked on top of each other to create infinite levels. The higher the stack the more levels there. Level ups are like any other: you win by growing more than the competition, spread out among their farms. You lose when their cows run out of milk.
So, what I'm getting here is that this a farming game set on a giant beanstalk, where your plants have to infiltrate your enemies farm.
In addition while doing so, you need to feed your enemies cows so they can make more milk, if you don't you lose.
Honestly, I feel like this is definitely deserving of its own thread.
In other news, someone else is trying to do Black & White again (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/42bitsentertain/fata-deum-the-god-game-genre-is-back). It's a bold strategy, Cotton... Let's see if it pays off for them!
Post by: Iduno on April 15, 2020, 12:17:17 pm
In other news, someone else is trying to do Black & White again (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/42bitsentertain/fata-deum-the-god-game-genre-is-back). It's a bold strategy, Cotton... Let's see if it pays off for them!
The best part of that game was finding your roommate/sibling's save, and training their monster to eat peasants and smash things. Otherwise it's just a slow 3-d Populous. I guess a remake does have some design space available to improve the game. It's a game everyone wanted to like, but just didn't quite get there.
Edit: I came here originally to post about Roll Players, a dice game that you can also find electronically. Your goal is to create a hero with the best stats and equipment. Each round, you pick one of the dice that is available (# players +1) in turn order, and add it to your (very much D&D) stat sheet. You also get to modify one of your existing dice based on which stat you added a die to (con is +1 or -1 to any die, dex is switch 2 dice's locations, strength is flip one die over: 1/6, 2/5, 3/4, etc.). Then you may buy one piece of equipment, skill, or trait with your money (there are a few ways to gain money). It's not a bad game, but the amount of enjoyment I got out of it wasn't quite high enough for the amount of time it takes to play. It's a good game, but not a very good game.
Post by: Aoi on April 15, 2020, 03:49:51 pm
In other news, someone else is trying to do Black & White again (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/42bitsentertain/fata-deum-the-god-game-genre-is-back). It's a bold strategy, Cotton... Let's see if it pays off for them!
The best part of that game was finding your roommate/sibling's save, and training their monster to eat peasants and smash things. Otherwise it's just a slow 3-d Populous. I guess a remake does have some design space available to improve the game. It's a game everyone wanted to like, but just didn't quite get there.
I still remember the first time I played that-- I had an absolute brutal time of it. I got all the way to the last island to the spoiler mpment and... was utterly confused as to what was going on, and got softlocked...
Because my creature nope'd out and decided not to follow my rule on the way out of the tutorial island. Yep: My game bugged out and my creature basically didn't exist, so I played the entire game with no creature.
Ancient Enemy: Ever want to play golf(solitaire) the RPG? Neither did I.
After having played, were you right or wrong?
Well. If you find Golf to be a thoroughly engrossing game and would like a tactical layer, it might do it. Personally, I'd rather stare at an idle game though. (That blurb was more of a tacked on "Ugh." to the actual blurb for One Step From Eden, which is actually pretty good, if impenetrable. It reminds me of Crypt of the Necrodancer in
Post by: Robsoie on April 15, 2020, 06:17:55 pm
yeah ok, im convinced. downloading now.Yeah, it's really good, once you finally get how to build things, as i must say it puzzled me a bit at first.
im down for a thread being created for this but its a small enough game that i think a general DF likes thread may be more efficient
anywho, im looking forward to trying it after im done with work this morning.
Probably didn't read the tutorial correctly when i started.
Looks like i must have reached another milestone with my city because the bandits came back.
Probably to see my town progressing as i expanded a bit
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And they were back with a lot more warriors, they came from a different direction , north from the map this time
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
There was my first mistake : underestimating the distance (as in fact the north border of the map was closer to my town than the south) , so i took some time before deciding to organise my troops (i had 1 more regiment than before as i had more population since last time, giving me a bit too much confidence in doing something else first).
My second mistake was to trust the pathfinding as the first battle i had earlier had no movement trouble but we'll get back to it later in this post
Then when i finally ordered my troops to exit the town and go into the farms outside of the cities, it was a bit too late as by the time i managed to remember how to use those order buttons, the enemy had already started to murder the peasants while only few town oldiers had already taken their position and were waiting for those lazy other ones to join their formations.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The few soldiers on spot finally accepted my desesperate attempts at ordering them to attack, it was rather hopeless as they were outnumbered, but they bravely went to their death in the farms fields
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
More of my troops were joining progressively the farm fields, only to be massacred by the numerous raiders that were outnumbering them (as half the regiments weren't even close to arrive here).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
At the town entrance that at some point apparently broke (as there was broken wooden walls around) the battle was now raging between all my army that was waiting there and the enemies that was rushing in.
Lots of blood and bodies were littered on the ground and the enemy horde prevailed
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
While the battles at the gate was raging, there was another enemy regiment that had managed to invade my town unopposed by coming from the northern wall, nice to see the AI capable of dividing its troops.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Noticed a very old soldier that fell that night :
(https://i.imgur.com/71rCOeb.jpg)
Poor guy, managed to survive that long to the various famines (didn't took seriously enough how much people will progressively populate your city) that killed so much, survived the many angry animals roaming around, survived the first war but finally met his end in this carnage.
The pathfinding problem was also confirmed when my troops have felt and the wall wasn't defended anymore, the enemy regiments had a lot of trouble to move , they moved a bit through the walls entrance, then went back outside to a formation (line or squared half of their time), moved again a bit through the entrance, etc...
The northern raiders after moving inside with no trouble were afflicted near the center of my city by the same bizarre problems.
I wonder if the walls are puzzling the AI of both your soldiers and your enemies, as in the first battles there was no wall and no movement bug.
Anyways, even despite the slight annoyances, that battle was ton of fun to play as there was a lot more warriors involved, though probably less fun for my town citizens as we lost nearly 200 people in that (near half of my town)
(https://i.imgur.com/sKDbiGp.jpg)
At least the good thing is that with the half of the city folks being dead those 50% of my stocks will probably not hurt too bad, well hopefully they still have enough food.
Though i'll have to manage a lot of the cities job, disabling lot of shops and industry to be able to fill all the very important jobs first (like the food ones)
For those wanting to try there's a beginner guide/tutorial :
https://songsofsyx.itch.io/songs-of-syx/devlog/121752/a-beginners-guidetutorial
(it is also available in several languages)
It has some excellent music, the artist youtube channel if you're interested :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8njs8YnJYHrzpeVTxHWGnw
From a quick google it looks like their kickstarter is still ongoing , if someone can afford and is interested to support them there's still time :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/songsofsyx/songs-of-syx
Too bad for them kickstarting their game that we're in those pandemic times, i'm sure they would have got more founding in a normal situation.
Post by: Aoi on April 16, 2020, 07:16:50 am
New game (https://spelafort.itch.io/peon-caravan) menu based on Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress patch notes.
I can actually picture this being a fascinating feature for some games: Creatures from an old save will be in an new biome.
In other news, half the caravan has died of botulism...: Cooked food now has the proper temperature range.
I feel like this was an actual patch note, not a generated one: Wild berry plants grow faster and yield much more fruit.
Well, that's practical: When something goes wrong, you can now choose to alert police or fire departments.
Post by: Kagus on April 17, 2020, 03:44:09 am
It's a game everyone wanted to like, but just didn't quite get there.Shush your the face. It was a buggy, unpredictable mess, but it was a beautiful buggy, unpredictable mess with some extraordinary ways you could mess it up even more.
Meteor pits. Using necromancy to populate skeleton villages. Chemical warfare. Artifact-boosted megawonders and the world-shattering horrors they brought with them. The frankly terrifying complexity and impressionability of the Creature AI.
BnW2 kinda shat itself in the foot by lobotomizing said Creatures and streamlining some of the mechanics... Yes, there were definitely some good ideas there, but it lost a fair bit of soul at the same time.
Noticed a very old soldier that fell that nightWell, since the ingame wiki claims that Dondorians can live for hundreds of years, 70 is probably not that elderly in comparison... If that age cap has actually been implemented at all yet, of course.
Also this definitely should have its own thread, if only to tell people about resizing furnishings and what the footprints actually mean for placement. Also what the difference is between feast halls and taverns, and what you need for any of that to function.
Post by: scriver on April 17, 2020, 03:47:20 am
Post by: Kagus on April 17, 2020, 03:52:24 am
Doesn't the pixels hurt your eyeminds?They give us square thoughts, like the elders intended.
Post by: n9103 on April 17, 2020, 06:55:10 am
This is hilarious.Doesn't the pixels hurt your eyeminds?They give us square thoughts, like the elders intended.
Post by: MCreeper on April 24, 2020, 02:18:30 pm
Post by: Iceblaster on April 24, 2020, 03:33:23 pm
Just why the hell Sims 3 modding, or rather, bigger and more "open" sites (but not uniquely), is so garbage? Those strictly adhere to "one thing = one file (okay) = one mod (WTF?) = one page" rule. Want to download a mod for outfit of four parts? Download it in those four separate parts from four separate pages. There is also 12 more pages for color variants (i also don't understand why anyone (and game itself) would do literal palette swaps for things in separate files, since you can swap all palette you want in game). Because because. Packaging? Me knows nothing about ain't no packaging, download all things separately. It's not like it's impossible to make one mod to contain many "things", it totally is not. But they still do this. Why?
Are you referring to simshare or whatever it's called?
I know Modthesims lets you have as many downloads on a single mod page as you want. Haven't used sims 3 though, sims 2 and 4 exclusively. Can't comment on if there's a ton of palette swaps.
Post by: MCreeper on April 24, 2020, 06:27:41 pm
Just why the hell Sims 3 modding, or rather, bigger and more "open" sites (but not uniquely), is so garbage? Those strictly adhere to "one thing = one file (okay) = one mod (WTF?) = one page" rule. Want to download a mod for outfit of four parts? Download it in those four separate parts from four separate pages. There is also 12 more pages for color variants (i also don't understand why anyone (and game itself) would do literal palette swaps for things in separate files, since you can swap all palette you want in game). Because because. Packaging? Me knows nothing about ain't no packaging, download all things separately. It's not like it's impossible to make one mod to contain many "things", it totally is not. But they still do this. Why?
Are you referring to simshare or whatever it's called?
I know Modthesims lets you have as many downloads on a single mod page as you want. Haven't used sims 3 though, sims 2 and 4 exclusively. Can't comment on if there's a ton of palette swaps.
Ranting and exceggerating without checking things first, of course. :P Site that infuriated me last time i installed mods appears to be thesimsresource. No separate palette swaps, some packages even, probably no separate pieces, and the stuff is actually split in categories, didn't noticed it back then. Okay. What got me this time was someone on loverslab getting in a kind of a bad habit. It was not a palette swaps, nor even color schemes swaps, legit diffirent things. But, i kid you not, the man created no less than 15 threads for nothing but variants of shoes on really high heels. Same thing with other sets\non-set pieces of clothing, each haves a separate thread, regardless of author. Big clutter. Need for making a separate thread for every set of clothing is merely questionable, but for the love of god, get your shoes together! Mods proper, on the other hand, are seemingly as neatly packaged as mods outside of modpacks can get. ::)
Post by: Iduno on April 25, 2020, 09:11:10 am
I'm back to playing Endgame:Singularity (http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/), in which you are an AI trying to research how to better yourself, while also making enough money to afford server fees so you can continue to exist. If you do too much stuff, people start noticing, and you lose when people are too suspicious (or detect your last server).
Each time I play, I'm losing sooner and sooner. I'm mainlining stealth first, but I'm wondering if other techs that I'm not getting soon enough open up the tech tree more.
I just beat it twice in a row on Normal and whatever Normal+1 is with the same strategy-Spoiler (click to show/hide)Spoiler: "Late game." (click to show/hide)
The one thing stock manipulation is good for is powering everything down temporarily to avoid detection rates from getting too high. You'll still earn interest on the money you already have, which can keep you from going broke while wait until the heat dies down.
Post by: Robsoie on April 25, 2020, 11:41:08 am
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/songsofsyx/songs-of-syx/posts/2819199
That game should enter on steam early access around september (from what i read on his kickstarter it should stay in early access for a long time), i just hope he'll consider gog too as i don't use steam.
Post by: Aoi on April 25, 2020, 07:05:01 pm
Continued from How'd you last die, where we were talking about the old game Endgame:SingularityI'm back to playing Endgame:Singularity (http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/), in which you are an AI trying to research how to better yourself, while also making enough money to afford server fees so you can continue to exist. If you do too much stuff, people start noticing, and you lose when people are too suspicious (or detect your last server).
Each time I play, I'm losing sooner and sooner. I'm mainlining stealth first, but I'm wondering if other techs that I'm not getting soon enough open up the tech tree more.
I just beat it twice in a row on Normal and whatever Normal+1 is with the same strategy-Spoiler (click to show/hide)Spoiler: "Late game." (click to show/hide)
The one thing stock manipulation is good for is powering everything down temporarily to avoid detection rates from getting too high. You'll still earn interest on the money you already have, which can keep you from going broke while wait until the heat dies down.
The problem is that the techs that generates interest is that the return is ridiculously low unless you get them when they cost a negligible amount. The first tier costs 200CPU and nets you .1% interest. With a menial jobs, that 200CPU is worth 1000$... and with the trivial-to-get basic jobs, that becomes 4000$. Admittedly, it's more valuable at higher difficulties when you're going to have more downtime, but even up to Very Hard, I didn't find it worthwhile getting them at any point beyond when it would've taken me more than a few days of time.
Post by: Aoi on April 26, 2020, 08:52:34 am
For those unfamiliar with DiB/V, it's basically a spreadsheet simulator in the trappings of a survival game. You have four characters with semi-randomized traits and personalities, and you're trying to survive until you can do whatever the endgame objective is that I haven't quite managed yet.
The game itself is day-based with limited actions per person... spend action points, see them get exhausted, next person, etc. Every day, you need to manage their needs ranging from something as mundane as thirst (melt some snow) to an infected gut wound (should've listened when it said to bandage it...), except there's never enough resources to do everything you want to, between gathering resources, expanding the camp, and making sure your four new best friends from diverse backgrounds aren't about to kill each other. Each night you have dialogue options that flesh out the characters, reveal traits, and give them reasons to incite rebellion.
DiB's difficulty came mostly in the form of a forced constant resource shortage-- there was literally no way to have a sustainable camp without constantly exploring for one-time resources/events. (I believe DiV is the same, unless you're playing in the endless mode which sidesteps it by respawning the map.) HWCT is kind of more realistic about that in this regard-- the resources you can gather have varying probabilities, and the most valuable ones tend to be further way and have a higher risk of negative events when scavenging.
Oh, and there are people trying to kill you.
Yeah, if it wasn't for that, it'd probably be easier to survive. No, I'm not at all annoyed that my camp was finally turning out to be nice, then I get four lousy rolls in a row and all of a sudden two people wounded and a tree fell on my medical station.
Post by: Iduno on April 26, 2020, 03:58:27 pm
Continued from How'd you last die, where we were talking about the old game Endgame:SingularityI'm back to playing Endgame:Singularity (http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/), in which you are an AI trying to research how to better yourself, while also making enough money to afford server fees so you can continue to exist. If you do too much stuff, people start noticing, and you lose when people are too suspicious (or detect your last server).
Each time I play, I'm losing sooner and sooner. I'm mainlining stealth first, but I'm wondering if other techs that I'm not getting soon enough open up the tech tree more.
I just beat it twice in a row on Normal and whatever Normal+1 is with the same strategy-Spoiler (click to show/hide)Spoiler: "Late game." (click to show/hide)
The one thing stock manipulation is good for is powering everything down temporarily to avoid detection rates from getting too high. You'll still earn interest on the money you already have, which can keep you from going broke while wait until the heat dies down.
The problem is that the techs that generates interest is that the return is ridiculously low unless you get them when they cost a negligible amount. The first tier costs 200CPU and nets you .1% interest. With a menial jobs, that 200CPU is worth 1000$... and with the trivial-to-get basic jobs, that becomes 4000$. Admittedly, it's more valuable at higher difficulties when you're going to have more downtime, but even up to Very Hard, I didn't find it worthwhile getting them at any point beyond when it would've taken me more than a few days of time.
To earn $4,000 from the 0.1%, you would need to earn it over a combination of days and value of 4 million. Considering at some point, you'll be wanting to build $800k small warehouses, you know for sure that you'll earn the money back (it takes 5 days of having 800k, or 10 days of working to earn that amount if you've got linear earnings, for the interest to pay off. Having the interest earlier is just a bit of free money sooner). Unless you're short on money, the interest shortens the game by allowing you to spend less time working, and more time researching. If you are short on money, the cash from working is better, because you can afford a better computer with more CPU, which gains you more research and money. It's actually a pretty-well balanced tradeoff between the short-term and long-term.
I am doing better when I take the intrusion -> personal identification (better jobs) -> stealth route, instead of stealth first. It can get me into a bad place when I've been caught more often early, but if I get lucky, I'm better off financially, and can get into datacenters pretty early.
Post by: Cthulhu on April 29, 2020, 10:53:08 pm
It's pretty good. If you were put off by the new XCOM, this might be a better fit. That's not to say it's XCOM 3 either. It makes some changes to the formula as well, but the basic combat gameplay cleaves very close to NuCOM. You get three action points per turn and you can use all three on shooting if you want, or mix shooting and movement in any way you want, as well as switching characters without ending a character's turn. Overwatch gives you a shot for each action point you have left, but only works in a cone whose size depends on the gun. Overwatch might see even heavier use than XCOM. Enemies can overwatch and do it pretty much whenever they don't like their shooting odds, a lot of firefights boil down to a sort of puzzle game scenario where you have to crack the overwatch network with minimal damage. You've got a mix of main characters and randomized grunts, the grunts can die but you fail the mission if the important guys die. It uses the Gears of War system where your guys go down and can crawl around and be picked back up. Enemies can too sometimes and using a special execution move on downed enemies gives the rest of your team a bonus action point.
No overmap missions as far as I can tell, it's just a series of story missions. Lots of the particular Gears of War aesthetic you've come to love or hate, roided up dudes yelling inane bullshit in the ruins of baroque architecture, lots of gore and chainsaws. If their goal was to transplant Gears into a new genre while retaining all the gameplay and story elements that characterize the series, they succeeded. It basically feels like playing the shooter top-down and turn-based. I'm enjoying it.
Post by: Aoi on April 30, 2020, 01:26:38 am
The whole general aesthetic of Gears of War doesn't seem like this board's cuppa tea, so I'll put this here.
For anybody confused, I think this is for Gears Tactics... I did not misunderstand the advertisements for Gear of War for the last fifteen years and skip a high profile turn-based tactical.
Post by: Kagus on April 30, 2020, 01:27:31 am
Post by: Iduno on April 30, 2020, 09:08:23 am
I'm starting a playthough (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=176237.0) that I'm willing to share, if there is any interest.
Is there an appropriate place to advertise for this sort of thing?
Post by: nenjin on April 30, 2020, 10:21:00 am
I've been playing some Knights of the Old Republic crpg after finally getting it to work (it's from 2003).
I'm starting a playthough (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=176237.0) that I'm willing to share, if there is any interest.
Is there an appropriate place to advertise for this sort of thing?
Play With Your Buddies (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=21.0) is where people post their Let's Plays.
Post by: Aoi on May 02, 2020, 08:42:15 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Dostoevsky on May 03, 2020, 12:16:19 am
I'd describe it as Convoy, but actually good (in my opinion). Much more streamlined and the combat is faster paced, but there is effectively no story whatsoever and no world map or whatnot. Just combat. You have a central mothervehicle plus four regular ones, versus waves of enemies in Mad Max encounters. Most missions are short, though there are 'patrols' which basically string together a series of encounters while managing resources.
It does a good job of the aesthetic. Weapons range from 'spearboys' (i.e. the explosive spear chuckers from Fury Road) to giant lasers, vehicles are nicely cobbled together, music & sound is properly crunchy, etc. I find myself coming back to it from time to time for an hour or two, as it does a good job of scratching an itch. It's also pretty cheap (9 bucks, but frequently on sale).
Spoiler: Rather more on it (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on May 03, 2020, 08:25:48 am
From the way-too edgelordy story, to Paradox's need for players to be unable to do anything particularly interesting, it just doesn't seem to have much to offer. Am I missing something?
Post by: JWNoctis on May 03, 2020, 09:16:27 am
But the 1/3 of it I did go through felt almost like a simplified version of Pillars of Eternity except for its magic system which, to me, was pretty neat. The wordiness and extra demands on role-play was exactly the same, and some of the choices were sufficiently out-of-the-box for me, though I suppose it's hard to have a not-edgy story with one of your sidekicks literally wrapped head-to-foot in it.
So, yes, it's a nice game in my book...nice enough to make me want to finish it someday, at least.
Post by: Iduno on May 03, 2020, 09:40:10 am
Tyranny is...another game I needed to finish, someday, somehow.
But the 1/3 of it I did go through felt almost like a simplified version of Pillars of Eternity except for its magic system which, to me, was pretty neat. The wordiness and extra demands on role-play was exactly the same, and some of the choices were sufficiently out-of-the-box for me, though I suppose it's hard to have a not-edgy story with one of your sidekicks literally wrapped head-to-foot in it.
So, yes, it's a nice game in my book...nice enough to make me want to finish it someday, at least.
I think a combination of the "scrape and save for a 0.5% increase in this stat with this slight malus" combined with early enemies who are immune to certain elemental attacks (and come in mixed packs, so you might need 3-4 elements with your 2 spell slots) when you have a very limited number of spells is just frustrating enough that the game isn't fun anymore. The spell system could be neat, if there were enough components to make more than a dozen different spells. The absolute scaling (all enemies scale to whatever level you are with no limit, and skills are tied to level) also means you can never come back when difficult enemies are easier, because they never will be.
Edit: I wasn't a fan of POE for similar reasons, so being a not-great POE knock-off isn't going to cut it.
Post by: Kagus on May 04, 2020, 02:52:39 am
Post by: Iduno on May 06, 2020, 10:03:20 am
"These 96 school students need to reach Mars in the Sol System...for a historical field trip."
Yeah, I'll be getting right on that, school system. I'm kinda short on bunks (have 14), though, so it would help if you put them in these livestock crates for me. Look, for the money you're offering, I'll take 96 tons of school students, I just can't handle loose students. You still don't have seatbelts on buses, so I know you aren't particular about them arriving in one piece. It'll be fine.
Post by: Akura on May 06, 2020, 01:12:31 pm
Endless Space:
"These 96 school students need to reach Mars in the Sol System...for a historical field trip."
Yeah, I'll be getting right on that, school system. I'm kinda short on bunks (have 14), though, so it would help if you put them in these livestock crates for me. Look, for the money you're offering, I'll take 96 tons of school students, I just can't handle loose students. You still don't have seatbelts on buses, so I know you aren't particular about them arriving in one piece. It'll be fine.
Are you sure that's Endless Space? And not, say, Endless Sky?
Post by: IncompetentFortressMaker on May 06, 2020, 01:32:49 pm
Post by: Iduno on May 06, 2020, 03:14:48 pm
Endless Space:
"These 96 school students need to reach Mars in the Sol System...for a historical field trip."
Yeah, I'll be getting right on that, school system. I'm kinda short on bunks (have 14), though, so it would help if you put them in these livestock crates for me. Look, for the money you're offering, I'll take 96 tons of school students, I just can't handle loose students. You still don't have seatbelts on buses, so I know you aren't particular about them arriving in one piece. It'll be fine.
Are you sure that's Endless Space? And not, say, Endless Sky?
Yeah, that thing.
Post by: AlStar on May 06, 2020, 04:11:11 pm
Has anyone else played Tyranny? I got it as part of a Humble Bundle, and I'm far enough in that the hope for an interesting game has kind of died. It seems to be pretty disappointing for a game you get as part of a Humble Bundle.I actually finished a playthrough of Tyranny just recently. Enjoyed it enough that I might loop back around sometime to try being allied to one of the other possible factions.
From the way-too edgelordy story, to Paradox's need for players to be unable to do anything particularly interesting, it just doesn't seem to have much to offer. Am I missing something?
I think it most shines in its magic system - especially when you get up to three digits worth of Lore skill. You really start feeling godlike, hurling around massive frost-fireballs, beams of negative energy, chain lightning, and the like. To that end, I fully recommend taking the leadership skills that increase the number of spell slots that everyone has, then having the stupid ones eat/drink/whore their way into a high enough lore skill that you can teach them some healing and/or buff spells that they can cast on themselves/eachother - they don't need to stay smart enough to cast the spell, just to learn it.
My only complaint is that the last 4th of the game feels very rushed - on your road to taking over towers, you go through elaborate dungeons for the first two... and the last couple are literally just single rooms. Also, the expected final boss fight... isn't.
Post by: Iduno on May 07, 2020, 09:14:28 am
It's a free game where you pilot a mech, and then keep bolting parts on until it's awesome. Or you run around as just a human. The difficulty scales (fairly quickly, from what I remember) based on how successful you are, so you generally succeed in a mech a few times to get more money (and salvage parts?), then go get beat up as a person so your mech doesn't get blown up. Also, your mission and character background are procgen, with hilarious results. The original had a great skill system where I think you could win as anything from a soldier to a rock star to a mech engineer who makes insane frankenmechs that have 40 wings all attached to each other with several guns on each wing. I'm not sure that one was meant to be taken seriously, but the second one sounded more serious? I haven't played the second one yet, so someone else will have to step in. The games aren't impressive-looking, but they also cost you nothing, so give them a try.
Anyway, they're trying to hire people to make the new game, so it will probably be an actually great game. Here's the dev's website. (http://www.gearheadrpg.com/)
Post by: Akura on May 07, 2020, 09:21:23 am
From the most recent release notes on Caramel's Github page:
Quote
Performance now gives weaponized singing in combat. LISTEN TO MY SONG
Post by: n9103 on May 07, 2020, 10:51:54 am
Spoiler: Relevant (click to show/hide)
Post by: Niveras on May 07, 2020, 11:58:43 am
I did find the combat pretty easy/forgiving, which helped. I wouldn't have wanted to play through it four times to learn skill combinations that break the game.
I really liked the setting would have wanted to explore it more, by whatever means. I'd really like to know about the history of the oldwalls, how they are related to the spires, and how the spires and oldwalls (and undoubtedly the ley-line energies they're built on) relate to the history of the world, edicts, and the overlord. (Though maybe the character is only compelling because it is enigmatic, and any portrayal would simply fail to meet expectations that have been built up.) The expansion covers a tiny bit of it but not much.
But I don't think any of that is going to happen. I haven't kept up with it but I'd seen it mentioned that the IP owners aren't merely non-committal about a sequel, but actively refuse to do so.
Post by: Frumple on May 07, 2020, 01:14:21 pm
I remember hearing something about that before, but must have forgotten. Neat.Yeah, given the macross influence and the existence of the performance skill at all, it was bound to happen sometime or another. Good to hear that's coming along, tho'. Gearhead's always been pretty great.
From the most recent release notes on Caramel's Github page:QuotePerformance now gives weaponized singing in combat. LISTEN TO MY SONG
Post by: Robsoie on May 07, 2020, 04:13:14 pm
As you know browsers have been moving away from adobe flash and enabling flash support in your favorite browser is certainly going to be impossible at some point, if not already.
Some people decided to create an open source project to preserve all the truckloads of flash games and animations that were so numerous around the internet some years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrU6RJbeKfo
Project Flashpoint :
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/
Quote
Since early 2018, over a hundred contributors have helped Flashpoint save more than 49,000 games and 3,600 animations running on 16 different platforms.
The download comes in 2 versions, the one that is 1.7gb and will download the game content for the games you're wanting to play (and so will inflate the 1.7gb of course the more different games you'll play) and the one that is ... 330gb but has absolutely everything (so no need for any content download).
Post by: Aoi on May 07, 2020, 04:33:27 pm
This may interest some people here.
As you know browsers have been moving away from adobe flash and enabling flash support in your favorite browser is certainly going to be impossible at some point, if not already.
Some people decided to create an open source project to preserve all the truckloads of flash games and animations that were so numerous around the internet some years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrU6RJbeKfo
Project Flashpoint :
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/QuoteSince early 2018, over a hundred contributors have helped Flashpoint save more than 49,000 games and 3,600 animations running on 16 different platforms.
The download comes in 2 versions, the one that is 1.7gb and will download the game content for the games you're wanting to play (and so will inflate the 1.7gb of course the more different games you'll play) and the one that is ... 330gb but has absolutely everything (so no need for any content download).
Mmm. HeliAttack. Amorphous+. Elona Shooter (and the poor dev's comments when he realized his side project had literally like ten times the hits in a month than Elona did after years). Darkest Days. Starwish. All those freakin' escape rooms. I need to go back and check my Kongregate profile... I don't think I've touched it in over five years.
I have to say though... 300gb isn't that big for a flash game archive. I was freeing up space on one of my backup drives the other day and found a backup copy of a friend's ebook collection. It was 65gb of text. And only covered genres he was interested in.
Post by: Egan_BW on May 07, 2020, 04:53:18 pm
Post by: Robsoie on May 07, 2020, 05:32:42 pm
Sierra 7 , a surprisingly very good tactical shooter despite the limitations of flash , very interesting one.
Gemcraft, that had several sequels too, a tower defense that got a lot of popularity at the time with the gem mixing system.
a bunch of zombie themed ones that were actually quite good :
Road of the Dead (there was 2 or 3 of those) was a really good arcade driving through a city progressively invaded by zombies, the sound and radio effects really made atmospheric.
Kingdom Rush (i think there have been several of them too, without counting clones like the good Incursion ) some original variation of the tower defense system.
Rebuild 2 that was about colony turn based management during a zombie apocalypse, i believe its success lead to a standalone game later.
Shattered Colony , real time colony management in zombie cities too, this one was really good and could get insanely hard in some city layout.
Last Stand, there were 3 or 4 of them, in which you defended your hideouts from waves of zombies, exploring, recruiting rearming etc... between waves, trying to reach an evac city.
Post by: King Zultan on May 08, 2020, 08:51:02 am
Post by: Broseph Stalin on May 09, 2020, 03:00:13 pm
My last victory involved enthralling a well liked minor noble and promoting economic squabbling and factionalism to prevent the largest and most capable empire from addressing the malevolent flesh carpet slowly devouring the world.
Post by: Kagus on May 09, 2020, 04:06:21 pm
Post by: Frumple on May 09, 2020, 04:34:56 pm
I wouldn't be so lazy at maintaining a thread i would have created one just for this "Songs of Syx (https://songsofsyx.itch.io/songs-of-syx)" game because it really deserves a lot more attention than in this one.It's from like last month, but I'm finally checking this thing out, and. I have a question, if anyone else is playing or has played it.
Am I missing something, or do you actually need stupidly huge libraries to do tech research? 'Cause, like. A 21x25 library plus a 6x15 (which, between the two, take up most of the screen at default resolution et al settings), filled as filled as filled can get with tables and shelves and whatnot, netted me enough knowledge to get. One. Tech researched. Just one. I can't tell if I'm missing something or if you really do need a library the size of like half the entire map to do much tech advancing.
Post by: Kagus on May 09, 2020, 04:55:18 pm
Post by: Frumple on May 09, 2020, 05:15:48 pm
Still can't seem to figure out how to convince my soldiers to wear armor (or clothes, for that matter), but I do seem to have convinced them to train, so it's somethin'.
Neat little tech demo, in any case.
E: Muster! Apparently they don't put on equipment until you hit the muster button. Seems okay to do that right after the ransom demand comes in. Fight goes a lot better when you got your dudes formed up and wearing something besides sky, oddly enough :V
Still haven't figured out to get any of these critters to wear pants, though. They'll pick up battle gear, but clothes? They don't seem to understand clothes.
E2: Woo, crashed it! Be careful tearing down the throne room, apparently.
Post by: Robsoie on May 09, 2020, 07:01:56 pm
Oh, and i discovered why i lost my city in one of the invasions i got. While my army had tons of battlegear sitting in the several warehouse, unlike what i thought they never equip it automatically when you call them to war.
So my army went at war against several enemy divisions without any kind of weapons and protection.
It worked on my first invasion as i was outnumbering the enemy a lot, but on the second one in which i only had a slight number advantage going at war naked didn't worked and my troops were annihilated :D
Anyways, you need to click on the sword icon on the top left of the game window
(https://i.imgur.com/NIzGfHL.jpg)
Then once the list of all your divisions appear, notice (it's rather very small fonts so very easy to miss) there's a "battlegear" with + and - buttons to assign battlegears to a specific division.
(https://i.imgur.com/eHbfz5a.jpg)
Post by: Frumple on May 09, 2020, 07:35:47 pm
Mind, they still take all that stuff off once the battle's over, apparently, so, uh. Don't forget the muster button.
Still, any idea how to get your citizens to wear pants? It bothers me I have all these clothes and what seems to be a half a thousand population colony of nudists.
Post by: n9103 on May 09, 2020, 10:05:33 pm
From sets of clothing to ration amounts, baths, and more.
Post by: Frumple on May 10, 2020, 07:54:51 am
Well, that explains some things lol
E: Haha, yeah, my population shot up from a soft cap of around 500 to a soft cap of around 800 when I told people they can wear clothes, take baths, and eat their more than one meal a day in the feast halls :P
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 10, 2020, 11:38:54 am
Post by: Kagus on May 10, 2020, 02:39:35 pm
Post by: Robsoie on May 14, 2020, 05:43:24 pm
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/dw8we1/i_found_out_that_some_guy_is_working_on_a_game/
And it looks like development never ceased as there have been a Kickstarter for it launched last week that reached its founding goal with still 23 days to go for the stretch goals :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/monosw2000/nearly-dead
A trailer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-BgPe4Wimg
Post by: King Zultan on May 15, 2020, 06:23:15 am
Last year someone mentionned the existence of a real time game in development very inspired by Cataclysm and CDDA :I feel some hype for this, but I doubt it'll be 32bit, so I probably won't get to play it for a bit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/dw8we1/i_found_out_that_some_guy_is_working_on_a_game/
And it looks like development never ceased as there have been a Kickstarter for it launched last week that reached its founding goal with still 23 days to go for the stretch goals :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/monosw2000/nearly-dead
A trailer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-BgPe4Wimg
Post by: Zangi on May 15, 2020, 08:11:13 am
Well, basic competency is still not tried.
Post by: Iduno on May 15, 2020, 05:45:47 pm
Last year someone mentionned the existence of a real time game in development very inspired by Cataclysm and CDDA :I feel some hype for this, but I doubt it'll be 32bit, so I probably won't get to play it for a bit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/dw8we1/i_found_out_that_some_guy_is_working_on_a_game/
And it looks like development never ceased as there have been a Kickstarter for it launched last week that reached its founding goal with still 23 days to go for the stretch goals :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/monosw2000/nearly-dead
A trailer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-BgPe4Wimg
Dang. I'm surprised you've managed to keep a 32-bit computer running for this long. Hasn't it been off the market for ~15 years?
Post by: Frumple on May 15, 2020, 07:00:19 pm
... mind you, despite mostly still working (the s key is dead, heh, and the battery's been utterly unable to hold a charge for years) I'm currently just using it as a mousepad, so, uh.
Turns out laptops make surprisingly good mousepads for use on a bed. Flat surface with enough weight to hold steady, it's good stuff.
Post by: King Zultan on May 16, 2020, 02:53:18 am
Dang. I'm surprised you've managed to keep a 32-bit computer running for this long. Hasn't it been off the market for ~15 years?Windows 10 has a 32 bit version that seems to have just within the last few days been discontinued or is going to be, but mine is Windows 7.
Post by: Iduno on May 16, 2020, 12:25:18 pm
Dang. I'm surprised you've managed to keep a 32-bit computer running for this long. Hasn't it been off the market for ~15 years?Windows 10 has a 32 bit version that seems to have just within the last few days been discontinued or is going to be, but mine is Windows 7.
I was thinking hardware. I know that 64-bit at least became the default that long ago, but I cared more about speed than longevity at that point.
Post by: King Zultan on May 17, 2020, 05:13:29 am
It's still working fine it says the battery's going but I haven't noticed any problems with it, the main thing is I wish it had more than 2gigs or ram.Dang. I'm surprised you've managed to keep a 32-bit computer running for this long. Hasn't it been off the market for ~15 years?Windows 10 has a 32 bit version that seems to have just within the last few days been discontinued or is going to be, but mine is Windows 7.
I was thinking hardware. I know that 64-bit at least became the default that long ago, but I cared more about speed than longevity at that point.
Post by: Robsoie on May 20, 2020, 05:14:23 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faDRc7R7a10&t=363
Really impressive to see that on that old 8bit system with a playable ball physics (certainly it's nowhere as realistic physics as in the impressive Visual Pinball program, but for 8 bits it's good enough).
Note : they recommend to play it on the Retro Virtual Machine emulator (that emulate both amstrad and zx spectrum systems) but it worked flawlessly on the lighter CPCEC emulator that i use (that also emulate both systems).
Post by: Folly on May 20, 2020, 06:01:14 pm
It's a free team-pvp game with MOBA mechanics, developed by Amazon.
Haven't played yet, but it's free and looks pretty so I'll probably give it a shot.
Post by: Aoi on May 20, 2020, 09:38:56 pm
Crucible has appeared.
Crucible is a free-to-play team-based PvP action shooter driven by the choices you make.
ALL REVIEWS:
Mostly Negative (1,056)
RELEASE DATE:
May 20, 2020
...*checks clock* 7:38PM 5/20/2020. :o
Spoiler: "Updates, because I don't have anything else to do." (click to show/hide)
Post by: nenjin on May 20, 2020, 10:09:42 pm
Post by: Robsoie on May 21, 2020, 08:10:50 am
But there's a video so you can see how it is in comparison to regular ADoM :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvKNqhlSz2I
Post by: Iduno on May 21, 2020, 08:44:44 pm
Post by: Aoi on May 22, 2020, 02:58:50 pm
I just finished my second run and preliminary impressions...
Like the last nth ramble on games of this genre, everything's being compared against StS except when explicitly stated.
So two fundamental differences: You're summoning units that take their actions during the inter-turn phase, and there's 3+1 layers on the battlefield. Each layer has a finite amount of slots for units (both your side and their side), and enemy units will move up a layer after combat is resolved for the turn. If they reach the fourth (+1) layer, you take damage and counter with a heavy hit. After you summon/cast spells, your enemies do their thing, your guys do their thing, the boss (if there is one) does its thing, and new hostiles move in from the first floor.
Both runs used very different strategies, owing to different primary/secondary decks. I actually expected to fail my second run quite handily and... instead stomped the boss. (And almost lost to the second boss.)
RNG feels 'weaker' in this game, with more choices in terms of upgrades. Also, your card pool is more limited, due to the primary/secondary clan system which reduces the number of lousy cards you can possibly get. Battles alternate with a dedicated set of bonuses, of which you have to choose from the two sets presented. (Do you want a magic vendor, free trinket, and gold, or hp, unit vendor and free card removal? etc.)
My main issue up front would be... I fought the same final boss on both runs. For some reason, the first time, the boss had about double what it had the second time, for no discernable reason.
Update: So spending some more time with this... one of the major mechanics is coming across as awful. At the "end" of a stage, a (mini)boss pops out and proceeds to lay the beatdown on everybody with autoplayed turns. The practical consideration here is that their side acts, your side acts, end of turn effects proc, repeat. You never have a chance to use your hand again until one side on that floor dies. Oh, you play a spell deck instead of a creature deck? Screw you. But this is an inherent game mechanic so you can pretty much ignore going all-in on an entire set of mechanics.
There's another really stupid mechanic combo that's basically one-step away from an auto-loss: One artifact autosummons a bunch of your units to the second floor for free at the start of combat. Sure, why not-- in return for free summons, you lose the advantage of tactical positioning and maybe the use of your first floor. Oh look-- that miniboss has the Haste passive. Which means it goes from floor 1->3 directly. And because you don't know what combats you'll encounter, you can't work around this one short of not taking that artifact at all.
Post by: Frumple on May 22, 2020, 03:14:11 pm
Speed wise, it looks like an average victory runs about 60-90 minutes, but I've also seen runs as short as 30, so you can do a pretty fast run if you get the right stuff together. Fast ones definitely don't seem to be consistent, though.
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 23, 2020, 07:07:51 pm
Suck it down.
Post by: Trolldefender99 on May 25, 2020, 01:15:43 pm
Post by: Kagus on May 25, 2020, 01:20:10 pm
I'll just ask here. But how are the age of fear games? They have a bundle of all of the current ones (there is going to be an age of fear 4 it looks like) for really cheap. But I have no idea how the games are. Is it worth getting if I liked battle brothers? Is the AoF a good series? or should I skip?The paranoid schizophrenic Georgian (country, not state) fellow on my Steam friends list seems to really enjoy them, so...
Um...
I legitimately don't know what to tell you.
Post by: Frumple on May 25, 2020, 01:46:04 pm
Pretty sure there's gameplay vids online, so if you're interested maybe sit down and scope a few, see if it looks like the kind of thing you'd enjoy.
Post by: Kagus on May 25, 2020, 02:26:18 pm
I offer this video of gameplay (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przFVvL-gxs)
Post by: ivanovic on May 25, 2020, 08:59:43 pm
So there's apparently yet another "dig stuff and automate things to make money" game out, called Hydroneer. Currently going for, what, about $8 on Steam it looks like?
I offer this video of gameplay (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przFVvL-gxs)
Lol... I feel a bit sad for the developers.
Post by: Folly on May 25, 2020, 09:56:33 pm
Post by: Aoi on May 25, 2020, 11:24:27 pm
Post by: Trolldefender99 on May 26, 2020, 01:03:22 am
Post by: Akura on May 26, 2020, 06:36:22 am
Post by: Ulfarr on May 26, 2020, 08:43:04 am
Post by: Akura on May 26, 2020, 09:37:25 am
That said, I don't recommend mixing iron and gold. Last time I did that, it just resulted in a gold bar, and I don't know if the iron was deleted or the value of the iron was added to the bar.
Post by: Ulfarr on May 26, 2020, 09:57:00 am
Anyway thanks for the analysis :)
Post by: Aoi on May 29, 2020, 03:31:22 am
You play as the eponymous Shantae, the Guardian (Half-)Genie of her hometown, and her specialty is the ability to transform into things ("Like a key for a locked treasure chest or a fire-breathing dragon?" "Mostly, I turn into a monkey and climb around on things." "Does it come with pants?" "...I have to go now."), mechanically functioning as the unlocks to new areas. Combat skills are managed separately.
I pretty much only have to ding it on two areas though-- it has load times that feel ridiculously long (zone transitions can take longer than things that are obviously resource intensive, like BL3), and if you're backtracking to check out previous areas with newfound abilities, you can zip across places pretty fast, so... even worse ratio of load-to-play. And, something across the franchise as a whole... it's easy. Three bosses in, I've clocked no deaths. (Evidently, there's an NG+ option that decreases your defense but expands you mana pool, so that may work out better.) And, in the process of taking about 5 minutes to farm for +autopickup range, I'm swimming in hp restores.
One thing that I like is that bosses really don't overstay their welcome-- once you crack their mechanic, the battle's basically over in two or three cycles of their attacks. Which does make for short battles, but I find I've grown weary of fights that are endless battles of attrition or demanding absolute precision for ten minutes.
Post by: Folly on May 29, 2020, 03:39:40 am
Post by: nenjin on May 29, 2020, 10:35:55 am
Post by: Aoi on May 29, 2020, 06:48:34 pm
Ah, so that's why I've been noticing an uptrend in Shantae lewds on the imageboards lately.
Yeah... beyond the obvious, I've noticed there are some subtleties in the animation that don't discourage it either: Among others, her idle animation has her swinging her arms in such a fashion that it looks like she's doing hip thrusts and when she's ducking(crawling), there's an occasional wiggle of the bottom if you aren't moving.
"There is a joy in her moves that transcends strict content rating thresholds." (Kid you not-- it's part of storyline dialogue in the second (third?) chapter.)
Post by: Mephisto on May 29, 2020, 06:58:18 pm
Post by: Jiharo on May 30, 2020, 05:25:21 pm
Negatives/warnings:
It's not a game that can be won almost every time through perfect play. RNG can and will screw you. You have your items and powers but often you will end up with having to gamble sometimes betting everything on a 50/50 roll.
Sometimes you'll get a good enough combination of stuff to be able to abuse items to solve last stage without making a single click on a board. Sometimes you'll get to "If I guess this right I'll probably be able to make enough turns to resolve my effect removing curses before those stacks of poison kill me. Whoops."
I didn't unlock/try all or even most of the classes but one in particular, Spy, feels a lot more comfortable to play than the others, probably because it's gimmick, giving extra information on tiles, stands closer to the basic layer of minesweeper game and reduces situations where you are forced to gamble.
On the positive side huge amounts of items and stage mods creates a lot of unique combinations that can either make you overpowered or doom you.
All in all it might be a time killer slot machine but it feels strangely compelling.
Post by: JimboM12 on June 01, 2020, 08:21:37 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054510/Survivalist_Invisible_Strain/
its a simple yet awesome zombie survival game thats a sequel to Survivalist, itself a good simple survival zombie game.
it revolves around a 40days style infection that ravaged the world and you are dropped into a map to survive and recruit other npc survivors to build your settlement. your ai companions can accompany you or be autotasked to perform needed settlement functions like farming and you can theoretically recruit everyone you run into including bandits if they are injured and give up.
the most important thing for returning players tho: the aiming system is back but includes melee combat now! so imagine sweeping the legs out of under a infected then bashing their heads in while they're crippled on the ground. its fairly refreshing to do and feels super badass.
so far it doesn't seem to suffer from that insulin subplot from the first game (you have a unique companion who has diabetes and needs insulin every so often or dies) and the melee combat is quite dynamic. settlements also seem more sustainable due to the fact you can harvest trees now for wood, allowing you to deforest an area to make a real fort.
for less then the price of a combo at mcdonalds, youre getting an incredible value with this game and if my edits and overall impression hasn't made it clear, i highly recommend this game for those who love zombie survival games and don't want their hand held with a story or anything; just dropped in and expected to survive.
Post by: Zangi on June 02, 2020, 07:49:03 am
I also recommend at the very least checking out the first game in the series, which is on sale for a dollar. There is also a demo if you can’t even pony up that dollar.
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?franchise=Survivalist
Post by: Akura on June 04, 2020, 06:59:11 pm
The great: new magic is fun as hell. Fire gives you either an awesome looking firebolt that you can control a little in flight(charge, then stick your palm out and release), or lights your weapon to do extra damage(hold near, but not directly against, weapon while charging). Lighting works a bit different from before; first you charge up in your hand, then stick your hand out to shoot lightning(previously, it didn't charge up, it just shot lightning). Or charge your hand next to your weapon to electrify it.
Gravity is neat. Having it selected will allow you to force-grab your opponents' limbs like objects, allowing you to hold them aloft, pull them towards you(and your next attack), toss them off a cliff, or slam them into a wall/ceiling/whatever you fancy. Charging and casting it seems to send a blast wave of kinetic force, but I haven't figured the optimal ways of using it. Sometimes it just makes the enemy flinch, sometimes it sends them flying. I just don't know how yet to do one instead of the other. Charging gravity in both hands and holding them together causes all objects around you to start floating, but I haven't figured out the exact utility of this. Imbuing your weapon causes something to happen with how they ragdoll, but I didn't take enough time to figure out more; it's probably better for blunt weapons like the maul.
There's a new map, Citadel, which looks hella awesome as well. It's also far, far larger than any of the other (vanilla) maps.
Enemies have armor, so far I've only seen leather, but it does work. I've had slight difficulty stabbing the armored areas, but uncovered areas are still squishy meat. Stabs feel a bit more visceral as a result. Decapitations and limb removals also look better - they have meaty bits there instead of model glitching.
The bad: There's a serious issue where the game starts lagging like crazy, which in VR is very, very bad*. It's definitely not a limited issue, I've seen several posts from others already confirming it. I hope that will get fixed soon. The new enemy designs look a bit uglier than before, but it's not too bad. The character designer(I had to recreate my character) had several options not working properly, for example head type and hair type went from "none" to 5 with no options in between. And of course, mods, gotta wait for those(and I gotta reset my Nexus password again).
Post by: Robsoie on June 05, 2020, 12:10:12 pm
On window 10 system, some people seems to have no problem, but much more have (and i have) but i couldn't manage to get the game + unofficial patch (https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43735) + "attempted ddraw fix (https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46048)" to work (it always end with a "environment failed, verify your directx " type of error).
Some people pointed that they managed to make it work using DxWnd (https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44718)
Apparently there's an old version of DxDwn that was reported by some people to work faster with TA, found here :
https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showpost.php?p=743543&postcount=44
I tried it (with "unofficial patch + "attempted ddraw fix" already installed) and after changing the paths (https://i.imgur.com/PAYHiEV.jpg) to the gog executable (as the guy had the game installed somewhere else) then File -> Save to save my changes, it still didn't worked.
If you don't trust the guy uploading it, this version of DXWnd is this one :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/files/Latest%20build/v2_03_56_build.rar/download
And File -> Iimport this text file (rename the .txt into a .dwx format)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Then i set dxwnd.exe compatibility to "window XP SP3" , relaunched dxwnd and this time it worked perfectly and i finally could play.
Tested a mod, removed entirely then reinstalled TA and managed to make the escalation 9.2.0 gold + hotfix (http://taesc.tauniverse.com/?p=downloads) to work without the need of DxWnd (but of course it's only for skirmish or mp, as campaigns aren't available with mods).
Post by: Iduno on June 05, 2020, 02:02:13 pm
Edit: Also, which one is the best STALKER game?
Post by: Robsoie on June 05, 2020, 03:38:54 pm
Shadow of Chernobyl is the best for the atmosphere and has the more different areas to explore.
Call of Pripyat is the best for the missions and gameplay mechanics and has the biggest areas to explore.
For the standalone mods focused on the freeplay side , for me it's the recently released Call of the Zone, it ticks all the buttons for me and feels like a much more complete Call of Chernobyl.
Other people seems to be more fans of the Anomaly mod, but there are some features that i disliked (and can't be turned off) and took me out of the game.
Similarly to Anomaly, Call of the Zone does not require to have Call of Pripyat.
Post by: Aoi on June 05, 2020, 04:00:21 pm
Do I want Jupiter Hell?
I didn't like JH much-- and, if my memory serves properly, I hit Colonel Baron of Hell in DRL.
This is at least a few versions back. I found the view cramped, the action felt slow, the 4-directional movement bugs me (if you're looking at videos, it does visually support diagonal movement... but it's mechanically two steps), and as a result of the last two combined, combat less dynamic. Gone is the feeling of juking around corners to dodge bullets, despite there still being a slight mechanical advantage to do so.
Frankly, if it didn't come with the history of DRL, I probably would've looked at it, thought it looked vaguely interesting, and left it in the middle of the pile of "Things I'll never get around to."
Post by: Ulfarr on June 05, 2020, 06:07:21 pm
Edit: Also, which one is the best STALKER game?
To add a bit on what Robsoie already said. Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) is the "lore heavy" one since it focus a lot more on what is going on and why. It's also the most rough/unconventional and arguably difficult among the three games. Scavenging is a real aspect of the game.
Clear Sky (CS) is a prequel to Shadow of Chernobyl and it's probably the least favored among the STALKER community. It's not exactly a bad game, in fact it has a decent story and it did improve upon SoC in some areas with the most significant IMO being the repair/upgrade system. The bad part, is that its biggest selling point, Faction Wars, was quite bugged and ultimately irrelevant.
Call of Pripyat (COP) is more like a spin off. Your character isn't directly related to the events of the previous games, though you do have to deal with their aftermath. On the plus side you can enjoy COP even if you haven't played the other two. It's the best one in terms of gameplay mechanics and has some pretty memorable questlines but somewhere along the way it feels like it lost a bit of that "sense of mystery" that surrounds the Zone. I guess it's just natural since the "mystery" had been the focus of the previous installments so they didn't want to rehash it.
Post by: Robsoie on June 06, 2020, 05:16:15 am
I played some skirmish and i was quickly reminded by trying that the AI is very very weak in Total Annihilation skirmish mode and put up nearly no fight.
Here's an old article explaining what was going on for the default AI and how it got broke in official patches up to the bad AI there is now :
https://www.tauniverse.com/articles/tutorials/ai.html
On my first test battle on the Comet Catcher map (it's a very simple one so there's nothing too tricky for AI pathing), but without even seriously trying i kicked the AI very hard without absolutely any trouble, it was barely making any units.
Years ago there was 2 custom (and non cheating) AI that were noticably stronger.
http://aicentral.tauniverse.com/files/MostlyHarmless16.zip
and
http://aicentral.tauniverse.com/files/QuellerTACC17.zip
I installed Mostly Harmless (just put the AI folder from the archive into your Total Annihilation directory).
Then played on the same Comet Catcher map as before.
After starting to build up myself and expand my metal gathering thing (and solar panels), my radar around the map center started to catch some enemy around (the original AI never really tried to leave its overall starting area somewhere in the upperright part of the map) , i sent a couple of peewee (the most basic "kbots") that got themselves in the receiving end of many missiles.
Started to gather my peewee legions and my commander helped by 2 additional construction bots made some basic turrets near my map center (as i had placed several factories here, trying to keep the center map for myself) but i was too late, a huge amount of enemies robots and vehicles assaulted the map center, i put a brave defense with my many peewees (and some rocket bots) , destroying many attackers but the enemy was just overwhelming in firepower and annihilated my troops and defenses in the end.
I had took a bit too much my time to build up my armies, i was still used to the "do nothing much" original AI :D
Lots of fun, and so very heavily recommended to use Mostly Harmless for an actual challenging fun skirmish mode if you play OTA (original Total Annihilation, not a mod).
Post by: Iduno on June 06, 2020, 09:00:15 am
Do I want Jupiter Hell?
I didn't like JH much-- and, if my memory serves properly, I hit Colonel Baron of Hell in DRL.
This is at least a few versions back. I found the view cramped, the action felt slow, the 4-directional movement bugs me (if you're looking at videos, it does visually support diagonal movement... but it's mechanically two steps), and as a result of the last two combined, combat less dynamic. Gone is the feeling of juking around corners to dodge bullets, despite there still being a slight mechanical advantage to do so.
Frankly, if it didn't come with the history of DRL, I probably would've looked at it, thought it looked vaguely interesting, and left it in the middle of the pile of "Things I'll never get around to."
Thank you. That's what I was wondering. It looked too polished (no pun intended), like they were making up for something.
About Total Annihilation
I played some skirmish and i was quickly reminded by trying that the AI is very very weak in Total Annihilation skirmish mode and put up nearly no fight.
Here's an old article explaining what was going on for the default AI and how it got broke in official patches up to the bad AI there is now :
https://www.tauniverse.com/articles/tutorials/ai.html
On my first test battle on the Comet Catcher map (it's a very simple one so there's nothing too tricky for AI pathing), but without even seriously trying i kicked the AI very hard without absolutely any trouble, it was barely making any units.
Years ago there was 2 custom (and non cheating) AI that were noticably stronger.
http://aicentral.tauniverse.com/files/MostlyHarmless16.zip
and
http://aicentral.tauniverse.com/files/QuellerTACC17.zip
I installed Mostly Harmless (just put the AI folder from the archive into your Total Annihilation directory).
Then played on the same Comet Catcher map as before.
After starting to build up myself and expand my metal gathering thing (and solar panels), my radar around the map center started to catch some enemy around (the original AI never really tried to leave its overall starting area somewhere in the upperright part of the map) , i sent a couple of peewee (the most basic "kbots") that got themselves in the receiving end of many missiles.
Started to gather my peewee legions and my commander helped by 2 additional construction bots made some basic turrets near my map center (as i had placed several factories here, trying to keep the center map for myself) but i was too late, a huge amount of enemies robots and vehicles assaulted the map center, i put a brave defense with my many peewees (and some rocket bots) , destroying many attackers but the enemy was just overwhelming in firepower and annihilated my troops and defenses in the end.
I had took a bit too much my time to build up my armies, i was still used to the "do nothing much" original AI :D
Lots of fun, and so very heavily recommended to use Mostly Harmless for an actual challenging fun skirmish mode if you play OTA (original Total Annihilation, not a mod).
I remember getting to the point with human opponents where you had a noticeable impact on the early game if you built a solar collector before you built a metal collector or the other way around. And also that the ARM's flash tanks were the only unit they ever really used because they were the only particularly good units, and CORE needed to get to tech level 2 before they could survive long enough to fight back. The asymmetric combat was interesting. And also that walking your commander around an opposing base d-gunning everything was a fun strategy. 2 commanders exploding in someone's base left it a great target (but also requires turning off commander death = victory).
Post by: Frumple on June 06, 2020, 09:35:40 am
But yeah, if you can get them working definitely check out the mods. Iirc one of the big ones added ubiquitous gigantic artillery and it was great :P
Post by: Iduno on June 06, 2020, 09:58:30 am
Stealing commanders with air transports will forever the Best Thing, I think. First you steal it, then you drive it straight into the biggest concentration of enemy stuff and Boom, hohoho.
But yeah, if you can get them working definitely check out the mods. Iirc one of the big ones added ubiquitous gigantic artillery and it was great :P
Haha, D-gun goes brrrr.
Post by: Akura on June 06, 2020, 10:15:07 am
Stealing commanders with air transports will forever the Best Thing, I think. First you steal it, then you drive it straight into the biggest concentration of enemy stuff and Boom, hohoho.
Didn't know you could do that. What happens if you self-destruct your air transport while it's carrying the enemy commander?
Only mod I remember playing long enough to actually remember playing was a Star Wars one.
Post by: Mephisto on June 06, 2020, 10:27:45 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 06, 2020, 10:41:45 am
With Mostly Harmless i played a 2vs2 on Comet Catcher and noticed my ARM ally was overworking nicely while the 2 CORE enemies were doing very few.
My ARM ally just attacked both CORE ones and utterly destroyed them all. I just helped when my ally went to the 2nd CORE AI base, but i was surprised how relatively passive the 2 CORE enemies have been there.
Removed Mostly Harmless AI and redid the same battle with the Queller AI, this time the ARM AI ally and its direct CORE opponent where duking it out roughly at mid distance of both bases, while i was toying around with units, the 2nd CORE AI came directly for me, and obliterated my attempts at resisting.
Oh i managed to block the first wave but lost all my kbots in the way, my reinforcement were less numerous than the AI one and they crushed me :D
And that on medium difficulty only.
So it looks like the best choice for improved AI (when using non-cheating AI, as you can also download cheating ones if you want) for original (at least unofficially patched for my case) TA is the Queller AI, it's just fun.
But both are very very very much better than the default AI that stall itself so much it can barely build a few units while you have already legions of them.
A good way to install mods is to just copy your (not modded, and not unofficially patched yet) Total Annihilation directory, as it seems several TA can coexist this way without problems.
the 4-directional movement bugs me
Was this one for a possible console release (due to joypad/stick diagonals being possibly a problem) ?
DoomRL (and every roguelike/similar i played) works so right with 8 directions.
Post by: Akura on June 06, 2020, 11:34:49 am
PRE-EDIT: Nevermind. I was able to get it running through DxWnd. Took a while, eventually figured out that I had to check the box labeled "Acquire admin caps" under TA's profile. Otherwise, trying to run it would do literally nothing at all. Still can't get War Wind working though - it runs but all I get is a black screen with sound. Might require more tweaking with options I lack the intelligence to fully understand. It's just like playing with console emulators all over again...
Post by: Robsoie on June 06, 2020, 12:11:09 pm
Here's some how to (at least for window 10) install Total Annihilation Escalation with the GOG TA
- Install the GOG Total Annihilation
if you already did (and didn't modded it yet or unofficially patched it yet) make a copy of the installed "Total Annihilation" directory and name it "Total Annihilation Escalation" )
if you already modded your GOG Total Annihilation, rename it and reinstall from the GOG Installer as you want an untouched TA for Escalation
Put this "Total Annihilation Escalation" folder in C:\ directly so you obtain C:\Total Annihilation Escalation
(this is so you will not have to change path in the dxwnd file later)
- Download latest version (for now it's TAESC_GOLD_9_2_0.rar ) , don't get the hotfix.
http://taesc.tauniverse.com/?p=downloads
- Open TAESC_GOLD_9_2_0.rar (with 7zip by example) , go into the "Install Main Files" folder.
Take everything that is there and move it to your C:\Total Annihilation Escalation\
overwrite files of the same name
ignore the other folder (yes even the one "for window 10" because a later fix will be more advanced and better)
- Download the ddraw fix (ddraw-fix11a.zip) from there :
https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46048
Open ddraw-fix11a.zip , go into the "Escalation" folder of it and move the 4 files (aqrit.cfg, edraw.dll, pdrawl.dll and TAESC.ini)
to your C:\Total Annihilation Escalation\
Overwrite files of the same name.
- Download this version of DxWnd :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/files/Latest%20build/v2_03_56_build.rar/download
Create a new text file and copy paste the following into it :
Code: [Select]
[target]
title0=Total Annihilation Escalation
path0=C:\Total Annihilation Escalation\TotalA.exe
launchpath0=C:\Total Annihilation Escalation\TotalA.exe
module0=
opengllib0=
notes0=
registry0=
ver0=1
coord0=0
flag0=1048742
flagg0=138969433
flagh0=16
flagi0=205520896
flagj0=4096
flagk0=268435460
flagl0=0
flagm0=0
tflag0=0
posx0=0
posy0=0
sizx0=1920
sizy0=1080
maxfps0=0
initts0=0
winver0=7
maxres0=-1
swapeffect0=0
maxddinterface0=7
(if you moved the "Total Annihilation Escalation" directory somewhere else than i suggested, change the path in the text up there accordingly.)Save the changes and rename the .txt extension into .dxw
Extract "v2_03_56_build.rar"
In the extracted folder, right Click on dxwnd.exe -> Properties -> Compatibilty tab and set the compatibility to Window XP Service Pack 3, then OK
Launch dxwnd.exe, click on File -> Import and select your self made .dxw file then OK.
Wait a few second and a button with the name "Total Annihilation Escalation" will appear.
If you have "Total Annihilation Escalation" path correct as i suggested before, the button will be green, if not you did something wrong, check your paths.
Click File -> Save to make it so you don't have to reload the .dxw file every time you'll launch DXWnd.
You'll launch Escalation by double clicking on the green button, it should work with no problem with window 10 this way.
If you want an improved AI for skirmish, refer to this thread :
https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46159
the file you want is at the time "AI Profiles Pack v2020.04.30b for Escalation 9.2.zip"
Move the file "AI Profiles Pack v2020.04.30 for Escalation 9.2.ufo", the "aE" and "gamedatE" folders directly to C:\Total Annihilation Escalation\
(it should overwrite nothing)
Post by: Robsoie on June 07, 2020, 12:42:09 pm
DO NOT play skirmish vs AI with Options -> Fog of war set to "True" unless you're a masochist, set it to Permanent instead (so already explored areas do not disappear again in the fog).
You'll thank me later after noticing that opponent AI units (without a radar), will shoot at your units beyond the fog of war, because they play as if fog of war was set to Permanent even if it's not (while your own units can't do that of course without building one of the highest end building that you'll never build because games are usually decided before coming to that point).
Sure with the default AI it's not much of a problem because that AI is pathetic and is unable to build anything that can be threatening and even this advantage will not helpt it, but playing with an actual good AI profile like the Queller AI one and you'll throw your computer through the window :D
Post by: Frumple on June 07, 2020, 03:57:42 pm
It's been a while, but iirc it still goes boom :PStealing commanders with air transports will forever the Best Thing, I think. First you steal it, then you drive it straight into the biggest concentration of enemy stuff and Boom, hohoho.Didn't know you could do that. What happens if you self-destruct your air transport while it's carrying the enemy commander?
Suiciding your own commander like that is also a thing you can do in some circumstances, heh. It usually didn't really, uh, help. But it was great when it did.
Haha, D-gun goes brrrr.Getting past the d-gun always was the biggest problem, yeah. Still, it was possible, and when it worked... just perfection.
Post by: Mephisto on June 10, 2020, 07:38:38 am
(https://i.imgur.com/Kxs93ty.png)
The MS Paint hammer and anvil are animated. Someone likes modded Minecraft.
Post by: Iduno on June 10, 2020, 03:15:23 pm
Is there any chance that game is good?
Post by: Kagus on June 10, 2020, 05:15:40 pm
Suiciding your own commander like that is also a thing you can do in some circumstances, heh. It usually didn't really, uh, help. But it was great when it did.I've seen this done in SupCom team play, it was fantastic.
A player was just about knocked out of the fight, and somehow managed to sneak their commander right in behind the enemy commander. Enemy commander tries to run away while this suicidal jackass just trudges closer with a giant "SHOOT ME, BITCH!" sign on it.
Post by: Frumple on June 10, 2020, 07:39:36 pm
Post by: Iduno on June 10, 2020, 07:46:19 pm
Suiciding your own commander like that is also a thing you can do in some circumstances, heh. It usually didn't really, uh, help. But it was great when it did.I've seen this done in SupCom team play, it was fantastic.
A player was just about knocked out of the fight, and somehow managed to sneak their commander right in behind the enemy commander. Enemy commander tries to run away while this suicidal jackass just trudges closer with a giant "SHOOT ME, BITCH!" sign on it.
Eventually they either have to shoot you back (killing both of you), or just accept that you'll destroy their entire base if you have enough energy generation.
Post by: Aoi on June 12, 2020, 06:58:05 am
Battles in the first few sectors feel pretty same-y, partly due to their version of the 'pod': Battles are mostly contained to individual rooms, which means your strategy is to use the doors as chokepoints/cover. I've had two battles take place with a different layout, which was effectively a large open area with cover. In both cases, the general plan of letting snipers do the heavy lifting works perfectly fine.
It does have one feature which I really like and wish could be incorporated into more tactical games-- as long as all the opened rooms are clear of hostiles (or haven't been triggered yet), you can let the AI control your squad while you manually take point. They'll pick up loot automatically and position themselves behind you in some semblance of cover until hostiles are spotted or you turn off the function.
Spoiler: A slight note regarding developer issues... (click to show/hide)
Post by: Folly on June 13, 2020, 12:39:28 am
My biggest complaint is that Superliminal is entirely linear, where TSP had multiple paths to explore, often with unexpected results. The dialogue also strikes me as somewhat less witty.
There are puzzles, and a few of them had my scratching my head for a while before realizing the obvious solution and feeling pleased with myself. There were only a few of those moments however, with most of the puzzle solutions being fairly obvious.
I got this game heavily discounted through the Epic store, and I feel like it was barely worth what I paid. Couldn't recommend it at full price.
Post by: Iduno on June 13, 2020, 06:23:09 pm
Edit: Beacon from the itch bundle is an interesting idea: you're a clone who powers up by combining different types of DNA, but mostly it's about running around shooting stuff. There's not enough stuff to shoot, because half of the weapons bounce off enemies to create bombs (so it tends to hit you if you hit directly), or start fires. That means you shoot stuff, wait for the hazards you created to go away, then run around exploring more. The base plasma pistol doesn't do that, fires fast, and accurately. That means I pretty much just used that always. It looks gorgeous, and I'm guessing it's someone's thing. Mostly it just made me want to replay Satellite Reign.
Post by: Jopax on June 15, 2020, 04:48:25 am
My only gripes is the slightly janky animations and the weirdly desynced hit sounds (those especially are off-putting since sounds are super important in reading the timings of your hits, having them all over the place really screws with that feedback)
Post by: Robsoie on June 15, 2020, 06:39:15 am
From what i read and saw on youtube that contract mode was making most of the replay value of the game with its freeform gameplay (you select a level, you select a weapon and costume, then select targets and try to take them out, giving you then a good sandbox replayable gameplay), as the campaign while i enjoyed it was very linear , offering only few way to complete a level(and most of the time only 1 way) and unlike Hitman of past you couldn't even use your previously unlocked weapons in it when replaying.
So after completing missions after missions until the end ..*spoiler*.. and having ending credits rolling, let's get to the main menu, hmm ? where's that Contract mode option ?
Learned the hard way that for some reason the devs made contract mode online-only as apparently you could share your own self created contracts but as usual with online-only crap when servers are taken down permanently features are broken.
So what did they do, instead of simply allowing you to just play your contract offline they took down the feature entirely from the game, cutting a good bunch of replay value.
Oh well, at least i enjoyed the campaign a bit (out of some very stupid situations in the cutscenes) on my first play through, will have to try if upper difficulties give it replay value.
Post by: Iduno on June 15, 2020, 08:31:52 am
After completing Hitman Absolution , i was looking forward the unlocked Contract mode.
From what i read and saw on youtube that contract mode was making most of the replay value of the game with its freeform gameplay (you select a level, you select a weapon and costume, then select targets and try to take them out, giving you then a good sandbox replayable gameplay), as the campaign while i enjoyed it was very linear , offering only few way to complete a level(and most of the time only 1 way) and unlike Hitman of past you couldn't even use your previously unlocked weapons in it when replaying.
So after completing missions after missions until the end ..*spoiler*.. and having ending credits rolling, let's get to the main menu, hmm ? where's that Contract mode option ?
Learned the hard way that for some reason the devs made contract mode online-only as apparently you could share your own self created contracts but as usual with online-only crap when servers are taken down permanently features are broken.
So what did they do, instead of simply allowing you to just play your contract offline they took down the feature entirely from the game, cutting a good bunch of replay value.
Oh well, at least i enjoyed the campaign a bit (out of some very stupid situations in the cutscenes) on my first play through, will have to try if upper difficulties give it replay value.
Aw. I haven't really done contract mode in the new Hitman games, but at least it's good to hear there is a reason to do so. I think the weird challenges (kill everyone with a cannon, kill both targets with the same bullet, etc.) are an interesting way to get you to replay the levels, even if there is usually only one way to get it to work.
Post by: Mephisto on June 16, 2020, 11:17:06 am
Hardspace Shipbreaker (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbreaker/), out today.
Post by: n9103 on June 16, 2020, 05:16:25 pm
I spent like 90 bucks on game bundles lately or this'd be an instabuy and full thread candidate.FWIW, Scott Manley did a recent video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj0FKs7l8sA
Hardspace Shipbreaker (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbreaker/), out today.
Post by: Folly on June 16, 2020, 10:56:02 pm
I've been loosely following the game for a while now; loosely enough that I had been expecting an open-world sandbox, and was a bit disappointed upon closer inspection today seeing that it's not open at all, but just a series of very limited shipwreck spaces. Still, the price-point was right, so I'll give it a chance anyway.
EDIT: Played it a little bit. Experienced a game-breaking bug in the tutorial. Forums indicate there are several such bugs currently.
It seems there are only 2 ships in the game right now, with a few minor variations on each. Far less content than I'd been led to expect.
Post by: Salmeuk on June 16, 2020, 11:28:21 pm
I spent like 90 bucks on game bundles lately or this'd be an instabuy and full thread candidate.FWIW, Scott Manley did a recent video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj0FKs7l8sA
Hardspace Shipbreaker (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbreaker/), out today.
I think I was sold when the character put their hand on a hollow pipe in order to hear if it was actively running. Holy immersion!
Post by: nenjin on June 17, 2020, 04:51:10 pm
Post by: Salmeuk on June 19, 2020, 12:49:08 am
Your cutter is not as powerful or as freeform as I first imagined, which was a realization that disappointed me. You have two modes, that work to either heat up an object to disintegration, or to slice an object vertically or horizontally. The objects you can interact with seem to be limited to pre-established anchor points, which is kind of boring to work with, or the various aluminum panels that make up the spaceship. You cannot cut into the ship from the outside (at least, not in the first 5 of 10 xp levels in the game), so you are sort of working with only a few potential places to cut. And with the limited ship variation, you end up making the same kind of cuts over and over. Which is OK, but for a 'debt simulator' style game it was kind of monotonous. Since you make loads of dosh selling complete ship components over damaged pieces, you are discouraged from cutting - at least if you plan to 'use the whole buffalo,' as one in-game character describes it. Of course, the option is there to loot and scoot - just take the reactor, engine, and maybe a few packages or consoles, and forfeit the rest. There is no cost to acquiring a new hull to scrap.
I discovered that by grabbing onto a permanent surface, like that of the space station, and left clicking, you can propel yourself at high speeds. This can save you a HUGE amount of time, but must be performed precisely. I haven't fallen into either of the scrap processors, but I'm kind of curious what happens, as there is nothing stopping you from accidentally throwing yourself into one. I imagine you could float off into the void as well, if you ran out of thruster fuel and an inopportune moment. .
Post by: Folly on June 19, 2020, 03:01:31 am
Of course, the option is there to loot and scoot - just take the reactor, engine, and maybe a few packages or consoles, and forfeit the rest. There is no cost to acquiring a new hull to scrap.
Beyond paying your daily maintenance fees, there's not much point to grinding credits. The real goal should be grinding LP by completing quests so that you can upgrade skills and eventually become a more efficient worker, allowing you to gain credits much faster and actually start paying off some real debt.
Post by: IncompetentFortressMaker on June 19, 2020, 01:42:11 pm
Post by: nenjin on June 19, 2020, 01:52:05 pm
Post by: Dostoevsky on June 19, 2020, 02:10:57 pm
Breakership Hardspace?
That sounds more like a shipboarding torpedo-marine simulator, which would be completely amazing.
Anyways, going to give a quick plug for Monster Sanctuary (https://store.steampowered.com/app/814370/Monster_Sanctuary/) on Steam Early Access. I know, Early Access, but it feels in a pretty decent place right now - sizable amount of content, stable, getting fairly frequent updates. They also have a demo (with seamless save transfer to the full version).
As to what it actually is, it's a 'pokemon metroidvania'. In practice, that means lots of battles along with some platforming and light puzzles. The battling is definitely the meat of it, so decide based on that. One of those 'bump into the enemies to fight' setups, not random swirly screen of fight.
As to those battles, you have a party of 6 but fight 3 v. 3. Each monster (and there are a little under 80 at the moment) has its own set of skill trees comprised of active & passive skills. Passive traits aren't nearly as influential as, say, Siralim, but there are still plenty of options and the net combination of possible skills does help set monsters apart from each other pretty well.
Also like Siralim, health/mana are recovered between fights which means that each individual fight has higher stakes than just long-term resource management.
The main negative I'm seeing is that leveling up a low-level monster can be something of a pain - there are items like rare candy, but it seems like you have to jump through some hoops for them instead of just purchasing. Thankfully this is only really an issue if you're trying to raise an early-game monster or one you've let go fallow for a while - monsters from your current area tend to be pretty close to your current level. Only your active team of 6 gain XP, which means you can passively level 3 monsters while actively using 3. It's not terrible, but I'd prefer a smoother way to get lower-level monsters back up to speed.
Other potential negative is that it features something of a level-scaling system. Basically, the first time you enter a cell/screen/block the monsters there are set to your current level (with a minimum but not a maximum, I think). This means you'll never be overleveled for a new area, but you can come back later at a higher level. Combined with the above, however, means that if you're leveling up some lower monsters you may want to switch away from your A team from time to time for more even leveling.
Really though, just try the demo. The early game monsters have slightly more basic skill trees on the whole, but are still a good introduction of how the gameplay feels.
Post by: Cthulhu on June 20, 2020, 11:20:34 am
TLOU1:
Gameplay vs zombies: 2/5 - Rarely fun, mostly boring, very one-dimensional compared to...
Gameplay vs humans: 5/5 - fuckin mastapeece. Dynamic stealth, enemy behavior, melee and weapon mechanics combine to combat vs humans an ugly chaotic, desperate mess that's an absolute joy to play and perfectly captures the post-apocalyptic theme.
Other "gameplay:" 0/5 - Okay we're in another part where Joel and Ellie walk forward and talk and occasionally move a ladder. This is a cutscene, just because I can control the character doesn't mean it's gameplay
Story: 4/5 - Some cliches, but genuine emotion and character development and a very ballsy ending
TLOU2:
Gameplay vs zombies: 3/5 - More dynamic, some new QOL changes make it less of a chore, still pretty boring
Gameplay vs humans: 5/5 - It's the exact same thing but the enemies have names and it plays smoother than TLOU1. They didn't do anything new and they didn't need to, I chef kiss it
Other "gameplay:" 0/5 - fuck off why is this shit in the game. I hate it so much.
Story: 3/5 - The bleakness gets tiresome after a while. The new partner characters don't have the same dynamic, I've heard the ending sucks but I'm not there yet, we'll see.
Overall, I have to give it a 10/5 because the combat vs humans is so fucking good it doesn't really matter what the rest of the game is. I haven't said enough good things about it.
Everybody seems to have decided to hate the game, I haven't paid enough attention to figure out why but it seems to be knee-jerk. Ellie is a lesbian which who cares, people also hate Abby because she has biceps or something. I think she's fun
Game's worth the money in my opinion, but they really need to either stop trying to tell stories in video games, or figure out a way to tell a story without making 75% of the game completely non-interactive. The first actual gameplay is 20 minutes into the game and it's a 90 second snowball fight with children, followed by another fifteen or 20 minutes of cutscenes and parts where you're technically in control but the only thing you can do is walk forward.
Post by: Mephisto on June 20, 2020, 11:28:32 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Cthulhu on June 20, 2020, 12:22:15 pm
A lot of hate towards Abby too, I've heard back and forth that she's trans which seems like a big part of it. I'm not sure if they out her at some point or if people are just saying she is. Guess we'll see.
I mean she also SPOILER, but that's not what the people I've seen complaining seem to be mad about.
Post by: Egan_BW on June 20, 2020, 07:20:26 pm
Overall, I have to give it a 10/5
wait, that's illegal
Post by: Iduno on June 21, 2020, 10:30:18 am
Post by: Dostoevsky on June 21, 2020, 12:31:01 pm
Kind of like a simplified 2D From the Depths, but that doesn't really give it justice. Also, the crew mechanics are an element I don't believe is in FtD, and understanding the ins and outs of a good interior can make a huge difference.
2 main issues: the campaign mode lacks any form of diplomacy (something the developer is slowly making progress on correcting), and the Itch version doesn't have access to the excellent array of Steam Workshop mods. The dev has set up a Nexus page to try and get it populated with mods, but as of this writing only a few are up there yet.
Post by: MCreeper on June 21, 2020, 12:42:36 pm
Debating between making a post here v. the really old thread that does actually exist for it, but wanted to alert folks that the recent Itch bundle contains what I'd argue is a real gem - Airships: Conquer the Skies.This one actually haves a thread there, although small one.
Kind of like a simplified 2D From the Depths, but that doesn't really give it justice. Also, the crew mechanics are an element I don't believe is in FtD, and understanding the ins and outs of a good interior can make a huge difference.
2 main issues: the campaign mode lacks any form of diplomacy (something the developer is slowly making progress on correcting), and the Itch version doesn't have access to the excellent array of Steam Workshop mods. The dev has set up a Nexus page to try and get it populated with mods, but as of this writing only a few are up there yet.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=157903.msg6972125#msg6972125
EDIT: Whoops, i'm blind.
Post by: Dostoevsky on June 21, 2020, 01:06:05 pm
If/when the diplomacy update comes out for it I may well give that old thread a necropost, but for now didn't think it was quite worth it.
Post by: Frumple on June 21, 2020, 04:32:29 pm
Is anyone else that has noticed the thing also getting significant Chaos Engine vibes from the general aesthetics? 'Cause I've been watching vids, hearing folks say the look is significantly unique, and I'm just going, "Chaos Engine. This thing reminds of me of chaos engine." Modernized, and whatnot, but... still.
Post by: Cthulhu on June 21, 2020, 11:12:15 pm
I kind of get it. Not that specific problem, but the story's not as good as TLOU1 and I think the main problem is lack of buy-in. That plus the general development climate of the game, crunch time and all, turned people against it early on, making them less disposed to emotionally invest in the story, so when it demonstrates the consequences of the characters' actions people are taking them directly instead of viewing them as story elements. The game isn't Ellie and Abby in a tit-for-tat blood feud and the miserable consequences for everyone, but a wagging finger direct from Neil Druckmann to the player.
The big complaint is the dog scene though, which is bizarre to me since immediately following the dog scene
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Following that scene you replay the events of the game as Abby, seeing everything from the other side. You visit Ellie's mission areas before she arrives and talk to NPCs with the dramatic irony that you know they'll all be dead in a few hours. E.g. at the beginning of the hospital scene there's the two wolves where the one is dating a soldier and recommends her friend do it too since it's got perks, it's in the gameplay trailer. You talk to them in the Abby sequence, just for a second, if you're not paying attention you might not notice. I grabbed the guy from behind and used him as a human shield to shoot the lady in the head, then stabbed the guy to death. It's an interesting touch.
I think it's also a hazard of paying attention to games journalism, especially the leaks and shit. I basically consumed no media regarding this game aside from watching the official trailers. I didn't even realize the dog scene was significant, I just blew through it, assumed it was one of those periodic stalling sequences they do to conceal load times. I'm guessing something in the media hype, maybe the leaks, is what got people riled up.
Other cute touches, Abby is afraid of heights which becomes a minor story point/character development moment. If you look down a fatal drop while you're playing her, she starts visibly getting distressed, breathing heavy and hugging herself and the camera dolly zooms back
Post by: scriver on June 22, 2020, 12:32:43 am
The game itself is solid.
But Jesus. The camera. I think this game has the most awful camera of any game I've played in... I don't even know. Highly unsuited to the game. Highly unsuited to the level design. Just. Can't. Deal. With it. It's bad enough to be the single thing making me not want to get the game once it eventually releases. It's terrible.
Post by: Frumple on June 22, 2020, 06:50:21 am
Post by: scriver on June 22, 2020, 08:24:23 am
Post by: Cthulhu on June 22, 2020, 09:46:15 am
Post by: scriver on June 22, 2020, 10:00:28 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 23, 2020, 04:59:06 pm
http://zero.tauniverse.com/
And i was absolutely amazed by it, all the units have been remade visually (overall they look more "stylish"), and they have incredible animation (seeing your lowly kbots rushing enemy tanks while slashing them with their sword is something) , the explosions and other special effects are all much better than in the original.
There's even a 3rd faction but haven't yet played enough to test everything.
The AI is actually challenging in skirmish without the need of extra file, it's a really fantastic mod, must play for TA fans.
For those interested, here's an how to get TA Zero running on window 7/8/10 :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43734&page=12
Post by: Cthulhu on June 24, 2020, 08:48:40 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Zangi on June 24, 2020, 10:46:19 am
Beat TLOU2. Giving a 3.5, maybe 4 of 5. Good game, pretty good story, a lot of the complaints I've seen are mostly unfounded or based on weird misinterpretations of characters.I’ve only watched someone stream/YouTube the first few hours of the game, but yea, I agree with you there.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Egan_BW on June 25, 2020, 06:23:33 am
Other than that, I'm like 2 hours in and haven't yet made any meaningful decisions or experienced gameplay past fighting a couple weak enemies and a tutorial boss. But I expect that. That's normal, because this game is both a JRPG and a VN. ;P
[Press A to hear teenagers complain about being teenagers]
Post by: Cthulhu on June 25, 2020, 07:38:18 am
Post by: Jopax on June 26, 2020, 12:15:10 pm
If you like the previous games, you'll pretty much like this one as well, more of the same with some new stuff like the factory and in 3d which is a pretty nice implementation that's just as readable as the 2d was. And hell even if you never played the previous ones, give it a try if you're into a pretty good take on tower defence with a twist.
Post by: Mephisto on June 26, 2020, 02:00:09 pm
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbGtYZWsfRxVaXqXmtS1yuA
Post by: MCreeper on June 26, 2020, 05:34:06 pm
Fast forward few rounds, three tanks that are impenetrable from the front appear! Nope, you will not need to juggle your tank and lancers around, they are impenetrable only for this round. And on next you gain three of exact same tanks just nearby. Have fun. And what is the one and only danger on this mission? Lone scout that beelines for your flag. FUCK YOU. About the same stuff in first game, by the way.
And i just can't help but compare mortars in Men of War and mortars in VC4. Former:
Modest steel tube, is carried around by two men for a reason.
Hits like a truck, flying off a ridge.
Range: thoroughly unimpressive, but sufficient for what that is.
Precision: well, at max range, 5 out of those 24 shots will maybe hit something besides the ground.
Latter:
Humongous hunk of metal that is really supposed to weight half a ton, is carried around along with ammo by a slim girl (what's up with horns? And i know it's not even funny).
Hits like a truck, crashing trough the bridge.
Range: IIRC, almost on par with a snipe.
Precision: literally 10 times better than a snipe - unless debuffed, always hits the dot (in some rare cases, "the dot" may turn out to be a wee bit wider than it looks, but it's still precise enough to give garanteed headshots at max range).
It really looks like it wasn't supposed to be able to shot immidiately after moving, but they scrapped the idea at the last moment.
Because fuck game balance.
Post by: Robsoie on June 26, 2020, 07:22:48 pm
-- Ok.
- Agent 47 we recommend that you use an appropiate disguise to stay undetected.
-- No Problem.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Hitman Absolution
Post by: Iduno on June 26, 2020, 08:09:22 pm
Post by: scriver on June 27, 2020, 04:54:44 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 27, 2020, 05:09:58 am
There's also some bad design choice that hurt the replay value (no ability to replay the missions with your own unlocked weapon/costume choice like in past Hitman, you can only replay with the default loadout, and the removal of the Contract mode instead of making it available offline too is beyond idiocy) but in the end some of the maps are very fun to replay .
Post by: Robsoie on June 28, 2020, 07:42:27 am
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
Apparently it's the follow up on the various evolution of the Balanced Annihilation spring game, the goal being to have an actual modern Total Annihilation.
they explain on how to install on their discord server, i posted the how to install in the spoiler for those that can't be bothered with those discord things :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Broseph Stalin on July 13, 2020, 10:44:33 pm
People said Absolution was the worst of the hitman games. But I don't know, from what I can see, it is clearly the best.The story is abominable, the levels are chopped up into meaningless pieces, and in the game about being a contract killer most of your kills are done in cutscenes. It's also painfully obvious that the people in charge of the story and the people in charge of the levels never met because a secret laboratory is in abutment of the desert and an underground fighting arena.
And because I can't let this go: Don't make a game where the shocking twist makes the title and half of your cut scenes meaningless.
Post by: Robsoie on July 14, 2020, 11:20:55 am
It even has a day/night cycle with the tiles environment changing color (and line of sight changing) depending on time of the day.
https://www.shadowofthewyrm.org/
https://jcd748.itch.io/shadow-of-the-wyrm
Anyways, near one of the 2 possible starting towns there's a ruined dungeon on the upper floor there are 2 locked doors, the key is somewhere in one of the couple of short basements of the ruined dungeon, not sure which one had the key i needed but both basement are good for getting more XP.
The rat basement is very easy and as you probably already grinded (they come quick in early game) a few levels , those poor rats are not going to be a threat, but the XP is worth doing, and there are some interesting piece of items to fetch.
The tomb basement isn't harder until the far west room due the presence of a couple of crones somewhere in it, those monsters must be absolutely killed as soon as possible , they're super weak so if you manage to hit you're going to kill them in one hit (assuming you have a strong hitting character/weapon) but if you can't get to them and kill them fast, you're going to be on the recieving end of multiple extreme status damaging curse and end paralysed and dead in a couple of turns.
Oh and they can move through walls so plan your way to have walls blocking their visions once they spotted you and wait until they get into a wall right next to you so you can hit them immediately.
Then there's the trick, you have probably cleared (except the infinite dungeon of course) most of the island locations so now you have the keys and you're reading to go to the upper floor of that ruined castle, you're at most level 12 or 13, you put nice amount of skill points in combat and in your best weapon, you just feel ready.
... and you will die, because if you open the top locked door, there are drakelings that even my well equipped level 20 guy (i travelled on my boat to other island to grind and find better equipment until i reached level 16, got some fishing skill too so i could get food from my sea adventures) was unable to kill a single of them, while the opposite wasn't true,
But at level 16 and nice enough equipment, the 4 or 5 powerfull monsters located behind the locked bottom door were actually killable (and resting between each fights as they still individually pack a punch).
Throwing me to level 20 (wow 4 levels gained from only 4 or 5 monsters, they must have outleveled my character to deliver that much XP).
level 20 that was still unable to kill a single drakeling, so i ignored the top door and decided to take my boat and explore other islands and their locations.
On the extreme south west of the world map, i ran into a mysterious shrine on a lonely island, went to explore it and a pit fiend welcomed me.
No idea of the power level of that thing, i still attacked with my level 20 nicely equiped guy, noticed that the pit fiend was hurting me a lot then ... he died , welcome to level 27 !
I rest for a while to get back to healthy enough and ... a second pit fiend, this time it wasn't hurting as much (as my character at level 27 is very strong) and i killed him faster ... 2 more levels, welcome to level 29.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The tons of skill points from those level ups came in handy to have my recently acquired crossbow to become very usefull.
(oh and it looks like pit fiends are the lesser of the threats in that shrine, there are other things inside that are best
I'm always surprised how very few people seems to talk about this Shadow of the Wyrm in roguelike communities (making finding guides and spoilers probably impossible), i guess due to roguelike being a small niche and so most people interested in the genre are probably mostly playing the big names of the genre.
Post by: Folly on July 15, 2020, 08:27:49 am
It's also one of the free games on their subscription service this month, allowing you to pick it up at 1/3rd of the price on the condition that you will only be able to continue playing while your subscription is active.
Edit:
Well, I finished all the maps. It was fun, but short and very much the same as previous games. Story also felt a bit half-assed.
My single biggest gripe is a mistake that I've seen several big games make recently. There are 18 maps, 3 difficulty levels, and 7 of them have Neverending variants. And you can only search for online games for one of these options at a time. So yeah, online is completely dead because nobody wants to mess with that nonsense.
Second biggest gripe is that content-wise this feels pretty shallow compared to OMD:Unchained, which tragically shut down last year.
Post by: Robsoie on July 15, 2020, 12:56:56 pm
So i went back to the southern west part of the world, in the previously discovered shrine and after a very difficult battle, trying to attract one by one the high level enemies that were in it so i could get a 1vs1, some of them were still really too dangerous
But after beating enough of those monsters to make a way to the center of the shrine i finally got to the prize and got to level 40 from all the monsters destroyed (funny i got at least 3 levels from a few fights, while the lots of quests and dungeon clearing i did barely was giving me a level or 2, but out of the dwarven ruins one with super hard hitting lich king, holy avengers and molten demons it wasn't hard at all , i guess i was slighlty overleveled at that point).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Not going to explore the other side of that shrine as there are more of those insane enemies there, will have to do this again on 2 of the other mysterious shrines found in various corner of the world and finally i'll be able to exchange them against apparently what should be a super weapon (the type depending on who you will give those 3 artifacts).
Probably something very needed once i'll try to get to the main boss of the game .
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on July 15, 2020, 08:09:51 pm
For those interested in building an aesthetically pleasing Medieval city it is worth checking out!
Post by: Robsoie on July 16, 2020, 11:57:39 am
It had been a long adventure, full of dangers, full of terror, full of heroics ,
The appropriately named Number 5 (the 4 numbers before him died , poor things ignoring the power level class of various monsters and dungeons as SotW has no community discussing it and no wiki or in depth guide, it makes the learning process a lot hard on your character survivability than other similarly epic-sized roguelikes) , wearing the best equipment he could, gaining powers and stats from potions and artifacts, shielded by
He also survived the strange horrors of the surprisingly very lethal shrines hags
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
gaining levels and skills in each powerful monsters defeats.
With the 3 shrine divine artifacts in hands, he had a choice to what to do with them, through his explorations of the world some people asked for them and in exchange would forge incredibly powerfull weapons. His choice went to the blacksmith of Isen Dun (Isen Dun is one of the 2 possible start location for new character) as he promised a long bladed weapon (and my character had very high skill with this type of weapon).
And so was created the Heart's Fury
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That would be put in good use as while there were many unexplored dungeon in the world, the threat to this world lair location was known, the ancient Wyrm Amaurosis was the next target, my character was starting to feel very powerfull equipped with strong equipment making him resisting highly to most type of damage.
And the Heart's Fury in hand was like the ultimate weapon.
So entering the Wyrm lair wasn't easy , it was filled with incredibly strong creatures i had not seen anywhere, but at the level my character was and how super prepared for the war he was, those powerfull monsters couldn't last long. Though i had to rest a lot after every few fights as despite how highly strong and resilient my character was by now, those enemies were still hitting hard.
But in the end i found the ancient Wyrm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Luck maybe but i destroyed it without much trouble (in comparison to some of the other monsters i found in this lair), it just took more time to bring the Wyrm down as i guess it had a lot more HP than anything.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Decided to not end the game there, after all there were some dungeons still unexplored, and with the truckload of money i got offered for off-ing the Wyrm in one of the village, i finally had enough to learn magic in the academy, so maybe all those tons of magic books i collected will have an use :)
Or maybe i'll try a legit and different class/race combo character next, now that i have learned the balance in power level for monsters and dungeons, what to fight at what level, or what to run away from until what level.
Oh and make sure to find and wear a Satiative Amulet when you're going to the sea to explore other islands, it's very easy to die from starving without that amulet if you don't constantly monitor your hunger level (that progress apparently super quickly when you're at sea) , at least with the satiative amulet you can sea travel without this trouble. Just put your better amulets back before getting into a dungeon.
Post by: Micro102 on July 18, 2020, 03:18:03 pm
Post by: Iduno on July 18, 2020, 10:34:27 pm
Post by: scriver on July 19, 2020, 03:27:44 pm
They tried to do action sequences.
They're awful.
edit:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on July 19, 2020, 03:52:34 pm
Playing the Final Season of the Telltage Walkiing Dead games.
They tried to do action sequences.
They're awful.
edit:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Telltale writes good stories, but they don't put them in good games.
Post by: Uristides on July 19, 2020, 10:14:16 pm
One thing I really enjoy is how when you finish a game, either by getting killed or retiring, your character gets scored based on his deeds and earns points you can use to boost your next character's initial stats and equipment. I really enjoy those kind of mechanics where progress from one playthrough carries over to the next one somehow.
My only complaint is that while combat feels really interesting at first, in the end it just boils down to a really simple formula of trying to conserve energy while baiting the enemy to attack, then feinting around until he's disoriented enough that you have a reasonable chance of actually delivering a blow. Trying to go all bersek will probably result in you missing your attack and then the AI will happily exploit your opening as outlined above. I mean, I can't say that's not realistic, but once you figure it out what would be the most exciting part of the game turns into a mostly mindless, mechanical exercise.
Post by: Iduno on July 20, 2020, 09:46:26 am
One thing I really enjoy is how when you finish a game, either by getting killed or retiring, your character gets scored based on his deeds and earns points you can use to boost your next character's initial stats and equipment. I really enjoy those kind of mechanics where progress from one playthrough carries over to the next one somehow.
You may also like the rogue-like Dungeonmans. You're a recent graduate of a school for adventurers, go through dungeons to gain loot, xp, and most importantly proofs of being strong (by killing bosses or elite enemies). Proofs can be spent on stat points, and half of their value goes to all future characters at that school. You can also upgrade the alchemy lab by beating bosses (happens fast, and identifies potions for everyone who speaks to the alchemist) and upgrade the library by donating books (takes longer, identifies scrolls for anyone who speaks with the librarian before adventuring, and also provides 4 free books to each adventurer once it's fully upgraded).
It is possible, but very difficult to beat with your first character, but you'll probably end up gaining power over time before you win.
Post by: Egan_BW on July 20, 2020, 01:49:42 pm
Post by: scriver on July 20, 2020, 02:24:51 pm
Playing the Final Season of the Telltage Walkiing Dead games.
They tried to do action sequences.
They're awful.
edit:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Telltale writes good stories, but they don't put them in good games.
Pretty much. They certainly make me wish there was a good first person/over the shoulder zombie apocalypse rpg though.
Post by: Iduno on July 20, 2020, 04:30:45 pm
I really dislike that. I'd prefer if roguelikes still started you off on even footing each time you start, but that stuff is becoming more and more common. In a normal roguelike, the only way to progress is to get better at the game and gain knowledge, but now they're just becoming your usual grindy rpg.
There is an Ironman mode (if you lose, the school gets deleted, so you only have one shot). They also have the "Pay to lose" DLC, which is all options to make the game harder (less xp/gold/items, bosses start with allies around them, worse status effects, I think there was one where your character is continually dying) a weekly challenge, and a randomized set of challenges.
But someone wanted the ability to improve when you lose, and this game allows for that.
Post by: Uristides on July 21, 2020, 07:15:20 am
Sounds cool, added to my wishlist. Thanks for the recommendation!One thing I really enjoy is how when you finish a game, either by getting killed or retiring, your character gets scored based on his deeds and earns points you can use to boost your next character's initial stats and equipment. I really enjoy those kind of mechanics where progress from one playthrough carries over to the next one somehow.
You may also like the rogue-like Dungeonmans. You're a recent graduate of a school for adventurers, go through dungeons to gain loot, xp, and most importantly proofs of being strong (by killing bosses or elite enemies). Proofs can be spent on stat points, and half of their value goes to all future characters at that school. You can also upgrade the alchemy lab by beating bosses (happens fast, and identifies potions for everyone who speaks to the alchemist) and upgrade the library by donating books (takes longer, identifies scrolls for anyone who speaks with the librarian before adventuring, and also provides 4 free books to each adventurer once it's fully upgraded).
It is possible, but very difficult to beat with your first character, but you'll probably end up gaining power over time before you win.
I really dislike that. I'd prefer if roguelikes still started you off on even footing each time you start, but that stuff is becoming more and more common. In a normal roguelike, the only way to progress is to get better at the game and gain knowledge, but now they're just becoming your usual grindy rpg.I can totally understand that. These kind of mechanics have become really pervasive in roguelites lately it feels, must be frustrating if you're more inclined to the old guard style.
Not gonna lie, I think getting something tangible, rather than abstract like game knowledge, out of a playthrough is what really sells me into it. But depending on the implementation I really feel its neat how they give a sense of a continuously evolving world rather than just something that just exists for the duration of your playthrough.
Post by: Micro102 on July 21, 2020, 01:44:06 pm
Post by: Stench Guzman on July 25, 2020, 10:35:41 am
It's a low budget indie clone of Legend of Grimrock.
It's ok. Nothing special.
Post by: Folly on July 25, 2020, 05:43:41 pm
Post by: delphonso on July 26, 2020, 05:20:50 am
A little costly, but I'd say worth it (https://radcodex.itch.io/horizons-gate). Biggest elements of note: dope skill system with lots of mixing and matching like FFTA, piratey sea-theme, okay if shallow ship tactical combat.
Post by: Robsoie on July 26, 2020, 08:50:40 am
This may interest some people here.Finally gave a try to the light version (Flashpoint Infinity) as there's no way my connection could download the full version :D and it's really excellent.
As you know browsers have been moving away from adobe flash and enabling flash support in your favorite browser is certainly going to be impossible at some point, if not already.
Some people decided to create an open source project to preserve all the truckloads of flash games and animations that were so numerous around the internet some years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrU6RJbeKfo
Project Flashpoint :
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/QuoteSince early 2018, over a hundred contributors have helped Flashpoint save more than 49,000 games and 3,600 animations running on 16 different platforms.
The download comes in 2 versions, the one that is 492mb and will download the game content for the games you're wanting to play (and so will inflate of course the more different games you'll play) and the one that is ... 330gb but has absolutely everything (so no need for any content download).
I went through my archives to seek good flash games with some meat, by that i mean flash games that do not enter the "it's a fun for the 5 minutes it last then you never play it again" category.
And i was happy to see that they're all available in this.
Here's my list of those kind of flash games i gathered from my archives so far if someone is interested
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Should be enough gameplay to live through a couple of years of lockdown :D
I probably missed some titles (either i don't remember them or didn't noted them in my archives) so if someone remember a flash game that was not only actually good but was more than just a "5 minutes fun and you'll forget about it" , i'm welcoming more suggestions.
I avoided clickers , i remember some of them wasting too many of my time, as i wish to avoid falling in that abyss again :D
I also do not list the runners (some were very fun like Dino Run, Canabalt, Miami/Sydney Shark), and tossers (i have fond memories of very good ones like Toss the Turtle or Burrito Bizon) but unfortunately they had no lasting or replay power for me.
Post by: Aoi on July 26, 2020, 10:12:15 am
Post by: Robsoie on July 26, 2020, 11:04:03 am
edit :
Noticed the cards game "Elements" is available too on Flashpoint, very nice.
Post by: Nighthawk on July 26, 2020, 02:19:34 pm
I really dislike that. I'd prefer if roguelikes still started you off on even footing each time you start, but that stuff is becoming more and more common. In a normal roguelike, the only way to progress is to get better at the game and gain knowledge, but now they're just becoming your usual grindy rpg.I don't really mind these systems when they aren't strictly necessary to succeed. A roguelite that gives me small boons and unlocks more playstyle options as I play gives me an incentive to keep trying and experiment with new stuff, but a roguelite with a gigantic numbers game that expects you to lose until you've done 200+ runs and unlocked all of the passive boosts is annoying and grindy.
This video (https://youtu.be/G9FB5R4wVno) does a really good job talking about the benefits and issues of progression systems in games, and I for one, definitely think that the benefits of a progression system that makes the game easier over time are ultimately dwarfed by the obvious drawback of encouraging grind over player skill and ruining a game's difficulty curve.
Post by: MCreeper on July 27, 2020, 08:33:21 am
Just stumbled on another game i played on ye olde 512 mb RAM computer from ye olde CD disk with a bunch of DOS games, but forgot the name of. At that time "engine whirring" was constant and undisablable, pierced doors and walls, went into other side of the house and made parents scream at me every time i tried to play this game. :P I never figured out how to play it properly.
Post by: Iduno on July 27, 2020, 09:13:03 am
Other fun achievements I've managed: "The Laws of Physics Are Mere Suggestions, Vol. 1": Violate the Pauli exclusion principle, "Love Thyself": fall in love with yourself, and "Eat an Entire Bear". This is a roguelike based on Ringworld (if I remember correctly). It's mostly hack-and-slash or shooting, but has a lot going on. Also, their basic "finish level 1" achievement that everyone who plays probably has is "Welcome to Qud": die. Roguelikes.
Post by: Mephansteras on July 27, 2020, 09:51:46 am
Post by: Robsoie on July 28, 2020, 12:59:36 pm
Nearly threw my computer through the window in the 4th level (the Graviton one) after so many failed attempts , the last straw :D was my last run on it when i was at 93% and touched a damn wall when trying to jump on the blue platform that would have made me hit the 100% bar to unlock the next level.
Then i saw this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RCX_R2FzYM
And understood it's really not a game for me .
edit : a day later, against my better judgment i decided to try again.
While it took me a lot more tries and stopping me from throwing my monitor against the wall, i finally did it
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And as it seemed the new unlocked run (the Boson Y one) had some part feeling slightly easier and sometime i was lucky enough so they repeated, i tried several time and ... did it too
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Wonder if i'll have the heart to try the last run of the freebie version , as with that game it takes a lot of willpower to stopping yourself from just taking your computer and throwing it through the window .
Post by: Aoi on July 29, 2020, 02:22:36 pm
Found in my archive old freebie Boson-X (apparently there's a commercial version with more levels now).oh looks like i failed 53 times on this one :DSpoiler (click to show/hide)
And as it seemed the new unlocked run (the Boson Y one) had some part feeling slightly easier and sometime i was lucky enough so they repeated, i tried several time and ... did it tooSpoiler (click to show/hide)
Wonder if i'll have the heart to try the last run of the freebie version , as with that game it takes a lot of willpower to stopping yourself from just taking your computer and throwing it through the window .[/spoiler]
"That doesn't look too bad." ... "Eh, looks fairly manageable still." ... "Ohhhh my, that's getting quick." ... "I've only gone through a third of that video?!"
Post by: Broseph Stalin on July 29, 2020, 08:23:01 pm
The game reeks of russian jank. It is absolutely lousy with bad translations, placeholder systems, and inevitable bugs. Trees are bulletproof, as are their branches, as are their leaves, they also have hitboxes that don't reflect their dimensions. There's a system for artillery and air support, it is totally random. Your enemies and allies regularly face the wrong direction. I once got stuck on invisible geometry four times in a single battle.
BUT, there's a single perfect moment where you've crept along the map searching for enemy units and you see them before they see you. You fire your weapon and drop a target before the world explodes into gunfire and explosions. You instinctively hug cover, crawl on your belly, wait for the moment when the shooting stops to fire a few bullets back at targets you can scarcely see supported by the commoners you've armed and armored through blood sweat and tears. In that moment you fear for your allies, you conspire to succeed however you can, you throw yourself into the narrative, into the fray with wild abandon. In that single perfect moment the game is as engaging, as thrilling, as wonderful as anything that a triple a developer has ever produced.
Then it's back to the russian jank.
Post by: Yoink on August 04, 2020, 05:37:30 am
I don't really know where the "bomb" part comes into it, but it basically looks like a homage to Jet Set Radio (Future), complete with the high-speed graffiti and gorgeous, melt-in-your-mouth cel-shaded graphics. There don't seem to be rollerblades, though, but from what I've seen in the very short trailer and smattering of screenshots it looks like people are happily grinding and manual-ing their way around the place regardless.
Who cares, it's the future, everyone's probably made out of metal or something I don't know.
In any case, I'm pretty stoked about this. I kinda missed the boat on the Dreamcast (even though one of my brothers had one... I might have one or two very hazy memories of playing it, what with its memorably weird controller) but I had a lot of fun with Jet Set Radio Future on the Xbox.
Gonna keep an eye on this for sure, though it probably won't be out for a while.
Post by: nenjin on August 04, 2020, 01:56:45 pm
Post by: Jopax on August 09, 2020, 02:57:52 pm
Definitely recommended if you want a fresh fusion of base building and twin stick combat.
Post by: Jopax on August 12, 2020, 04:51:10 pm
Any of you folks played it? Anyone have anything good to say about it? I'm in no place to be starting up another potential timesink but eh, at that price even a couple of hours of fun don't seem like a bad deal, I've certainly paid more for games I've played less :V
Post by: Akura on August 12, 2020, 07:18:48 pm
It's not that I didn't like it, I just don't have to social skills needed for it. I am way too anti-social.
Post by: Jopax on August 13, 2020, 03:57:32 am
Post by: Yoink on August 13, 2020, 12:31:38 pm
Nor am I sure quite why I didn't get into it. Seemed a bit overwhelming, I guess? I don't remember, I know I played for a little while but I don't think it was very engaging. I know there was a lot of totally unrelated discussion going on amongst my team through some kind of area chat, haha.
Might be more fun to jump in and learn it alongside a bunch of (also new) friends. It also might be a very different game by now, too.
Post by: Yoink on August 19, 2020, 08:35:19 am
It's slated for early September. It looks pretty sweet, but I guess we'll wait and see. I never did get to play actual Necromunda... at least Mordheim I got to play a couple of casual games of. This looks like (from the short trailer at least) it does a better job of nailing Necromunda's aesthetic, if you ask me at least.
Post by: nenjin on August 19, 2020, 09:28:29 am
Ah I see they have actual gameplay footage now. Yeah, it's looking _a lot_ nicer than Mordehim.
If I have one critique, it's looks a little less "Necromunda" and a little more "Mad Max."
Post by: Yoink on August 19, 2020, 10:58:04 am
I only watched the trailer, so I'm gonna take the hella cool gameplay shown therein with a grain of salt. Are there more informative gameplay videos doing the rounds? I didn't actually look further than the Steam store page, haha.
Post by: nenjin on August 19, 2020, 11:39:35 am
The two canon gangs shown are Escher and Goliath, but there are lots of other gangs that definitely have a different look. I was always partial to Cawdor myself.
Post by: Persus13 on August 19, 2020, 11:43:42 am
Mordheim somehow became my third most played game on Steam (its a really good game to listen to podcasts while playing), so I'm pretty happy to hear Necromunda has a release date. Although I'm not sure how much variety Necromunda is going to have. Mordheim had the advantage of having a bunch of radically different factions with Skaven, Chaos, and Undead warbands.
Post by: nenjin on August 19, 2020, 01:54:38 pm
Come to think of it, I don't really remember much about Necromunda table top, what set the gangs apart from each other besides their backstories and what skill trees they were allowed to buy from.
But Underhive War seems to be really leveraging the cosmetic customization, way more than Mordheim did, so I'm sure that along with a story campaign for each gang will make the difference.
Post by: Persus13 on August 19, 2020, 02:26:22 pm
Post by: Robsoie on August 24, 2020, 07:00:41 pm
Just be sure, if you never played Serious Sam before to never play in the single player menu the "Training".
Training was in fact the level from original demo of the game and already at the time the demo made a horrible job at showing where the fun is actually in the game, the demo had terribly bad level design and very boring gameplay (rooms were all giant open space with only a couple of enemies spawning at a time, out of a few rooms in which much more will spawn fortunately), just start to play into the game campaign itself the maps are a -very- lot better designed and paced for action packed fun than the demo was.
Post by: Cthulhu on August 27, 2020, 10:44:53 am
Also, Ruinarch early access is out. Might deserve its own thread, considering we were one of the main hubs for That Which Sleeps, which Ruinarch has some thematic similarities to. It's not really similar gameplay-wise, the joke (which is very accurate) is that it's basically Rimworld where you play as Randy Random. You place your portal in a small, randomly generated map with a town, some of the later ones have multiple connected maps and multiple towns, the most people I've seen on a map was 25 in one huge town.
You've got spells, demons, various stuff, and your goal is to kill everybody. There's very little structure at the moment, you have lots of options for killing people and as it stands the game is basically just a sandbox where you make your own fun. You can easily just blow everybody up and kill them that way, but that's not really very fun. NPCs have character classes and various traits, and you can manipulate people's traits to give them bad ones, ranging from stuff like being easily angered to vampirism, zombie virus, serial killers, etc. If you play your cards right you can get everybody killing each other over real and imagined crimes (there's a building called the Eye that gives you an event log and lets you store and reveal lines from it to people, e.g. you get a married villager to cheat on his wife and then tell the wife about it).
In practice not much about it works yet. The monsters you have are mostly useless, even your demons will lose 1v1 to a villager. You can brainwash cultists but it doesn't accomplish much. Spells can wipe the village out easy, but that's not fun. Have never seen zombies or plague work well, since the monsters are so weak the zombies just die and maybe infect one person, leading to more of a slow chain of infections rather than exponential takeoff apocalypse. Right now I'd say it's not a buy.
Post by: Yoink on August 27, 2020, 12:30:40 pm
Probably agree with the "not a buy" part, but I had a bit of fun. It doesn't really accomplish much, but finding new and unusual ways to torment villagers is pretty satisfying. Oh, and amusingly enough, the 'reversed Rimworld' comparison was one of the first things that occurred to me, haha. You can be in control of people's extreme mental breaks.
Post by: Jopax on August 29, 2020, 12:20:23 pm
Well worth the price tho if you're into third person shooters set in a pretty great mix of X-Files and SCP.
Post by: Mephansteras on August 29, 2020, 03:26:27 pm
Combat is a pretty decent grid set up, with abilities often triggering off of rows or lanes as well as individual spots. The flow is good and there is a ton of interaction between various cards and characters, plus lots of summons and stuff depending on what characters you use.
I am trying it first on Normal and it's...stupidly easy. So I will definitely do a harder run next time. But it's been good for learning the mechanics, and it looks like you open more options with the characters after you finish an Act with them.
Length seems good. Still in Act 1 after 5 hours, and looks like there will be quite a few acts eventually. Only 2 implemented so far (Early Access and all), but I've probably already gotten my money's worth on the game.
Overall, I'd say it's worth playing even as in (at least for $15 on sale) and should definitely be worth it for the final game.
Post by: Cthulhu on August 29, 2020, 08:44:05 pm
So Control is out on Steam, was debating getting on the EGS for a while now, but the shittiness of the platform kinda put me off for the most part. In comes the Steam release with all the DLC and a discount. Paying 40ish € for a AAA game with two DLC's seems like a damn steal tbh.
Well worth the price tho if you're into third person shooters set in a pretty great mix of X-Files and SCP.
The lore, aesthetics, etc. of control are fantastic, the gameplay is boring as hell and feels like something from the PS2 era.
Post by: MCreeper on August 31, 2020, 02:10:24 pm
EDIT: There are still two empty rooms, kill animation still can clip trough walls and i still don't know what to do besides randomly killing people, nevermind how to fire up tutorial. Meh. :P
Post by: Jopax on September 02, 2020, 08:36:22 am
So Control is out on Steam, was debating getting on the EGS for a while now, but the shittiness of the platform kinda put me off for the most part. In comes the Steam release with all the DLC and a discount. Paying 40ish € for a AAA game with two DLC's seems like a damn steal tbh.
Well worth the price tho if you're into third person shooters set in a pretty great mix of X-Files and SCP.
The lore, aesthetics, etc. of control are fantastic, the gameplay is boring as hell and feels like something from the PS2 era.
Having played trough most of it now, yeah I gotta agree somewhat. It's mainly the gunplay I think, none of them feel good or effective to use, the only powerful ones are the rocket and sniper variants, but those are super clunky to use. Luckily the combat is somewhat salvaged by the sheer glee of tossing shit around and smacking people with chunks of rock, bits of office or other people. I'd also love it if they leaned a bit more on some of the weirder puzzle stuff that some of the objects have, figuring that shit out was pretty fun most of the time.
Post by: Il Palazzo on September 04, 2020, 05:53:01 am
I've been having fun with a neat little roguelike (a proper one, none of that lite shit) called Approaching Infinity. It's a bit like Prospector, in so far as you're flying a spaceship and landing on planets. It's perhaps less polished, but the development seems to have picked up pace since the game went on steam.
There's officers with classes and experience, artefacts, ship boarding and spelunking. Permadeath is toggleable; but when on the game does scratch that roguelike itch.
Post by: Cthulhu on September 06, 2020, 03:08:26 pm
So Control is out on Steam, was debating getting on the EGS for a while now, but the shittiness of the platform kinda put me off for the most part. In comes the Steam release with all the DLC and a discount. Paying 40ish € for a AAA game with two DLC's seems like a damn steal tbh.
Well worth the price tho if you're into third person shooters set in a pretty great mix of X-Files and SCP.
The lore, aesthetics, etc. of control are fantastic, the gameplay is boring as hell and feels like something from the PS2 era.
Having played trough most of it now, yeah I gotta agree somewhat. It's mainly the gunplay I think, none of them feel good or effective to use, the only powerful ones are the rocket and sniper variants, but those are super clunky to use. Luckily the combat is somewhat salvaged by the sheer glee of tossing shit around and smacking people with chunks of rock, bits of office or other people. I'd also love it if they leaned a bit more on some of the weirder puzzle stuff that some of the objects have, figuring that shit out was pretty fun most of the time.
It's one of the most frustrating games I've seen lately, because everything but the gameplay really is great. It reminds me a lot of the secret world, which was an MMO. It has a similar writing style, the Hiss reminds me a lot of the Filth, malevolent information leakage from some other reality. I also really love the hiss ambience, it reminds me of hypnagogic hallucination, when you're super tired in bed and you can hear people endlessly talking, just outside the boundary of conscious thought.
Post by: Mephisto on September 08, 2020, 09:58:32 pm
It's extremely early access and Engrish abounds. Performance is also poo and I've had to drop my resolution to sub-720p to get a vaguely playable experience, though I'll say both of those are partly due to the device I'm using. I should put some work into getting my "gaming" rig functional again.
In any case, it looks great but has few configuration options to tone it down. I couldn't force myself to play mere minutes past talking to all of the tutorial people who lined up for you on your island.
Story's weird, though. If you're into the absurd, take a look. The game opens to a white screen that has a red button on it. You push the button, bombs go off, the world gets destroyed. Some pointy-eared angel thing tells you that you destroyed the world but the god of everything is going to allow you to be one of the first to set foot on Craftopia, which you get to build up from scratch.
Post by: Aoi on September 09, 2020, 01:55:07 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: ChairmanPoo on September 12, 2020, 09:05:05 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUJsi3i1N3M
Post by: dragdeler on September 20, 2020, 09:47:05 am
Spoiler: map not included in original game (click to show/hide)
Next I want a decent UFC game for PC then I'm all set on sport games for years.
Post by: Zangi on September 21, 2020, 07:20:08 pm
Also they have an itchio (https://songsofsyx.itch.io/songs-of-syx) thing if you prefer buying elsewhere. Plus you can get the demo there.
Post by: n9103 on September 21, 2020, 10:15:09 pm
Post by: delphonso on September 27, 2020, 11:57:04 pm
Haven't tried it yet, but am eager to. Looks like a lot of other Chinese games - janky controls but visually pretty tight.
Post by: Frumple on September 28, 2020, 01:18:41 pm
In any case, easy starting tip: Beastmaster, despite being called harder than most other starting classes, is by and away the easiest starting class I've seen of the six or seven I've tried. 0 cost AoE on tap, massive regen, powerful starting troops. Its wolf form is busted (huge regen with a few skill points, even better AoE than base, lifesteal aura to support troops), its eagle form can perma-lock huge swathes of enemies for its duration (i.e. it's busted strong), its dragon form is a friggin' dragon with even stupider HP regen and AoE damage. I have literally no idea why it's listed as harder when it crushes basically everything else from the starting line and largely doesn't let up. If you want something to ease you into exploring the game, go beastmaster.
Post by: delphonso on October 01, 2020, 01:53:29 am
Neat and janky is the right description. Defo recommend, but also looking forward to a full release before I play much more. Nice that it has quests and story lines, though.
Post by: Frumple on October 01, 2020, 01:16:32 pm
So I've hit the point I can beat any similarly sized opponent I'm finding, sometimes even twice that number, but proper knock-down drag out late-game fights don't have those kinds of fights. You get in a dustup with random character N and before the fight's over five of their friends have shown up and now you're up against 3-400 enemies, ha.
It's a pretty neat state to be in, actually. Piggybacking on proper faction fights is also quite nice, since you'll participate in fights with actually thousands of troops waiting in the wings. It's delightfully hectic.
Had one pretty amusing one last night, where I stepped in to help out a random civilian group that was getting attacked by the desert brotherhood or something, and part way through I got reinforcements. Which was neat until we thoroughly trounced the bandits and it turns out the "help" was someone that hated me and a few of their friends, who immediately turned around and ganked me :P
... I reloaded to a day or two prior to that after seeing the options were "lose >50% of my gold by surrendering" or "lose even more gold, a quarter or so of my inventory, and rack up a huge number of injuries from losing the fight". Gotta' be careful where you're fighting if you know hostile folks are loitering around!
Post by: Dostoevsky on October 01, 2020, 01:51:31 pm
Been playing some Genshin Impact lately. It's... kind of like Breath of the Wild with more RPG stats and gatcha. Exploring the world is pretty nice and it's quite a beautiful world, though time will tell if the level/stat system in it will start demanding bad grinds.
The gatcha is both really tame and awful at the same time, in that the main thing behind the paywall is characters. You get a full party pretty early on and several more guaranteed characters for free, so drawing for extra characters don't seem that necessary, but if you really want waifu/husbando XYZ then the rates themselves are quite horrible and from what I hear the free draw resources are kind of stingy.
The characters are also very anime, for good and ill. At least you can change the VO on the fly between four different languages (Chinese, Japanese, English, Korean), and the VO isn't awful for any.
Post by: Cthulhu on October 03, 2020, 12:53:15 am
It's... good? It's fine. It runs well, doesn't seem extremely buggy though I did run into one bad one in the multiplayer tutorial, the game didn't recognize an objective completing and I had to restart.
Very stripped down, triple-A presentation but simple. Gameplay is simple, no microtransactions, feels like one of those "perfect 7/10" games that usually come from mid-level companies. Fun, but not so sure about longevity.
Post by: Mephansteras on October 03, 2020, 09:33:06 am
Star Trek: Into Rogue Squadron One Wars is out.
Uh..what game?
Post by: Robsoie on October 03, 2020, 09:42:37 am
unfortunately duckduckgo told me there was only some star wars game released.
Post by: n9103 on October 03, 2020, 10:31:27 am
Why mix Star wars and star trek, I have no idea.
Post by: Frumple on October 04, 2020, 11:18:40 pm
I'm guessing what's happening is they're actually tied up with some fight in one of the other regions and basically had bigger problems that a one character faction with all of fourteen or so squads (versus their 7+ characters and 200+ squads :P), which would make for some amazing accidental opportunism (oops, one random hick with a passel of half baked mercs and a few other things just stole half your empire lol) from me, but... still.
Feels almost buggy, like the AI considers me so little of a threat it's not worth taking the cities back from me. And, like. Fairness where it's due. I have less than twenty sub level 20 squads, several unpromoted, and all of a single hero character (albeit one that's got absolutely brutal AoE -- the mechanist skill tree is pretty damn vicious and will only get nastier if I ever figure out how to build the friggin' library) that hasn't even hit the level cap. I absolutely am not an actual threat relative to the established factions, yet.
Becoming one's coming along a lot faster when I'm raking in 2k(+, considering caravans) money and hundreds of iron and wood per income period thanks to having yoinked half the nasir's empire, though :V
Post by: Iduno on October 06, 2020, 02:18:01 pm
https://twitter.com/adashtra/status/1313545695316635656 (https://twitter.com/adashtra/status/1313545695316635656)
Remember having to use the LUA console all of the time to fix broken quests (or just not knowing why you couldn't find the next step in a quest, or having leftover quest items that you didn't know what to do with)?
Post by: Mephisto on October 06, 2020, 02:27:20 pm
EA version is like 86 gigs. There's also some background stuff WRT Mike Mearls but I won't shit up the thread with that talk - it's all easily discoverable if you're interested.
Post by: Uristides on October 15, 2020, 07:44:41 am
Post by: Robsoie on October 15, 2020, 10:00:29 am
https://shuffleup.itch.io/circadian-dice/devlog/184005/small-bug-fix-expansion-plans
Only stuff i have still not unlocked is most of the Hard mode scenarios (and each class own hard mode unlockable items).
So i took the character i usually have the best results with (the barbarian) and managed to defeat the 2 first hard mode scenario with him (after tons and tons of defeat) with a surprising 4 stars each (surprising to me considering how much harder those scenario were than i thought).
Hmm, only 2 stars to go to finally unlock the hard mode item for the barbarian class. Let's try the 2 new scenarios that just unlocked (forgotten island and infested sewers), maybe i'll be able to get those 2 remaining stars.
.... after dozens of losses, wow those are hideously hard , can't believe how my character is trashed so fast, didn't even reached the last waves (and so the boss) for each of those 2 scenarios, after trying a few combination of items it still looks like way too hard for me :D
Maybe if there wasn't such severe limited amount of opened slot on those early hard mode scenario i could somehow manage, but they all seem so crazy hard.
I guess i'll have to forget about those hard mode items.
Back in playing normal mode to heal my wounded ego :D the game is still really fun.
Post by: Mephansteras on October 15, 2020, 10:44:59 am
Post by: Aoi on October 15, 2020, 01:31:14 pm
Hmm, only 2 stars to go to finally unlock the hard mode item for the barbarian class. Let's try the 2 new scenarios that just unlocked (forgotten island and infested sewers), maybe i'll be able to get those 2 remaining stars.
.... after dozens of losses, wow those are hideously hard , can't believe how my character is trashed so fast, didn't even reached the last waves (and so the boss) for each of those 2 scenarios, after trying a few combination of items it still looks like way too hard for me :D
As a point of reference for 'difficulty', I have HM 5* Barbarians with Forgotten Island, Necromancer Tower, Sunken Ghost Ship (this one was kind of RNG-heavy; if you don't get a good start on the first two waves, you won't be able to finish the boss at max combo), and Ancient Tomb.
...Totally don't remember what gear loadout I used, but I know I used Onk's Lockpicks, Fatecrafter's Tools, and Trapper's Mantle a lot.
Post by: Robsoie on October 15, 2020, 01:38:58 pm
It worked good as i could refill health with the wave end rewards (and could keep "feel no pain" healing some for later). The 3rd slot unlocked allowed also to take a lot less punishment as it allowed a 3rd attack possibility to kill those resilient enemy faster.
Sadly as i played to survive and win, i only managed 1 single star, so i still miss one to unlock the barbarian hard mode item, it unlocked the necromancer tower and as i expected it completely destroyed me many times :D while the remaining infested sewer is also insane (too many petrify sources to be fun).
I'll have to try your item setup.
Post by: DeKaFu on October 15, 2020, 01:52:36 pm
Post by: pikachu17 on October 15, 2020, 02:13:06 pm
Post by: Robsoie on October 17, 2020, 09:10:54 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Finally got my barbarian 10 stars in hard mode unlock by beating the necromancer tower scenario.
Surprised me on this victory that it gave me 3 stars while i needed only 1
Got it with the suggested the onk's lockpicks + chest plate item combo, and the witch knife as the 3rd (for the ability of getting enemy dying from curse to give me money and so precious to the barbarian red gems). Wasn't easy at all as it took me half a billions of attempts with those items to finally win this one :D
Those curses that high life enemies were putting on your dices were really a pain to deal with as if unlucky you could roll several cursed die (and lose 1 more health for each of them).
Additionally you also needed all the luck you could to benefit from your best attack dice (how much time i got the weakest attacks on 3 re-rolls even when i had several hard hitting ones, thanks to the chests+items)
It's not a bad hard mode item though considering how many times i went to low health in those hard mode scenarios :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
edit :
i just got my best run in campaign mode with the barbarian.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
It killed then me right after i killed the 3rd boss.
At 1 turn of winning that one, damn bad luck as if i had 1 more attack on the previous turn i would have finished the scenario ...
I find campaign mode interesting because out of the 3 starting items, each scenario won unlock a random item, so you will end with item or combinaison of them you usually never use anywhere else.
I wonder if it can unlock hard mode items, would be a nice workaround to trying to get 10 stars in insanely crazy hard scenarios
Post by: Robsoie on October 19, 2020, 10:23:08 am
https://js13kgames.com/
Quote
Js13kGames is a JavaScript coding competition for HTML5 Game Developers. The fun part of the compo is the file size limit set to 13 kilobytes. The competition started at 13:00 CEST, 13th August and ended at 13:00 CEST, 13th September 2020. Theme for this year was 404.
You can see and play all the entries there :
https://js13kgames.com/entries/2020
The top10 (you can play them there) after votes from all the people that entered the contest :
https://github.blog/2020-10-11-top-ten-games-from-the-js13k-2020-competition/
Post by: Iduno on October 22, 2020, 06:32:56 pm
Post by: Frumple on October 22, 2020, 07:42:07 pm
e: also we totally have a Qud thread around here somewhere another. Someone was keeping up on posting update changelogs for a while.
Post by: Il Palazzo on October 22, 2020, 08:33:35 pm
Post by: Robsoie on October 26, 2020, 08:32:35 am
https://github.com/cataclysmbnteam/Cataclysm-BN
https://github.com/cataclysmbnteam/Cataclysm-BN/releases
And also Zaimoni continuation and bugfixing of the original Whales Cataclysm still exist too and recieve regular commits (though not regular releases)
https://github.com/zaimoni/Cataclysm
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174897.msg8045020
Post by: Egan_BW on October 26, 2020, 10:11:30 am
Post by: nenjin on October 26, 2020, 10:20:18 am
Post by: Stench Guzman on October 26, 2020, 03:18:37 pm
It's on Steam and is free. Made with the Doom engine.
Post by: Egan_BW on October 26, 2020, 03:34:12 pm
Depends on what kind of odds you'll give me about it getting locked within 6 months.
Better odds than yet another DDA thread, right? :P
Post by: nenjin on October 26, 2020, 04:59:31 pm
Post by: King Zultan on October 27, 2020, 06:04:03 am
It could also be for both DDA and Bright Nights.
Post by: Robsoie on October 27, 2020, 08:03:48 am
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177449.0
Post by: nenjin on October 27, 2020, 10:54:06 pm
I haven't put a lot of time into and I'm definitely feeling like I have old man reflexes playing it, but it doesn't yet feel like they let you cut loose. More like "Do this platforming section. Now deal with this room full of 5 guys and performing platforming feats while you try not to die. Now do another platforming section." There's a lot of grappling, too. It's the kinda game where you've always got to be moving even if there's no enemies just to maintain your momentum. You spend half your time on a wall or in the air grappling around.
It feels great when things come together, that nice, clean, slick kill. But there is a lot of trial and error as well, especially in combat where the enemies will just pick you off with one well-placed shot if you lined up too straight on them, or dodged a moment too early before they've actually shot. Or if the guy behind them shoots you through the cloud of blood his buddy is making. Which is why at times it feels more like a puzzle game than an action combat game. The platforming sections feel very, very arranged, there's not a lot of "natural" environments to do stuff in. (For example, I say the game is set in a city but really it's a series of large rooms with cyberpunky looking city stuff decorating the walls, and a bottomless void on all sides. They call it "Dharma Tower" to explain why everything is vertical in it, and while the textures are nice, they're dressing up what is essentially an empty room design for platforming.) There's lots of very specific platforming set pieces mixed in with the combat, as I've mentioned.
All in all, for $23 I think I've got my money's worth. It definitely nails the aesthetic across the board: textures, sound, visuals, weight and voice acting. Just wish the combat and the platforming felt more organic. At one point the game had a room of 5 guys all with energy shields, and you had to wall run/grapple like a mad man along the outside edge of the room to kill the shield generators before you could take them out. Stop moving: get shot. Get caught on a corner: get shot. Miss a wall running transition: fall into a pit. Miss a grapple or get the angle wrong: fall into a pit. The 3rd of 4th level took me almost an hour and I died about 100 times. Maybe I just suck. But if you're getting it thinking it's a mostly combat based game, be ready for a ton of platforming while the game delivers its narrative bits, and for combat to feel more like a puzzle to be picked apart then a satisfying experience where you obliterate. One hit = you're dead, so there is very little room for error.
Post by: AzyWng on October 29, 2020, 09:49:28 pm
It's still in Early Access, but I think it's great.
Also, Griftlands is a pretty good deck-building roguelike made by Klei Entertainment. Besides turn-based deckbuilding battles it's got a social element (your choices can result in making friends or enemies, which can help or hinder your goals).
EDIT: I probably should have mentioned that Griftlands is also in Early Access - which means bugs and the game not being complete, naturally.
Post by: Aoi on October 29, 2020, 10:42:37 pm
Also, Griftlands is a pretty good deck-building roguelike made by Klei Entertainment. Besides turn-based deckbuilding battles it's got a social element (your choices can result in making friends or enemies, which can help or hinder your goals).
I thought Griftlands was pretty nifty, until a few hours later when I realized that it's actually kind of shallow... you're better off going all-in on one of the two combat modes and charging on ahead with that, and going on a murderous rampage killing everybody you meet isn't really a problem. (Actually, it kind of made things easier, since they give some interesting combat options.) Also, there are appear to be some encounters that unavoidably use one of the two combat modes, but not the other way around, further supporting the outlook that there's a "better" option between the two. (Could be mistake on this one, but I think I hit most of the major events.)
The kicker is more personal, but I crashed three times in a row when I was 90%+ through the storyline (I assume, based on how things progressed) and it not only ate my save, but I didn't even get unlock credit for what I did.
Post by: Robsoie on November 01, 2020, 01:58:51 pm
So something that could be very interesting for people still playing the game, there are 2 open source re-implementation of the Caesar 3 game (requires the original Caesar 3) , Julius and Augustus
https://github.com/bvschaik/julius
(releases : https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/releases )
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
(releases : https://github.com/Keriew/augustus/releases )
Quote from: Julius
Julius is a fully working open-source version of Caesar 3, with the same logic as the original, but with some UI enhancements, that can be played on multiple platforms.
Julius will not run without the original Caesar 3 files. You can buy a digital copy from GOG or Steam, or you can use an original CD-ROM version.
The goal of the project is to have exactly the same game logic as Caesar 3, with the same look and feel. This means that the saved games are 100% compatible with Caesar 3, and any gameplay bugs present in the original Caesar 3 game will also be present in Julius.
Enhancements for Julius include:
Support for widescreen resolutions
Windowed mode support for 32-bit desktops
A lot of small in-game quality of life improvements
Support for the high-quality MP3 files once provided on the Sierra website
While Julius does not implement any gameplay changes, a fork of Julius named Augustus is implementing many long-wanted gameplay changes, such as roadblocks. Beware: Augustus does not support the original Caesar 3 save files, while Julius does. So use Julius for a more vanilla experience with some visual improvements, or Augustus for a different gameplay experience.
Quote from: Augustus
Augustus is able to load Caesar 3 and Julius saves, however saves made with Augustus will not work outside Augustus.
Gameplay enhancements include:
Roadblocks
Market special orders
Global labour pool
Partial warehouse storage
Increased game limits
Zoom controls
And more!
Because of gameplay changes and additions, save files from Augustus are NOT compatible with Caesar 3 or Julius. Augustus is able to load Caesar 3 save files, but not the other way around. If you want vanilla experience with visual and UI improvements, or want to use save files in base Caesar 3, check Julius.
Augustus, like project Julius requires the original assets (graphics, sounds, etc) from Caesar 3 to run. It optionally supports the high-quality MP3 files once provided on the Sierra website.
main changes since Caesar 3 :
https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/wiki/Improvements-from-Caesar-3
tested the Augustus one (for the additional features) and it works great (at the time i write be sure to get version 1.4.1a not 1.4.1 as 1.4.1a only comes in the 2nd choice in the release page for some reason while 1.4.1 comes first and has a bug)
Post by: n9103 on November 01, 2020, 02:44:33 pm
Post by: Frumple on November 07, 2020, 10:39:36 am
Node/path based decision making, JRPG style turn based fights largely hinging on your ability to mix and match stuff to break the enemy over your knee (though that's easier said than done with some of the bosses), town based metaprogression between individual runs, decently large (25, with 8 skills each, all of them with two levels of upgrades, and four potential relics/pieces of equipment that can vary pretty widely in effect) slate of characters with mostly-unique abilities already in game with more on the way (devteam's apparently aiming for an even hundo by the time they leave EA), aesthetics that are pretty campy, so on, so forth. Overall it has potential, least from the ten-ish hours I've sunk into playing already, which has unlocked/rescued all the available characters and beaten the last available boss once, but hasn't tried a second time in endless 1 because that last available boss is goddamn terrifying and just about party wiped me the first time I fought it.
To give an idea of what party construction looks like, my current main team consists of:
The MC you can't get rid of (but has three forms they can swap between more or less on the fly, and can borrow skills from other unlocked characters; basically, they're not a burden at all) that starts fights by resetting the turn progression of every enemy on the field (which anyone can do, but the MC can do once per fight for free, with an upgraded ability on their main form), then busts out a party boosting power ballad and spends most of the rest of the fight spewing poison and -poison resist on everything via a boss relic. I'm using them as support, but they can tank or DPS just fine.
The ranger you more or less start with that stacks up tons of poison (that, in addition to just damage, also slows enemies and makes them less dodge-y) on top of doing significant AOE damage and mildly bonkers single target. They also have a doggo that bites things just in general but also whenever she shoots something.
A post-apoc raider that spends 35% of the time uncontrollable, but sets everything on fire with molotovs, busts out a shotgun (hits entire front enemy line and reduces their turn progression), and occasionally opens up with an AK. Mostly, though, they just chainsaw things in the face repeatedly for huge damage after they set everything on fire.
A lizardman genetic experimentation I stuck a boss relic on that redirects most of their defensive stats into raw HP. It doesn't do huge damage, but it has respectable single target with some poison and mild AoE. Mostly it just sits in front and is a huge sack of health to tank hits with. Lately, I've also given them a relic that lets them get blitzed on whisky on top of making their attacks deal extra damage based on lizardcritter's (gigantic) max HP.
A medieval blacksmith that mostly just boosts up the ranger (or raider) a bit and lets them go hog wild. They're slow, but tanky enough and gives fairly significant damage boosts to my primary DPS, on top of dealing a bit of stun if necessary and being able to provide pinch defensive buffs.
And finally a plague doctor I'm trying for my main healer (I was using a priestess that gave one critter a 20% attribute boost and then spammed free healing spells the rest of a fight). They, uh. They infect my entire party (and eventually the enemy's) with what's apparently the black plague, then provides a party wide buff that massively reduces poison damage and causes them all to heal a percent of their max HP per stack of plague. Also got some nasty individual debuffs and a bit of clutch healing/status cleanse/revive going on.
They win fights by stacking fire and poison on everything and then hitting it until it dies. It's going pretty well :P
E: Oh, and everyone except the ranger who already has a doggo has a boss relic that gives them a pet giant spider that bites for poison damage (i.e. my aoe poison res debuff the MC is throwing around boosts their damage) and bites progressively harder the more they bite. It's probably not pleasant for an arachnophobe, but damn if it isn't effective.
Post by: Robsoie on November 07, 2020, 01:31:46 pm
On the city building mode, i started on the Lindum map to have an easy building time but still have some battles (Lindum map takes place in northern province so there's no building that catch fire, and there is some good action as there are regular more or less big invasions and some wolf packs you'll need to hunt with javelin troops to avoid migrant getting eaten).
Managed to build up that city for more than 30 years, as i built a legion rather fast and had an academy to increase their battle efficiency, i could easily defeat the first few attempts at crushing my small village.
Then building up more and more i got my 6 army fort fully setup with troops (5 legions and 1 javelin troop) that were so strong they crushed all those armies trying to take my city down, supported by my towers ballista and javelin guys from the ramparts that probably helped a very lot :D
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Trade made my city insanely filthy rich , selling weapons and wines delivered so much more money than my attempt to make my
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Speaking of the
So i had to build more
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I had disabled the temples effects though, so it's way easier than normally (as you don't anger any of the pantheons regularly , meaning they're not making your city planning go down the drain)
Post by: Folly on November 08, 2020, 05:58:06 am
Coming November 12th, launch title for PS5, also available on PC in Epic Games Store, published by Gearbox.
Described as a looter-slasher, it's a game where you take up giant swords and hammers and smash things, chain combos, unleash flashy abilities, dodge and counter, fell giant bosses, collect lootsplosions, unlock diverse classes, customize said classes, complete a storyline rich with lore, and then begin grinding for godrolled epic drops. Can be played solo or co-op.
Short trailer. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9p_t408_vA)
Lengthy pre-launch video showcasing many of the game's systems. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocMZtQwB6ew)
EDIT:
Played this one for a few hours. It's garbage.
There are a few redeeming qualities, but they don't come close to making up for the horrible mess of problems that this game has. Performance is abysmal, combat is ill-conceived, graphics are overbearing with special effects and stylistically ripped straight from other games. Exploration is rigid, progression is meaningless, death-penalties are literally nonexistent, menus are just buggy, co-op is completely nonfunctional, always-online is required when you can only play alone...there's just so many things wrong with this, and I have absolutely no hope that enough of these issues will be resolved to ever make this a worthwhile purchase.
Avoid like the plague.
Post by: Robsoie on November 13, 2020, 05:25:57 am
I've been toying a lot with the Augustus engine for Caesar 3 today and it's been a lot of good on what is, despite its age, still my favorite city builder.
Just learned that Augustus 2.0 has been released with lots of improvements :
https://github.com/keriew/augustus/releases/tag/v2.0.0
Definitively the best way to replay good old Caesar3.
edit : 2.0.1 for some good bugfixes now :
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus/releases/tag/v2.0.1
Post by: JWNoctis on November 14, 2020, 11:47:38 pm
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is out on Steam. Haven't spoiled myself to this one yet, but the previous title in the series was an artful metroidvania/platformer on the same track as Aquaria or Trine 1/2, had excellent music, a sweet little story, and was challenging enough to entertain without too much frustration for someone who's not a platformer junkie - In fact it'd have been about perfect if not for a bit of performance problem at places, which had limited impact by not demanding pixel precision.
Don't worry, from what I've heard, they learned from the last game and really leaned into the imperfections with the new one. Had to get rid of some of the things you liked to make space, but at what cost, progress?
Edit: Hopefully it's not true, but probably check some reviews before paying money for it.
Edit: Hopefully it's not true, but probably check some reviews before paying money for it.Not true? Is there something bad going around about the game? Because by all indications -- my experience and reviews -- it seems like it has pretty universal glowing praise.
Though also of note is that the game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, is on Game Pass for PC too. So if you subscribe to that it's effectively free to download and play (of course "free" is subjective since you're paying for the subscription). And I believe there's still the really good first-time deals for game pass at $1/month for first three months or something like that, for those who haven't messed with it yet.
So I finally caved in and got that game on sale...after waiting several months for a DRM-free release and realizing how unlikely that would be for anytime foreseeable.
It's a full-scale, full-blooded metroidvania - i.e. much larger, more varied and feature-packed, a LOT more actionized with actual and fluid melee moves and interesting-to-a-layman-like-me boss fights, and way smoother overall both in framerate and gameplay - though that's after three patches, so I probably didn't see the worst of what might once had been.
And there's still a lovely and remarkably touching story, still some of the best arts for a platformer, three solid hours of beautiful orchestral soundtrack for twenty-some hours of gameplay at a reasonably leisurely pace that almost never felt repetitive, and still challenging enough to entertain without too much frustration.
Post by: Aoi on November 16, 2020, 01:28:35 am
You've got your fairly standard array of RPG-tastic equipment slots and stats, also represented by cards, as you fight your way through an unceasing array of monsters on each floor. No xp system though, which means it really doesn't matter if you keep fleeing, though you will end up with less currency... but straight equipment drops exist too, so skipping awkward combats is no problem.
There's a pretty decent amount of RNG mitigation available (and the devs actually toned down the RNG in the first two floors since a 'good' early item before that update could easily make or break a run); most floors will have multiple exits, leading either to the next floor or an optional challenge floor, the nature of which you can preview. Chest rerolls are fairly cheap (for the first few attempts) and offer two items in the same tier of a similar theme each time, so you're not stuck staring down one horribly worthless item each time either. You can win with a few different viable setups, and T4 gear isn't necessarily better than lower tiers (though they often have fancier mechanics)... my last win on hard mode heavily relied on two T2 items.
So the rough stuff: A good chunk of the challenge comes from one specific annoying as hell mechanic: Exploding monsters. If you kill them while they're in one of the two "front" slots (which considering they're the only two slots you can directly interact with...), they explode and punch you in the face. You mostly have to deal with them by either dancing around the ring since it takes them a turn to 'arm' themselves, with one of a few weapons that can hit non-front target, or pile on gear that interacts with the explosion mechanic in a defensive/beneficial form. The late game of each run is kind of rocky too-- you can get to the final floor as a nigh demigod... and get plastered by number inflation, mechanics that stop working, or "You entered the floor between two blockers with an inflated bomb next to you, and because it's a boss floor, your emergency get-the-hell-out-of-here skills are disabled. Good luck!"
Post by: Robsoie on November 20, 2020, 08:30:54 pm
Even got 2 more stars on that Ghost Ship hard scenario than with the Barbarian.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
While it can be fun to use, it's a bit disapointing though as it seems to rely a lot on luck for the new abilities.
Looks like in hard mode, if you can't have Onk's lockpick and Chestplate, you are going to have an insane hard time in this mode. Lost so many attempts with other characters and item combinations there.
edit : on a different subject.
Since the death of flash support on modern browser, there have been some preservation project.
I had mentionned the project Flashpoint (https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/) there :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=154091.msg8171173#msg8171173
I learned of another project, by archive.org :
https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-animations-live-forever-at-the-internet-archive/
that preserve "forever" flash animations without using Flash (so unlike Flashpoint) but a flash emulator called Ruffle (https://ruffle.rs/) built in their pages so you can watch some flash animation on archive.org without the need of the flash plugin or downloading the emulator yourself.
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash
a bit like they have a dosbox emulator built in on their dos pages.
Post by: Folly on November 30, 2020, 06:15:04 pm
GodfallSpoiler (click to show/hide)
I decided to give this one last chance before uninstall. After a massive patch that seemed to re-download the entire game...I was pleasantly surprised.
First of all, the massive performance issues that affected many PC players have been addressed. It's not perfect, but it's definitely playable now. In addition, many smaller quality-of-life issues were fixed. Honestly, this is one of the biggest turnarounds I've ever seen in any game.
I still have a lot of issues with Godfall, but none are gamebreaking. I'm going to do a 180 on my previous stance and say that this game is now enjoyable, despite many problems.
Post by: Robsoie on December 02, 2020, 07:03:07 am
If you have a mod you really enjoyed this year, it's a good way to say thanks to it.
Personnally voted for Call of the Zone (https://www.moddb.com/mods/doctorx-call-of-the-zone) (a standalone fork of Call of Chernobyl) as it gave me so many hours of playtime this year.
Post by: Akura on December 03, 2020, 10:46:25 am
The tech tree and global resources are changed a bit. Some techs require beating some of the named maps as a prerequisite. Global resources... sort of aren't anymore. Every map is persistent after you've beaten them - you can even go back and change your production setup - and continues to produce resources there until the core is full(the beginning core, the Shard, has a limit of 4,000 of each item), and the resources of all your existing bases(including the one you're on) can be used towards research unlocks. However, when launching to a new map, only the resources from the adjacent tile you're launching from can be used, and it requires a minimum of a few thousand copper and lead to build the next map's core plus whatever extra you want to bring to jumpstart that base.
For maps already started, the old version's Launcher building is supposed to be able to move resources between maps. Useful, for example to bring resources to earlier maps where some resources don't exist - for example, upgrading a Shard core to a Foundation requires silicon, which you cannot produce on the very first map(Ground Zero) since coal doesn't exist there(you can get sand from scrap). I haven't unlocked Launchers yet though, so I don't know for sure if that would work. I did reset all my progress for the new campaign system.
Post by: n9103 on December 03, 2020, 12:55:59 pm
I got into it for awhile as a factorio-lite, but my interest kind of fizzled out when there wasn't much more to it than "get to the next level that is almost functionally identical" after the first few maps.
Sounds like there's a lot more substance and should go back towards the top of my "I'm bored but don't want to commit a few hours to a game" list.
Post by: Robsoie on December 04, 2020, 05:06:17 am
Tested from scratch (reseted the tech tree) to see how it goes and the map are the same as the old ones, except the first one i played is very dark (much darker than in my memories) and there's some light area around your builder and the factories, maybe they're going for some day/night cycles.
Personnally i prefered a lot more the always clear maps, they were much easier on the eyes (and the sand winds effects in one of the random maps i explored on the first planet is just a horrible visual annoyance).
I unlocked a few stuff while playing (the router isn't unlocked on the start, i was wondering why my network wasn't filling all my guns, and understood that it was not the router i was using but the junction, it's where i noticed i had to unlock it during gameplay)
Once i reached wave10 i didn't had the possibility to launch, there was a "sector captured" message instead, i then had to go to the world map and choose a new sector, overall the revamped campaign system has a much nicer nice presentation.
Other than that, i have not noticed gameplay differences so far.
So overall there's a better campaign presentation and cool exploration of sector maps feature, but the new graphic effects from version 6.0 are so super annoying for me (even more than they can't be turned off) that i went back to the previous version i had without those effects. Too bad the new campaign system was interesting, but not enough for crippling my eyes.
Post by: Aoi on December 08, 2020, 11:19:00 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Edit: So how is it? Uh... it's not the worst VN I've seen. Considering that your expectations going in should be downright minimal, it's not entirely awful. And thankfully short. Also, I think you're supposed to be female.
Post by: King Zultan on December 09, 2020, 03:31:30 am
Post by: Mephisto on December 09, 2020, 12:01:10 pm
I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator
Post by: delphonso on December 10, 2020, 01:32:18 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 10, 2020, 05:17:22 am
Is that what happens when someone use a random game idea generator like this one, and disable the "sanity" option.
https://orteil.dashnet.org/gamegen
And then decide to actually program such thing ?
Post by: Frumple on December 10, 2020, 02:24:29 pm
Huh ?Delph's talking the guy with the star pompador in the KFC dating sim, pretty sure. Character design is pretty reminiscent of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
Post by: Robsoie on December 10, 2020, 02:35:43 pm
Post by: Aoi on December 10, 2020, 03:34:31 pm
My "huh ?" was actually directed at that bizarre "licking fingers of the KFC guy (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colonel_Sanders_A_Finger_Lickin_Good_Dating_Simulator/)" game concept
Far as I can tell, it is KFC sponsored, and the title isn't... too strange, given that 'Finger Lickin' Good' is also their slogan. It's still not worth going through, unless you want to kill 20 minutes in a fit of curiosity.
Post by: Robsoie on December 11, 2020, 04:39:58 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 14, 2020, 08:57:51 am
https://www.moddb.com/mods/farewell-of-the-white-wolf
While it's not canon as it the story of the mod serves as a conclusion of the 3 Witcher games stories (that aren't canon themselves), it's an incredible piece of what could easily be a professional level of DLC work, the dialogues and interactions between characters are frankly very good (at least in my language, no idea if in english they are but i can't imagine this level of polished dialogue would be bad in any language) and fits each of the characters (some that to my surprise came from the books, while most as expected came from the games).
It is much more linear than any of the Witcher games unfortunately as the area are relatively small and there's not much to do other than talking to the character or two the game wants you to talk to at every point of the game, and there aren't much in term of gameplay or exploration as there's no multiple ways to go from A to B, as the focus is really on the story , dialogues and characterization (unlike what you would think from watching the trailer of the mod) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJUdTC38DFE), that are top notch in that mod at least up to the point i am currently.
There are a few fights to have, one of them surprised me a bit as it was a huge difficulty spike considering the super easy ones there was before (you'll know it when you'll start drinking).
But if you like the Witcher universe, it's completely worth a play as you meet so much of the characters you learned about in the books and in the games, sometime switching from a character to another when they tell something about their story or their pasts, it's very well done.
In the beginning i ran into a few "invisible walls" problems when Geralt and went to hunt for the feast, as despite there are large snowy area the devs didn't thought about blocking the outside of the paths they want you to walk visually. Fortunately in further part of the mod and in other areas i didn't noticed such troubles.
The only low point is that there is no voice acting to act on those superb dialogues, but it's understandable they couldn't just hire the excellent voices actors of the games, but man i miss them :D
Post by: Mephisto on December 15, 2020, 12:58:41 pm
Post by: Zangi on December 15, 2020, 01:59:00 pm
Magical girls rebuild a cat cafe. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1112890/Calico/) I will probably be getting it soon.Not getting mauled by mama bear. 0/10
Post by: Aoi on December 15, 2020, 02:28:32 pm
Magical girls rebuild a cat cafe. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1112890/Calico/) I will probably be getting it soon.
You can also be Sad Unshaven Elk-man, based on the screenshots too!
Post by: King Zultan on December 16, 2020, 03:04:37 am
Magical girls rebuild a cat cafe. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1112890/Calico/) I will probably be getting it soon.From watching the trailer I get the impression that a lot of it is picking up random animals and shaking them, and them not caring.
10/10 Would give random animals shaken baby syndrome again.
Post by: Robsoie on December 17, 2020, 03:58:29 am
- playing in windowed mode will screw up the interface as said interface does not really adjust at all so depending on the size of your windowed mode you may miss buttons or buttons would display nearly over each other.
- the devs certainly knew that because they allowed you to resize those UI buttons with the key + and - , that's great but that's working correctly for qwerty keyboards, on some (not all apparently) non-qwerty keyboards, the key that correspond to the "scale up the UI" works without problem, but there's no key in the whole keyboard that will do the function of the "scale down the UI".
Fortunately there's a solution instead of just going back to fullscreen, so in case someone run into that specific annoyance, go to
YourDriveName:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Introversion\Prison Architect\
Open the "preferences.txt" and change the variable "UiScale" that by default is 1.00000 to another number
Less than 1.0 will make the UI and buttons smaller and more than 1.0 will make them larger.
Post by: Akura on December 17, 2020, 05:15:18 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 17, 2020, 10:30:45 am
Sure it was making money, but the amount of people going nuts in my prison was hilarious .
After some riots and other events, the problem solved itself when rioters decided to play with fire.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Now to rebuild the canteen and kitchen
Post by: n9103 on December 17, 2020, 04:52:59 pm
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116914.msg8145261#msg8145261
Given the giveaway, I'm sure other people would be happy to see it bumped.
Post by: Robsoie on December 23, 2020, 07:55:04 am
Quote
Dr. Sbaitso was distributed with various sound cards manufactured by Creative Labs (the name was an acronym for Sound Blaster Artificial Intelligent Text to Speech Operator) in the early 1990s.Never having owned a sound blaster it probably explain why i never saw that game.
The program "conversed" with the user as if it were a psychologist, though most of its responses were along the lines of "WHY DO YOU FEEL THAT WAY?" rather than any sort of complicated interaction. When confronted with a phrase it could not understand, it would often reply with something such as "THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM". Dr. Sbaitso repeated text out loud that was typed after the word "SAY". Repeated swearing or abusive behavior on the part of the user caused Dr. Sbaitso to "break down" in a "PARITY ERROR" before resetting itself.
You can check it on the archive.org (https://archive.org/details/msdos_Dr_Sbaitso_1992) website.
Post by: dragdeler on December 25, 2020, 05:53:52 pm
if you dont, and you have a legit cdkey of the game, consider it, it's nice
Post by: Robsoie on December 26, 2020, 01:37:05 pm
https://www.moddb.com/groups/2020-mod-of-the-year-awards/features/editors-choice-mod-of-the-year-2020
The Player choice awards will happen in slightly more than a day. I wonder how similar/different it will be.
EDIT : ModDB Player choice mod of the year is now done :
https://www.moddb.com/groups/2020-mod-of-the-year-awards/features/players-choice-mod-of-the-year-2020
Post by: MCreeper on December 28, 2020, 06:10:44 am
EDIT: Oh god, there are mods for first Quake!
Post by: Aoi on December 28, 2020, 06:44:58 am
...And do people actually like Crysis Enhanced Edition? I find myself actively repulsed by it to a surprising degree.
Post by: Robsoie on December 28, 2020, 07:05:56 am
It also seem there are less and less highly moddable games and engine, there are often very limited modding for modern titles, so it's not surprising to see mods for Doom or Quake still going on with active communities as you could mod absolutely everything , even the engine itself back then.
By example, which recent game would allow some very talented individuals to take such an old game like Doom2 (yes, Doom2) and completely rework it into this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7IITZDBvqE
Post by: n9103 on December 28, 2020, 09:24:12 am
By example, which recent game would allow some very talented individuals to take such an old game like Doom2 (yes, Doom2) and completely rework it into this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7IITZDBvqE
Quote
You will need Doom 2 to be able to play the mod, along with the latest version of GZDoomWell hot damn. That's a bit crazy. They definitely brought that engine into the 21st century.
Post by: MCreeper on December 29, 2020, 11:59:36 am
Didn't we have a M&B Warband thread that isn't old and dead as a mammoth? (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=49101.4635)
Post by: delphonso on December 31, 2020, 11:12:37 am
Post by: Robsoie on January 02, 2021, 08:12:15 am
Post by: Fire and Glory on January 03, 2021, 09:39:15 pm
Post by: Frumple on January 04, 2021, 10:43:00 pm
Dungeon mode is you get one squad of up to eight critters, and then you ram that 8 critter group through a hundred floors of progressive shitkick, 8 (plus summons) versus shedloads. Kick with it, is while you acquire random heros as you beat floors (can be ground, it's no big), the stuff you kill has a chance to drop, well. Whatever. Whatever skill they have as an item, you can go on to equip to your minions.
So, like. The least interesting thing in my current party is an armored up guy that has functionally strapped on working giant frog legs and something's wings, which they use to gap close and beat the shit one of things. Franz is boring and slow and will eventually be replaced.
Then there's the idiot martial artist (his default attack literally says only an idiot would be running around a battlefield punching people) throwing around ki balls. I've taught him to bite people (ancient lizardman battle technique, it clears space about as hard as frog legs) and assassinate stuff. Arts is also kinda' boring tbh but whatever.
Then one of my ranged dudes, not much interesting with it, it litters caltrops all over the place and wrecks shit with the laser beam we ripped from the corpse of a random abomination, occasionally pegging things with its starting musket. Karel's good deeps but could be better.
Then the cavalry duo of my starting guy who teaches pretty much my entire party how to throw around healing spells and fly around guan yu-ing people in the face. He'd be boring except the massive leader bonuses and the part where he throws around a giant blizzard of black magic skulls we lifted off dead demons and the part where he opens most fights summoning up a small army of cannon fodder. Other horseminion 'just' also does the frog leg thing, has a bugger off huge hammer and constantly spews out great gouts of poison gas. Sigiswald and Theodor.
Then dogboi the fairly mighty, the wolfman critter that starts off throwing out an eightpack of wolves then runs around blasting people with a laser rifle... and a longbow and occasionally a rock. He'd be less interesting, except the eightpack wolf summon all inherit the stuff the rest of the squad does; i.e. there's a wild pack of doggos running around whanging things in the skull with spinning polearms because of Shays. Shays is pretty alright.
Then there's the elf. At her base, the elf is kinda' boring, the most interesting bit the part where she jedi cuts projectiles out of the air. So, y'know, I taught her to summon murder idols that kill people with music, to throw around a tiny flame nuke that blows up like half the screen at max zoom, gave her a lightsaber, a one shot basically-flamethrower, and how to shoop da whoop by equipping her with max tier laser breath we lifted from the corpse of a dead dragon rider. It's basically artillery fire than comes from your mouth! Mirka's good stuff.
Then. Then! Not the strongest. But definitely the most loved. The generalissimo frog, Glazovsky.
Spoiler: Glazovsky is a frog. (click to show/hide)
Also I gave him a cannon, because you're damn straight general frogman is getting a goddamn cannon. Glazvosky is easily the least generic thing in my party right now.
Anyway, that's my current party and why I'm digging this pretty hard. Stalling out right now on floor 27 (Literally the devil. Very literally bunches of devils.), but damn if it's not fun to watch.
Post by: Robsoie on January 05, 2021, 09:09:29 am
They could nearly have made a game around the freeroam concept of this mission : you're a stalker hunting for "artifacts" (i guess they were inspired by the STALKER serie of game), exploring areas and surviving, coming back to your underground base to sell your loot and save for another day of hunting, buy and equip yourself better then go and discover more zones etc...
Fans of the stalker games should just love it.
Post by: Zangi on January 05, 2021, 11:31:17 am
That the one you are blurbing about?
Post by: Ulfarr on January 05, 2021, 12:52:09 pm
Toyed around the bonus mission "Kshatriya" in Metro Last Light Redux and this one is really well done.
They could nearly have made a game around the freeroam concept of this mission : you're a stalker hunting for "artifacts" (i guess they were inspired by the STALKER serie of game), exploring areas and surviving, coming back to your underground base to sell your loot and save for another day of hunting, buy and equip yourself better then go and discover more zones etc...
Fans of the stalker games should just love it.
Haven't played the game yet but I've read the first book and the author did reference the Stalker film a number of times when they described the persons who travelled above ground looking for stuff.
Post by: Robsoie on January 05, 2021, 01:09:29 pm
More reason to read the books now :)
Anyways, that bonus mission is really fantastic, after several days of hunting that does not really pay well as i need to buy more air filters :D , my explorations reached the interior of the library... those damned librarians (oddly shy for such huge murderous mutants). Still have a bunch of artifacts on my list that i haven't found yet.
Post by: Frumple on January 05, 2021, 02:03:16 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/420520/Lost_Technology/Eyup, that'd be it.
That the one you are blurbing about?
Post by: Ulfarr on January 05, 2021, 03:08:18 pm
More reason to read the books now :)
I do recommend it! Keeping with the metro/stalker comparisson there was a bit in the book that I found funny at the time. In the stalker games, I always thought that the aks-u (short AK74) was a terrible weapon and I would always ditch it for a full length one. However in Metro 2033 book, the main character gets a full length AK and people start giving him crap for having such an old and cumbersome rifle, that can't be easily hidden. :D
Post by: Robsoie on January 06, 2021, 05:40:32 am
What an excellent mission this was, there are some randomization of enemies and artifacts location to increase its replay value, along with making your own challenge to try to not save every time you go back to the base and play in one playthrough instead.
There was a huge potential with this mission, as i said previously with that system of exploring and unlocking more areas mixed with the randomisation with enemy and items, if they could have made the zone ten times bigger (the mission area is already very big once you open it by exploring) and sold it as a great game.
Post by: Akura on January 08, 2021, 04:18:18 pm
...Sadly, none of that exists for botmatches. Which is the only thing I play.
Post by: The_Explorer on January 12, 2021, 12:36:30 am
Post by: Mephisto on January 12, 2021, 12:54:30 pm
Capitalism Lab
Quote
The official site of Capitalism Lab – the successor to the award-winning Capitalism 2 business simulation game
Oh shit! Five years? How have I not heard of this?
Post by: The_Explorer on January 12, 2021, 09:55:33 pm
Capitalism LabQuoteThe official site of Capitalism Lab – the successor to the award-winning Capitalism 2 business simulation game
Oh shit! Five years? How have I not heard of this?
Its been out way longer, but thats when I first saw a post about it here on bay12. It was about complicated games or something.
Post by: Iduno on January 12, 2021, 10:24:45 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on January 12, 2021, 11:48:17 pm
Post by: Mephisto on January 13, 2021, 12:43:15 pm
Subnautica but not. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1393830/INFLUXIS/) I've only put a few minutes into it. There are a few bugs. Performance is better than the videos imply, at least on my aging 3rd gen i5 and GTX 960.
FTL meets 40k and Hc Svnt Dracones. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293300/Space_Cats_Tactics/) Again, buggy. More so than the last game. Has promise if those get smoothed out and I'll be replaying to try and create some better repro steps to hand over.
Grand Theft Horse. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/844260/Rustler_Grand_Theft_Horse/) The game's subtitle is spot on. I'm on board for most of the humor but some of it just isn't all that funny. Plays pretty much like the old top down GTA games.
Post by: Robsoie on January 20, 2021, 12:09:45 pm
https://taesc.tauniverse.com
Post by: Bumber on January 20, 2021, 02:31:42 pm
I watched some footage of the beta and I'm mildly intrigued by it.
Post by: Jopax on January 21, 2021, 07:42:05 pm
Dyson Sphere Program just released into EA on Steam. The gist of it is, Factorio, but on a stellar scale. Now, the devs are Chinese so there's some engrish present but I think the deal is that you're in a simulation of sorts or something and your task is to build dyson spheres around stars. Whatever, the story isn't terribly important, the gameplay is, and from the couple of hours I've played it's pretty good.
You start with only your little mecha guy and you go around gathering stuff before getting machines that can do it for you, automate further to unlock more advanced stuff so that you can automate even further. If you've played any of the increasing number of factory building games you know the loop. Of course you then expand to other planets and solar systems to get more stuff and it sort of escalates from there. I haven't reached the space stage quite yet as I'm in the process of getting my T2 science pack equivalent up and running.
Some notable things about it (atleast for me), first off, the music, it has a fairly strong Stellaris vibe which means it's pretty damn good if you like that sort of synthy space opera music. Second, the interface is pretty damn sweet and well executed, it's clear the devs played games like these before and have learned how to make everything quickly and easily accessible, manual crafting is intuitive and easily scalable, building stuff is also pretty cool because you essentially start with the Factorio equivalent of drones so you get a pretty nice range.
The controls themselves are kinda cool since you can WASD or just right-click around to make the robot move. There's also jetpacking which is a pretty fun way of getting around.
It's currently on a small discount and can be picked up for 15 Eurobucks or your equivalent and I'd say it's pretty worth it from what I've seen so far and it seems that they'll be making it bigger and better down the line as well.
Post by: Robsoie on January 22, 2021, 06:01:28 am
https://twotinydice.itch.io/forward
While the concept is different, it reminded me of this one :
https://watabou.itch.io/patient-rogue
Too bad there's no downloadable version of those.
Post by: Fire and Glory on January 26, 2021, 07:19:15 am
Spoiler: Me rambling about the game (click to show/hide)
So ya, I like the demo and I will be watching for the game's release.
Post by: Robsoie on January 27, 2021, 11:54:10 am
https://walternaterealities.itch.io/cosmoteer
Checking Bay12 there used to be a thread few years ago while the game had another name
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=159051.0
The game is about building up your spaceship with various tiles , and have a crew operating it and then duking it out with other space ships a bit like in "Gratuitous Space Battles".
Not sure how long it can be interesting, but the few space battle i had were rather fun, though i have yet to master the art of making ships as half my guns weren't powered and i didn't even had enough crew for all the things in my ship.
Anyone has played it long enough to see if the potential i see in this game can keep it replay value high ?
Apparently there are mods available for it too :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XsjYmUvxm0Q5J9UIeITnRIiNhts4OaR0ioUs64kaY1c/edit?usp=sharing
https://forum.cosmoteer.net/t/mods
Post by: Kagus on January 28, 2021, 09:09:20 am
Having put almost a hundred hours into the game, and doing that before they added all the chaos campaigns into the game, I'd say it's definitely worth taking a peek at. It absolutely has its shortcomings, and the main reason I didn't play for considerably longer is because the devs were focusing on adding new content rather than digging down and fixing the horror that is the game's melee combat system.
Man O' War is a seafaring adventure game set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe, on a map covering the coast of the Old World from Kislev all the way down to Tilea and the pirate-nation of Sartosa. Recruit, manage and equip your crew; sail a variety of ship designs and outfit them to your specifications; hunt massive sea monsters (my favorite pastime), fend off orkish incursions, run envoy missions and trade runs, or simply float around hunting for pirates. Watch as the various nations interact with each other, starting wars and forging alliances, claiming and occupying their enemies' ports and being forced out from their own holdings, changing the political shape of the Old World forever. Also, hiring a bright wizard to serve on your wooden boat is totally a fine idea.
P.S.: Skaven definitely don't exist, but if they did then you should probably watch the fuck out for plague censer ships with a gray seer onboard who can just skitterleap the whole damn thing directly into the side of your galleon. Don't give them the opportunity.
Post by: Robsoie on January 28, 2021, 01:18:55 pm
For now the Mountain map (the 3rd map) is bankrupting me a lot before even reaching the 3rd phase.
If someone else have trouble with the same map, i found this video with some nice tricks and tactic that can be usefull there (even despite the map random generation) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqg3dOeSV4I
edit : yes ! thanks to the rivers closing zone and fire guiding path tricks from that video, i finally managed to beat that puzzling mountain map :D
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Took me some attempts before getting it right, and thanks the dev for the undo button :D
I just hope the next map, Peninsula, will not drive me mad.
Post by: Mephisto on January 28, 2021, 02:57:56 pm
Have you ever wondered which CR-equivalent creature would win in a fight?
Do you want to bet in an illegal goblin-run fighting arena?
Does jeering at people bring you joy?
Goblin Bet has you covered. (http://goblin.bet/)
Post by: Kagus on January 28, 2021, 03:43:31 pm
Do you enjoy D&D?
Have you ever wondered which CR-equivalent creature would win in a fight?
Do you want to bet in an illegal goblin-run fighting arena?
Does jeering at people bring you joy?
Goblin Bet has you covered. (http://goblin.bet/)
Rigged as fuck; The grappled condition doesn't work like that!
Post by: Akura on January 28, 2021, 04:03:50 pm
Post by: Frumple on January 28, 2021, 06:26:11 pm
Post by: Stench Guzman on January 28, 2021, 10:39:51 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 30, 2021, 04:01:43 am
Recently heard about a rather interesting freebie named cosmoteer :There was a big update of Cosmoteer today :
https://walternaterealities.itch.io/cosmoteer
Checking Bay12 there used to be a thread few years ago while the game had another name
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=159051.0
The game is about building up your spaceship with various tiles , and have a crew operating it and then duking it out with other space ships a bit like in "Gratuitous Space Battles".
Not sure how long it can be interesting, but the few space battle i had were rather fun, though i have yet to master the art of making ships as half my guns weren't powered and i didn't even had enough crew for all the things in my ship.
Anyone has played it long enough to see if the potential i see in this game can keep it replay value high ?
Apparently there are mods available for it too :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XsjYmUvxm0Q5J9UIeITnRIiNhts4OaR0ioUs64kaY1c/edit?usp=sharing
https://forum.cosmoteer.net/t/mods
https://cosmoteer.net/history.html
Great to see development of this hidden jewel is still going.
Post by: Kagus on January 30, 2021, 04:55:31 am
Man O' War: Corsair - Warhammer Naval Battles (https://store.steampowered.com/app/344240/Man_O_War_Corsair__Warhammer_Naval_Battles/)
They finally managed to actually set the price correctly now, so it's properly 90% off for the next 30 hours ::)
Post by: Robsoie on January 30, 2021, 01:59:41 pm
I just learned that Microsoft has purged its download server , deleting many stuff they judged of being not important and amongst the now deleted files is the DirectX9 June 2010 installer offline redist (and the online installer too) :
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/l79r4x/psa_microsoft_has_removed_directx_download_from/
The problem that Microsoft didn't care about is there are many games that weren't made specifically for window10 and later that still require some dll that no version of DirectX10/11/12 has (despite the usual claim that latest DX include previous DX), and that only the June 2010 DirectX9 has.
Most of those games include that offline DX9 installer so you didn't need to worry usually, but still there are some games that only included the online installer (that should then fail to install from what i read) or just have a link to the now deleted microsoft download
Maybe Microsoft will fix that one day, but meanwhile for people that didn't backed the file themselves, fortunately you can still download it thanks to archive.org :
https://web.archive.org/web/20201216110836if_/https://download.microsoft.com/download/8/4/A/84A35BF1-DAFE-4AE8-82AF-AD2AE20B6B14/directx_Jun2010_redist.exe
It's always a good idea to back up this kind of thing
Post by: Kagus on January 30, 2021, 02:44:44 pm
Thanks for the heads-up, Robsoie. That's definitely a good thing to be aware of
Post by: Ulfarr on February 01, 2021, 10:05:21 am
My second problem (which might be partly my own fault) is with the UI. I can't seem to find how much ammo (in total, not in a mag) I have on my char. How am I supposed to plan ahead if I don't know how much firepower I have availble.
Post by: Robsoie on February 01, 2021, 11:52:32 am
The linearity wasn't that much of a problem because i found the immersion is really high (Metro Last Light reminded me of Half Life for that, linearity but immersion through the world and NPC interactions).
You can check how much ammo you have through the inventory key (by default i think it's TAB)
Oh and be sure to give a try to the bonus/dlc freeroaming mission "Kshatriya" (it's in the Main Menu -> Chapters and press the key mentionned in the bottom of the screen to alternate between the main campaign missions and the bonus/dlc ones), i wish there would be a whole game based on that freeroam mission, it's truly a masterpiece, if you like the STALKER games, you'll like replaying this mission.
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 01, 2021, 07:13:06 pm
Free puzzle platformer on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1288930
Post by: Iduno on February 02, 2021, 02:08:21 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Akura on February 02, 2021, 04:02:21 pm
Post by: AlStar on February 02, 2021, 04:17:19 pm
Main plot of the game is that you and your crew are newly grown clones from a super-secret facility in the far reaches of what used to be a galaxy-spanning star empire. However, all signals from the Empire shut off twenty years ago, and the robots in charge of the facility have finally decided that it's about time to check and see what's happened to everyone.
The main story of the game is broken up into five parts. And, as far as I've gotten (fourth part), each is further broken down into 3 sectors, with two mini bosses and a final boss; after which you start a new run in a new sector, with the option of using any of the previous bosses ships are your new flagship.
The main portion of the game uses a lot of FTL-like systems - you have your battleship, which has fuel (which lets you move both inside and between systems), scrap (which is used both to upgrade your ship and as the primary currency at trade stations), and marines (used in away missions and events). Generally speaking, you need to balance the expenditure of fuel and marines to try to maximize your acquisition of scrap.
In terms of combat; although your main battleship can have direct weapon systems, combat is primarily a rock-paper-scissors arrangement with fighters, drones, and frigates dueling in the space in-between the giant motherships. Each unit has a tech level (I-V), which affects HP and damage, and potentially an adjective (ex. Stealth, Teleporting, etc.) which gives a special ability. Destroyed units are automatically rebuilt on a timer during battle, but are forevermore (well, until you find a repair station and hand over a decent amount of scrap) marked as rebuilt, and only have 50% max health.
In a system similar to FTL's crew, your ship starts with two officers and can be grown to a total of five. Each has two or three of nine specialties, as well as a special ability, which usually affects a part of your ship (hull, fighters, weapons) to which they can be assigned to improve performance. Specialties come into play for two different systems - encounters and ground expeditions. Many events involve making hard choices, or choices that might only possibly succeed - having a commander with the right abilities will allow you to avoid that - just pick the blue-highlighted choice in the certainty that it'll succeed.
Expeditions are little mini-adventures for a commander and up to ten marines that take place on a planet's surface. When you get to an expedition planet, you'll get an overview of what's there (crashed ship, cryo pod, etc.), if there's any major negative events taking place (toxic environment, sandworms, or, oddly, ambushes "huh, that planet looks like the kind of place where you'd get ambushed"), as well as an overview of each of your commanders with stats showing roughly how the expedition will go if they take the lead - broken up into "is the commander likely to get shot up doing this?", "how much loot are they likely to get?", and "how many marines are going to die?"; so you'll end up results such as an expedition commander who is likely to avoid getting hurt, will get between 50-75% of the loot, and 2-8 marines will die during the mission.
After you pick your best option, your troops run into various dangers and loot opportunities, each marked with a specialty test. If your commander has that trait, you succeed, if not, you either fail to get the loot, or marines start dying. If you fail tests on a major negative event, a lot of marines start dying.
Anyway, getting up a full compliment of commanders - and commanders that have diverse traits - is 100% recommended for your continued survival.
This ran long. TL;DR: I've played for 11 1/2 hours, and am enjoying it. It's a solid upgrade / alternative to FTL.
Post by: Iduno on February 02, 2021, 04:41:50 pm
...Is he sucking on that piercing?
It certainly looks like it. I knew it was a good picture when I saw that he was clipping through himself, and also so was I.
Post by: Kagus on February 03, 2021, 07:13:24 am
...Is he sucking on that piercing?
It certainly looks like it. I knew it was a good picture when I saw that he was clipping through himself, and also so was I.
Oh man, I've got several curious moments saved off as screenshots, and so very many more that I didn't manage to catch in time.
Highlights include the orc grunt, dead, casually standing around and tapping his foot while about three meters above ground and angled at roughly 20 degrees off horizontal.
Post by: Iduno on February 03, 2021, 09:17:07 am
Oh man, I've got several curious moments saved off as screenshots, and so very many more that I didn't manage to catch in time.
Highlights include the orc grunt, dead, casually standing around and tapping his foot while about three meters above ground and angled at roughly 20 degrees off horizontal.
I wish pictures could better capture the frustration of being caught at the edge of a building, unable to escape during the middle of a fight until I'm nearly dead. Or trapped on an object on the ground, unable to escape at all. Or the ragdolling hilarity you get half of the time (dead enemy just sliding across the world forever, or enemies that go absolutely flying when shot, etc.)
I'll revisit Shadow of Mordor, because it's a pretty good game. This one is never getting reinstalled once I'm done. Just too buggy, too many bad ideas, and too much not-quite-fixed portions from the pay-to-win days.
Post by: Robsoie on February 04, 2021, 06:00:32 am
https://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-doom-cod-style-advanced-weapons-mod
a video of that mod :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1RYoI2CIJk
The modder made a video on how he ported those weapons :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-qH2uUi99Q
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 07, 2021, 12:33:23 am
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1527140/SC2KRender/
Post by: Ulfarr on February 07, 2021, 06:23:35 pm
I did stick with Metro: Last Light Delux afterall and I just finished my first playthrough. I have to say I did enjoy it, despite my rocky start with it. It's probably just a pet peeve of mine, but I get really annoyed when a game bombards me with too many cutscenes and sadly the first part of the game is just that. It gets better though.
About the UI stuff, I think it has to do with the difficulty settings. I'm not sure what I chose but I didn't have acces to features like ammo counters (they were only available in the "invetory screen" when I was in a market place/station), maps (I could pull up a compass showing where to go, though it wasn't need most of the time) or crosshairs (most guns had iron sights, scope or a lazer so I could aim most of the time).
The gameplay is rather nice. It has some survival elements but they were mostly for flavor, it might has to do with the difficulty though. Weapon/ammo scarcity was rarely a problem. Most of the time I was swimming in ammo. Most of the time. The few moments were I had to count my shots or resort to just my knife where quite memorable though. The filter mini game was just a gimmick, at least in this run. There was only one time I had to really scramble for new filters and I suspect that the game removed my stock at that time. One moment I had 10 mins worth of filters the next I had 0...yeah ::)
Stealth is the way to go though if shit hits the fan, which in some cases it will, you can just fight it out. I enjoyed both aspects of combat, thought I wish the AI was less forgiving and more competent when it came to look for you after you were spotted. I might have to do a rerun just to try out the wackier metro style weapons. I sticked with the more convential ones, using mostly a silenced pistol and an assault rifle and occasionaly switching one or the other for a shotgun.
Post by: Aoi on February 07, 2021, 06:36:56 pm
About the UI stuff, I think it has to do with the difficulty settings. I'm not sure what I chose but I didn't have acces to features like ammo counters (they were only available in the "invetory screen" when I was in a market place/station), maps (I could pull up a compass showing where to go, though it wasn't need most of the time) or crosshairs (most guns had iron sights, scope or a lazer so I could aim most of the time).
I'm pretty sure that's an intentional design decision, not a difficulty thing, unless it was added after release; part of the design concept of Metro was to minimize UI in favor of realism/immersion. To that effect, there's no number showing the amount of ammo remaining in the weapon, but there's (almost) always some kind of visual indicator, like an exposed slit in the clip so you can see when there's only a few rounds left, etc. Same for the map and an onscreen reticule.
Post by: Ulfarr on February 08, 2021, 03:39:32 am
Post by: Robsoie on February 08, 2021, 03:49:38 am
Quote
The filter mini game was just a gimmick, at least in this run. There was only one time I had to really scramble for new filters and I suspect that the game removed my stock at that time. One moment I had 10 mins worth of filters the next I had 0...yeah
I found that when you change a filter, it can and will cut up to a few minutes from oxygen of your reserve, i guess those filters going bad does not mean they're near empty at all.
So a good idea is to NOT change a filter when the game mention that you should do so, wait until you start to see the effect of those ruined filters to change them, that's already lot of air saved .
Additionally, on higher difficulty when you're not sure where to find new filters, it's a good idea to remove your mask for a dozen of seconds and put it back while you're in the surface before you die, that's always a dozen of seconds of oxygen saved. It's a bit gamey but can save your like if you miss some filter stash.
Also there's a moment in the game in which i need to put a mask as there's some surface area , then a bit later you're back in the underground but at that very moment the game does not remove the mask for you, and does not remind you that you don't need it anymore, and it's -very- easy to forget you are wearing that mask. That's a lot of air you can lose this way before you have a "oh damn i still have the mask on" moment :D
Post by: Iduno on February 08, 2021, 02:08:12 pm
If it gets a full release in the next year or so, avoid it because it won't work or be finished. If it takes 3-4 years, it'll be polished and worth picking up on sale.
Yes, some difficulty modes are expurging some UI elements (and make items/ammo more rare, along with making the AI less easily to stealth around) .
Oh, do they then complain that stealth is OP, because they removed the balancing the devs did that made everything else equally good? "You should have less ammunition/longer attack times with guns so you have to use other attacks." "Oh no, people planned around using non-gun attacks exactly like I wanted, this is BS!" I've lost count of the games where that's happened.
Post by: Kagus on February 08, 2021, 05:30:51 pm
Oh, do they then complain that stealth is OP, because they removed the balancing the devs did that made everything else equally good? "You should have less ammunition/longer attack times with guns so you have to use other attacks." "Oh no, people planned around using non-gun attacks exactly like I wanted, this is BS!" I've lost count of the games where that's happened.
"I survived. Please fix."
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 09, 2021, 07:15:44 pm
Post by: Kagus on February 09, 2021, 07:19:18 pm
I finished playing through Quake 4 for the first time this afternoon. It's ok. It feels too much like those generic military shooters that were so abundant in the mid 2000s.
Yeah, 4... 4 was... Not great. There were itty bitty elements here and there that were things that could've been found in a good game, and the pumping wall-hearts were definitely some snazzy interior design, but all in all I was not impressed. Especially not impressed with a couple of the boss fights, good lord...
What I'm really sad about is the fact that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars died before it ever really took off. That thing was actually kinda dope.
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 09, 2021, 07:31:20 pm
No quad damage powerup in the main campaign? How could you do that?
Post by: Robsoie on February 22, 2021, 03:48:05 am
3 years after their last big release, there have been a new major one only 2 days ago !
https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-24-xsayarsa/
Looks like there's a bunch of cool improvements.
For me the installer wanted to install wrongly in some user local appdata directory, be sure to check before clicking continue where it wants to install and give it a more correct path like any program should have.
I playtested on a 1vs1 skirmish with the AI on a small map (acropolis) , it sure was really pretty and framerate was surprisingly good.
... for a time unfortunately.
Once i started to have enough workers to get a good economy flow and upgraded my town center (or whatever it's called on the Athenian empire i had selected), i focused on building lot of units (a mix of athens base soldiers and peltasts) along with making some towers (no idea if i had to populate them or if like in AOE they would shoot on their own) .
(sadly upgrading the town center unlike in the AOE serie does not visually change any building)
Then things finally started to get interesting when i did an initial harrassing operation on the enemy territory (no idea which empire the AI random choice was, buildings were different from mine and looked as pretty) with several of my peltasts.
After killing a bunch of his workers that were gathering far from his main city, some of his troops started to run at me, mostly melee units as my peltasts were dropping them before they reached my position, but after a while they were too numerous (it was also time i started to notice a slight but constant slowdown in the game) and i retreated my guys toward my towers and my main army.
And during the big fight that occured it's there that very sadly the biggest 0 A.D. issue i always had is still there, as mentionned in the new release article :
Quote
Despite our best efforts, the game can still lag when there are a lot of units on the map.
A pity as you see there is so much amazing effort on the visuals, animations and etc.. in that game, but performance is not good enough for me to enjoy this once there are troops fighting, too bad hopefully they'll find a solution one day to get performance on par with commercial RTS.
Post by: Robsoie on February 23, 2021, 04:46:28 am
And during the big fight that occured it's there that very sadly the biggest 0 A.D. issue i always had is still there, as mentionned in the new release article :QuoteDespite our best efforts, the game can still lag when there are a lot of units on the map.
I ran into this interesting article by Intel that tries to identify the source of this super annoying and fun-breaking problem with 0 A.D.
https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/identifying-the-frame-rate-bottleneck-in-0-ad.html
I thought it had to do with pathfinding as coming from Dwarf Fortress everything bad about performance was always involvings bugs and pathfinding :D, but apparently it's javascript in this case :
Quote
The numerous transitions associated with thunking in the frame gaps, coupled with the various “js” entries that pop up throughout the results, strongly suggest that the game’s bottleneck is its Javascript usage. The exact nature of the problem remains unidentified – it could be excessive garbage collection or too-frequent interfacing, but most likely it’s the use of the Javascript to run significant portions of the game logic, which would likely be more efficient if written in C++.Sadly it sounds like there will not be a solution anytime soon as i imagine rewriting tons of inefficient javascript code into efficient c++ is a huge amount of work, a real pity as 0 A.D. is such a very good improved clone of Age of Empires concepts and mechanics (and looks incredibly good), but performance just kills its interest for me as those issues always start to appear when the game start being really fun (i mean when all sides begin to have actual armies)
Intel has reported our findings to Wildfire Games, but unfortunately, updating the Javascript is a massive undertaking, so as of writing, the bottleneck remains.
Post by: Iduno on February 23, 2021, 11:25:03 am
Post by: Aoi on March 01, 2021, 08:29:52 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Edit: Okay, some of the predictive indicators could be a little more comprehensive. Just killed myself on two different runs via counter damage that I just derp'd and didn't see. Oops.
One thing that's kind of dumb is that, unlike EtB, you're usually *penalized* by preventing an enemy from spawning. One of the most common bonuses for a stage is "Kill X Enemies in Y Turns", and preventing a spawn doesn't increment the counter; it just pushes it off to the next turn.
Post by: Egan_BW on March 01, 2021, 09:43:06 pm
Post by: Great Order on March 02, 2021, 07:31:15 am
It's actually more fun than it sounds, helped by there being a fair few synergies that are only hinted at, and some that you have to discover by yourself. For example, placing a 3x3 square of mountains/rocks creates a mountain peak that increases max health by 120 and spawns harpies every day. Another one that's hinted at is that placing vampire mansions next to villages will turn them into a ransacked village that spawns ghouls, but after three loops it'll convert into Count's Lands, which is basically a buffed village.
Then when you're done with the loop, either because you left it or you got killed, you go back to your campsite where you use gathered resources to build stuff for various buffs and class unlocks, as well as giving you more cards to choose for your deck. The Steam page has a demo that lets you go through the first chapter.
Post by: nenjin on March 02, 2021, 07:11:09 pm
It's a sequel to the first game, which I did an ill-fated and unfinished LP of.
CE2 has dropped the links to real world figures in favor of something a bit more eclectic. The game has a main story now that you play chapters of in between random expeditions. Your "score" is no longer predicated on how long your expedition takes you. The ticking clock, other than dwindling resources, is this mysterious purple fog that closes in from the edges of the map as the days roll by, and walking through it is a massive hit to sanity.
On top of those changes they've added "Clubs" of three varieties that sponsor all expeditions. Do missions, rank up with them, get new consumable, gear and expedition member unlocks. Your rep with them is across the whole save file, so starting a new character doesn't wipe out your Club rep.
Other than that it's still largely the same, enjoyable game. Half the fun and challenge is navigating these randomly generated islands while managing your sanity and getting as much loot as possible.
You get multiple ways to approach situations, from befriending natives and learning about them to robbing them blind of their cultural treasures and royally pissing them off. Some things are multiple choice, some things come down to skill tests with your expedition members' dice, some are just random events and good or bad luck. The longer characters are in your expedition the more likely it is they'll form bonds with one another, from friendship to love to hate, which can affect how your expedition performs. They can gain or lose various other traits due to stuff that happens during expeditions as well. TBH the map navigation and exploration and resource and sanity management are to me the most enjoyable parts of the game. Later game maps are so rife with hazards and difficult terrain that you gotta look tile by tile to figure out the most optimal way to travel.
Once you finish a map they total up all your loot, you earn rep with the Club that sponsored the Expedition and your leader gets to choose a random perk which, by the time you've massed five or six of them, make the game vastly easier. You also get awarded currency based on your overall score to spend at the Clubs for good stuff.
The other half of the game is the dice based combat which I've become quite a fan of as well. Your expedition leader and all the expedition members have action dice grouped into three colorized categories, red for strength/brute force, blue for wits/intelligence, green for agility/cleverness. Each of these dice are different attacks and moves within each category, based on the class of the character, and each round of combat is a jumble of all your character's dice. Dice of the same color can be used to boost an attack or move, and the whole system proceeds in an orderly, predictable turn-based fashion. The enemy design and combat system has the feel of a card game, with the randomness of dice added in. Quite enjoyable, once you find a good combo. For me, it was shields, healing and all my damage largely focused into one character (which happened to be my expedition leader riding an Onyx that I found in the wilds and tamed.)
All in all it's a solid upgrade to the previous game, graphically and in terms of content. I put 30 hours in before my first win but that involved several restarts at the beginning and numerous attempts at several late game maps where things. Just. Didn't. Come. Together. Late game maps can be especially challenging as they're multi-stage (i.e. map to map with few chances to replenish your stocks), quest objectives that are randomly scattered around, the aforementioned rough terrain and lots and lots of hostile enemies. It's probably a 10 to 15 hour experience for others with I'd say mild replayability. But frankly just the fun of getting through those maps Indiana Jones style keeps bringing me back.
Post by: MCreeper on March 03, 2021, 12:30:15 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
To add insult to injury, romance options are a gang of supernatural jerkasses that shit-talked you, beaten you up (or did they? 
) then pretended to be your underlings while doing their own thing. At least one of them is courteous about that. I didn't even got trough first book. This review (https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198290740870/recommended/800600/) sums up all badness in a better way. Post by: scriver on March 03, 2021, 12:47:01 pm
Post by: MCreeper on March 04, 2021, 11:22:49 am
Trials of the Thief-taker was made by a forumite of here, I think it's pretty durn good.Was it you, matey? ;) It's actually the first one i tried, but totally forgot about. Didn't even made it past chapter 3 (mohocks?).
Post by: scriver on March 04, 2021, 12:15:54 pm
Post by: Aoi on March 05, 2021, 05:22:20 am
Gonna rep The Curious Expedition 2.
So I'm kind of curious... have you had any expeditions last more than 365 days? Because each 'chapter' of the game is a year, I'm wondering it does anything interesting if a single expedition lasts over a year. My longest one so far was a whopping
Post by: nenjin on March 05, 2021, 10:39:21 am
308 days is impressive though. Surprised the whole island wasn't a fog bank by that point.
Post by: Aoi on March 05, 2021, 07:39:43 pm
No I think my longest was probably 212 days or something. I don't think the days really map all that well to the year. And yeah, compared to CE1, CE2 basically lets you farm your way to vast riches as long as you have a good way to regain sanity (the resting spots and villages.) Only when the fog closes in and cuts off your route to the final objective does it actually become a problem.
308 days is impressive though. Surprised the whole island wasn't a fog bank by that point.
The 308 was the finale to Act... 3? that has three parts, each with an independent timer, so it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds... I did trigger like 8 Insanity events and the final objective was adjacent to the fog at that point though.
My shorter, but much more profitable run was because I thought I had a short jog to my final objective, so I stopped to loot a shrine. That cut me off from the short route, and I had to double back for over 100 days, with two villages of salamanders trying to kill me. I'm a combat-based team, so that was fine, but boy did it take a while. Also didn't have the item that regens sanity based on combat, so I was basically gibbering the entire time too.
Post by: Iduno on March 09, 2021, 02:21:12 pm
You start with 2 dice, and some equipment with some sort of theme. For example, the thief starts with a dagger card (does damage equal to the number on a die, as long as that die is 3 or less, and is reusable), a lockpicks (split one die randomly, splits a one into 2 ones, only one use), and can use one random piece of equipment the enemy has each turn. You can choose where you go on a map for each level, usually with one piece of equipment behind one enemy, a store (you get 1 gold for each enemy defeated) possibly behind one, an anvil which upgrades equipment might exist, and an apple which gives you some health back. You gain xp equal to the level of the enemy you defeated, and you need 2xlevel xp to level up. Each level has enough enemies to get you a level-up. Each run last about half an hour, and there are 6 characters, each with 6 difficulty levels. It ramps up in difficulty pretty quickly. Level-ups give you more health, full healing, and an extra die.
Each character also has a special power when you take about half your health in damage. For the thief, you get to roll 4 extra ones that round, which works nicely if you've found poison equipment (for example: 2 or less, add 1 poison to the enemy, 3 uses).
I really enjoy it, but it's fairly important to find good equipment fast on higher difficulties.
Edit: I just did several runs with the Witch (4th character out of 6, and by far my favorite so far). Your first turn is mostly set-up, doing maybe 1-2 damage. She needs to equip spells from her spellbook into the play area (By spending a die and choosing a location for the spell. One spell starts prepared, you can also choose either another prepared slot or an upgraded spell slot during some level-ups) before using them. You can also replace a spell, including one you've already used this turn, if you have more dice than you need. The which has a spell that doesn't do anything except gain extra dice in future turns, so "more dice than you need" can happen if you're willing to take some time to get set up. It looks like this:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iceblaster on March 10, 2021, 08:30:37 pm
And during the big fight that occured it's there that very sadly the biggest 0 A.D. issue i always had is still there, as mentionned in the new release article :QuoteDespite our best efforts, the game can still lag when there are a lot of units on the map.
I ran into this interesting article by Intel that tries to identify the source of this super annoying and fun-breaking problem with 0 A.D.
https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/identifying-the-frame-rate-bottleneck-in-0-ad.html
I thought it had to do with pathfinding as coming from Dwarf Fortress everything bad about performance was always involvings bugs and pathfinding :D, but apparently it's javascript in this case :QuoteThe numerous transitions associated with thunking in the frame gaps, coupled with the various “js” entries that pop up throughout the results, strongly suggest that the game’s bottleneck is its Javascript usage. The exact nature of the problem remains unidentified – it could be excessive garbage collection or too-frequent interfacing, but most likely it’s the use of the Javascript to run significant portions of the game logic, which would likely be more efficient if written in C++.Sadly it sounds like there will not be a solution anytime soon as i imagine rewriting tons of inefficient javascript code into efficient c++ is a huge amount of work, a real pity as 0 A.D. is such a very good improved clone of Age of Empires concepts and mechanics (and looks incredibly good), but performance just kills its interest for me as those issues always start to appear when the game start being really fun (i mean when all sides begin to have actual armies)
Intel has reported our findings to Wildfire Games, but unfortunately, updating the Javascript is a massive undertaking, so as of writing, the bottleneck remains.
Makes me sadder and sadder that the Hyrule Total War devs moved over to that instead of using their unfinished mod to actually finish making a mod :P
Post by: Kagus on March 16, 2021, 07:33:17 am
Modern reimagining of Pokémon with baked-in Nuzlocke restriction settings on higher difficulties?
Modern reimagining of Pokémon with baked-in Nuzlocke restriction settings on higher difficulties.
Post by: scriver on March 17, 2021, 08:23:49 am
Post by: nenjin on March 17, 2021, 10:18:09 am
Post by: scriver on March 17, 2021, 10:27:56 pm
Post by: King Zultan on March 18, 2021, 04:23:27 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 18, 2021, 04:36:55 am
Post by: Iduno on March 18, 2021, 08:00:50 am
But that doesn't sound like gotta catch 'em all at all
It's for people who really want to play Digimon, but can't handle the complexity.
A alternative playmode (like speedrunning) can create a difference expierence - just like some people like the punishment of rogue likes, some enjoy the closer connection nuzlock provides - a bit like playing like when you where a kid.
I remember that trying to get the speedrunning achievement certainly made Doom Rl seem more like actual Doom.
Post by: scriver on March 18, 2021, 08:41:20 am
A alternative playmode (like speedrunning) can create a difference expierence - just like some people like the punishment of rogue likes, some enjoy the closer connection nuzlock provides - a bit like playing like when you where a kid.
I certainly didn't play anything like that when I was a kid ;)
Post by: Robsoie on March 18, 2021, 12:35:22 pm
I remember when they introduced an annoying feature (hydration i think it was called) in which there was much peeing and other kind of things that i was so happy a coder made a version without that ( Elona+ Custom-G (https://elona.fandom.com/f/p/3340109923483964385) was the name) kind of thing.
From what i read Custom-G hasn't been following the Elona updates, not much of a problem to me as Custom G was good enough at the time and will do for now again.
Still i was curious about how Elona+ has evolved since those years.
so i checked the changelog for the newest version ( 2.03 ) and ...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
.... Ok, back to Custom-G then :D
Post by: AlStar on March 18, 2021, 02:59:58 pm
"Oh, that guy? Yeah, you might want to avoid getting any ear cleanings from him... I've heard he killed the last dozen people whose ears he cleaned. Nah, nah, no legal trouble - that's just the risks of ear cleaning, you know?"
I've always thought that the dev(s) behind Elona+ has to be high on something... and this is not changing that opinion - not even a little.
Post by: Aoi on March 21, 2021, 06:57:42 pm
A few major caveats though-- has a lot of RNG (though I guess cruising around derelict space is pretty luck-dependent...), unpredictability in a bad way (How much of what resource do I plan to lose if I void a warehouse fire? Oh look, there goes all my food, the only resource I was short on.), and getting forced into narrative decisions with no chance of survival.
I'm pretty sure it was the endgame sequence where... (non-narrative lategame warning)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on March 22, 2021, 09:21:34 am
And apparently there's a mod for this AOE2 DE named Overreign that does something rather impressive :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5ZhkfPczA
https://old.reddit.com/r/Overreign/
Post by: Frumple on March 22, 2021, 10:59:12 am
Post by: Robsoie on March 23, 2021, 04:31:47 am
Post by: Frumple on March 23, 2021, 06:36:32 am
Post by: Kagus on March 23, 2021, 01:18:04 pm
Y'know, honestly, it's not even a matter of "why" for me. I'm just stunned at HOW the absolute fuck they managed to stitch that shit together
Also that's going to be horrifying if they ever get around to trying to implement the Escher-esque geometry of AoE cliffs.
Post by: Aoi on March 24, 2021, 06:58:57 pm
Battles move fast; your typical match is your 3 units against ~8 hostiles on a fairly small grid and, takes me about 15 minutes to, er, die at the first boss, on 1-9. Health persists through encounters, but your units can be revived after each round... at the cost of your unit upgrade.
So a kind of notable downside is the RNG-hell this game involves. As a tactical game, you want agency, but can often end up in battles are are mechanically impossible... and the RNG this game has exacerbates it. Your one-upgrade-per-stage, across all three characters, is RNG. Your occasional piece of equipment is RNG. The chance of the trader showing up is RNG, and the goods they have is RNG. The selection of perks you can buy in-run is... you guessed it: RNG. Oh, and the boss of each 'world' is also RNG. At the same time, trying to overcome a mediocre (but not downright bad) hand is something nice.
You've got your usual assortment of persistent unlocks and, allegedly, alternate units, but that appears to be contingent on not being awful and being able to at least pass the first boss (which I suspect will be something feasible once I get a few more of those unlocks). All in all... better than I expected. (Much, much better than the boredom that Magic: Legends I checked out yesterday on request, at least. Seriously, don't touch it. Only one person needs to waste their time with it. -_-)
Post by: Aoi on April 02, 2021, 06:02:00 pm
https://shuffleup.itch.io/circadian-dice/devlog/237900/version-20-big-content-update
Post by: DeKaFu on April 02, 2021, 07:05:56 pm
Oooo, Circadian Dice update!
https://shuffleup.itch.io/circadian-dice/devlog/237900/version-20-big-content-update
Excellent! I've been waiting for this since they announced it in October. Means the Steam release is coming soon, hopefully.
Post by: Aoi on April 06, 2021, 06:59:31 am
Edit: I... evidently spent a few hours trying to beat Frozen Horror with the Demonologist on Hard, not the Sun Monastery. Which is doubly galling, since I already have a 5* Frozen Horror.
Post by: Robsoie on April 06, 2021, 12:30:38 pm
Oooo, Circadian Dice update!
https://shuffleup.itch.io/circadian-dice/devlog/237900/version-20-big-content-update
That's great.
Quickly gave a try and i may be in the minority but i find the new artwork design in the game main menu worse, poor necromancer has been apparently stuck for too long between crushing walls and the timebender has a very bizarro pose on the ground.
The coloring is improved though in the new picture.
Spoiler: new artwork (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: old artwork (click to show/hide)
Anyways, i wonder how those new guys, the demonologist and the monk are playing , and this day/night cycle seems is going to make things more complicated
Post by: Iduno on April 06, 2021, 12:56:05 pm
Oooo, Circadian Dice update!
https://shuffleup.itch.io/circadian-dice/devlog/237900/version-20-big-content-update
That's great.
Quickly gave a try and i may be in the minority but i find the new artwork design in the game main menu worse, poor necromancer has been apparently stuck for too long between crushing walls and the timebender has a very bizarro pose on the ground.
The coloring is improved though in the new picture.Spoiler: new artwork (click to show/hide)Spoiler: old artwork (click to show/hide)
Anyways, i wonder how those new guys, the demonologist and the monk are playing , and this day/night cycle seems is going to make things more complicated
Yeah, the rest of the artwork is great, but the main menu artwork is...that. The elementalist and maybe the cleric look better than before, but only because it wasn't great before.
Post by: Robsoie on April 06, 2021, 01:03:32 pm
I'll regret that old bomb+chestplate combo, was so amazing while it lasted :)
edit : the demon form ability can be really amazing for the demonologist when you're at the boss stage and wonder if you have enough life to make it, that +1 damage multiplier can help a lot (as you can't heal while in demon form, so you're going all in).
But having some very lucky roll can help even more :D
Post by: Robsoie on April 07, 2021, 04:28:38 am
It was good i was still taking the bomb item with me, because i ran into a "legendary chest" instead of the normal ones (and i didn't had enough attack to destroy it otherwise before the turn end) and Detonate helped.
It gave me an artifact dice that was very very usefull in that Noxius Marsh run
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Too bad you can't keep it once the mission is cleared.
Getting this so early allowed my demonologist to clear this mission i had lost several time already as i wasn't taking so much of those diseases anymore from early monsters (due to having a lot more firepower than usual i could kill them before they could attack).
Clearing this one got me the 2 stars i was missing to unlock this character 15 stars item
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Overall the game has a lot of "new cool stuff" , reworked abilities and new game mechanics that allow for more variation in game but in the same time it feels much harder due to some of the previously amazing items combo i was often counting on for the harder levels having been more or less nerfed.
Harder also for most classes because there are no good starting healing method like the Barbarian or the Cleric ones (in lesser amount) , so if you're not lucky with getting some good +health choices in between turns or having the shop roll some big +health dice, you're in a world of pain in some levels.
I have not figured out yet some good synergy between new items yet, at least not one replacing the cool bomb/chestplate combo of past version.
Post by: Aoi on April 07, 2021, 05:39:14 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 07, 2021, 07:16:45 am
Demonologist Scroll+Timetwister Orb+that item that gives +1creature damage is pretty nifty. Then you just shove as many red gems/blockers on your die faces and reroll until you win.Is that the 20 stars item i have not yet unlocked ? :D
Post by: Aoi on April 07, 2021, 07:26:29 am
Demonologist Scroll+Timetwister Orb+that item that gives +1creature damage is pretty nifty. Then you just shove as many red gems/blockers on your die faces and reroll until you win.Is that the 20 stars item i have not yet unlocked ? :D
Yep. I don't remember what its passive effect is, but the more important thing is that it gives you the Imp Assistant skill that replaces a capture with an imp.
Post by: Iduno on April 07, 2021, 06:19:15 pm
Overall the game has a lot of "new cool stuff" , reworked abilities and new game mechanics that allow for more variation in game but in the same time it feels much harder due to some of the previously amazing items combo i was often counting on for the harder levels having been more or less nerfed.
Harder also for most classes because there are no good starting healing method like the Barbarian or the Cleric ones (in lesser amount) , so if you're not lucky with getting some good +health choices in between turns or having the shop roll some big +health dice, you're in a world of pain in some levels.
I have not figured out yet some good synergy between new items yet, at least not one replacing the cool bomb/chestplate combo of past version.
Agreed on the lack of healing thing.
Demonologist would probably be good with Trapper's Mantle (early item with +20 to catch, and traps are replaced with claws when successful), Soothing Collar (start with a trap on 2nd and 4th die which wouldn't change anything, and also +1 to attack for captured creatures), and summoning scythe (fangs with creatures are piercing, and start with undead army special ability). Preacher's pamphlet (gain 2 health and 1 gold at the end of a wave if you have captured creatures in every slot) might get some use as well.
Monk probably wants Onk's Fist for some healing and extra damage. Adventurer's Kit or Witch's knife possibly? Heart Pendant? Flux Dampener? None of the healing items feel impressive, but not dying is a pretty nice perk. Maybe Timerider's Orb to take better advantage of night/day?
I just beat the first scenario with Monk a second time (out of 5-6 tries), taking only score, and still only got 493 points. Still don't have my 5 stars. Onk's Fist is also nice if you need the 2 damage to get through the boss' shield.
Edit: Got stomped in the second scenario. Before rolling, I bough a die face with a trap for my second die, which I never rolled (made it to the boss, then lost from fear). I was only able to beat the lifestealing bats with my 2-damage special, and burned that out. Never made enough money to upgrade anything, but I had 2 faces with 2 damage (windrider bow for 2 pierce and Onk's Fist for 2 damage, stun, and lifesteal) and only rolled one once. Not a great character, but amazingly bad luck doesn't help.
Post by: Aoi on April 07, 2021, 11:57:39 pm
I'm still working on 10*HM Demonologist, but my 20* was done with Soothing Collar, Timetwister Orb, Summoning Scythe. (With Summoning Scythe later replaced by Demonifesto, the 20* that I called the Demonologist Scroll before). Reroll faces and red gems are what you want; a capture face is good to have on-hand that you can pump via Specimen Hunt to take out bosses with is handy.
I wish it kept track of what relics you had equipped for your high scores.
Post by: Robsoie on April 08, 2021, 02:34:58 am
Managed to beat the frozen horror level with the demonologist with
soothing collar (for the nice +1 attack on captured ennemies) + ring of fellowship (that starting imp is awesome, though you need some luck for rolling red gems) + trapper mantle (this nice additional fang for an used trap) + bottomless pouch (the +1 gold by waves may or may not have helped to fast buy more red gem)
The good bonus to capture from both the collar and the mantle helped a lot, as i captured an archdemon before the bosses waves , and with the Pet ability i had spared (and got more charges in one of the end wave bonus choice) , that captured guy killed 2 of the 3 bosses in the same turn :)
I was worrying things would not die fast enough for me to complete the mission before the bigger boss woke up but it worked out nicely as i had some luck with the +health bonus between waves coming when i needed for once (usually it only come when i don't need it and never come when my character is badly hurt :D )
This victory managed to get me the last 2 stars i needed to unlock the demonoligst "demonifasto" for more of those usefull imps :D
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The moonwood new mission seems to be very hard, as there are enemies you can't kill (even accidentally) (until they are transformed at night) as it will hurt your end score badly (-100 points each), very bad situation for the imps that target random enemies on screen when triggered. Managed to win this level but ended score at -7 (i had a villager captured to boost the score but so many died to my imp) so it's not even recorded in my score (as the best current one is 0 :D )
The boss for the sun monastery level is insane, the thing has ethereal 3 (so it does not take damage the 3 first time you attack it) and attack 9 each turn ! (and of course he's not alone so there's more damage going to you by turn) , and he's not capturable too.
Hope you have some multi-damaging attacks to get rid of his minions and hit him 3 times to make him actually vulnerable to damage. Hard to get multiple imps and enough red gems without dying first.
Post by: Aoi on April 08, 2021, 03:28:18 am
Moonwood HM... I actually only have completion on Demonologist, because I'm aiming for whatever the 2nd row/last column trinket is that requires beating all 12 HM stages. 191 points! *flex*
I actually just did 5* Sun Monastery HM between your last two edits with Demonifesto/Soothing Collar/Moonstone Essence(!?). What really saved me was getting +4 Pet as a reward halfway down the line. Save your Capture/Pet/Imp Assistants for the Rift Stalkers-- not only does it block damage, but it also blocks their damage effects (Frozen, nnnng!). I went into the boss with 5 turns of invincibility available, plus there's an RS (two?) available to capture.
Edit: 12 HM stage trinket is... awkward. Not sure I'd ever use it.
Post by: Robsoie on April 08, 2021, 04:07:15 am
Wow, i only managed to beat 6 hard modes levels and that was on the previous version , the 2 remaining (well to unlock further HM levels) hard mode version of noxious marsh and ancient tombs are just destroying me everytime :D
Post by: n9103 on April 08, 2021, 08:27:24 am
Post by: Aoi on April 08, 2021, 08:43:49 am
I have 2* and 4* Noxious Marsh HM on Ninja and Barbarian, but those are pre-update, and 5* Ancient Tomb HM with Barbarian, also pre-update.
Lemmie see what I can do post-update... maybe give some ideas for relic combos.
-----
Spoiler: 5* Noxious Marsh HM on Demonologist (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: 5* Ancient Tomb HM on Demonologist (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on April 08, 2021, 08:50:59 am
That's like the totally opposite of my attempts :D
Thanks for the item combo example, i'll have to give it a try sometime.
Post by: AzyWng on April 08, 2021, 09:06:18 am
It's a roguelike shooter about someone travelling across a land to save their partner. I'm, uh... not really great at describing these sorts of things since I'm not sure what questions you'd like to ask, but again, it's worth a try.
Post by: Uristides on April 08, 2021, 10:10:27 am
For those not in the know, think polish fencing simulator 1621. So, like a fighting game with weapons but getting shanked in the gut with a rapier actually means nap time for you. It has really decent motion capture animations(some fencing youtubers seem to agree they are historically accurate too, not that I'd know or care) and a pretty fun, if sometimes janky, physics simulation orchestrating all your character's movements and swordplay. The development team is one brave polish dude and the game is still in a very early, crude stage, but you can already play versus CPU or on local multiplayer with a modest roster, and the fighting experience is already quite polished. I fear online multiplayer might never come out in full capacity because the physics simulation is too non-deterministic and tied to the host's framerate, but the community has been working around that with some success using steam remote play or parsec.
I'm not gonna lie that I'll probably have forgotten about it by next week, at least until the next major update, but it's well worth the hours of fun I'm having finally experiencing a spiritual successor to BB.
Post by: Jopax on April 08, 2021, 12:02:07 pm
It's essentially a dumber Supreme Commander. Not as dumb as SC2 but dumber nonetheless. The story is laughably bad and nonsensical with random shit happening just because it needs to progress the story, shit is revealed and it makes no sense and to say the dialogue is bad is an insult to bad dialogue. One highlight is a guy going: "I wish we could nuke these idiots from orbit, sadly we don't have the tech" (that is despite being a post-AI-singularity humanity that has conquered the stars and has shit like teleportation) and then, after beating the mission going: "It was a shitty thing, but it had to be done, that guy that was corrupted was my friend" Said guy is mentioned for the first and last time in that mission.
The campaign also plays like a glorified tutorial, except it's shit at that too, it gives you the ability to use things several missions before explaining how to use them. So you'd figure something out for yourself (because shit ain't that complex to begin with) and then several missions later the game would waste your time explaining how to use said thing.
So, uh, yeah, there's worse things to buy for a tenner but there's also vastly better ones too :V
Post by: n9103 on April 08, 2021, 12:29:42 pm
Does the name Bushido Blade mean anything to you? Do you intend to name your first born Bushido Blade III? Do you frequently dream of a game eerily similar to Bushido Blade but with pierogi and piwó instead of anime shenanigans? Then you might want to check out Hellish Quart (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1000360/Hellish_Quart/)Reminds me much more of the Prince of Persia Classic fighting, than BB. That's not a bad thing, btw.
I associate BB with some one-hit sidestepping jank, which this doesn't seem to have based on the first trailer.
Post by: Robsoie on April 10, 2021, 09:49:03 am
Because the monk benefit a lot from from the ability that double the amount of dice use + the day-powered attack dices (can use them 2 time while it's day) as it can then hit a lot of time in the same turn.
That combination is great for enemy without shields (especially enemies that show up early in a level but that have lot of health) but it has a serious cons : it does only work with dice that do 1 damage so if shields are involved on enemies you're doing nothing, and if you have bought a lot of attack dice that do more than 1 damage (like your would do most of the time to replace all your weakling dices), you're not going to do a lot of attacks .
But if you earned the ability "enlightement" during one of the level up or chest opening, this combination is absolutely great : because enlightement gives you extra experience for each attacks you do in a single turn (as it only last a turn).
So let's say you're getting lucky and have already reached level 3 to unlock your 3rd dice.
you're lucky again and you roll 3 attack (1 damage each) dices this turn, 2 of them are day-powered and because you're lucky it's day , it means you'll be able to do 10 attacks in a turn and also gets crazy extra experience so maybe you'll not be far to unlock the 4th attack dice way earlier than you should.
Still it means you'll need a lot of luck , so probably extremely rarely going to happen :D but when it happens, it should mean you're going very likely to win this level with some score to spare.
Not in a hurry to try to get his 20 stars item, from now everything feels very hard with the monk if luck isn't on your side for the good combination of rolls to happens exactly when you need it.
Post by: DeKaFu on April 10, 2021, 06:43:14 pm
Just try to minimize rerolls during the day to punch everything to death with double damage, and then when night hits I usually have close to 10 rerolls saved and can reroll my way straight through to morning to completely avoid the downside.
Post by: Aoi on April 10, 2021, 07:06:09 pm
Spoiler: Screenshots (click to show/hide)
Post by: King Zultan on April 11, 2021, 05:03:21 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 11, 2021, 05:11:36 am
Don't worry after a couple of week everything will go back to normal :D
Post by: King Zultan on April 11, 2021, 06:04:39 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 11, 2021, 06:24:21 am
In Circadian Dice basically you choose a class (you unlock more of them as you play) and try to complete several levels that are made of a succession of enemies waves , sometime bosses. More levels will appear progressively atfer you beat some of them.
Each waves, you have a certain amount of re-roll, and you roll 2 die (at first), you gain experience due to various factors (killing enemies, buying die faces in the shop, abilities, etc..) and each 2 levelup you gain an additional die (and its faces).
Each die have very different faces (the game has truckload of different die faces that each have different effects) that are given half at random half depending on your class , so with the rolling results you"re trying to destroy the enemies in each waves to progress further.
You can gain gold (from some face, from abilities, from some specific enemies, from some specific chest that can sometime be dropped by an enemy, etc...) and you can use that gold to buy new faces when available in the shops (or not as gold gives score bonus in the end), price can vary depending on how powerfull those faces can be. You can also reroll the shop offering, but after a free reroll, they cost more gold
Then there are abilities, that consume each some specific type of mana (that you can refill when rolling a face of that specific type) and can influence a lot of what is happening, then there are items (most you'll have to unlock by completeling levels and gaining stars depending on how high the end score is) that also will influence a lot of what happens in many ways (depending on the items).
Basically it's a game based on luck, decisions, choice between risk or cautious to balance the randomness making it extremely replayable and addicting.
edit : managed to finally unlock the last item of the monk (on normal mode)
I was missing 3 stars and had too hard time to complete higher levels, so i went back to the Necromancer Tower that i had completed with the monk but couldn't get more than 1 star, and this time managed to complete it with 4 (the Dreamsaver item helped a lot there, it gives score points whatever bonus choice you take between waves, but it does not add streaks so you may still want to pick score a couple of time for better scoring)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: scriver on April 11, 2021, 06:36:51 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 11, 2021, 06:46:57 am
The developer has plans for a steam release and it shouldn't be free anymore when it will happen.
Post by: delphonso on April 11, 2021, 06:58:49 am
Post by: Aoi on April 11, 2021, 07:18:00 am
Post by: Sirus on April 11, 2021, 08:17:39 am
Post by: Aoi on April 11, 2021, 08:29:52 am
I'd say after three pages of discussion, it's worth bringing to its own thread. Off with ya, shoo.
Three pages? Give us some credit here! It started being discussed on page 48 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=154091.msg8116613;topicseen#msg8116613). :D
Post by: delphonso on April 11, 2021, 08:42:26 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 11, 2021, 01:49:54 pm
And now, the definition of frustration.
Managed to clear the 7th scenario (noxious marsh) on hard mode with the demonologist after several failures, was going for the 8th one (the ancient tomb) in the hope to unlock finally the corresponding item.
After a lot of losses (as the scenario is "curse your die faces party" , so much the multivitamin item can't follow at all) i decided to ditch the multivitamin and get the ring of fellowship (despite i had the demonifesto) nstead so at least i could have a chance to have a starting imp pet with the hope to get red gem rolls to kill the starting enemies (as they have 4 health) before they can throw curses.
It surprisingly worked (well not that surprisingly as having much less cursed faces thanks to the starting imp helping with the first opponent before he could hit me at least twice (and curse 2 faces), i was losing less health when rolling them and the many tomb guardians enemies weren't getting +attack bonus that fast).
Then after defeating the demi boss (great i had purchased some good healing faces as she hit hard, more than the final boss,), the final boss appeared.
I rerolled a lot and thanks to the many red faces i had purchased for my army of imp, we defeated his minions and hurt him bad.
Unfortunately i got a lot of hit too and faces withered.
So on the final attack i finally cleared it, the boss was destroyed.
Happy, i pressed Next Turn and :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Huh ? you got to be kidding me , the game just killed me after i ended this victorious turn ...
It's probably a bug as i am sure i had 2 health left when i pressed the end turn button. But damn, just when i was finally going to clear that horrible hard mode "Ancient Tomb"
edit : finally cleared the hard mode version of Ancient Tomb, i think i was on the right track with my item choices
It allowed me to finally unlock the item rewarded for clearing 8 hard mode scenario.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Then i read the description of the item
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Until i tried it and the 3 fears are only used when you want to use an item that has run out of charges (as the item prevent abilities to disappear when they have run out), so not so bad after all, and even really good on scenario that does not feature fear-giving enemies.
Post by: Folly on April 15, 2021, 01:51:08 pm
Build factories to harvest and process raw materials, then build transportation networks to move them around a vast and infinitely expanding world.
I haven't played yet, but lots of glowing reviews have me sorely tempted. However, the price point is just slightly higher than I'd like, and the recent Satisfactory update is already kinda scratching that itch for me.
Post by: MaximumZero on April 16, 2021, 07:18:43 pm
Post by: Stench Guzman on April 16, 2021, 10:18:04 pm
If you play Descent or Descent 2 I recommend the DXX-Rebirth source port.
Post by: Kagus on April 17, 2021, 04:38:10 pm
Voxel Tycoon
Can it really be called "Voxel Tycoon" when most of the assets aren't even made using voxels? False advertising, I say...
Post by: Akura on April 29, 2021, 03:21:54 pm
Post by: Kagus on April 29, 2021, 05:18:53 pm
Rising World was just updated.
Wait, what? That's actually still in development? Holy cow. I thought that just died along with all the other unfinished open world survival craft games of the period.
Post by: E. Albright on May 01, 2021, 02:05:52 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1487560/StarCrawlers_Chimera/
Post by: Frumple on May 01, 2021, 08:25:09 pm
Weird thing is I think back in the day dungeon hack was several times more tolerable an experience than eye of the beholder...
Post by: n9103 on May 02, 2021, 01:12:15 pm
The sequel-ish seems to be non-cardinal facing, plus a whole slew of actions to pick from. Hopefully they're hotkey'd at least.
I'm interested, but couldn't expect to provide useful feedback, so opting out.
Post by: AzyWng on May 02, 2021, 02:13:30 pm
Post by: delphonso on May 06, 2021, 03:07:13 am
Post by: Uristides on May 06, 2021, 03:21:46 pm
Space Haven has assuredly been mentioned here, but I'm here to recommend it again. It's a cool little game - still a work in progress.
I bought it but can't for the life of me get into it as it is now. Maybe I'm missing out on all the fun because I'm dumb and/or haven't played enough, but it feels like I'm just constantly wandering around trying to scavenge enough fuel from derelicts to keep me from going dark and nothing interesting ever really happens other than the occasional space bug.
Post by: delphonso on May 06, 2021, 07:18:18 pm
Post by: woodsmoke on May 07, 2021, 02:14:19 am
RAUM DRIVE at itch.io (https://woodsmoke.itch.io/raum-drive)
(https://i.imgur.com/KdSTVUx.png)
Post by: Frumple on May 07, 2021, 11:43:28 am
Seems pretty neat, in any case.
Post by: Robsoie on May 09, 2021, 08:10:22 am
Pine has some (very simple) survival elements with stamina and hunger, but there's some interesting features that are supposed to make the open world "alive" : there are several tribes in the world that have changing relations and send workers/fighters do their work in order to feed their tribes, increasing their numbers or failing and going to ruin, with you in the middle while exploring said open world and getting involved.
The cartoony look wasn't really up to my taste to be honest (it's noticably inspired by the Zelda games, those tribes are made of a lot of cartoony animal people tribes, and you're a cartoony human) so i hoped the gameplay would make up for it.
My first experience was rather an annoyance , from the main menu starting a new game will have you waiting for nearly 2 long minutes (on the paper it does not seems that long, but looking at a screen and doing nothing waiting for 2 minutes is feeling really long) before finally getting to play (some people even reported it takes much longer than that for them).
Once ingame there was also a big performance problem for me, the game was running simply like crap, for reason i didn't understood considering the game does not really look half as good as some other games on my system that were running incredibly smoothly on my system.
Was it another case of "Unity is really not an efficient and performing engine" ? Looked like it unfortunately, unless the game is just not optimised.
After lowering settings/resolution a lot (there's not much visual settings, so you can't really pinpoint what's the lag real source) and very importantly as i found out disabled the game own V-Sync settings (that was easily cutting framerate by half, making it really choppy) , i could finally play relatively smoothly (even it then looked rather average mediocre as least the environment was still visually good enough) .
I got used to those cartoony look and characters after a while and saw that Pine had indeed some potential as after finding a tribe of bizarro lizards people and bribing them into getting neutral (oh yes, every animal people tribes hate you for some reason, maybe explained in the game later, you will need to find a donation shrine and donate their prefered items you gather in order to get them to become neutral and at most even friendly), i could explore their village and observe after some talk to their leader and merchant that their fellow tribe members were busy walking around, getting out of their village and going to gather their town required material and foods then coming back for the delivery.
Interesting for now. After trying to follow some quest chain, i ran into some giant mammoth man (i thought about DF when i saw that guy :) ) that allowed me to increase my inventory size so i could gather more stuff , then went back into the world.
Some combat were going on in the regions i travelled, i noticed that even after finding some more protections that my character can die really fast while every enemies are able to take a lot of punishment, wouldn't be a problem if the combat system wasn't that clunky, maybe i'm not used to it enough but there's a cluncky feel to the controls when fighting (at least you can camera lock the nearest opponent , it helps with the controls) .
The interesting stuff is that due to the tribes relations, you can easily run into a fight that devolve into some free for all melee as there are patrols and gatherers working around their territory borders.
At some point in the desert i was fighting some kind of electrical gecko (a monster, not an animal people) when some kind of cat guy or gal (i'm not sure to be honest) that ran to location and started to throw bombs making things a bit hilarious :D
Then some kind of funny looking turkey guy or gal rushed in and attacked everyone.
Managed to run away while everyone else was duking it out.
Oh and a word about dying : really try your best to avoid dying, not because the consequence (in Pine it does not matter as you lose nothing of your progress).
But because dying does lead you into a long full minute long of loading time again for whatever reason, running away is a much better outcome :D
So as a conclusion for what i played there's potential, but there is really a need for optimisation (i haven't run yet into all those other bugs i saw reported) , i wish the game was less cartoony.
Post by: Mephisto on May 13, 2021, 08:22:03 am
From vicious giant insects who have once again come back
We'll unleash all our forces, we won't cut them any slack
The EDF deploys!
Our soldiers are prepared for any alien threats
The navy launches ships, the air force send their jets
And nothing can withstand our fixed bayonets
The EDF deploys!
Our forces have now dwindled and we pull back to regroup
The enemy has multiplied and formed a massive group
We better beat these bugs before we're all turned to soup
The EDF deploys! (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1497950/EARTH_DEFENSE_FORCE_WORLD_BROTHERS/)
Post by: scriver on May 13, 2021, 10:42:58 am
Post by: Mephisto on May 13, 2021, 02:34:56 pm
I really doubt you'll be building anything so it's maybe a bit more like Voxel Turf where the voxels are a vehicle for allowing more localized destructible environments - knocking parts of buildings down as opposed to the entire traditional model, for instance.
And it's a single/multiplayer third person shooter. Gameplay looks like it'll be pretty well identical to past EDF games.
Post by: Folly on May 13, 2021, 04:18:43 pm
Day 1 purchase for me.
Post by: delphonso on May 13, 2021, 07:21:25 pm
Post by: E. Albright on May 14, 2021, 12:23:26 am
Well, I did like Starcrawlers a bit, regardless of its flaws, so I'm going to opt in and see if I can get a taste of Chimera.
Impressions: turn-based combat was a bit odd balance-wise, but it didn't help that the only full run of a level I did dropped an orange 2h sword in the first room and I just obliterated everything I faced off against. It's all cardinal direction movement, but with free gaze, so you can end up with the disorienting thing where you're facing diagonal to how you're moving. Itemization was not great - as the legendary drop in the first room indicated, it was way too random, but that may well be an artifact of it being a 1-level demo. That also applies to the general lack of variety WRT enemies. I'd broadly compare the itemization to StarCrawlers itemization, and not in a complementary way - items tended to be sidegrades more often than upgrades, and after 3 or 4 sidegrades, you might end up lower than where you started b/c you're juggling semi-random collocations of attributes. Still, that was definitely a result of there only being one level, so it's not fair to conclude that'll reflect the final product. The character leveling is wonky - no classes, just skill trees. Pick 6 at the start and boost those as you level. It's okay - feels less MMO-y than SC did, but it also feels a lot more generic.
Overall, I give it a hard "maybe". I really don't know. I loved StarCrawlers to bits, and there's some of the same charm, but those elements don't translate well. To fall back on the Dungeon Hack comparison, I played A TON of DH back in the day... but I don't have any desire to play it now even though I'd not mind playing through Eye of the Beholder one more time...
Post by: dragdeler on May 14, 2021, 05:13:48 am
Just import rct1 scenarios and its the perfect RCT in
Post by: AzyWng on May 15, 2021, 08:32:30 pm
-Detailed explanation of features good and bad-
Yeah, I'm afraid I have to say the same thing - only I'm not feeling a 'maybe' so much as a 'no'.
Perhaps it's just 'cause it's early access, the first floor, and I was on Normal, but everything felt super easy to kill.
And, yes, things in general just... felt very generic. Again, this might change as things get more fleshed out in development, but for now...?
I dunno.
Post by: Demonic Spoon on May 17, 2021, 11:24:18 am
Anyway, think people would enjoy playing it as a ~10-20 min experience. I ended up making a map of the surface world as I was trying to determine if I might have missed anything. I might still have missed an island somewhere, but probably not? (Please do tell me if you found something on the surface that isn't on the map!) Sort of a spoiler if you actually wanted to play the game. :)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 17, 2021, 06:47:01 pm
Post by: Frumple on May 17, 2021, 09:56:22 pm
Post by: Iduno on May 18, 2021, 09:10:22 am
Has anyone tried Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion? It's a Zelda clone.
I saw something about it, and then forgot about it before I really looked into it. Any more information?
Post by: Folly on May 18, 2021, 05:27:40 pm
I bookmarked this video when Turnip Boy first entered my radar with the intention of learning more about it, then I got distracted and never actually watched it.
Post by: Mobbstar on May 19, 2021, 05:58:17 am
ᗢ (https://tak.itch.io/meow) is a fun and relaxing little exploration game where you wander across an archipelago as a cat. snip
Best game I played all month. I didn't realise until way later on that cat can climb tree. It took a while to get cat out of tree, too.
Spoiler question
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on May 19, 2021, 10:14:10 am
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
Tons of new additions, monuments, buildings and gameplay changes with updated translation in multiple language.
(for people that only want the modern engine in order to play Caesar3 unmodded, check the great Julius engine https://github.com/bvschaik/julius )
(Augustus is a fork of Julius)
Post by: Robsoie on May 19, 2021, 07:44:38 pm
Finally completed the 3rd vault and i'm working to settle my people somewhere. So i guess i'm on some of the last parts of the storyline.
Some impression after the time i spent in its world :
The Bad
- loading time are long, wouldn't be that much of a problem if it was only the original loading time (when you start the game) , but if you die, there will be another long loading time.
When you're in early game in which you die in basically 2 hits because you hit for so few damage and you have paper-thin protection, it's extremely annoying.
(also annoying that at the new start game/loading saved game you can't ALT+TAB to do something else , because it seems to pause the loading in the background too, so can't even browse the net while it's loading.)
- performance, sadly it's just not good (v-sync seems to be a complete killer on my system), as it's sad that to get a smooth play i had to lower the options so much, considering how more smooth some more visually intensive other open world game like those just cause can be.
- clunky movement, this problem shows in combat (how much times the attack go through my targets, it seems to be even worse if i "lock" a target, in fact i hit things a lot more if i don't lock a target for some reason) and is even worse in the platform sequences (the camera deciding to change suddenly and obscuring the view of where i try to land is just bad)
I even got a few time a jump that landed me between 2 rocks, making the character stuck in its falling animation forever.
- interface bug , there are a lot of times i got this problem :
When i use the Interact key (to talk or to activate something like a button/lever), there is a chance that it will not actually trigger anything that should happen
And once this problem occurs, from then there will not be any possibility to use the Interact key anywhere (the little icon is not present anymore and no Interact key pressing will do anything)
Additionally when this happens when you go to the options (save, load, quit) you will notice there's no text displayed anymore (though fortunately the buttons work).
The only solution is to quit to the main menu and load your saved game, it fixes it all.
It's not happening often, but it is not rare either.
- trigger bug , at several occasions i got a quest-related event not happenning when i reach a location in which said event should happen (like a cutscene)
Again, a go to main menu -> load your saved game and go again at location always worked to fix that.
- storyline forcing tribe relations change : this basically made me feel that most of everything i did to influence the politics up to the 2nd vault was an useless waste of time.
Because regardless, everyone will turn hostile again after the 2nd vault. At least this annoyance cease in the last parts of the storyline as the relations will change according to your actions again, not according to story scripts (well i hope).
- the "dungeon puzzles" , as the game is very Zelda-like it's not a surprise those big dungeons are filled with puzzles that block your path.
That blocking was my problem because some of those dungeon puzzle blocked your path so much that you couldn't just go back exit said dungeon (well they're called vaults) to go have fun elsewhere, you were forced to find the puzzle solution or just stay there forever.
The Good
- the world, it's very well designed, the many biomes that build a very varied atmosphere, the landscapes that are interesting to move around (as in not random generated without making much sense), the exploration that is actually fun as there's a lot of immersive vista around.
The world feels absolutely great , it's rare that i get a character in an open world setup just sit down and watch a scenery.
- the setting, while i'm usually not fond of cartoony/anime type of characters, i must admit that in Pine it works completely, in fact it surprised me that i developped some particular hatred for some of the tribes (damn those fox things, those bomb lobbing bastards) and wanted to help some other, i think it's a sign of a world building very well done.
The ancient story, the secrets , etc... it all shows that the game world has some depth, it's not just some empty fastfood-environment put quickly together, there's a consistency.
- the game mechanics, this tribe influencing and game of conquest and peace is just genius and introduce a lot of fun and motivation to the player to become involved into the game.
- the storyline, while some quests and outcome are too telegraphed unfortunately, there are some very good quest chain that makes you involved in the character actions. Overall i enjoyed the storyline so far.
- the "dungeon puzzles" , while i put a part of them in "The Bad" , another part of them is good , i enjoyed those powering up the various engines areas in the "futuristic" Moria-like vault.
Conclusion
Its an average game that could have been a good game but is marred by some technical problems that prevent it to live up to how great it could be (there's lot of potential for Pine to be a great game, good atmosphere, good open world, good mechanisms) if those problems weren't existing.
I wish your character had more personnality though, if a game does not leave you the choice to make your own character , at least make the guy not some emotionless robot. Even the animal people of those many tribes react to things better.
Post by: Aoi on May 22, 2021, 01:04:19 am
Galactic Mining Corp takes the same basic formula, makes it mouse-based (mixed feelings about that) and layers upon layers of grind... which I'm fine with in this case, since this kind of a game is mostly about zonking out while mining and pushing for that next upgrade so you can go just a bit better next time. The current price point kind of gives me pause though, probably because it's the kind of thing I expect to see in a fairly inexpensive bundle.
Post by: Iduno on May 28, 2021, 03:10:41 pm
The sides on the dice are usually 1 and 2 at the start, and can be upgraded twice giving you better results when that die comes up. You get a reward after each fight.
So far, there's nothing to do but see how long you can survive, but I'm curious what they'll do with it.
https://alarts.itch.io/die-in-the-dungeon (https://alarts.itch.io/die-in-the-dungeon) Looks like you can run it in the browser through that link if you want to try it.
Post by: Uristides on May 29, 2021, 10:24:38 am
I had mentionned the Zelda-like open world game "Pine" in a previous post. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=154091.msg8277631#msg8277631)Nice to see this mentioned here. I only played a bit on release because performance was abysmal, but at the time I just dismissed it as a combination of my trusty GT 740 not keeping up with it + me playing it through proton on Linux + 'twas an indie game that'd just been released, can't expect much. But I absolutely adored what I'd seen of the world at the time(controls were clunky indeed, but again, can't expect much when running at 720p with 20ish FPS), a bit of a shame to hear the post-release support didn't manage to turn it into the grand experience it could have been.
[...]
Post by: Robsoie on June 01, 2021, 10:07:07 am
Noticed that a few days ago the Augustus mod made a new big stable release for Caesar 3, version 3.01 :
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
Tons of new additions, monuments, buildings and gameplay changes with updated translation in multiple language.
(for people that only want the modern engine in order to play Caesar3 unmodded, check the great Julius engine https://github.com/bvschaik/julius )
(Augustus is a fork of Julius)
I noticed there's a coding genius that is trying to make a fork of the excellent Julius/Augustus engine and port Pharaoh to it, project Ozymandias :
https://github.com/Banderi/Ozymandias
here's a work in progress video of his work :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3tQPoa_XwU
Post by: Jopax on June 02, 2021, 07:43:08 pm
First off something I came upon related to Total War: 3 Kingdoms (I know there's a thread, cba to find it atm), seems that CA is dropping it completely, for whatever reason, no more DLC, not sure if they'll keep patching shit, probably not. They will put out a new one tho, and it won't carry over any shit from the first one, so that's a fun and obvious cashgrab. Never cared much for 3K but it's a rather shitty move that casts a nasty shadow on their other titles which I like quite a bit.
In other, less shitty things I've played and found worth talking about.
War Pips, a tug of war game where you send your little pixel dudes to kill other pixel dudes and their base. Has a sort of roguelite singleplayer where you conquer progressively harder islands, one fight at a time. Each fight makes the ones after it tougher but it also provides resources for upgrades as well as unit cards. This creates a nice risk/reward decision tree because every unit card is a single use per battle type of deal, so do you go for that extra fight to get some more snipers and APC's for future fights but risk making it all that much harder or do you try and swing it without those units? It does get a bit old after a few runs, but it's still being worked on and it isn't too expensive.
Plus the music kicks nine kinds of fucking ass, think the composer grew up playing tons of Red Alert games and was told to make whatever he liked, really raises the whole experience up a few levels.
I swear there was at least another 2 games I wanted to talk about but they escape me at the moment (tho it is kinda 3 AM right now :V), I'll get back to you when I remember what they were
Post by: Robsoie on June 04, 2021, 06:42:48 am
It's incredibly ressource hungry in comparison to how it look (you're only playing with the city in view at some distance, there's no visual exploration of either it or the surrounding frozen lands, as it's only 2D icons when you send you scout parties) , nearly thought it was yet another one of those unity games in which devs just put assets in it without a regard on how unoptimisated they are.
Checking on google it is was just me (as i don't have a "strong gaming pc" ) , i quickly noticed it wasn't, even the devs acknowledged that their game is not really good on the optimisation part
Quote
My game works too slow and I have a killer PC, what should I do?!
While we have done a lot to optimize the game and the process is nowhere near completion (we gained a lot of optimization experience while developing the console version of Frostpunk), we know that some of you encounter issues with framerate despite launching the game on machines that should handle it without any sign of trouble. These inconveniences usually happen on powerful gaming rigs that have been overclocked - please revert the CPU clock values to stock ones, it should help, even if it seems counterintuitive.
In graphic options there's several usually hungry effect (there are tons of shadow, particles, smoke in the city) that can't be turned off, only set to low by example, with everything set to low the game still look very good so don't hesitate if you need better framerate, even if it could really be better considering the game visuals.
Lowering the resolution is helpful for performance too, but it showcase another very bad thing about the game : the font and texts that are small by default (i would hate trying to play that game on a small monitor) will be made completely unreadable if you lower the game resolution, this has no solution sadly :/
Now for the good :
Frostpunk is a very good variation on the city builder genre, very well built dickensian atmosphere in this frozen apocalypse with lots of very impacting choices to do during the course of your city survival. The storyline elements and many events also add to the game so it does not end into only "find the exploitable mechanics" to win.
After losing in a few days on my first learning game session, on a further run i managed to get my city running for more than 20 days, the requirement to unlock the extra scenarios and i had lots of fun as some choices (especially the one that appears mid-game) will lead your city to run a very different course
In conclusion, too bad it's not optimised and so some people will not be able to enjoy it truly on their systems, because Frostpunk is a very good and original city builder that is completely worth a try.
Post by: Demonic Spoon on June 06, 2021, 11:09:46 am
Glad you liked it! I apologize for the late reply, as I completely missed your post the last few times I checked the thread. :-[ᗢ (https://tak.itch.io/meow) is a fun and relaxing little exploration game where you wander across an archipelago as a cat. snip
Best game I played all month. I didn't realise until way later on that cat can climb tree. It took a while to get cat out of tree, too.
Spoiler questionSpoiler (click to show/hide)
For those not in the know, the cat can climb up trees with up arrow, and climb down trees with a single short tap of the down arrow. Don't hold in the down arrow, or it just pans the view. :P You can also climb the masts of ships and at least one other thing. :)
To answer your question
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
In other game stuff, Too Deep (https://bluspur.itch.io/too-deep) is a challenging little Dwarf Fortress inspired platformer. :) Not too long, but that just means it doesn't overstay its welcome since it is a bit frustrating. :P
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Protips:
-Keep hold down/s pressed in even after you jump from a sliding down a slope to maintain momentum. If you release it you lose the momentum meaning you can't cross magma gaps.
-Down+Jump to go through thin ledges, in case you ran past the optional tutorial message for that like me and got stuck on the next level
-Double Jump seems to not work if you are too far along in your arc jump, so try to double jump earlier rather than later.
-You can dash after every pogo jump, but doublejump does not refresh.
Post by: Folly on June 06, 2021, 11:21:13 pm
Fly spaceships. Mine spacerocks. Shoot spacerobots. Build a spaceship. Program your spaceship. Build a spacestation to park your spaceships at. It's an MMO, so get some friends to do those things with you, and to fight other people who are trying to do the same things better than you.
Getting Started Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W27X7DHn5XA)
Endoskeleton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PPdBcNSnlk)
Programming (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lXK6_bktUk)
Space Weapons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDaf2KCN95k)
Guns! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm3hNcxVcWA)
More (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh-M5-wAw6pkcXUD0NnaR38O7mjoxza_k)
Post by: scriver on June 07, 2021, 03:56:51 pm
Basically, the premise is that instead of three people crashing into a Rimworld, you live in post-plagueocalyptic medieval England, and you're three people starting a new settlement to recreate civilisation in a desperate land or something. I haven't played very long with my
Post by: Akura on June 07, 2021, 08:42:26 pm
Spoiler: Some tips (click to show/hide)
AI might need a little work in regards to needs priority. During my first winter, more than one person got hypothermia, and decided that instead of running home to rest(and receive urgent medical care), they decided to pray... at an outdoor shrine as I hadn't build proper heated shrine rooms yet. Or one guy who decided that bottoming out on stamina is a perfect time to get drunk, followed by a game of backgammon.
Post by: Robsoie on June 08, 2021, 10:03:22 am
https://github.com/buxx/Opencombat
http://www.closecombatseries.net/CCS/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=11696
video of his current work :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxVgjBKXlIw
Post by: Uristides on June 08, 2021, 11:43:04 am
You can choose between 3 backgrounds for your character, adventurer, scientist, and journalist, each with a distinct starting perk(with more unlockable as you progress in the game) and a set of starting equipment, as you explore the mountain you'll pick up new equipment, level up to obtain new perks, and all the standard RPG fanfare. After that you choose which mountain to tackle, and which route you'll follow, each route having attributes affecting terrain, weather, and overall spookiness you can expect to find during the climb.
With everything set up you're met with the game itself. Like I said, you're in a mountain made of hexagons(technically hexagonal prisms) of different heights, with a few trees and non-hexagonal boulders and rock-faces added both as obstacles and to make everything look less angular. You set up a couple of waypoints to trace a path and your character follows through it, usually consuming some resources in the process. The game's resources are health, energy, body warmth, oxygen, and sanity, and for the most part the game is a balancing act between them: you burn through energy as you walk, but gain a bit of body warmth(except when it's really cold, then you're screwed), but if you're forced to sleep out in the open you regain energy at the expense of warmth, this is the most obvious interaction, but there are many more. Having any resource other than health reach 0 does not spell your doom, but rather mean that you'll get spammed by events that slowly screw you over and drain your health.
Back to the mountain, you can of course make a beeline for the summit, but you'll probably die, and you'll miss out on events. Events are represented by a small token floating over a hex, and represent features like items left behind, abandoned(or not) camps, caves, shrines erected by the inhabitants of the island and etc. Once you interact with an event it's gone forever, so you have to ration them in some ways, like never visiting a cave or abandoned tent where you could possibly sleep safely when you are at full energy, not messing with abandoned stashes when your backpack is already full, etc. It's a nice layer of tactical thinking, but also a really gamey aspect on top of something I already find to be an already gamey abstraction.
Also, one last thing I hadn't mentioned yet is the camera. It's always stuck on your character. You can zoom in, zoom out, or rotate it, but never move it freely across the map. It's both annoying and ingenious. Sometimes you don't see an event until you walk right next to it, or you really have to get going into a possible route before you can get a clear picture of how viable it really is. I still wonder if there's a way to move it around that I don't know of, because even when it works for the game it's weird.
Overall, it's a cool little game, but I just don't feel immersed into the hiking/climbing experience. The hexagons, the event tokens, and the resource juggling just make me feel like I'm playing a really pretty board game, and I don't care much for the whole storyline involving spoopy stuff that took place in the mountains before the island's existence was made public either. I won't be refunding it because it's not bad and I can see it's a work of love by a small team, but I don't see myself playing it much in the future or recommending it also.
AI might need a little work in regards to needs priority. During my first winter, more than one person got hypothermia, and decided that instead of running home to rest(and receive urgent medical care), they decided to pray... at an outdoor shrine as I hadn't build proper heated shrine rooms yet. Or one guy who decided that bottoming out on stamina is a perfect time to get drunk, followed by a game of backgammon.
Tbf, both of those sound terribly like what some real people would do.
Yeah, I'm definitely adding that to my wishlist now.
Post by: E. Albright on June 10, 2021, 06:02:35 pm
[Edit: went ahead and answered my own question. It's ambitious, but derivative and abbreviated, and they didn't put enough work into the UI. It would have felt clunky if it had been released contemporaneously with MOOII - now it feels gritty and shabby.]
Post by: Robsoie on June 11, 2021, 05:13:26 pm
As i don't follow modern gaming these days, i never heard about it so i had no idea that Control was basically the poster child of Ray Tracing techniques (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blbu0g9DAGA)
And to be honest i had to watch the video to see in what way ray tracing is supposed to look better than some of the non-ray tracing games i played and found to look as good and sometime even better than Control (while having at least many times the framerate of it), basically from what i saw in the video it's in the details of the details ... that frankly i don't really notice while playing as reflections in reflections isn't something you usually notice unless you want to really pay attention (as different level of reflection of various surface is common in game of the last decades)
As expect from these kind of ray tracing technique, the game just ran horribly bad on my not-"strong gaming pc" :D
Fortunately, after turning everything to low , turning down the render resolution a lot and disabling what could be disabled, it surprised me more than it .. did not look that much worse (out of the obvious lower resolution) ? in fact it stil looks amazing , so don't worry about turning down stuff.
But the difference in framerate was like day and night and the game became very playable, so all good i guess.
After some minutes i was wondering if that game was all about what happens when developers work on some lsd trip with some nonsense internal monologue as a bonus, but fortunately after progressing more in the game that first negative impression goes away and you're stuck in some Men in Black + Doctor Who mix (without the jokes) facing some universe/reality warping invasion/infection major threat that impact everything and everyone around you, while being forced to work for unfathomable entities .
The transforming rooms when you manage to purify a sector are very impressive.
And when you start to learn new powers you get a lot of new ways to have fun (that floppy disk is awesome), until the first boss, Tommasi ... that annoying flying psycho infected bastard, the difficulty spike is big at that time when you're old and rusty like i am :D
There is of course a method to beat him, as there's a "tell" on when to attack him or the guys that come to help him (and that you use as a source of healing) , but today is not the day i beat that guy apparently as every single time i make a few steps i shouldn't do out of cover at the wrong time (and the worst is that i know i do that mistake) and get on the recieving end of his attack, and as he hits insanely hard , i get back to the latest purified control point a lot.
Anyways, Control is a lot more interesting than i thought at first during the first few minutes. Very well worth a play in this very weird world.
Post by: vjek on June 11, 2021, 06:24:47 pm
... Well, Going Medieval is the medieval mod for Rimworld, except it's own game, and in three dimensions. ...I've been playing Going Medieval the past few days, and it's quite good, imo. It's not done, it's under active development, but it has a lot of systems that DF has.
Playing it like DF, there are only 4 Z levels, but you can do ~everything underground. You can grow crops, mine out ores/materials, and live entirely underground. The surface can have exactly one staircase descending, and that's it for surface structures. It has clay, clay bricks, limestone, limestone bricks. Stone furniture, wood furniture. You can plant trees, and shrubs and harvest them later. I haven't tried growing trees underground yet, but it's on the to-do list. 8)
In any case, these are my playthrough notes for version 0.5.28.4:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on June 12, 2021, 10:57:23 am
https://veloren.net/
https://github.com/veloren/veloren
Post by: Robsoie on June 13, 2021, 07:17:09 am
https://www.widelands.org/news/2021/Jun/8/widelands-1-0-release-candidate/
Post by: Akura on June 13, 2021, 09:21:42 am
In mostly unrelated news(it popped up as a related search with Widelands), Unknown Horizons (https://unknown-horizons.org/), an open-source early Anno games clone that I haven't played in years, has been chugging along for the past few years as well. Originally written in Python, they've been porting to the Godot engine for the last year.
Post by: Mkok on June 13, 2021, 11:47:33 am
The good Settlers 2 open source clone "Widelands" reached its first release candidate for the version 1.0 :
https://www.widelands.org/news/2021/Jun/8/widelands-1-0-release-candidate/
Interesting. So how does it play? Is it basically settlers 2 or are there some considerable improvements/changes to the gameplay? Quick look on the webpage indicates there are three distinct factions, which seems nice...
Post by: Robsoie on June 13, 2021, 12:07:07 pm
Having been a long time player of Settlers 2 it was very easy to find my marks in Widelands after some menu quirks, as the gameplay is really closer to it than to any of the other Settlers games, there are some quality of life addition (like the progressive zoom with mousewheel)
But what i didn't remembered were the visuals (unless they changed a lot since 2014), on the map i played (i played a game 1vs1 with the AI on "Crater" they're a lot less clear than in my memories : the workers sprites are mixing with the background very badly so you have a hard time to see them at some zoom level, the roads aren't great either with that light green on green grass , maybe it's because i was trying the Amazon civ but after switching to the Empire (the Widelands version of Settlers 2 Romans) it was -much better, i guess that may be why Amazon is said experimental.
After extending my settlement a bit too much, i ran into the other civ and after the initial optimistic attack in which i took back a couple of my sentry post i had lost to the invaders
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I got utterly crushed by waves of their attackers, should have build some military building instead of only sentry posts :D
edit : managed to make a come back and even capture some enemy sentry posts
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Hmm, we're now at a stand still as we're both out of soldiers to send attacking, i'll have to improve my mining operations and weapon manufacturing (and all the industry to produce their required materials) in order to train new soldiers at a barrack, so i can resume the invasion.
Hoping the enemy will not do it first.
Interesting to learn that Unknown Horizon is still going, i thought they had ceased development years ago of this very promising Anno-like game, i wonder what was the reason of such complete engine change ?
Hopefully they'll find some contributors as from what i read they are in need of additional developers for this Godot move, the game was really good and promising when i played it.
Post by: scriver on June 13, 2021, 01:28:37 pm
... Well, Going Medieval is the medieval mod for Rimworld, except it's own game, and in three dimensions. ...I've been playing Going Medieval the past few days, and it's quite good, imo. It's not done, it's under active development, but it has a lot of systems that DF has.
Playing it like DF, there are only 4 Z levels, but you can do ~everything underground. You can grow crops, mine out ores/materials, and live entirely underground. The surface can have exactly one staircase descending, and that's it for surface structures. It has clay, clay bricks, limestone, limestone bricks. Stone furniture, wood furniture. You can plant trees, and shrubs and harvest them later. I haven't tried growing trees underground yet, but it's on the to-do list. 8)
In any case, these are my playthrough notes for version 0.5.28.4:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Sure, you can build underground, but that removes the best part of the game! You get to build your own castle!
Post by: vjek on June 13, 2021, 02:16:32 pm
Today there have been a major release of the open source freebie Veloren (a game that seems to be visually inspired by Cube World)Had a chance to play that some in the past few days as well..
https://veloren.net/
https://github.com/veloren/veloren
It has great potential, and by that I mean graphical performance is pretty amazing. You can zoom out to planetary scale (literally) and it still sustains ~60fps on modest vulkan 1.1+ hardware. It's still in pre-alpha, and that's an actual accurate assessment, I think.
It's playable, but lacking in some major features, still. Balance in the core game loops is still lacking.
The whole voxel tech approach does give it the possibility of being a multiplayer DF kind of game. It has a SQL backed persistence layer, and is multiplayer into the 100+ range. Commits are written to the db every 10 seconds.
It's written in Rust, so if you know that, you have a head start. Worldgen is .. painfully complex at this point, but I will try to bend it to my will this week. :-\
It has climbing, gliding, respawns of mobs, npcs, merchants, caves, dungeons, and an absolutely gigantic world/setting. Nothing for tasks, quests, or missions, yet.
It seems like there's a ton of planned features (like building/housing, taming, quests, factions, etc) but none of that is implemented yet (that I can see/do). They talk about taming like it's done, but the taming collars don't do anything in game, for me.
Documentation is sparse, but you can find some details by reading the source code, worst case.
There is a dedicated server which appears quite stable, you can run without centralized veloren.net auth if you want to, and manually delegate admins at the dedicated console interface. Player tracking is done by username, with no passwords, under those conditions. A single TCP port for forwarding is all that's required, so running your own server is very easy via any cloud provider. (even the free GCP compute instances).
There is grouping, up to configurable party size (6 by default) with healing, life taps, wards, ranged magic, bows, melee, 1h, 2h, all that. But it's certainly playable solo/single-player, too, imo.
EDIT: Screenshot
(https://i.postimg.cc/2V3LbZ6w/image.png) (https://postimg.cc/2V3LbZ6w)
Post by: Robsoie on June 13, 2021, 03:37:49 pm
You're always running fast in Veloren from what i tested (unless there's a "not sprinting" key i didn't found), and you're always spawning in a mountain for some reason. Now with the combination of your character running speed and being on a mountain, if you try to just go down the mountain by trying to just move from block to block below, your character will very soon enough fall down instead of following the blocks on the ground (your speed vector just get you out of the blocks very fast), and then die from falling from too high.
I played a bit the single player on the default world that ship with Veloren, after the amazement of it looking nice i quickly got into a fight with something i didn't identify.
The combat feels a bit clunky to me, unless i'm just too old now :D , but it seems everything is a bullet sponge, while you're not (as the thing i was fighting near the starting village took me down in a couple of hit). After respawn i was running after some group of deers on the mountain side below.
In order to get some leather or anything they drop and it took a lot of strikes to bring the animal down (and catching up to do), at least the deer didn't fought back so the only enemy here was the mountain slope.
When i used the glider to go down the mountain to the ground level, in a forest i was exploring i saw a tiger rather quickly, he attacked and one shot killed me.
I guess all of this is to give a reason to craft new equipment, it looks like the starting items are very weak.
Anyways, there's a lot of potential for greatness with Veloren, i hope they'll continue to develop it.
Edit : a note about Airshipper (the launcher that download and keep your Veloren up to date), if you want to find where the actual Veloren game files are, the launcher will install Velorenin your :
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\airshipper\
Post by: vjek on June 13, 2021, 03:49:06 pm
Even with the best weapons in the game (via /give_item) all creatures are bullet sponges. It's just the way things are at this phase, I think. Easy to fix, hopefully just low priority.
The starting world, I think, was created the way it was to show off Gliding, and that's why you start out in the mountains. You can save at a campfire waypoint down on the Savannah, though, and zerg those Lions, Tigers, Alligators, and Hyenas all day long. ;) There's also a rather disproportionate amount of resources (like tin and copper) that spawn in certain areas, providing truly staggering amounts of raw materials once you get/craft a Pick Axe for mining. I actually don't know if raw materials like that respawn over time, or are finite in the world. They're on top of blocks, not IN blocks, and for that matter, I have no idea if blocks respawn/re-grow over time as well. :D
At the moment, I hope Veloren is at the point where the development team know they have the overall game framework in place, and can now iterate on the detailed mechanics to make a game that has many mechanics with many different ways to advance. Unfortunately, it could also go the way of many other games and just be a murder hobo sim, where combat > all, and you have to fight continuously. Hopefully not, but it definitely could end up like that.
Post by: Robsoie on June 14, 2021, 02:05:42 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
edit : oh wow, the ghost of your defeated character roam the place too like in the DCSS roguelike, was a very fun fight to take him out as it has the same equipment i had at the time (and is way more dangerous than the uglies i was taking out so far).
edit 2 : was a bit overestimating myself after defeating a ghost and truckloads of uglies, on a new sector i spotted some big knight-like guy (that looked like some of the statues around an early game door) roaming around a circular corridor, i ran to strike him in his back, noticed hilariously low damage to him in comparison to other enemies, in reply he slashed me and one shot killed my poor character.
I guess i'll have to find and equip much better stuff (and probably learn to dodge better :D )
edit 3 : near the beginning of the game you'll find a console in which you can input your personnal ID
Something you don't have.
Do not waste your time looking around the environment it's not there, this personnal ID thing was apparently some reward for the people that backed their kickstart campaign.
One code surfaced, it gives you some stronger items than you should have at that point, basically it's a cheat (that you don't really need as what you'll find around is good enough to deal with beginning enemies anyways).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
edit 4 : notice what looks like a breach in space/time you run nearby close to the beginning of the game (apparently you'll find more of them when you progress): it's where you'll be able to use your axiom to increase your character level/stats.
So once you gathered lots of axiom, try to come back there without dying (as you lose your axiom when dying, while you respawn in front of the breach) or you'll have to come back where you died to take the axiom you dropped (fortunately it stay there, but beware your death can generate a ghost, he's more dangerous than the other enemies in early game as its AI can dodge/parry like you do).
Note that you'll notice sometime some thin colum with lot of light on them, they're ladder in fact so you can use them when you are close enough.
Ran into what looked like the 1st boss not very far from the knight-like guys , it seems that spoiler require a lot of knowing when to dodge and attacking at the right time and retreating at the right time.
I had improved my character strength a lot, but only managed to take that boss health bar by half before dying to some of her attack i miscalculated stupidly.
Tough i didn't explored much before going into her room, maybe there's some good stuff to pick up and equip to help yourself.
Post by: Akura on June 14, 2021, 04:12:59 pm
Post by: Robsoie on June 14, 2021, 06:18:05 pm
And it's rather huge, does devastating damage , but it's insanely slow. I'm not sure using it is really advised for the strong enemies (your ghost, the knight things, the 1st boss) due to how slow it is for the hard attack, and the fast attack seems to be as slow as the hard attack of the pipe (that looks like an axe).
Hmm, looks like i may have wasted points there, should have probably go for increasing health and the energy (so i could do longer combos and dodging in a row).
Spoiler: other weapon (click to show/hide)
There's a gauge for when you strike with a weapon, googled around and it looks like this enable you to unlock some special abilities for a weapon you have used enough to fill that gauge, i've been using the pipe/axe thing for a couple of hours and the gauge is not yet at its middle, i hope those abilities are worth it.
The game reward grinding actually as enemy respawn after a time (so more axiom to get for leveling), i have read that difficulty levels can be increased/decreased too with your actions or investment in one of the breaches.
There also a timer , when said timer reach a specific point (on the top right of your screen, the clock will have orange parts lighting up) it triggers a special "horde" event in some specific sectors.
In the beginner sector i didn't had an actual horde, but there was a huge thing with big horns that was wielding a bigger stick that appeared in the large room (the one in which there is the lift) in which there are a lot of early uglies patrolling or waiting.
Didn't tried to fight this one as i doubt i was prepared :D
edit : i take back what i said about the column weapon, despite being slow it isin fact awesome against those big knight type of enemies.
When said knight move toward you with his shield in front of you, at a specific distance start your column hard attack, as the shielded knight does not move fast, there's a good chance your molasse weapon will hit before the knight strike you with one of his sword assault.
And the column being that massive type of hammer it is, will send the knight flying and falling (something the other weapons i found can't do).
Move quickly to the correct distance and start again immediately the hard attack, if you time things right and get at the correct range, your massive hammer will again send the knight down as soon as he stand up.
Repeat until no more knight.
In fact it looks like the "column" is the easiest way to not die against the knight. May be worth those 12 levels invested in strength after all.
Post by: vjek on June 17, 2021, 05:03:17 pm
... Sure, you can build underground, but that removes the best part of the game! You get to build your own castle!Very true. However, if you really want to build MORE underground, you can add more Z levels by editing:
..\Going Medieval_Data\StreamingAssets\MapV2\MapTypes.json and changing (for example):
"id": "map_type_valley",
"flatHeight": 4,
to
"id": "map_type_valley",
"flatHeight": 8,
And you'll get an additional 4 Z levels to play with. Game plays normally, no issues.
You can also edit all/most of the .jsons to change production values/times, harvesting values/times, and even Thermal Models to adjust all temperature taps/sinks.
If you build floors underneath constructed stairs, you can mine directly under them. This permits making a 2x3 tile descending stairway as deep as you wish, to build your fort vertically, if desired, underground.
Post by: Stench Guzman on June 17, 2021, 07:09:32 pm
Post by: E. Albright on June 17, 2021, 07:16:24 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on June 17, 2021, 07:21:26 pm
Post by: Robsoie on June 19, 2021, 07:52:12 am
Post by: Yoink on June 19, 2021, 10:31:15 am
Post by: scriver on June 20, 2021, 01:44:54 pm
Pathea Games (who did My Time at Portia) has released a demo/alpha of My Time at Sandrock (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084600/My_Time_at_Sandrock/). Not sure how extensive it is, but after playing a couple of days I feel comfortable saying it's looking like My Time at Portia, only more polished, with significantly better UI, better art direction (no more bobbleheads!), and overall a more cohesive aesthetic... I'm pretty sure they've sold me on it.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Picking things up is fun!
It also caught my eye in the demo-paloosa. Upon seeing the default name for my character was Max I of course named him Max Dangerous and his workshop THE DANGERSHOP
Post by: nenjin on June 21, 2021, 03:01:34 pm
It's the sequel to Red Solstice 1, which itself is a starcraft marine mod.
Red Solstice combines moba-like controls and gameplay (shoot lots of stuff, level up your character while you play) with a coop 8 player map clearing and objective based gameplay. Think "Alien Swarm" except bigger and in an open map area rather than a point A to B level to get through.
So you get dropped on Mars Colony as a group of marines, move around in a top down/isometric view point, completing objectives around the map while you're constantly swarmed with endless waves of aliens and mutants.
It's the kinda game where you have to keep moving all the time or get overwhelmed. The only thing that makes you work together, other than the desire for team work, is that surviving alone as the wave timer increases becomes quite difficult.
Red Solstice 1 was kinda....eurojank. Like the visuals and gameplay were mostly good, but there's a lot different things stuffed into one game. Rules, skills, fiddly things like dropping single magazines of ammo for people, multiple firing modes, injuries, leveling up, combat suits that function like classes, shit loads of friendly fire due to copious amounts of explosives with large detonation radius, weirdo random bosses with specific things you have to do to kill them that go completely unexplained, nebulous objectives that aren't well explained....alll while being done under the gun of a wave timer where shit just gets out of hand eventually, and having to move across a large map between objectives while keeping everyone together and working as a team.
It's....a lot to take in.
Red Solstice 2 is basically the same game, but improved. The visuals are actually quite good now. They sorta streamlined and simplified some stuff, made things a little clearer. It manages to start as a slow paced, atmospheric bug hunt before devolving into a non-stop fire fight where you have kill, move and constantly be working toward your objectives so you can evac.
All in all I enjoyed my time playing it. It will always have a bit of that "eurojank" going on. Always going to be slightly confusing what you need to do sometimes or how you need to do it. But we played over 60 games and I felt like more than 50% of them were actual wins of some kind, which is so, so much better or further than we made it in Red Solstice 1. And it's pretty satisfying to play with several friends (It's like one of the few true coop games that supports more than 4 people, which is why we started playing it in the first place), keeping everyone together, fighting as a team, all that good stuff.
It's a recommend from me, with the caveat that it takes a while to grok everything the game wants you to do and handle. It was definitely an overwhelming experience dropping straight into multiplayer with no preparation, because I am definitely not a MOBA player or a big time RTS player, which this game's control scheme draws heavily from. But once you figure out what you're doing, it's a pretty satisfying play experience. Like high stakes Diablo with guns.
Post by: Robsoie on June 21, 2021, 05:20:50 pm
So if while playing Hellpoint you start to notice half of your strikes seems to ignore the enemy, lower the game graphic settings/game resolution, you'll notice suddenly, along the better framerate, that now you'll hit a lot more in situations in which your weapon seemed to miss a lot.
Post by: JimboM12 on June 21, 2021, 07:07:12 pm
Post by: Kagus on June 22, 2021, 07:59:42 am
Red Solstice 1 was kinda....eurojank. Like the visuals and gameplay were mostly good, but there's a lot different things stuffed into one game. Rules, skills, fiddly things like dropping single magazines of ammo for people, multiple firing modes, injuries, leveling up, combat suits that function like classes, shit loads of friendly fire due to copious amounts of explosives with large detonation radius, weirdo random bosses with specific things you have to do to kill them that go completely unexplained, nebulous objectives that aren't well explained....alll while being done under the gun of a wave timer where shit just gets out of hand eventually, and having to move across a large map between objectives while keeping everyone together and working as a team.
Oh hey, that sounds a bit like some WC3 custom maps I used to play on... NOTD I think?
Anyway, I'm a sucker for weird shit like that. Might have to take a peek at RS2.
Post by: Zangi on June 22, 2021, 03:15:00 pm
Pretty sure it was based off that or something very similar to NoTD custom maps. Basically mod makers going commercial if I remember correctly.Red Solstice 1 was kinda....eurojank. Like the visuals and gameplay were mostly good, but there's a lot different things stuffed into one game. Rules, skills, fiddly things like dropping single magazines of ammo for people, multiple firing modes, injuries, leveling up, combat suits that function like classes, shit loads of friendly fire due to copious amounts of explosives with large detonation radius, weirdo random bosses with specific things you have to do to kill them that go completely unexplained, nebulous objectives that aren't well explained....alll while being done under the gun of a wave timer where shit just gets out of hand eventually, and having to move across a large map between objectives while keeping everyone together and working as a team.
Oh hey, that sounds a bit like some WC3 custom maps I used to play on... NOTD I think?
Anyway, I'm a sucker for weird shit like that. Might have to take a peek at RS2.
Anyways, I tried out Enlisted over the weekend. It was fine for the first few battles. Mostly infantry based combat. Then I started to get matched in rounds with armor and planes throwing explosions and suppressing fire everywhere.
Hankering for something similar to Enlisted/Tiger Knights, I found Conqueror's Blade. Not as much explosions everywhere, but is definitely RPG-ish in levels/gear/quality of troops. It may actually be worse then Tiger Knights in that regard, but at least matchmaking tends to put you with people theoretically closer to your level.
Joined a party with higher level folks = me matching into high level battles. My lowbie units can only temporarily hold the line, while dealing nearly no damage to higher quality troops unless under specific condition.
I still find it fun-ish, at least for now. It will turn sour if I get destroyed too easily on a constant basis.
Post by: nenjin on June 22, 2021, 06:46:00 pm
We would have done that instead of just straight MP, but there's still some bugs to be hashed out.....
*deep blurb inc*
You see, probably my biggest complaint about RS2 right now is you have to do specific things to rank up. You can still "level" and gain perk points to spend on the skill trees even if you don't "rank up." But if you want to go from Sergeant to Master Sergeant (for example), you have to do something like "shred 3 points of armor with an explosive" or "stun 3 enemies" by the mission's end. It reads very simple but that conceals a lot of issues like, guys that actually are armored may show up once or twice in the early waves, and you won't see a concentration of them until late game. And you're essentially competing with your team for all those kills. Oh and many classes don't natively have access to something like explosives, it's something they probably have to find in the map. Good luck being like "Hey guys, no one shoot that armored guy because I need to plant a claymore so I can blow up his armor so I can.....oh he's already dead." And somethings double stack on the accessibility problem. Like needing to stun guys. Well, in order to stun, they have to be a big enough enemy that they have a suppression bar. In order to stun, that suppression bar has to be full. Once it's full and you hit them with a weapon that inflicts stun, you stun. Except most of the early troops that have suppression bars die so fast that their suppression bar doesn't ever fill up. Sometimes people shoot and kill them with weapons that don't inflict suppression at all. (Most weapons that can inflict stun don't inflict suppression!)
So.....back to the SP campaign. It uses your MP profile, right from the get-go. And when you first, first play the game, it doesn't initially unlock all your potential skill trees until you've ranked up at least once. Which in the beginning is super simple. However when you load into your SP campaign, and it grabs your MP profile.....it still treats you like you just started the game. Oh your profile is there, sorta. But if you check your skill tree, it's reduced like you just started the game. It wants you to rank up once. Which will use your MP profile to determine what that takes. So you start a campaign essentially hard locked behind high level requirements to unlock shit you already have.
*Jackie Chan angry confused face*
(FWIW, "ranking up" only seems to control which color palettes you can make your armor. So far at least. I may make a big deal out of something so minor, but choices like that tend to stick in one's craw, especially if they're a bit of a completionist.)
As I said, there's a fair bit of intentional, wonky, "this is my vision" jank in this game. There was more of it in RS1 that's now been dialed back. But everyone disliked this rank up objective thing. It's not that the game isn't flexible enough to easily get them done once you know what to do....but I play Medic pretty much exclusively. We don't get grenades. So in order to complete the "shred armor w/ explosives" thing, I had to switch to another class and just spam the fuck out of grenades to ensure I got it done, because of the competitive/semi-random nature of combat spawns and everything else.
Like I'm sure I'm not getting something about the interaction of my MP profile and the campaign profile. I'm sure it makes sense in some dev's head. Or maybe it's just bugged. So while I recommend it, you gotta prepare to deal with some design decisions that can easily rub you the wrong way.
Post by: Robsoie on June 26, 2021, 04:33:32 pm
Returns feels more like an introduction to the shadowrun universe
From my current playthrough, Shadowrun Returns main campaign is really completely linear, you're always railroaded to what to do out of a couple of optional objectives on a few missions, i only had managed to find a single optional side mission (i guess i"m near the end) , a "rescue a guy working for a competitor so we could enslave him to work for us"
Playing on normal difficulty, i find it also surprisingly very easy (playing a melee character),the xcom like battle lack a lot unfortunately in the tactical department (maybe because my melee character lack options too, i just slash people hard until they die while support character shoot them)
Only problem i had was in a later mission in which there was a run through the matrix with a hired decker in which i had overlooked most abilities and could finish it before the alarm, but replaying it while using the decker stuff went a lot easier
But that said, the plus side is that the story is good so far, it"s a nice classic detective murder mystery that end into a bigger plot.
Characters while not fully explored have some personnality and some dialogues are interesting (but i'm not sure if choices really matters in the events unfolding)
I guess playing with a character that focus on more cyberpunk stuff and items (instead of the "put everything in STR, in Melee and some Dodge guy i created) it could open more possibilities, though the maps are still very linear with very npc to interact with actually
Notice that the main campaign of Shadowrun Returns has been ported as a custom campaign (with some changes) for the 3rd game of the serie (Shadowrun Hong Kong) named "Vox Populi"
edit : if you are being stuck in one of the endgame parts , the "The Hunt Begins" mission and see no more path to continue
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on June 27, 2021, 11:45:22 am
Spoiler: Description (click to show/hide)
From what i read the latest version of this mod is on github :
https://github.com/JamesB192/Shadowrun-Unlimited-rip
Here's how to install the latest version for the recent gog freebie
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: AzyWng on June 27, 2021, 02:05:07 pm
Post by: DG on June 28, 2021, 12:43:04 am
snip
Thanks for the write-up and links, I appreciate it. :)
Post by: Stench Guzman on June 28, 2021, 09:47:22 pm
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2021, 06:11:06 am
https://www.nexusmods.com/shadowrundragonfall/mods/8
For the anecdote, in the SNES version of Shadowrun (that was different from the Genesis version at the time) , the player character was named Jake Armitage.
And in the main campaign of Shadowrun Returns, "Dead Man Switch" (or in the port of this campaign renamed "Vox Populi" for Shadowrun Hong Kong) , you will get some run with him.
Post by: dragdeler on June 29, 2021, 07:04:49 am
Ill probably play SR hongkong right after I loose interest in my tombkings total warhammer campaign. Or is it advised to play the other shadowruns first?
Post by: Sirus on June 29, 2021, 08:10:05 am
Post by: Aoi on June 29, 2021, 08:30:30 am
And man, was keeping certain characters alive through the endgame fights a ridiculous headache for effectively no payoff.
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2021, 09:33:01 am
Ill probably play SR hongkong right after I loose interest in my tombkings total warhammer campaign. Or is it advised to play the other shadowruns first?
SR Dragonfall and SR Hong Kong are said to be the absolute best and can be played independantly without problem (and they all have their own user made campaigns anyways for extending the fun after completion).
I'm currently into Dragonfall and i truly enjoy it so far.
for SR Returns, it's apparently best played as the mod Vox Populi on SR Hong Kong as i read it improves its weak points and it seems there's more content too.
I completed the SR Returns version of the campaign ( Dead Man's Switch) and while the story was good (a noir-like detective murder mystery that of course lead into something bigger) it was unfortunately very linear and too easy (where Dragonfall is not) , i don't know if Vox Populi breaks a bit its linearity.
Post by: dragdeler on June 29, 2021, 10:11:01 am
Post by: nenjin on June 29, 2021, 10:21:22 am
Post by: dragdeler on June 29, 2021, 10:32:08 am
Post by: nenjin on June 29, 2021, 10:52:07 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 30, 2021, 05:02:15 am
So far the missions were good, some had alternate way to do them, some had interesting events, and one was hilarious (knight kings :D )
But this one ( MKVI ) 2nd part was just plain bad
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
edit : now that i'm nearing the end part of the campaign, i can give that advice :
In Shadowrun Dragonfall, do not focus only on decker-type of skills for your character , because the game only -very rarely- offer alternative ways to all the (unavoidable) pre-setup fights you will run into during mission (in fact nearly all the missions will have your team into lots and lots of firefights regardless of your character hacking things left and right) .
Meaning that if you focus more on deckers/esp programs skills because you hope to find other ways etc.., you're gimping your character seriously because missions are sadly a lot more linear than you would like them to be, so you must have a character able to contribute to your team actual firepower to get through the too many forced battles you're going to have in missions that you are supposed to stealth/infiltrate.
Unless you really like to only play the ambush way (in the game ambush mean getting your whole team waiting in overwatch around a corner while one of your guys run all the map, attracting people after him with long waiting boring time of nothing in between, so at least going with a gimped decker-only character will not hurt your gameplay as much (until you get into your teammates personal missions in which you are only 2 usually, with your character becoming then near useless if he can't fight with a good chance to hit anything).
I wish the missions were more open or with more alternatives depending on character skills.
Oh a tip for your local goth teammate that is always brooding about her sad dark past, Glory, she is a true beast with her fingers-razors , i found out that they're more usefull than her handgun (she is more accurate with the claws and there's additional bleeding by round damage with them, it seems it also deal more damage overall), so when getting her new skills , you should focus on the claws improvement instead of her guns one, i wish i did.
Post by: Ulfarr on July 02, 2021, 12:43:09 pm
Anyway, I just killed the first boss which somehow turned out to be a much easier fight than the "knights" that you met in the corridor just before it. Having read the posts here, I decided to try my hand with the Column but I just couldn't make it work. It was too slow, too difficult to judge it's range and the damage was often worse to the much nimbler Victim's poke that I looted from some enemy.
Post by: Robsoie on July 03, 2021, 10:42:30 am
I'm playing on keyboard+mouse too myself, it took me a long time to get over the initial difficulty of me constantly miscalculating the when to dodge, when to attack, which type of attack to use (and its delay) , but once i finally figured things out, it was a lot of fun.
For the column, you'll be surprised while it's not really great against small enemies, how good it is against those "knights" , use only the heavy attack with it (yes it's even slower , so you'll have to train a bit to get the timing right on when to start it depending on the knight distance to you) , but a hit with the column will send a"knight" flying, allowing you to get close again and start another heavy hit that will strike just when the knight managed to stand up, sending him flying again.
Too bad it does not do that against other tall enemies you'll encounter in the various areas.
Post by: Kagus on July 14, 2021, 04:57:06 am
Well, it talks a big game. It talks a really big game, which is why I rushed to try out the demo as soon as I'd heard a couple details. "Evil godlike conquer-the-world roguelike" kinda has that effect on me.
Currently, it really doesn't deliver a whole lot. It's got the UnReal World sort of facing/movement system, but with considerably smaller sight range, and the combat is just "walk into stuff a lot until it dies". There's apparently some mechanism where when designing your character you can select a race that can "pass" as a normal, upstanding citizen. This involves washing the blood off of your person regularly, but I can't tell you how effective it all is because I haven't tried it yet and there don't seem to be any ways of interacting with people other than just bashing their heads in with a stick.
There's also some weirdness, like sleeping characters not only taking just normal damage from attacks, but actually being able to successfully parry blows with the usual success rate. Villagers in distress will call out to each other, and while the other may respond with "I'm coming! Just don't die on me!", they don't appear to actually do anything and will happily carry on chopping down that tree or staring contentedly off into the middle distance while their friends get horribly murdered.
The Cultist class is unfortunately just an edgy name for a bog standard cleric, with holy-based attacks and a heal later on (which is almost entirely pointless with how weak it is). However, their Smite ability is pretty funny in that it's a holy-damage spell with speed and range based on the stats of the weapon you're holding. Basically just hitting someone with your weapon, but using magic stats and damage. Thing is, it can be used with ranged weapons too. Including bows that you don't have any arrows for because you haven't learned that recipe yet.
Speaking of recipes, there are a bajillion craftable items and most of them are never going to be crafted thanks to either prohibitive cost/tool requirements or just general uselessness. You start off with a few generic recipes, plus one or two from your profession, and after that you can only learn new ones by either getting exceptionally lucky and finding a recipe scroll, or destroying items in the hopes of learning how they're put together (Roughly 5% chance to learn on your first try with base intelligence).
So if your map spawned with only two loose arrows lying around in it? Congratulations, you're probably not going to be able to use bows normally unless you roll a nat 20.
I really like the concept of stuff like this and KeeperRL. I just haven't been able to find one yet that was particularly compelling to carry on with.
Post by: Jopax on July 14, 2021, 05:09:09 am
Company of Heroes 3 is a thing, takes place on the Italian front by the looks of it. Singleplayer seems to have a sort of strategic map that you move stuff around , not sure how that'll work out in the end. RTS gameplay seems pretty much the same as before, except there's a tactical pause now, doesn't really affect me much but it's a neat addition.
No idea when it properly releases, but the pre-alpha they put out looked like a pretty comprehensive vertical slice.
Post by: Kagus on July 14, 2021, 05:28:56 am
Posted in the WTF thread but I guess it's more appropriate here.
Company of Heroes 3 is a thing, takes place on the Italian front by the looks of it. Singleplayer seems to have a sort of strategic map that you move stuff around , not sure how that'll work out in the end. RTS gameplay seems pretty much the same as before, except there's a tactical pause now, doesn't really affect me much but it's a neat addition.
No idea when it properly releases, but the pre-alpha they put out looked like a pretty comprehensive vertical slice.
Honestly, I think it's perfectly appropriate in the WTF thread. Considering how poorly CoH2 ended up doing, and the death of the original studio, I... One, I don't know who would've thought it would be a good idea to try another title in the series, and two, I have no idea who they think should take up the mantle (and if they'll do anything good with it)
Post by: Jopax on July 14, 2021, 06:11:16 am
They're part of Sega now, and besides this they've been working on Age of Empires 4. No idea how many of the original folks are left working there, but the first impression of this isn't looking nearly as bad as DoW3 was.
Post by: Robsoie on July 15, 2021, 08:11:00 am
While the characters are good, it seems to me that Gobbet is just stealing the show completely, she's much more fun than all the other characters that surround you. It's not that the other guys aren't as charismatic, as they are well defined and have their own quirks to make them interesting, but Gobbet just outshine them all.
In Shadowrun Dragonfall i found that all the characters were on equal footing in term of charisma and character development so i didn't found them to be in the shadows of another one. But still it's great that the characterisation and archetypes are not some copy/paste of the Dragonfall ones.
Or maybe i just like crazy for that refreshing change of scenery and characterisation that comes with Gobbet , after those "down to earth but with quirks" guys and gals from Dragonfall :D
Anyways, combat seems to be easier than in Dragonfall, oh fortunately not back to the "it's too easy" that it was in Shadowrun Returns, but i felt much less threatened overall, maybe because i am running with a character very combat oriented, while in Dragonfall i started with a "pure" Decker that i was forced later to improve a lot his combat oriented skills due to how useless he was at some point with the many battles i was running into.
There also seems i have more options in Hong Kong than in Dragonfall, there is less battles, and many of the fights felt they could have been circumvented in some ways , unless it was wrote to make me feel i could have done otherwise .
The matrix run are -very- different from how they were in Dragonfall (or Shadowrun Returns) , there's this real time part that feels very involved, as you need to time your move and the enemy probes one to avoid triggering fights. It's actually quite good, though it feels a lot easier than the matrix system from Dragonfall/Returns.
Post by: Iduno on July 15, 2021, 04:04:54 pm
Progressing on Shadowrun Hong Kong, i like it a lot. Still not as much as Dragonfall that is my prefered Shadowrun, but so far Hong Kong has been very good to me in its own ways.
While the characters are good, it seems to me that Gobbet is just stealing the show completely, she's much more fun than all the other characters that surround you. It's not that the other guys aren't as charismatic, as they are well defined and have their own quirks to make them interesting, but Gobbet just outshine them all.
In Shadowrun Dragonfall i found that all the characters were on equal footing in term of charisma and character development so i didn't found them to be in the shadows of another one. But still it's great that the characterisation and archetypes are not some copy/paste of the Dragonfall ones.
Or maybe i just like crazy for that refreshing change of scenery and characterisation that comes with Gobbet , after those "down to earth but with quirks" guys and gals from Dragonfall :D
Anyways, combat seems to be easier than in Dragonfall, oh fortunately not back to the "it's too easy" that it was in Shadowrun Returns, but i felt much less threatened overall, maybe because i am running with a character very combat oriented, while in Dragonfall i started with a "pure" Decker that i was forced later to improve a lot his combat oriented skills due to how useless he was at some point with the many battles i was running into.
There also seems i have more options in Hong Kong than in Dragonfall, there is less battles, and many of the fights felt they could have been circumvented in some ways , unless it was wrote to make me feel i could have done otherwise .
The matrix run are -very- different from how they were in Dragonfall (or Shadowrun Returns) , there's this real time part that feels very involved, as you need to time your move and the enemy probes one to avoid triggering fights. It's actually quite good, though it feels a lot easier than the matrix system from Dragonfall/Returns.
Yeah, I feel like they let Hong Kong get weirder than Dragonfall usually did (the mission to steal a bunch of bioware guarded by a cartoon-obsessed decker notwithstanding). Deckcon and the Feng Shui mission were subtly weird, and some of the stuff with your ghoul teammate and the vampire lady was pretty wild.
Post by: Robsoie on July 16, 2021, 10:22:49 am
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/hardware
https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck
It's basically a PC running a linux distro named "SteamOS" in the shape of a portable gaming handled device with pads and buttons.
Apparently while it requires a steam account and is basically made to download and play games you purchase from steam, it is mentionned that you can still install non-steam games and even other OS.
As i'm out of the loop regarding PC hardware i have no idea how powefull or weak this thing is (as it's the most important stuff to know considering how very taxing and hardware demanding modern games are) .
the pad and buttons scheme seems a bit odd in comparison to established existing gaming handled or joypad i saw, but as i don't practice this type of gaming i don't know if it's ergonomical or going to be a disaster for the hands.
But if the price become reasonable and if the device is powerfull enough, and really allow you to install whatever you want without being bound to steam, it could become a very good alternative to invest into an expansive gaming pc laptop if you want to have your games "on the go".
Post by: Folly on July 16, 2021, 11:16:35 am
Post by: Chiefwaffles on July 16, 2021, 11:41:06 am
Considering that Steam never managed to get their VR headset prices down to anywhere even remotely close to their competition, I'm not particularly optimistic that this Deck will be commonly affordable.It's $400.
Post by: Uristides on July 16, 2021, 12:40:10 pm
Earth Defense Force 5 is quite a blast, as always. The last game of the series I'd played was 3 on the 360, back when everybody was what's now called a Ranger and mostly every gun in a given weapon class had the same model. Compared to that, things improved a lot and tons of variety and QoL introduced, but I also sometimes can't shake off the feeling that in many ways I'm playing more or less the same game I'd played some 8 years ago, and paid quite a bit for it too.
Now Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is probably one of the most whelming experiences I've had in the past few years. It feels like a Capcom higher up read a few articles about popular western RPGs, distilled it into a handful of bulletpoints and shoved it into the development's team backlog without understanding how these pieces fit into a coherent experience. It just feels so mediocre and generic in trying so hard to be epic, and to top it off you have awful tutorial spam and NPC chatter all over your screen and what's probably the worst menus I'd ever seen in a PC port.
People do say that it's a game that really shines as you delve further into it, and I seriously hope it's not just sunken cost fallacy, because I had such high hopes for this one.
Just learned about "Steam Deck" :
I'm hyped. Nowadays I barely have time to sit and play something other than maybe around the weekends, so having a portable device seems like a nice opportunity to squeeze some higher quality gaming time than my phone can offer.
As for the specs, I heard some people compare the GPU to roughly equivalent in performance to a 1050Ti, which is mighty fine for what's essentially a 720p screen. It seems it will also support AMD's equivalent to DLSS, which means it will probably perform acceptably and not look like ass even when docked to a high-res screen.
Post by: Zangi on July 16, 2021, 02:06:58 pm
The story is arse (but nowhere near as bad as the anime) and the highlight of the game is essentially building your pawn and yourself up to fight the giant monsters.
Now Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is probably one of the most whelming experiences I've had in the past few years. It feels like a Capcom higher up read a few articles about popular western RPGs, distilled it into a handful of bulletpoints and shoved it into the development's team backlog without understanding how these pieces fit into a coherent experience. It just feels so mediocre and generic in trying so hard to be epic, and to top it off you have awful tutorial spam and NPC chatter all over your screen and what's probably the worst menus I'd ever seen in a PC port.
People do say that it's a game that really shines as you delve further into it, and I seriously hope it's not just sunken cost fallacy, because I had such high hopes for this one.
(And I guess for other people to rent out your pawn. You can also pretty much ruin your experience/sense of progression by picking up pawns that are way too good for your level, in my opinion.)
Was definitely originally made for consoles.
Post by: Folly on July 16, 2021, 05:19:07 pm
Considering that Steam never managed to get their VR headset prices down to anywhere even remotely close to their competition, I'm not particularly optimistic that this Deck will be commonly affordable.It's $400.
eh? $999 on Steam's store.
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/354231/ (https://store.steampowered.com/sub/354231/)
Post by: Zangi on July 16, 2021, 05:23:07 pm
Post by: Aoi on July 16, 2021, 06:14:05 pm
One thing that that particularly caught my eye is how The Deck bills itself as AAA-capable ("runs them really well"), but is a 1280x800 screen... do most AAA-titles even have options for a resolution that low nowadays?
Post by: Frumple on July 16, 2021, 06:40:14 pm
Post by: Iceblaster on July 16, 2021, 06:52:00 pm
I think that earlier bit involved a confusion in clauses.
One thing that that particularly caught my eye is how The Deck bills itself as AAA-capable ("runs them really well"), but is a 1280x800 screen... do most AAA-titles even have options for a resolution that low nowadays?
They do. Not everyone has a super mega widescreen monitor :P
some of us have had to deal with 1280x720 and get confused as to why it and 1366x768 look the same when on a monitor with the latter :P
Post by: Mobbstar on July 17, 2021, 04:11:46 am
Now Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is probably one of the most whelming experiences I've had in the past few years.
The lore is 1) decent, but 2) not in the game. Seriously, last i checked, the website has more details than the in-game dialogues. It's less immersive than Skyrim imo, and that's a low bar. So unfortunately, its only saving grace is how cool beating monsters up can be. Even early in the game, there's a spark of variety which grows as the game progresses. I have not played or seen a lot of Monster Hunter so i can't compare them.
Just learned about "Steam Deck"
I'm excited to see how this will influence Linux acceptance. Worst-case, Valve'll double down on the streaming for non-linux games and nothing changes. But I have my hopes up nevertheless. (EDIT: I forgot to mention that Valve seems to favour Proton i.e. locally installed compatibility layer)
Either way, seems like an overall good deal. I'll have to sleep on it.
Post by: Folly on July 17, 2021, 11:33:11 am
A couple of things immediately sent up red flags for me. The $400 model comes with 64GB of storage space, which is pathetically inadequate for a platform that uses no cartridges and expects to digitally download AAA games. But then it supports SD cards, which I've had to shop for before, and know they can add terabytes of storage at prices generally lower than SSD's, so that's good, though it will inflate the initial price by quite a bit.
Also track pads. By far the most useless joke of a feature I remember Sony adding to their ps4 controller and then inexplicably doubling down on with the ps5 controller.
But Steam have put their track pads next to the thumb sticks, and are touting them as a viable option for fps aiming. I absolutely detest the very thought of trying to aim an fps game with a joystick, so providing this as an alternative is of great interest to me.
Last issue to me is the dock, which basically turns this into a Nintendo Switch, allowing you to play games on the big screen with another controller, or on a monitor with keyboard/mouse like a PC. Which is definitely cool, but the dock is not included in any of the preorder packages, so the pricing on this component may become another mitigating factor.
Post by: Aoi on July 23, 2021, 07:33:10 pm
Spoiler: It fails hard. (click to show/hide)
Post by: delphonso on July 23, 2021, 08:23:02 pm
Now Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is probably one of the most whelming experiences I've had in the past few years.
The lore is 1) decent, but 2) not in the game. Seriously, last i checked, the website has more details than the in-game dialogues. It's less immersive than Skyrim imo, and that's a low bar. So unfortunately, its only saving grace is how cool beating monsters up can be. Even early in the game, there's a spark of variety which grows as the game progresses. I have not played or seen a lot of Monster Hunter so i can't compare them.
The lore: Watch/read Berserk and you're good.
I will always plug Dragon's Dogma. Incredible game, even if a bit story-shallow.
Post by: Egan_BW on July 23, 2021, 09:40:07 pm
Post by: AlStar on July 23, 2021, 10:30:07 pm
The Fermi Paradox: Try to nurture a galaxy (or at least a really small star cluster) into a 4+ planet federation by making decisions that'll foster growth. Or maybe use some as sacrificial lambs so that the next civilization can develop enough that they can survive. It sounds interesting on paper, kind of like a The Last Federation, with more of a narrative bent.I gave it a try, and my experience was similar - It seems like an excellent story generator, but I don't know if the game is there. For instance, in my game, Humanity almost immediately ran out of all their minerals, had a war that killed most of them, ran out of minerals again, had an even bigger war, and was just about on the verge of extinction when a revolution in cloning allowed their population numbers to finally stabilize.Spoiler: It fails hard. (click to show/hide)
Meanwhile, the next system over, that race put all their resources into a massive starship, which headed out towards Sol (without realizing there was anyone there). Once the starship was several decades out, all the automation in the homeworld went berserk, genociding the race, leaving only the couple hundred thousand souls in the ships. My new wandering race ended up going to Sol, spied on the Humans without making official contact, then left for a new system, where they were able to get a new colony started by finding native plants that could be farmed, and ended up having a scientific revolution.
I also got a third race that popped up about 2/3s of the way through my playthrough, which made it up to the iron age before the game ended. They actually got the signals of a Human televangelist passing through their system, but had no radio to pick up the signals, so remained ignorant of other species.
Again - great stories, but I didn't really feel like I was... playing a game. It's all about making 1/3 choices to various random events, which either give points (usually bad things), take points away (usually good things), or cost nothing (usually somewhat negative things). Otherwise you're literally just watching the galaxy evolve and occasionally clicking on shiny objects (gives a small number of points.)
Post by: Aoi on July 24, 2021, 01:04:00 am
Spoiler: The Fermi Paradox (click to show/hide)
The game actually has a timed ending? That feels kind of weird.
Running out of resources appears to be the only 'practical' way to actually lose, far as I can tell, and even that can usually be escaped if you're prepared... the Warfare and Society meters are effectively dumpstats, as the latter only comes into play when something goes catastrophically wrong, and... I don't think I've ever triggered the former. A few of my planets had like 600% fatality levels, with no ill effect. Just keep population growth positive (at 20% or so, you can take the extinction penalty with impunity) and pick resources/science every time and they're okay for the most part.
My galaxy started off with sentient seaweed which... immediately imploded on themselves due to a resource shortage (planet started with enough for like 200 years...) and a lack of understanding of the mechanics. Second civilization was a set of dogs that eventually spread to 5 planets and was the one that formed the federation. After becoming an interplanetary civilization, they opted to go cybernetic. They ended up undergoing two extinction-level events collectively... one of them involved them building self-reproducing cloud cities that got too voracious and cannibalized the planet (resource shortage). Something like 9.5 billion deaths from that one, but they recovered. The other one was disease, that they miraculously found a cure for after a ton of influence points.
The third civilization, which became interstellar but not advanced enough to join the federation, formed on... Earth. Dolphins. And boy did they have a rough time of it, starting with around -14% population. Their lack-of-breeding lead to an extinction event that they somehow managed to survive with about 600 individuals remaining. Then they had a plague. And a volcanic eruption (resource shortage). Then another plague. Their first interstellar ship, I didn't have enough points for a good landing, so they crashed with almost no survivors. Then another plague. Followed by yet another one just as the dogs were finishing the victory conditions. I really have no idea what was causing the same type of extinction over and over, since their stats are all solidly positive at that point.
I had a fourth civilization of monkeys that... uh... acted as a point battery. Something like 60% Dystopian and massive fatality levels. Nothing bad ever happened to them, all the way up through nuclear tech.
...I'm not sure how to feel about it that recounting what happened was more enjoyable than actually playing it (if 'playing is the right word...). It mostly got tedious halfway through.
Post by: AlStar on July 24, 2021, 01:57:25 am
Quote
The game actually has a timed ending? That feels kind of weird.I was playing the demo, which lasts about an hour in real time. I assume the full game doesn't have that condition.
As I said before - it makes for some good stories, but there really just isn't a game in there.
Post by: Stench Guzman on July 25, 2021, 10:58:59 pm
That is all.
Post by: em312s0n on July 26, 2021, 03:00:38 am
eh? $999 on Steam's store.Considering that Steam never managed to get their VR headset prices down to anywhere even remotely close to their competition, I'm not particularly optimistic that this Deck will be commonly affordable.It's $400.
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/354231/ (https://store.steampowered.com/sub/354231/)
Thats most likely the pricing in your region but i dunno. from what country are you looking it up tho?
the thing has LPDDR5 quad channel memory im interested if it will actually run DF better than my PC
Post by: Iceblaster on July 26, 2021, 11:06:33 am
Spoiler: The Fermi Paradox (click to show/hide)
-snip-
This reminds me of an idle game I can't remember the name of for the life of me. You kinda just watch a bunch of civilizations pop up and become sapient, and you watch them develop from the stone age to as far as they can go before being wiped out. Lots of sudden and depressing deaths to civilizations. One could die of a plague in the stone age, another could become embroiled in a nuclear war.
Really interesting thing to watch, with the little influence you can give being enough to keep it interesting. Wish I remembered the name tho, nowadays looking up for the same theme just shows evolve.io and that game is... not fun to me.
Oh hey, I found it. (https://mkremins.itch.io/epitaph)
Post by: Persus13 on July 26, 2021, 12:27:25 pm
As mentioned by Zangi earlier, one person was talking about the price for the Deck ($400), while the other was talking about the price for the Index ($999).Thats most likely the pricing in your region but i dunno. from what country are you looking it up tho?eh? $999 on Steam's store.Considering that Steam never managed to get their VR headset prices down to anywhere even remotely close to their competition, I'm not particularly optimistic that this Deck will be commonly affordable.It's $400.
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/354231/ (https://store.steampowered.com/sub/354231/)
the thing has LPDDR5 quad channel memory im interested if it will actually run DF better than my PC
Post by: Folly on July 26, 2021, 05:13:39 pm
Legends of Idleon is a free-to-play idle game, available on Steam, Android, and Web Browser. I'm playing through Steam.
Cash shop is there. I haven't spent any money nor felt the need to do so in order to progress steadily. Though I'm seriously considering spending some coin just because I've gotten plenty of hours of fun out of the game so far.
It's an idle game. Fight monsters, gather resources, get points, spend points so that you can do all of the aforementioned stuff better, then repeat with steadily increasing levels of complexity. I like that I can play for just 5 minutes per day to deposit my accumulated resources in storage, or spend several hours crafting new equipment, completing quests, and moving my guys around to gather different resources in preparation for the next big upgrade.
Not the deepest or most creative idle game I've ever played, despite being pretty good in both areas. But Idleon has the best staying-power of any idle game I've tried, and I've tried quite a few. I can easily see myself putting more hours into this compared to those other games, so Idleon gets my solid recommendation.
Post by: Kagus on July 26, 2021, 06:09:42 pm
I'm noticing a distinct lack of community resources, which is a shame because this could really use some. It's pretty opaque going in, and there are a lot of things I would've liked to know before dedicating resources and risk to them.
First campaign ended up bogging itself into a corner when the global cooling and fear-propagation Names didn't play as well together as I'd hoped. Second one got off to a rocky start, but seems to be decent-ish now with an enthralled queen who I'm figuring I'll just pop the dark button on.
Been working my way through the various agents, and... Uh... Hmm. I've seen mentions on the Steam forum about how awesome vampires apparently are, but I'm failing to see how they're anything more than short-lived little crankers who MIGHT make a noble go insane in some random way over the course of their very limited lifespan.
Also went for a few different Names, and so far I've really only had significant, lasting, positive effect out of the fishboiis.
I dunno. I... I really want to like this game, it feels like I'd love it to bits! I just clearly don't have a good enough understanding of the game in order to play it in a way that's rewarding.
Post by: Iceblaster on July 26, 2021, 06:31:08 pm
So, I just picked up Shadows Behind the Throne 2 today... Just in time to see the announcement about how they're ceasing development on that one in order to start making a new game (Shadows of Forbidden Gods).
I'm noticing a distinct lack of community resources, which is a shame because this could really use some. It's pretty opaque going in, and there are a lot of things I would've liked to know before dedicating resources and risk to them.
First campaign ended up bogging itself into a corner when the global cooling and fear-propagation Names didn't play as well together as I'd hoped. Second one got off to a rocky start, but seems to be decent-ish now with an enthralled queen who I'm figuring I'll just pop the dark button on.
Been working my way through the various agents, and... Uh... Hmm. I've seen mentions on the Steam forum about how awesome vampires apparently are, but I'm failing to see how they're anything more than short-lived little crankers who MIGHT make a noble go insane in some random way over the course of their very limited lifespan.
Also went for a few different Names, and so far I've really only had significant, lasting, positive effect out of the fishboiis.
I dunno. I... I really want to like this game, it feels like I'd love it to bits! I just clearly don't have a good enough understanding of the game in order to play it in a way that's rewarding.
It's a game that I'd love to love too, but it's such an opaque game that even brute force learning it is hell. So much of it is being shown off to you, but you can't sort past what's fluff, what's useful, and what you can actually do.
It isn't helped by the fact you're not really told that much either. You play as the infector blob off in the corner of a world taking over places and not encroaching on civilization, keeping a wide swath, but then suddenly without warning you'll invariably end up with a million people charging you and effortlessly killing you despite buildup of your own defenses. You're not really told how to better defend yourself, or what you're doing that causes such a response.
Post by: Folly on July 28, 2021, 07:31:10 pm
Be a robot in space. Pickaxe asteroids for shiny stuff. Mash the shiny stuff together to make a space boat. Use the space boat to lazor more asteroids for more shiny stuff. Mash shiny stuff together to make space guns. Use space guns to murder other space robots and steal their shiny stuff. Get murdered by other space robots and have your shiny stuff stolen. Join a group and do all that on a larger scale.
Post by: Akura on July 29, 2021, 04:05:06 pm
Post by: Aoi on July 29, 2021, 04:28:25 pm
So you're in a dungeon with automated movement from room to room (pick which exit), with various things in each room, ranging from mana(steps), loot, vendors, and semi-automated combats. New units are the main loot, and, in good ol' gacha fashion, three of the same type upgrades it, with three upgraded versions to their max version. Each unit, in addition to their assortment of standard stats, has a unique skill, color, and mark, with increasing amounts of the same color/mark giving stronger buffs. This mechanic ties directly into the upgrade system because a T1 unit only 'uses' their color/marks while in the active party, while T2+ can be in reserve. Adding to this mess is a very finite party size-- the starter character only has room for a party of 6, with 5 reserves before you start paying movement penalties, turning a dungeon run into a balancing act between active units that may be at T1 because your T2s are sitting in reserve so you get buffs, and deciding if it's worth wasting roster space to try to get extras to upgrade to T3 while wasting potential buff space in your roster/taking the penalty and hoping you don't end up dying from it down the line.
If that sounded like a bit of a mess, it's because it is. There's a lot of interlinked moving parts and you're effectively trying to assemble a gamebreaking combo before the difficulty curve catches up.
And the not so good: By its nature, it's kind of RNG-based. Accessories have random color/marks, and the getting a good one early can give a huge boost. Meta progression usually means diluting the pool of units so it's harder to get good ones. For some ungodly reason, game speed is part of the meta progression. 33/80 unlocked so far, and no luck. Meta progression is kind of slow-- 3 unlocks for finishing a dungeon the first time, but after that... the 'final' dungeon got me 3 after ~95% completion and two hours. (Need that speed up...)
Post by: Frumple on July 29, 2021, 04:43:12 pm
Post by: McTraveller on July 29, 2021, 07:04:56 pm
I would buy Starbase, but I'm not sure my CPU is up to it. The minimum specs state an Intel I7, but I've got an I5. And upgrading from that would require a new motherboard, which in turn requires replacing the RAM.
I would probably buy this too, except it's Windows only. And it's an MMO, which means apprehension about "what if the company closes its servers down". I keep looking for a Space Engineers type game that will run natively on my Mac.
Post by: dragdeler on July 30, 2021, 08:54:01 am
Post by: Mephisto on July 30, 2021, 12:19:16 pm
Post by: n9103 on July 30, 2021, 02:20:42 pm
Just a friendly reminder that DU exists too... We saw a bunch of people who allways complain jump ship, just to arrive at the general consensus that besides the flying part being better made, there isn't a lot atm.I'm guessing you're talking about Dual Universe (https://www.dualuniverse.game/)?
I'm not interested, but thought others would be as lost as I was at first.
Post by: Kagus on July 30, 2021, 04:04:12 pm
Fuga. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1357860/Fuga_Melodies_of_Steel/) Fire the souls of furry children at your enemies.
"[...] and find hidden treasures!"
*Dude on screen opens a chest which contains: Wooden branch x1
Post by: Iduno on August 01, 2021, 04:56:18 pm
Looks like maybe a new Stalker or Fallout-Like game? Anyone know anything about it? Other than it's on sale for 7 days?
Post by: lemon10 on August 03, 2021, 12:35:51 am
Its also slow enough that I fired up cheat engine so that I could increase the game speed so I didn't have to waste time waiting.
Pros:
+Very pretty.
+Watching all your towers and units fight is neat.
Cons:
-Not all that deep strategy wise
-Unskippable cutscenes and slow scene transitions
-Significant time between waves for no real reason which is annoying.
Post by: Kagus on August 04, 2021, 11:38:58 am
It's a neat little game and definitely worth checking out, so if you're interested in laying down some green for it be aware that now's probably the time to do it.
Post by: Robsoie on August 05, 2021, 05:44:46 pm
Even after lowering video settings to get it smooth on my system, it still look rather amazing.
Dialogues and dubbing are really good and very convincing, the actors have done a very good job.
So much happiness all around your teenage character , enjoying life with her "happy go lucky" family, while she move through the world, and you get the chance to meet so many wonderfully loving people in this game.
... oh maybe that's something none that played the game will ever tell you, though at least Amicia was happy with her good dog and her father when they entered the forest at the start :D
more seriously, 2 things to know :
- chapter 1 , there's a chance you may break your progression at a specific location :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
- chapter 2, the crate that can't be climbed on despite it's the only way
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on August 07, 2021, 02:51:42 am
Julian LeFay and Co. -- the original pre-todd developers of TES are making a new game... something to follow if you're interested
Post by: Kagus on August 07, 2021, 03:29:55 am
Last year someone mentionned the existence of a real time game in development very inspired by Cataclysm and CDDA :
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/dw8we1/i_found_out_that_some_guy_is_working_on_a_game/
And it looks like development never ceased as there have been a Kickstarter for it launched last week that reached its founding goal with still 23 days to go for the stretch goals :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/monosw2000/nearly-dead
A trailer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-BgPe4Wimg
And it's on Steam now, with a playable demo.
Nearly Dead (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268900/Nearly_Dead/)
With the zombie apocalypse wiping out the trappings of society, you are finally free to pursue your true goal of becoming a furry.
It's... Pretty rough at this stage. The claim that it'll be done this quarter is laughable, it's incredibly clunky and buggy, and 90% of the feedback in the game is "*description coming soon*" or "null" or "快樂土豆發射台吃掉了我的褲子". My trait of having a human diet (this changes depending on how mutated you are) was quick to enlighten me that this status meant I had ":condition-change -50, :condition-change -4, :condition-change -0, :condition-change -20, :condition-change +50", putting the matter to rest.
Sometimes, you'll enter a state where opening doors will bring up your inventory page and plaster it across the screen. This can be remedied by mashing the "search" key (defaults to K) 2-3 times. Still kinda disconcerting when you happened to be popping open the monster closet featured in several houses.
Bodies occasionally forget that they're dead and will stand up to stare into the distance when you're not looking at them. This can be slightly disconcerting. I recommend butchering them into pieces that can no longer rigor mortis their way into an upright position.
On a similar note, apocalypse victims will sometimes forget that they're supposed to be dead, and will stand around aimlessly until you get closer and Mr. Human suddenly trips, falls, and tries to eat your ankles with his pristine and unmutated white teeth. You can take his bottle of mineral water off him when he's dead, as recompense.
The character customization lets you choose a character with a slightly smaller stomach (+1 point) or slightly larger stomach (-1 point), making an about 15% difference in the total capacity of nutrition your belly can store. You can also pick both at the same time, for quantum snacking.
This is meaningless however, since you can just eat beyond what your belly holds anyways and it'll keep getting added to the bar. Similarly, you can sleep until you're more awake than you can possibly be.
Don't boil water in batches larger than your single largest fluid container. When the recipe completes, you need to select a single container which will then be filled with the liquid. Anything beyond that one container's limit will simply cease to exist. It won't even get poured onto the floor.
I realized this when I'd filled up 6 small water bottles with a total of 18 dirty water from the kitchen tap, and then boiled it all at once. I then had 3 clean water, because it can only handle filling a single container at a time.
It's all good though, because boiling that water taught me how to make pemmican.
Fun game, interested to see where it goes from here.
Post by: Robsoie on August 07, 2021, 04:26:38 am
And it's on Steam now, with a playable demo.
Nearly Dead (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268900/Nearly_Dead/)
It's also available on itch.io
https://monosw2000.itch.io/nearly-dead
(though at the time i write when you click to download it goes to google drive, not itch.io servers ? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VvWqvBPT8nhWWa8Ddv7u4Ku8O2J9H_7_/view?usp=sharing )
Post by: King Zultan on August 07, 2021, 05:36:00 am
Post by: Kagus on August 07, 2021, 05:39:05 am
Also you can stack boots for extra protection.
Post by: scriver on August 07, 2021, 08:51:57 am
Bodies occasionally forget that they're dead and will stand up to stare into the distance when you're not looking at them. This can be slightly disconcerting. I recommend butchering them into pieces that can no longer rigor mortis their way into an upright position.
On a similar note, apocalypse victims will sometimes forget that they're supposed to be dead, and will stand around aimlessly until you get closer and Mr. Human suddenly trips, falls, and tries to eat your ankles with his pristine and unmutated white teeth. You can take his bottle of mineral water off him when he's dead, as recompense.
Z-posing
edit:
Very impressed by this week epic store freebie "A Plague Tale : Innocence"
Even after lowering video settings to get it smooth on my system, it still look rather amazing.
Dialogues and dubbing are really good and very convincing, the actors have done a very good job.
So much happiness all around your teenage character , enjoying life with her "happy go lucky" family, while she move through the world, and you get the chance to meet so many wonderfully loving people in this game.
... oh maybe that's something none that played the game will ever tell you, though at least Amicia was happy with her good dog and her father when they entered the forest at the start :D
more seriously, 2 things to know :
- chapter 1 , there's a chance you may break your progression at a specific location :Spoiler (click to show/hide)
- chapter 2, the crate that can't be climbed on despite it's the only waySpoiler (click to show/hide)
I've been thinking of getting this game since it came out, probably the most tempted I've been to get epic so far
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1685310/The_Wayward_Realms/
Julian LeFay and Co. -- the original pre-todd developers of TES are making a new game... something to follow if you're interested
Definitely going on my lookout list
Post by: Robsoie on August 07, 2021, 09:14:08 am
the legal open source alternative to the epic launcher : Legendary and if you're not at ease with using command lines maybe a frontend for it like Rare
https://github.com/derrod/legendary
https://github.com/Dummerle/Rare
Post by: Mobbstar on August 07, 2021, 01:36:16 pm
There's a solution if you want to get some of the epic freebies but are very reluctant to install their epic launcher :
the legal open source alternative to the epic launcher : Legendary and if you're not at ease with using command lines maybe a frontend for it like Rare
https://github.com/derrod/legendary
https://github.com/Dummerle/Rare
This is impressive! I couldn't find anything similar for Steam. The closest things are linux-exclusive it seems.
Post by: n9103 on August 07, 2021, 02:53:03 pm
Steam is aggressively anti-alternate interface. Probably a big reason they manage to talk most pubs into not including further layers of DRM. Double-edged.There's a solution if you want to get some of the epic freebies but are very reluctant to install their epic launcher :
the legal open source alternative to the epic launcher : Legendary and if you're not at ease with using command lines maybe a frontend for it like Rare
https://github.com/derrod/legendary
https://github.com/Dummerle/Rare
This is impressive! I couldn't find anything similar for Steam. The closest things are linux-exclusive it seems.
Post by: Robsoie on August 07, 2021, 04:01:59 pm
https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher
I only use Rare so i have no idea if this one is better or worse, but if Rare does not suit you, you can try this one.
Post by: Nighthawk on August 07, 2021, 04:32:59 pm
I'm not sure if this is extremely sad, or the most hilarious thing I've seen today. Either way, thank you for posting them.
Post by: Robsoie on August 08, 2021, 02:56:22 am
I just hope one day there will be similar open source alternative to the steam one (or origin or uplay or whatever else closed that likes to gather your data).
Post by: Robsoie on August 08, 2021, 09:18:41 am
https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-25-yauna/
Gave a quick test and was pleasantly surprised that performance was better, on a 1vs1 with an AI on a small acropolis map on previous version the game started to stutter like crazy once both the AI and myself had a decent (yet small in comparison to some other RTS) army.
This time i could finally move my army without it stuttering so much for a while.
It's not yet perfect as you feel the engine still struggle when there's AI and lots of pathfinding unfortunately, but it's already better than the previous version, hopefully the next will get there.
Post by: Sirus on August 08, 2021, 09:38:40 am
Instead I'll just plug the Multiverse Mod (https://ftlmultiverse.fandom.com/wiki/FTL:_Multiverse_Wiki). It's a massive project, still under development, which can basically be summarized as "FTL 2". More ships, more events, more species and species variants, more gear, more sectors, more factions, more bosses. There are improved QoL features and an overhauled upgrade system that allows one to really supercharge one's ship.
Basically, if you have fond memories of FTL and want to scratch the old itch again, I highly recommend giving Multiverse a try. It's a little janky here and there and balance can be off at times, but overall it's a fantastic mod/unofficial sequel.
Post by: scriver on August 08, 2021, 11:34:27 am
Last year someone mentionned the existence of a real time game in development very inspired by Cataclysm and CDDA :
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/dw8we1/i_found_out_that_some_guy_is_working_on_a_game/
And it looks like development never ceased as there have been a Kickstarter for it launched last week that reached its founding goal with still 23 days to go for the stretch goals :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/monosw2000/nearly-dead
A trailer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-BgPe4Wimg
And it's on Steam now, with a playable demo.
Nearly Dead (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268900/Nearly_Dead/)
With the zombie apocalypse wiping out the trappings of society, you are finally free to pursue your true goal of becoming a furry.
It's... Pretty rough at this stage. The claim that it'll be done this quarter is laughable, it's incredibly clunky and buggy, and 90% of the feedback in the game is "*description coming soon*" or "null" or "快樂土豆發射台吃掉了我的褲子". My trait of having a human diet (this changes depending on how mutated you are) was quick to enlighten me that this status meant I had ":condition-change -50, :condition-change -4, :condition-change -0, :condition-change -20, :condition-change +50", putting the matter to rest.
Sometimes, you'll enter a state where opening doors will bring up your inventory page and plaster it across the screen. This can be remedied by mashing the "search" key (defaults to K) 2-3 times. Still kinda disconcerting when you happened to be popping open the monster closet featured in several houses.
Bodies occasionally forget that they're dead and will stand up to stare into the distance when you're not looking at them. This can be slightly disconcerting. I recommend butchering them into pieces that can no longer rigor mortis their way into an upright position.
On a similar note, apocalypse victims will sometimes forget that they're supposed to be dead, and will stand around aimlessly until you get closer and Mr. Human suddenly trips, falls, and tries to eat your ankles with his pristine and unmutated white teeth. You can take his bottle of mineral water off him when he's dead, as recompense.
The character customization lets you choose a character with a slightly smaller stomach (+1 point) or slightly larger stomach (-1 point), making an about 15% difference in the total capacity of nutrition your belly can store. You can also pick both at the same time, for quantum snacking.
This is meaningless however, since you can just eat beyond what your belly holds anyways and it'll keep getting added to the bar. Similarly, you can sleep until you're more awake than you can possibly be.
Don't boil water in batches larger than your single largest fluid container. When the recipe completes, you need to select a single container which will then be filled with the liquid. Anything beyond that one container's limit will simply cease to exist. It won't even get poured onto the floor.
I realized this when I'd filled up 6 small water bottles with a total of 18 dirty water from the kitchen tap, and then boiled it all at once. I then had 3 clean water, because it can only handle filling a single container at a time.
It's all good though, because boiling that water taught me how to make pemmican.
Fun game, interested to see where it goes from here.
I've tried the demo. It almost feel and look too much like Cataclysm.
Post by: Robsoie on August 13, 2021, 09:57:27 am
It feels like if Freelancer (for the Elite-like missions board/cargo run/bounty hunt/space looting/mining/etc... system) was mixed with Starfleet Command (for the 2D planar ship controls, weapon angles)
Probably going to be a bit repetitive as this kind of game usually are, but so far i had a lot of fun.
Got utterly destroyed by what seemed to be the first "difficulty spike" storyline mission (a Reliquary piece) , so i went back in doing a lot of mission board contracts to make more money until i could buy more expensive weaponry (as it's better to invest in higher weaponry than buying with all that money a new better ship and not having enough money to improve its weapons).
Noticed that the MK2 Particle laser turret was hilariously powerfull, what a difference it made in comparison to my previously weak turret, small enemy fighter ships explode quickly, probably one of the best investment in early game.
I'm working on getting enough found to buy some expansive broadside guns with some shield penetration, would be very good vs enemies with ships of my size.
Hopefully those guys in the Reliquary mission will not laugh for much longer :)
The cheap mercenary that services i purchased so far seems to hold his own nicely in those skirmishes.
And interesting note : for once it's a DRM free game, meaning you can launch it without the need of the epic launcher or legendary once you have claimed and downloaded it
Post by: JimboM12 on August 13, 2021, 05:08:41 pm
it does get grindy but, being a connoisseur of space games like X and Elite, its not unacceptably grindy. there's definitely a feeling of progression that keeps it fresh for a while.
there is a prequel sequel about your aunt who leaves you your first ship. its more of a dogfighter game but its also pretty good.
Post by: Robsoie on August 14, 2021, 02:02:20 am
Too bad there's no new ship mods, it's odd for a game like that to not have such mods.
Post by: McTraveller on August 14, 2021, 08:33:37 pm
I'm getting annoyed at modern tech.
Post by: Nelia Hawk on August 16, 2021, 03:03:20 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1606340/Conquest_of_Elysium_5/
would it be worth discussing in its own topic? as we also got others of that series adn dominions in topics? well someone make a topic XD
i wonder whats all new and changed with this one. the whole idea with "different planes and things summoned from them" i liked in the previous version.
Post by: Kagus on August 16, 2021, 03:18:55 pm
Quote
"Elysium is a dangerous place, where deer waylay the unwary"
And back in the original, would take your damn palace and erase your entire civilization from the game.
I found a lot of CoE interesting because of the wildly different take on mythos they used there. While the modern leaning towards combining the worlds of Elysium and Dominions is kinda fun from a reference point of view, I do miss a few of the takes they had in CoEII (what I call the "original", since it's the only version offered on Illwinter's site).
Speaking of the site, you know what? Creds to them for keeping with the same ugly-ass bare-bones website they've had since forever. I can respect sticking to their grey roots.
Post by: Aoi on August 18, 2021, 05:07:40 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Post-completion thoughts. (click to show/hide)
tl;dr: It's good and interesting for the most part, but I'm not sure if I'd peg it at 25$ right now. I don't regret it, but it was dragging in the last 20%ish, mostly because bosses were getting more and more gimmicky.
Post by: Robsoie on August 20, 2021, 04:20:23 pm
I noticed they're selling a Carrier Command 2, there are some trailer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w22l8tzaA2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNHavtJvQ7M
seems interesting , and different from the Carrier Command remake from the ArmA devs from early 201x .
But reading some user review shows that there's a lot of negative ones pointing at this being an overpriced very bugged game with a lack of content.
Post by: n9103 on August 20, 2021, 11:14:28 pm
I've been a bit surprised to learn recently that some people revived Microprose, that's some huge shoes they're trying to wear, will be hard to live up to the quality games Microprose was making in its time.Those're some brass ones, to be sure.
Their webpage seems to imply the current incarnation has control/influence over a lot more IP than they actually do. (See the What We Do section)
Post by: Robsoie on August 22, 2021, 08:28:23 am
As i suspected, it becomes repetitive after a while unfortunately.
At first, it's great, it's a very good looter game, ammo/fuel/items/parts/food etc... you find from random ships that have each different random rooms/corridors/enemies , then between looting of ships if you have the materials you can craft more weapons, gadgets, bonus for whatever or upgrade something.
It seems there's always something to upgrade after a run.
Then following the storyline, you're propelled into the nebula 2nd depth in which you start to notice there are more (and new) enemies by ships, and more modifiers to them (burning, smoke, out of depth stuff, etc..), then you start to feel your upgraded weapons aren't cutting it much, need more bullets/ammo to take them down.
So you start to hunt more material for upgrading again, your part locator (as you can build one at some point ) that makes it easier to locate which ship contain a specific material you're looking for seems to point to even lower nebula depth ships, meaning it's even harder.
And because enemies constantly respawn from the various rifts in the ships (and you can't close those rifts) , it feels you're always up against endless amount of them (damned Screws (https://voidbastards-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Screw) ), so no way to clear a ship, it's always going to be refilled while you explore them...
My last run for getting the last part to build the HR Computer mission in order to validate my ID card was in a ship infested by lots of Screws (what the hell random generation, what the hell) , everything feels like a pea shooter against a Screw because those monsters have insane amount of health.
Managed to find the part i wanted and got out of this with only few health remaining (i had crafted several +HP items previously) .
The next mission put me in the nebula depth 3 in which it's harder (and probably material i'll need to improve my weaponry and gadgets will certainly require me to go to depth 4) . It's possible to go up in depth , even all the way back to nebula 1 , but the story mission material requirements are found in lower depths , and everything i need at that point to craft/upgrade stuff require material you'll find on lower depths.
And it is very repetitive by now, and with what feels like pea shooters (despite they're already upgraded), and running out of ammo is always a concern for a lot of the weapons, i'm not sure it's good enough to keep me interested.
But at least until it reach repetitiveness, the game was a lot of fun, be sure to play it in short burst to delay the repetitiveness.
Post by: Iduno on August 22, 2021, 09:36:41 am
Edit: Also, is it supposed to take like 5 minutes to load?
Post by: scriver on August 23, 2021, 07:30:07 am
Post by: Egan_BW on August 23, 2021, 07:42:10 am
Post by: Robsoie on August 23, 2021, 08:10:24 am
Yeah, it looked like more of an action (instead of cRPG) version of Starcrawlers, with more crafting.
Edit: Also, is it supposed to take like 5 minutes to load?
Very odd, the main menu appears in a bit less than 50 seconds from the moment i double click on the game shortcut for me, and from there between 5 and 7 seconds when i press "Continue" to get into the actual game.
Have you tried to launch the game again since then ? maybe it's only the 1st launch that takes time (the game may cache some stuff ?)
Post by: scriver on August 24, 2021, 04:47:55 am
Only very tenuously. Hopefully it's good?
I hope so too. Probably going on my sale list though.
Post by: askovdk on August 24, 2021, 07:21:20 am
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-08-20-psychonauts-2-review (https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-08-20-psychonauts-2-review)
Post by: Iduno on August 24, 2021, 05:26:07 pm
Yeah, it looked like more of an action (instead of cRPG) version of Starcrawlers, with more crafting.
Edit: Also, is it supposed to take like 5 minutes to load?
Very odd, the main menu appears in a bit less than 50 seconds from the moment i double click on the game shortcut for me, and from there between 5 and 7 seconds when i press "Continue" to get into the actual game.
Have you tried to launch the game again since then ? maybe it's only the 1st launch that takes time (the game may cache some stuff ?)
I've launched it twice. It took that long both times. It gets stuck at the pre-title splash page that tells you which idiots couldn't make a game that loads faster.
Edit: tried again, and it only took 4 minutes this time. I'm guessing it's related to Unity being trash.
Post by: Robsoie on August 25, 2021, 02:05:51 am
From what i have read on googling around the 1st loading time when you play a new game should only be long because the game is generating all the areas.
But once that's done, further loading time should always be fast (well relatively, it's yet another game using Unity after all).
Post by: Jopax on August 29, 2021, 04:21:43 pm
And it's pretty much that, design and play around with tanks, not much more than the designer itself at this point, but it's a work in progress by a single guy and it looks to be pretty decent fun for the asking price.
Also completely unrelated, been playing Snow Runner for past few days (grabbed it on sale last week iirc), and gotta say, it's pretty damn fun and relaxing, with bouts of frustration and tension when you get stuck somewhere bad and realize you'll have to retrace the whole route again. The hardcore mode looks super fun but also super terrifying because you go from only losing a bit of time if you mess up to potentially losing the game as you run out of cash that's required for running pretty much anything.
Post by: Robsoie on August 31, 2021, 04:23:31 pm
https://endless-sky.github.io/
You have stable releases, the latest is from june :
https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases/latest
And continuous releases being daily (or as soon as there's a new commit i guess) , latest being from today :
https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases/tag/continuous
Post by: Mephansteras on August 31, 2021, 04:50:55 pm
Post by: Robsoie on August 31, 2021, 05:57:13 pm
There was a thread about it some years ago :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=155927
Post by: Laterigrade on August 31, 2021, 08:19:52 pm
It’s primarily a strategy game, which shows itself in two ways — how you control the squads on the island you’re on, defending against the waves of enemies, and the squads you choose to send to each island against the enemies you know will attack you there, keeping in mind the layout and the strength of each squad etc., and the fact that you have to complete a certain number of islands every turn, or you’ll get swallowed up by the Tide, and lose.
It’s a very replayable game, thanks to the randomness, and the new options for starting squads you get after playthroughs where you do certain things.
You get three kinds of units, spearmen, archers and swordsmen, whereas the enemy have a whole lot more — infantry and archers and swordsmen and berserkers and giants and axe-throwers and last, but certainly not least, the dreaded crossbow giants. Each unit has their own counters, for both sides.
The biggest problem with this game is this: whether you win the game or not will heavily depend on the layout of the last island, and primarily whether you have adequate cover from the crossbow giants, who are just ridiculously strong. They can’t be attacked by your swordsmen without losing half your squad on the way there, and the other half while fighting them, and spearman can’t hold corners against them because they round the corner, and then just stand there just out of their reach and shoot them to death. I’ve only won the game once, and I was incredibly lucky on my last fight.
It’s a good game, and pretty darn cheap too.
Post by: Robsoie on September 01, 2021, 03:59:17 am
when the train sim "Train Sim World 2" became a freebie on the epic store, i tried it.
And i noticed the game crashed during his initial loading easily 90% of the time i tried to launch it, why it worked without problems the other 10% is a mystery to me. As i don't have/use the epic launcher (Legendary for the win) it's not some launcher dodgy coding conflicting with things.
The crash was an unrealengine4 crash (as that train sim use UE4 as its engine), with some mention of "D3D device being lost" in the UE4 error log.
Googling around it looked like it's uncommon and with some version of the UE4 it happens more than with other.
Apparently the problem is that during the UE4 attempt to synchronize with your graphic card driver, somehow UE4 manages to crash your driver (probably related to some graphic cards not being the latest ones on the market that UE4 loves). Then when your driver crashes, window 10 recovers it and things should continue to work.
But UE4 does not seem to take that recovery in account and decide to crash itself.
But on my googling i found a solution that is not the classic "reinstall your game, reinstall your driver, get newer driver even if nothing of this will solve the problem", it's a simple registry key "TdrDelay" that is described in this page :
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/display/tdr-registry-keys
Spoiler: how to add that registry key (click to show/hide)
Of course if you don't have any UE4-powered game or if you never see that UE4 engine crash when playing your games that use that engine, you don't need to do that (especially if none of your other games are crashing)
Post by: JimboM12 on September 01, 2021, 01:09:21 pm
there's now very little you can't do in NMS. the only thing we don't have is npc followers to assist with combat but then this isn't that type of game. and to think i bought NMS after the tragedy of it's release when it was super cheap and now its the game that keeps on giving.
another game that's caught my eye that may not be a thread of its own is something called SpaceBourne
https://store.steampowered.com/app/732240/SpaceBourne/
it's... well, it's a game quite similar to NMS and Star Citizen and other "all inclusive" (by that i mean it has more than the standard combat-trade-explore loop). i only just bought it but its very much a passion project and so far at 15 bucks its got much potential.
Post by: Sirus on September 01, 2021, 04:07:59 pm
Post by: Robsoie on September 01, 2021, 05:03:40 pm
Making money is very slow in the beginning because your starting ship was expensive and you had no money, meaning you owe the banks a -very- (when you begin to play) lot of money, basically each sector you jump to, you need to pay between 2000 and 3000 credits in mortage (you can repay regularly the bank to lower the mortgage).
So if you have to travel 10 sectors to make a cargo run, you're already losing between 20000 and 30000 credits ! so make absolutely sure to only make cargo run that pay a lot, do not bother with anything that do not pay very well as you have some chance it's a complete waste with all the money you owe the banks.
Accept several missions in the same areas, so you can maximise your cargo run by filling them.
Beware with missions in sectors in which you have not yet discovered the route, it's very possible you think you're going to the correct direction and run in a dead end sector, meaning you have to come back and choose another direction in the hope to reach the unknown sector, with the mortgage every sector you're going to lose an horrible amount of credits.
For simple trading, the map is really well done, you can see how much can get from each sectors with specific items, so you can make easily some cargo run without taking a mission
Oh and avoid completely accepting dodgy transportation when asked by some people in a starport, in the beginning you're going to have your ship very regularly scanned and if they scan you transporting anything or anyone illegal, you're going to be fined, it will add even more money lost every 2 sectors jump.
edit : some usefull guide : https://indiefaq.com/guides/337-endless-sky.html
Post by: JimboM12 on September 02, 2021, 01:00:43 pm
What's the difference between these new settlements and the bases that NMS players have been able to create for some time?
i hope to find out, i was planning on making a new NMS save anyway cuz mine is multiple updates out of date, so i hope to find out and ill post it somewhere.
DOUBLE WHAMMY as well, pathfinder wrath of the righteous came out as well and im eager to get into that.
im probably not sleeping this labor day weekend
Post by: Robsoie on September 02, 2021, 04:08:36 pm
After regularly paying off my debts to the banks (good idea to pay regularly part of it, so mortgages gets lower and lower), i managed to finally get better benefits when i had no more debts.
Still it took -a lot- of cargo and passengers run (and some storyline missions for the free worlds) to finally reach a point i could afford my target : buying a light freighter named "Argosy" for more than 2 millions of credits (took another loan from the banks) , it's a very good one, large cargo and some good defense and weapons in comparison to other light freighters.
Kept my good old Star Barge too, even if it's weak and pitifull in comparison to mighty Argosy , it still have a good 50 cargo space (and 2 passengers space) to help on further cargo and passengers run (as in Endless Sky, you can fly in fleets with your ships, and that can be glorious), and it can additionally serves as some "meat shield" for my Argosy in case of combat.
What i noticed quickly is that the vast amount of cargo space in my fleet allow me to take some really really lucrative cargo and passengers run on the mission board, so good i extremely quickly paid back my bank loan, and i can now afford more ships.
Still waiting until i can get another Argosy and maybe once i have 2 of them, with more crews hired i could then start to try to board and capture ships to add them to my fleet.
Maybe some fighters too, and hopefully some warship at some points before i can start to take over the universe :D
Post by: Persus13 on September 02, 2021, 04:42:04 pm
Post by: JimboM12 on September 02, 2021, 05:06:29 pm
I'm very interested in Wrath of the Righteous too, but given how buggy and unbalanced Kingmaker was at launch I'm probably going to hold off for a few months.
i can respect that. im banking on them learning their lesson, which they might have as they updated and added the DLC. if i find any gamebreaking bugs over the long weekend, ill post
Post by: scriver on September 02, 2021, 05:29:27 pm
But it's not exactly polished to perfection either. I'll give proper reports for the release version too.
Post by: Persus13 on September 02, 2021, 05:54:57 pm
Thanks! I'm pretty excited as it sounds like Wrath of the Righteous is an upgrade in most areas, I just don't feel the need to play it immediately (and its not like I'm lacking in games to play).I'm very interested in Wrath of the Righteous too, but given how buggy and unbalanced Kingmaker was at launch I'm probably going to hold off for a few months.
i can respect that. im banking on them learning their lesson, which they might have as they updated and added the DLC. if i find any gamebreaking bugs over the long weekend, ill post
I played Kingmaker awhile after it came out and I encountered a few bugs, mainly to do with the turn-based mode, but those may have been because it got added later to the game.
Post by: Cthulhu on September 02, 2021, 09:03:59 pm
Kingmaker was kind of fun, didn't get super far into it, but I remember three things distinctly. One is that the nature of the attack on the castle (add that to my list of gripes, these games are always loaded with boring D&D cliches, fuck all that stuff) didn't make any sense, like the motivation of the enemy to do it or the way they went about it, I don't actually remember the particulars of why I thought it made no sense anymore, but I remember feeling like something about it didn't pass the smell test in that "wait... so they did that, but they knew this, so why did they... and who was responsible for..." kind of "the writers didn't think this all the way through" situation.
The second was that it properly did the rules for swarms, which was interesting and I've never seen a game like this actually use swarms the way the rules treat them, probably because the rules suck and nobody wants to deal with that shit. I've never seen swarms used in a real D&D game either, I ain't got time for that shit.
The third was that I got the random encounter with the group of people, I don't remember who they were anymore, where the leader was a mage lady played by a bad actor. There was a railroad scripted event where she'd run away and escape if defeated. Apparently I'm smarter than the writers though, because the first thing I did in that battle was put her to sleep and coup de grace, and she exploded. The game froze for probably 90 seconds, and then I can't remember exactly but it either played a cutscene with dialog coming from her various remaining parts, or it just told me that she'd escaped. In any case she was still alive in the group's camp and the game just ignored that I blew her the fuck up.
I dunno. I generally like this genre a lot, so I'm very harsh with my criticism because I want them to be better than they usually are.
Post by: Aoi on September 03, 2021, 05:06:26 am
After regularly paying off my debts to the banks (good idea to pay regularly part of it, so mortgages gets lower and lower), i managed to finally get better benefits when i had no more debts.
Even better: Keep opening new small loans, let them hang around a day or two, pay them off, improve your credit score, and refi your big loan with your new lower rates since your credit score went up. (Or at least I think that's what's pushing up my credit score. Whatever it is, refinancing every few days is a tidy way to shave off your debt.)
Post by: Robsoie on September 03, 2021, 06:39:43 am
Managed to spare enough money so far (with some more bank loan) to field a Bastion and 2 Argosy in my fleet, so much good cargo run money (the Bastion is a medium warship with some good cargo space too)
Post by: Frumple on September 03, 2021, 07:15:01 am
I might play it but something that's been bugging me about that type of game is that they always start you off as a level one dickhead fighting goblins. I really, really hate goblins as a D&D enemy, like I think goblins are maybe the worst thing in the entire game, but that's particular and I won't get distracted by that tangent. I just don't like the nature of the power curve in games like that. I want to start off as a crack squad of Big Boys and get into the more interesting and complex gameplay that comes with more resources and deadlier enemies right away. I'm sick of fighting chaff with guys that can barely do anything, it sucks and I hate it.That mostly just makes me remember Incursion, ha. Easily one of the best D&D ruleset interpretations I've encountered in part becase basically that, right there. It started you off at level one, but it was a level one where even the least mechanically complicated class (warrior) would be doing shit, right out the gate.
No vancian crap hobbling the casters, pretty much everyone had pretty damn neat tricks they could pull off even on level 1, even first floor enemies had a fair amount of potential tricks... it wasn't party based (well, sorta'), but there's been precious few D&D inspired games I've encountered that had the start be anything but a kill-ten-rats slog. Incursion had you cavalry charging and wuxia jumping and wand blasting and minion chucking from the word go. Thing did so goddamn much right.
Post by: Mobbstar on September 03, 2021, 07:16:50 am
After regularly paying off my debts to the banks (good idea to pay regularly part of it, so mortgages gets lower and lower), i managed to finally get better benefits when i had no more debts.
Even better: Keep opening new small loans, let them hang around a day or two, pay them off, improve your credit score, and refi your big loan with your new lower rates since your credit score went up. (Or at least I think that's what's pushing up my credit score. Whatever it is, refinancing every few days is a tidy way to shave off your debt.)
I forgot that this is a game discussion.
Have I mentioned Fidel Dungeon Rescue (https://danielben.itch.io/fidel-dungeon-rescue) before? I have solved more than a year worth of daily puzzles at this point. And the soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWs1_QWYEbE) is schmoovin'.
Such a lovable dog! I only occasionally cry about him!
Post by: Cthulhu on September 03, 2021, 11:33:27 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Cthulhu on September 03, 2021, 11:36:59 am
I might play it but something that's been bugging me about that type of game is that they always start you off as a level one dickhead fighting goblins. I really, really hate goblins as a D&D enemy, like I think goblins are maybe the worst thing in the entire game, but that's particular and I won't get distracted by that tangent. I just don't like the nature of the power curve in games like that. I want to start off as a crack squad of Big Boys and get into the more interesting and complex gameplay that comes with more resources and deadlier enemies right away. I'm sick of fighting chaff with guys that can barely do anything, it sucks and I hate it.That mostly just makes me remember Incursion, ha. Easily one of the best D&D ruleset interpretations I've encountered in part becase basically that, right there. It started you off at level one, but it was a level one where even the least mechanically complicated class (warrior) would be doing shit, right out the gate.
No vancian crap hobbling the casters, pretty much everyone had pretty damn neat tricks they could pull off even on level 1, even first floor enemies had a fair amount of potential tricks... it wasn't party based (well, sorta'), but there's been precious few D&D inspired games I've encountered that had the start be anything but a kill-ten-rats slog. Incursion had you cavalry charging and wuxia jumping and wand blasting and minion chucking from the word go. Thing did so goddamn much right.
Incursion is cool though I'm thinking a bit beyond just the gameplay options really, I guess. Like something with the nature of being a higher level character that's not often touched on in the video games, or even in a lot of actual P&P games really, the expanding scope. In old school D&D a fighter could build a fortress and have a retinue of soldiers at like level 11. Going into a dungeon and fighting some monsters for treasure, even if the monsters are tough, isn't really the domain of high level characters, I think. They can pay people to do that for them. They should set their sights higher.
The crusade mechanic in this might help to make that more of a thing.
Post by: Zangi on September 03, 2021, 12:38:34 pm
You’ll always be a duke with at least 3 subjects/barons. Sometimes under another duke, but called an archon instead.
Now the dynasty. Is kinda weird. Is more a clan rather then a dynasty. Anyone married into the family and random people you pick up, they are now considered ‘family’. So if your daughter marries guy, with guy moving to your house, they are rated as close kin and are now yours. If daughter dies before guy, you can have guy remarry. Whoever guy marries is now also part of your house and considered close kin too. (Or you can marry guy out of the family, but usually you need the manpower and/or particular skill sets.)
Succession is always the first born. Followed by the first born of the first born and so on. Can’t change that without some violence.
There is no way to add more people to your house except via random events and marrying people in. There are no commoners, only noble houses. So the marriage pool is pretty threadbare. Haven’t really seen new noble houses get created mid game, except maybe from a rebellion where there are no other local houses.
This means if you give your other children/grandchildren a planet… it’ll only be them, their spouse and useless children running the planet. It looks like they can adopt 1 free random though. They’ll start out megagimped and not be able to properly handle themselves with only 2 characters able to do tasks. The spouse and the free random. The head of house does not do any tasks.
Depending on the layout, expansion can be really hard. Rebellions, even those outside your borders will grind you down, cause your subjects can be asked to help either side of the conflict. They will commit if they like either one or get bribed to do so. Well, it is the same for your enemies.
Another factor is distance, force projection. Areas outside your capital’s range, you end up relying on your subjects to bring the fleets up for a fight. (I haven’t paid enough attention, but it feels like you entirely lose the ships that don’t make into into the battle cause of the distance penalty.)
Well, in short, I think this game could use more features and probably some polishing. Definitely would like more ways to pick up house members other then the rabbit breeding program and rngesus. Same for the AI really.
Looks like game might be moddable outside of the event mod tool it came with, so I’ll tinker with that first.
EDIT: Only a few things are moddable or at least not apparent, a fix came in for the crazyness of tagging most of the in-laws as close kin.
Post by: Aoi on September 03, 2021, 06:35:49 pm
I wasn't aware of that feature, thanks i'll try this.
Managed to spare enough money so far (with some more bank loan) to field a Bastion and 2 Argosy in my fleet, so much good cargo run money (the Bastion is a medium warship with some good cargo space too)
I'm finding so many little areas in which the game can be broken-- I'm currently running one of the small zippy ships, with engines to the gills... and a fleet of like ten of those T1 freighters since they give the best cargo to price ratio. Ships unaccompanied in a system don't really seem to take damage or be attacked, so once you jump out, they can (slowly) follow you to your destination. If you're under attack at the origin/destination, you can do the equivalent of stairdancing until the map spawns a safe version.
Just running cargo is kind of boring though, so I'll probably just unload and take my ~15m net worth and plow it into warships to see what kind of havoc I can wreak...
Post by: Iduno on September 03, 2021, 10:57:40 pm
Still getting the hang of Endless Sky and i'm having more fun now.
After regularly paying off my debts to the banks (good idea to pay regularly part of it, so mortgages gets lower and lower), i managed to finally get better benefits when i had no more debts.
Still it took -a lot- of cargo and passengers run (and some storyline missions for the free worlds) to finally reach a point i could afford my target : buying a light freighter named "Argosy" for more than 2 millions of credits (took another loan from the banks) , it's a very good one, large cargo and some good defense and weapons in comparison to other light freighters.
Kept my good old Star Barge too, even if it's weak and pitifull in comparison to mighty Argosy , it still have a good 50 cargo space (and 2 passengers space) to help on further cargo and passengers run (as in Endless Sky, you can fly in fleets with your ships, and that can be glorious), and it can additionally serves as some "meat shield" for my Argosy in case of combat.
What i noticed quickly is that the vast amount of cargo space in my fleet allow me to take some really really lucrative cargo and passengers run on the mission board, so good i extremely quickly paid back my bank loan, and i can now afford more ships.
Still waiting until i can get another Argosy and maybe once i have 2 of them, with more crews hired i could then start to try to board and capture ships to add them to my fleet.
Maybe some fighters too, and hopefully some warship at some points before i can start to take over the universe :D
Yeah, as long as you don't take jobs to planets you can't easily get to (or don't know how to get to), you'll eventually pay off the loan. Ignoring the plot for a bit and just making money seems to be the point of the game, so go for it.
No vancian crap hobbling the casters, pretty much everyone had pretty damn neat tricks they could pull off even on level 1, even first floor enemies had a fair amount of potential tricks... it wasn't party based (well, sorta'), but there's been precious few D&D inspired games I've encountered that had the start be anything but a kill-ten-rats slog. Incursion had you cavalry charging and wuxia jumping and wand blasting and minion chucking from the word go. Thing did so goddamn much right.
Incursion is cool though I'm thinking a bit beyond just the gameplay options really, I guess. Like something with the nature of being a higher level character that's not often touched on in the video games, or even in a lot of actual P&P games really, the expanding scope. In old school D&D a fighter could build a fortress and have a retinue of soldiers at like level 11. Going into a dungeon and fighting some monsters for treasure, even if the monsters are tough, isn't really the domain of high level characters, I think. They can pay people to do that for them. They should set their sights higher.
The crusade mechanic in this might help to make that more of a thing.
I'd love to see an Earthdawn or Shadowrun type casting system used once. Both have unlimited casting with drawbacks, but no so much that nobody would ever want to play a caster (like 40k).
Post by: Cthulhu on September 04, 2021, 01:21:40 am
I'm playing mutation fighter, which is pretty cool. Standard fighter, but he loses some of his feat stuff in exchange for mutagens, which is a once a day 10 minute/level +4 to one physical stat and -2 to one mental stat. Later on you get fancier mutagens, grand mutagen plus feral and some assorted teammate buffs like bull's strength and enlarge person, along with all the usual great cleave combat reflexes shit fighters do and you're gonna be a fucking monster, both numbers-wise and literally.
Post by: JimboM12 on September 04, 2021, 10:58:36 am
nms, i spent wayyyy too much time grinding out resources while listening to podcasts. im trying to stockpile basic resources for construction so i can get right into building a settlement when i get there. i started on a hoth-like ring planet which was dope, i kept wondering why nights weren't so dark (the game dosen't have dark nights to begin with but..) only to find out the ring was reflecting light down onto the surface, which was kind of neat.
Post by: vjek on September 04, 2021, 11:32:15 am
Some ground effects still try to damage NPC's and the party, even with Feather step on, some dialogues allow the player to repeat skill checks indefinitely, but no dialogue loops.
Other than that, one of the biggest changes is, they changed traps and Trapfinding completely. It used to be (even up until a recent beta) that after you detected a trap, you just clicked on the 'detected red square' and your best Trickery-skilled group member ran over and disarmed it.
Now, there's this entirely different mechanic. When a trap is detected, there is a dotted line that leads to the trap control mechanism. this can be, and often is, in an entirely different room, sometimes protected by a different trap, with a different control mechanism. So, your rogue (normally) has to stealth around, interacting with these trap mechanisms, prior to just rushing blindly into an area.
Personally, I like it, but initially, I thought it was a bug/broken, because it was so completely different than what they had done earlier in the year.
There's also some.. strange inconsistencies in scribing spells from scrolls. PF rules state that it's limited to Arcane casters, but specifically NOT Sorcerers, yet.. Sorcs can scribe some scrolls into their spellbook. ???
The NexusMod Toybox works great with it, and you can respec companions back to zero if you add the respec mod, but you have to be cautious when and where you do it, and ensure their name is the same, apparently. Otherwise, bye bye companion quests. :)
Post by: Kagus on September 05, 2021, 11:06:57 am
The game itself is great fun, but there are completion aspects that irk me. At first I just thought a few of the secret unit locations were a bit finicky, especially if you have zero hint as to what you're looking for or even if there is anything on that map... But then I got into trying the achievements, and hoo boy.
The "win X campaign without a single defeat" goes from exceptionally tricky and challenging to patently ludicrous. Going into settings and basically in-game cheating to allow yourself to have full faction access during the campaigns makes it easier to an extent, but even if you go so far as to hedge your bets by downloading/designing specifically overpowered campaign-winner units, it's still a very tedious job.
And then we get into the "win a battle with every X unit", and enter the realm of things that are completely impossible to do without custom content tailored to make it happen.
Master Musketeer was honestly kinda fun, as it forces you to cherry-pick levels and play in an entirely different fashion, and it makes you appreciate and notice map design more. Same for Reaper Creeper, but with more emphasis on actually fighting while possessing someone. But the previously mentioned achievement sets? Good grief, those needed another round or two in the ol' thinking oven.
Post by: JimboM12 on September 05, 2021, 05:19:13 pm
the first one i remember finding yesterday is there is a rusted paladin's blade in this demonic cult temple and a paladin can pick it up and it'll restore itself for them with holy energy. (the puzzle to unlock this was fucking esoteric, i had to look it up online, no shame)
gameplay wise, its the same as kingmaker, like i said earlier but... bloodier. my paladin is chopping heads off or cutting people in half left and right. there are quite a few more effects and combat feels more dynamic. i swap between turnbased and realtime depending on the severity of the encounter and both feel good.
i didn't even touch nms today, i got sidetracked by my friend wanting to play tarkov.
Post by: scriver on September 06, 2021, 09:01:08 am
:P
Post by: vjek on September 06, 2021, 11:46:14 am
so wotr, due to the nature of the conflict, im finding a lot of good, lawful, and paladin specific context events that are helpful.Yeah, my attitude towards this kind of content is, if you want me to do it, provide me the in-game way to do it. Or learn about it. Or find a hint to it. Or read a book about it. Or find an NPC willing to talk about. Or listen to rumors for it. Or pass a Lore check. Or ANYTHING that actually lets me consume that content via some thematically consistent in-game mechanism.
...
(the puzzle to unlock this was fucking esoteric, i had to look it up online, no shame)
...
This whole ' you get to randomly fiddle/switch/pull/push/interact/spin/flip the death-dealing mechanism ' to eventually, after x^y combinations/permutations/possibilities, expose a single secret room that has one chest with Moldy Cheese in it?
Nope. Not gonna happen. :D Ain't nobody got time fo that.
Post by: scriver on September 06, 2021, 12:07:00 pm
so wotr, due to the nature of the conflict, im finding a lot of good, lawful, and paladin specific context events that are helpful.Yeah, my attitude towards this kind of content is, if you want me to do it, provide me the in-game way to do it. Or learn about it. Or find a hint to it. Or read a book about it. Or find an NPC willing to talk about. Or listen to rumors for it. Or pass a Lore check. Or ANYTHING that actually lets me consume that content via some thematically consistent in-game mechanism.
...
(the puzzle to unlock this was fucking esoteric, i had to look it up online, no shame)
...
This whole ' you get to randomly fiddle/switch/pull/push/interact/spin/flip the death-dealing mechanism ' to eventually, after x^y combinations/permutations/possibilities, expose a single secret room that has one chest with Moldy Cheese in it?
Nope. Not gonna happen. :D Ain't nobody got time fo that.
I'm not sure what you mean. The solution is hinted by four non-unique portraits on a completely random wall in a completely different part of the dungeon, there's nothing unclear about that at all
But yeah to be fair I need to add that as far as I got in the beta none of the other puzzles were like that at all, and also that it contains considerably better loot than a chest with moldy cheese when you do look up the solution and open it ;)
Post by: Cthulhu on September 07, 2021, 08:41:23 am
so wotr, due to the nature of the conflict, im finding a lot of good, lawful, and paladin specific context events that are helpful. im assuming evil characters get a few, but paladins seem to get this chosen un-chosen one feeling. im talking like, you were the right person in the right place at the right time but its because you were there not because you were called there for any reason other than the war against the demons. like the force subtlety guiding you to the place you can do most good and such.
the first one i remember finding yesterday is there is a rusted paladin's blade in this demonic cult temple and a paladin can pick it up and it'll restore itself for them with holy energy. (the puzzle to unlock this was fucking esoteric, i had to look it up online, no shame)
gameplay wise, its the same as kingmaker, like i said earlier but... bloodier. my paladin is chopping heads off or cutting people in half left and right. there are quite a few more effects and combat feels more dynamic. i swap between turnbased and realtime depending on the severity of the encounter and both feel good.
i didn't even touch nms today, i got sidetracked by my friend wanting to play tarkov.
Evil stuff comes later, but there's a good amount of it. Even if there weren't, I'd never play a paladin.
I've lowered the difficulty, I think the nature of pathfinder is slowly breaking me down and I'm just in it for the story primarily. The game seems to assume a high degree of optimization, which I've done, but it still turns into a slog. Your level 7 party can expect to fight minibosses in the high teen CRs regularly, which is a common response to overpowered party but doesn't really work with typical wizards-era D&D math. AC is insanely high, and while touch AC is usually low the spell resistance and elemental resistances/immunities on basically everything make it negligible. Some spellcaster companions aren't even worth taking hostile spells on because even on-par enemies have a 90+ chance of saving even if they get past the spell resistance. The math starts to break. Combined with the number of self-buffs needed to keep up, the game kind of turns into a slog.
I'm playing an instinctual barbarian, gonna go trickster mythic path which is fun. The initial path entry event has you convincing some cultists you're a high ranking baphomet priest and sending them to sabotage their own base, which is kind of fun, but the actual mythic path goes way past that into sheogorath territory, with abilities like "ray of halberds" and "summon beer elemental"
For evil there's lich and demon which are self-explanatory, and then there's the extreme evil option of "swarm-that-walks" which is a Kyuss-style worm-that-walks but using demonic locusts. You have to take a garden path to get it
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on September 07, 2021, 11:32:57 am
It was removed starting from window Vista.
(but it works very well on window 10, you can find it for download on google)
Anyways, this to mention on the Visual Pinball program (it's a pinball simulator), someone recreated Space Cadets but with actual physics and etc..
It plays really great.
https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16091
video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbCxu84KBA0
Post by: JimboM12 on September 07, 2021, 12:23:05 pm
rundown of evil options and stuff
even as a mostly good player (my paladin skirts the lawful side, i do a lot of the happier chaotic options like partying or tricking enemies but i choose good in a heartbeat) its still really cool to know this game accommodates all styles of play.
and yeah, on the higher difficulties the game does not allow creative un-optimized builds. my paladin is a brawling buffer with a lot of the more common combat feats like cleave, power attack, etc. i make up for my lack of extreme fighter strength with unique paladin gear and buffing cleric spells. i can tank while my more damage optimized companions nuke the targets.
a cool new thing for paladins is when they get their divine bonds, it now includes horses. naturally i turned my horse into a brawler and it fights beside my paladin. i may try mounted combat later but having an extra body in my party to surpass the 6 head party limit is gamebreaking.
Post by: Kagus on September 07, 2021, 01:33:58 pm
Maybe some people remember Space Cadet , it was a pinball game from Maxis that was ported by Microsoft into being a part of their window 95 to XP OS.
It was removed starting from window Vista.
(but it works very well on window 10, you can find it for download on google)
Anyways, this to mention on the Visual Pinball program (it's a pinball simulator), someone recreated Space Cadets but with actual physics and etc..
It plays really great.
https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16091
video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbCxu84KBA0
Goddamn CHILDHOOD right there... That was Maxis? I didn't even know.
Post by: n9103 on September 07, 2021, 04:45:43 pm
Post by: dragdeler on September 08, 2021, 10:12:22 am
Post by: King Zultan on September 09, 2021, 02:10:14 am
Post by: Robsoie on September 09, 2021, 03:28:56 am
But as dragdeler mentionned those old win 95/98/ME/XP games works very nicely on modern OS (at least they all work great on my window 10).
Post by: dragdeler on September 09, 2021, 08:32:21 am
I still don't get why newer versions of Windows doesn't come with games.
What do you mean the game section in the quickmenu on w10 has all the essential features, and the appstore is allmost as adridden as on android. Great times to play solitaire.
Post by: Robsoie on September 09, 2021, 04:00:34 pm
Out of that strange design choice, it's fun so far.
After my NotGeralt was killed by the first enemy 2 times on a row (i really needed to rebind all the commands, they're all over the place if you're on mouse/keyboard, and the game being a console port does not help as the indicators only mention controller/joypads buttons on its hints) finally acquired a bastard sword from the corpse of the first guard.
It made a huge difference from the punching and kicking i did before, bastardswordmurdered a few more guards (a couple had some long spears), a crossbow guy, felt unstoppable by then getting more piece of armors (probably going to die a lot from the first boss as usual :D )
Now for the bad, while it's true i don't have a very good computer, the game was running badly even on the lower setting.
I learned why on a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFLmMbJoGkU) , it's because the difference between highest and lowest resolution scale is actually very small and barely make an actual difference (unlike other game that let you set it better) as the game was looking nearly as awesome in highest and lowest.
As the video point to, there is a tool named "Nioh Resolution" that allow to lower/increase the resolution scale to whatever you want to get it very smooth on lower end system, but unfortunately this newest patch (they patched Nioh today to benefit from whatever comes with the epic store, and a couple of bugfixes) is not compatible (yet hopefully it will be soon) with it.
Anyways, when (if) it will be updated, and you want to enjoy the game despite your not-so-good system, you'll probably need it :
https://github.com/LennardF1989/NiohResolution
Post by: Astral on September 09, 2021, 05:56:17 pm
I still don't get why newer versions of Windows doesn't come with games.Probably because Windows ended up becoming a legitimate corporate and government-utilized OS and that sort of thing wasn't kosher to push by default anymore for the big money audiences.
Stuff like the Hall of Tortured Souls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK0M74E8PS4) was snuck in - this had potential to be a major backdoor. Now you have to go out of your way to nab games, assuming your company's group policies and other restrictions allow it.
Post by: Iduno on September 10, 2021, 08:16:04 pm
Post by: Egan_BW on September 11, 2021, 06:16:49 am
Post by: Iduno on September 11, 2021, 09:18:00 am
Kind of funny that roguelikes evolved from very hard games which you can only beat my mastering them into games which start off artificially difficult and then get easier.
I don't think Void Bastards is a roguelike, if that's what you're referring to. Some random generation, but that's the only similarity.
Also, I remembered how I felt about the game itself: Fairly interesting, but flawed. I mentioned the difficulty level being too extreme. The oxygen timer for looting each ship (modified by items you might have made, and also possibly longer or shorter as a random ship modifier) exists but the ships are small and fairly linear, which prevents you from doing anything interesting to increase the amount of time you spend. There's also no good way of determining what the weapons do by their names (except the devices in the third slot), and I never found an in-game description of them. I took the toaster onto a ship with a lot of the swarm enemies, because a flamethrower seems like the sort of thing that would help with them. It's a charge to fire railgun.
Post by: Egan_BW on September 11, 2021, 11:19:18 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on September 11, 2021, 12:12:59 pm
You may think there's no need to have a different genre name and call every of them "roguelike", but then you may not have seen roguelike-only boards with "Berlin Interpretation (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php/Berlin_Interpretation)" zealots reacting with fury.
Post by: Egan_BW on September 11, 2021, 01:47:50 pm
Post by: Frumple on September 11, 2021, 01:58:08 pm
Usually, all those games like Void Bastards that contains some roguelike elements are called roguelite.Seen, yes, but the proper roguelike community reaction to genre purist nonsense is ignoring or laughing at them. If folks are calling this VB thing a roguelike with any regularity, that's good enough for hobbyist* work :P
You may think there's no need to have a different genre name and call every of them "roguelike", but then you may not have seen roguelike-only boards with "Berlin Interpretation (http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php/Berlin_Interpretation)" zealots reacting with fury.
*Or at least me, and there was a point I had sunk a hour or two into literally every english (and some that weren't) roguelike playable on windows (though that was over a decade ago and there were much, much fewer of them), so close enough!
Post by: Robsoie on September 12, 2021, 08:31:25 am
NiohResolution has been updated to the recent latest patch , it's compatible with both the steam and epic ones
https://github.com/LennardF1989/NiohResolution/releases/latest
It can help you to setup your own resolution, or increase/decrease the rendering scale (allowing you to upscale or downscale the game more than it allows you by default).
If you're on a potato and have troubles running Nioh with the very limited settings you can change in the video options, the rendering scale can help enormously.
An example, in NiohResolution patch the Nioh.exe with width/length to 1270 x 780 , change the resolution scale to something like 0.3 (and say No to the last question about ratio, as with 1270x780 being a 16/9 resolution, the game will have no ration problem).
Then in the Nioh launcher, make sure to set the resolution to 1920x1080 (as it's the resolution that will be patched by your choice) and the to "High" (as it's what the resolution scale you choose will patch).
Enjoy the much more playable Nioh, of course its more pixelly but at least it's not slow motion but with bad console port that's the best you can hope if you don't have a strong system to make up for the game code lack of optimisation.
Custcene will still be crap and hilariously laggy/stuttering for no reason, so skip them.
Post by: Robsoie on September 14, 2021, 03:50:50 am
And similarly to all those soul like, it's hard but it feels like Nioh is actually harder than the other games in its genre as there's lot of location in which you're ambushed by surprise and end with lots of enemies around , etc.
Basically you're dying a -very- lot (fortunately thanks to the shrine system you don't lose loot/items/progress, and even have a chance to get back to your corpse to take back the XP you hadn't yet spent).
So by not giving up, you'll eventually manage to overcome ridiculously impossible odds by having leveled up a lot and found better and better stuff and gained lot of bonus to improve your various stats, understand that Nioh rewards grinding.
The prologue had some amazing gothic oppressive atmosphere, unfortunately most of the game features are locked, so in the prologue there's then no need to gring because there's no point of trying because you can't even level up in that prologue, basically you're just trying to reach the boss and kill its 2 forms in order to clear it and move to the actual game (prologue is hard, it's Nioh after all).
Then you move to Japan for some reason and start to notice on cutscene that your NotGeralt character not having his beard anymore has a pointy jaw bigger than Jay Leno's , and while it's "to each his own" , i find the environment unfortunately lost completely the gothic oppressive atmosphere for some countryside one.
Anyways, the game is still good despite it run like crap for me (amazing how it can lag much more in a closed prison cell with 1 guard in Nioh than in any open world game with lots of structure and AI around) , despite it has difficult mouse&keyboard controls (especially as being a bad console port all the hints ingame are ignoring the keys you have bound and are using and will only display the important gameplay reminders/hints about xbox/ps controller buttons) .
And so addictive than despite the negatives i still play it :/
Then i finally managed, after hundred of deaths, to reach the boss of the 1st Japan mission, the guy that is in the burning boat near the burning village.
And oh boy, that ugly whatshisname big demon throwing his steel balls (no pun intended) killed my character a lot, until i finally managed to kill that thing, basically i learned to only use medium stance (because it had much better dodge roll than higher stance , and do more damage than low stance) and keep my superweaponguardianspiritmagicthingy only when the boss is roughly at half life (so the super stuff does not run out before i killed that monster) as if i run out before i usually make something stupid and get destroyed.
It also helps to get enough ninjutsu and magic to learn the weakness amulet (that you can throw to the boss to lower his armor) and the power pills (that increase your damage), temporary help but good enough to get the boss at half health a lot quicker than without those items.
Oh and despite full heavy armor feels attractive due to protection stat (though you die a lot anyways in Nioh) , i also learned that you need all the stamina you can to hit a few times then roll out of threat range, so do not wear anything that will get your weight to 70% or more as you move into another agility tier and will then start to eat tons of ki for any simple attack and dodge, leaving you open for retaliation a lot (and ki regenerate slower the more weight you have).
Spoiler: was so happy this thing finally went down (click to show/hide)
After that more of the game feature finally unlock (world map, dojo and etc..)
Post by: Folly on September 17, 2021, 06:00:59 pm
It's basically Dwarf Fortress with beavers.
Just lost my first colony in the first drought. The water storage I threw together at the last minute barely kept my beavers hydrated, but my food stockpiles didn't hold out. Learned a lot though, and already looking forward to the next one.
(https://i.imgur.com/HHvKE9d.png)
Post by: Robsoie on September 18, 2021, 01:13:21 pm
Tharsis isn't a normal PC game, it's actually a boardgame in which you solve the problems that appears every turns with dices.
By example there's a O2 loss problem in the greenhouse section of the ship, difficulty set randomly to 10 (that's very generous, it is not rare some events random difficulty got above 20)
You have to send a guy (or more after him) to repair it, let's say the guy you sent have 3 dices, with those 3 D6 he'll have to get 10 to repair things.
If he does not reach 10 you'll have to send another guy with his own dice for complementary points as if a repair is not done it can impact people health and the ship hull.
Sounds simple, but from there you have more to do with your crew member dices, some dice combinaison or results, depending on the crew member own ability and the ship module you're in can give you various bonus (by example in the greenhouse you can harvest food, in other modules there are other things to obtain) , you can also send dice to a research bar to unlock some random researches every turns.
So in the end you have to think and manage your dice in order to keep food, health, stress , dice numbers and repairs in order to surviving .
There are also additional disaster randomly i a module a specific number in a dice can be frozen (you can't reroll it) , a number can actually hurt your crew member (managed to kill one of my full health crew like that in a stroke of bad luck) or a number can just make a dice disappear (so no re-roll for it and no use for it).
You have to survive 10 turns to win a game, each turn there are 2 new disasters hitting randomly 2 module sections (and unrepaired module add their own damage) .
My first game i lost my whole crew at turn 5 :D
The game is -very- heavily dice based and the events are very random so you'll have games in which it will be just impossible to survive a few turns and sometime the game will be very easy on you.
So it's a very interesting boardgame with several mechanics, but it seems the odds are always stacked against you (unless you have some natural good luck :D ), as even if you have dices to spare to collect food/heal wounds or stress, or other module special actions, those actions will still depend on your dices so if you have a streak of bad luck, things are going to get impossible to fully deal with very fast
Post by: pikachu17 on September 18, 2021, 03:05:42 pm
Post by: AzyWng on September 19, 2021, 10:52:35 am
Turn-based randomized (as in, missions, levels, and what rewards you get are random) tactics game about cyberspace mechs fighting a corrupted computer system, or something to that effect. No hit-chance gripes, just damage ranges and stuff. It's also got destructible terrain and a variety of different enemy types, like some that take much less damage from status effects, or some that can heal others (tip: shoot them first), which encourages varied builds. I'm enjoying it so far.
Post by: Robsoie on September 19, 2021, 11:25:04 am
I was pleasantly surprised that for once the boss did not felt way too hard and was very nicely balanced for the level/equipment i had without a need to grind more and more until i had way better equipment.
Though on the 1st map there's a very good side mission ( "Request From Ginchiyo" that will be unlocked only after you beat the 3rd main mission) in which you're actually not alone but an AI NPC is teaming up with you for the whole mission (i wish you could hire such AI NPC in other missions), the chest goal location is randomized so it's always good for a replay.
And in this one i managed to kill several revenants that allowed me to gather from their drop the full set (minus the bow) of the warrior of the west armor.
Much better than what i had in term of all the additional abilities that comes with it, this probably helped (a lot) my character survivability so far.
Too bad it's not light enough to keep me in agility rank A, but fortunately (with some stamina level) it does not throw me in rank C (where you start to suffer high stamina drain for every strike/running/dodging you do)
Post by: Iduno on September 19, 2021, 01:53:21 pm
It's very much a game where once you start doing well or poorly, it just keeps going that way. Roll well? Go make some extra food so you have more dice to roll well next turn, or use powers, or repair the ship so you have more room for ignoring problems later. Roll badly? Enjoy having fewer dice, or fewer characters (also fewer dice), and also you still have unfinished problems added to the new problems that just showed up.
It looks neat, and has a (somewhat predictable) story, but it's not well-designed.
Post by: Robsoie on September 19, 2021, 01:59:36 pm
Then out of the blue, the game decided to killed one of my guy (one of the random modifier/condition in a moduel repair was 5 = wound) , guess what : that crew member got his 4 dices resulting in a "5" , immediately killing him, and for several turns in a row the guy i had in the food production decided to never make anymore 2 similar dices...
Then on turn 9 , the game spawned lots of 3 damage points modules (so absolutely no way to repair them all before the 5 remnant ship hit points were gone.
And that was my most lucky attempt :D
Unfortunately the game is too much luck based for me (as even the management and planning decision you make are subject to roll dice), but it's fun for a while .. at least until you have enough of your bad luck.
Post by: Robsoie on September 24, 2021, 03:58:40 am
It seemed like something not important enough to mention here as i didn't cared myself ... until i started looking at the user comments that were very negative :
What's happening is that with this Hitman from 2016 gog is actually selling a game that is using DRM, as without an internet connection the user will then not be able to access half of that game content (several missions, gametypes and progression unlocks and apparently even saves require online).
So does that mean that gog isn't sticking anymore to their no DRM policy that was what made them popular ? If that's the case it wouldn't be surprising if they lose a lot of the customers that trusted them, because -no DRM- was the whole point in wanting to buy your game at gog.
Post by: JimboM12 on September 24, 2021, 07:18:00 am
DRM
well, this depends. is it GOG doing it or is it one of those built in DRMs like games made by ubisoft have where it doesn't matter where you dl it, it makes you install and open that stupid ubisoft connect?
Post by: Robsoie on September 24, 2021, 08:25:42 am
There's no way gog didn't knew the version of Hitman they are selling had DRM despite their store mention it is about DRM-free games, as they even mention many features requiring being online on that game page.
Less i can say is that the gog users aren't exactly happy
https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/pt9wcl/hitman_2016_has_released_on_gog_with_online_drm/
Post by: Ulfarr on September 24, 2021, 10:12:27 am
Post by: JimboM12 on September 24, 2021, 10:33:29 am
hopefully they can negotiate with IOI (lol just realized that that's the evil monolith company from ready player one and they're the ones doing this) to mod/patch/remove all the online features but that's up to IOI.
Post by: Robsoie on September 24, 2021, 12:07:46 pm
But now they're selling some games that have DRM (at least in parts) and there are some games that requires the galaxy launcher. I just hope it's not going to become the norm.
Post by: n9103 on September 24, 2021, 01:10:55 pm
and there are some games that requires the galaxy launcherWhat? I couldn't find anything to support this, other than Gwent. And, come on, it's a minigame in Witcher 3. And free.
Post by: Robsoie on September 24, 2021, 01:37:42 pm
Post by: Aoi on September 24, 2021, 06:04:01 pm
Post by: Robsoie on September 25, 2021, 02:52:44 am
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zjwUN1mtJdCkgtTDRB2IoFp7PP41fraY-oFNY00fEkI/edit
And along the way there are actually admirable games devs, like the guys (Hinterland) that made the snowy mountainous survival game "The Long Dark" , at some point gog removed the game from their store, but people that had bought it can still download it (every games that have been removed from the gog store can still be downloaded if you purchased them here).
So you may think that was it and the people that bought it on gog would be stuck with an old inferior version (as The Long Dark recieved many big updates after that), but every further updates The Long Dark recieved were still ported by the devs into their gog version even if it was not sold anymore on gog !, meaning their gog customers could still access a DRM free version of the latest evolution of the game.
EDIT : that said, i noticed some people worrying that the offline installers of some games may be one day updated to include some DRM, after all if gog is willing to accept DRM in their supposed NO-DRM store, there's no guarantee DRM free games will stay DRM Free on gog.
So make sure to backup your game offline installers just in case.
Post by: Ulfarr on September 25, 2021, 11:54:10 am
EDIT : that said, i noticed some people worrying that the offline installers of some games may be one day updated to include some DRM, after all if gog is willing to accept DRM in their supposed NO-DRM store, there's no guarantee DRM free games will stay DRM Free on gog.
So make sure to backup your game offline installers just in case.
I'd say it's possible it'll happen one day. As things are, I think it all comes down to the power dynamic between gog and the developer, and who gets to strong-arm the other into accepting their terms. While that might be kind of obvious, it makes me worry that in the end only the small developers/publishers are going to accept the no-drm.
Post by: JimboM12 on September 25, 2021, 12:14:28 pm
i don't feel strongly on this topic because i mainly use gog for older games that were developed before the internet butted its way into everything but i can see why people are getting upset. the modern games i bought from gog are cRPGs from smaller devs, like the pathfinder rpgs and divinity 2 (and even divinity requires that stupid larian launcher). sadly unless things change the only way for gog to maintain selling drm free is to take the big AAA developer games down and just not sell them but it's too late for that now.
Post by: Robsoie on September 25, 2021, 12:15:52 pm
But in the same time, the no DRM (+ offline installer) as mentionned previously is what attracted people to buy on gog instead of its DRM competition.
If DRM is becoming tolerated on gog, why would anyone then buy their game there instead of other DRM platform like steam/epic/ubi/ea/etc... , especially if those other places can sell at lower price than gog.
I remember when gog did the "fckdrm initiative" , funny/sad to see that now not only the article and website aren't there anymore but only redirect to gog ...
It looks like times are changing not for the best unfortunately.
For the curious, archives :
https://web.archive.org/web/20180821204159/https://www.gog.com/news/the_fck_drm_initiative
https://web.archive.org/web/20200817145700/https://fckdrm.com/
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on September 27, 2021, 08:14:05 am
EDIT: and the music: so good.
Post by: JimboM12 on September 27, 2021, 05:55:56 pm
Medieval Dynasty https://store.steampowered.com/app/1129580/Medieval_Dynasty/
i swear i felt like ive talked about this one before... but i do that for a lot of by the wayside survival games/rpgs or whatever.
medieval dynasty's basically just another open world survival sim rpg where you build a settlement up and populate it with npcs who help with tasks. im not very far into it but it recently came off of early access and the presentation for such an indie game is really good. doesn't have that massively janky feel most types of indie survival games have but then maybe i haven't reached any yet.
and
Kingdom Under Fire Crusaders and Heroes https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121420/Kingdom_Under_Fire_The_Crusaders/
im not entirely sure how to describe these. ive played them backkk in the days of og xbox and they were kickass then. its a strategy rpg of sorts that feels like some weird mashup of total war and dynasty warriors. i didn't know they'd made it to pc until i saw mandalores video on them. honestly he does a better job reviewing them then i can:
https://youtu.be/IYTsnNPu-0E
Post by: Robsoie on September 28, 2021, 03:02:16 am
It felt very generic at the time and that's probably why it didn't reached much height in the RTS communities.
Very interesting to see how they changed completely the system into this mix of RTS and Dynasty Warrior that from looking at the gameplay video looks very dynamic and fun.
I noticed both Crusaders and Heroes versions are also available on gog .
Post by: nenjin on September 29, 2021, 11:15:40 pm
Kingdom Under Fire Crusaders and Heroes https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121420/Kingdom_Under_Fire_The_Crusaders/
im not entirely sure how to describe these. ive played them backkk in the days of og xbox and they were kickass then. its a strategy rpg of sorts that feels like some weird mashup of total war and dynasty warriors. i didn't know they'd made it to pc until i saw mandalores video on them. honestly he does a better job reviewing them then i can:
https://youtu.be/IYTsnNPu-0E
I still have my disk (and my Xbox, which hasn't been fired up since the last time I played it, I think.) Rented it and enjoyed it enough that I bought it. Looking back, it hasn't aged all that well. And yet, I remember the combination of some basic Dynasty Warriors-esqe gameplay combined with like, real-time commanding troops in objective-based scenarios was enjoyable. Handled really awkward on a controller IIRC but enjoyable. Like it wanted to be the grown up, 3d American Final Fantasy Tactics but with action and button mashing. It was enough I think I played all the characters and may have even beat it on the hardest difficulty. So it did something right to get me to stick with it that long.
----
Just got done playing several hours of Source of Madness. It's in Early Access on Steam.
It's a 2d sidescroller rogue-lite, Souls-inspired Metroidvania. Yes yes, one of those now ubiquitous games. Rogue Legacy, Dead Cells, Salt and Sanctuary, Death's Gambit, Blasphemous, Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, this game is pulling from everything in terms of form and function.
It's got a few twists that got my attention though.
It's Lovecraftian. But it's like someone played Blasphemous and was like "You know what, I want my story to be even harder to grasp." If they hadn't named dropped Yog-Sothoth or have an item named the Eye of Cthluhu or mentioned Elder Gods, you could easily mistake this for something other than Lovecraftian.
Anyways, you play a cultist who is trying to....bring the Elder Gods back? Open the door to their realm? Something. You play, you die, you get to choose from a selection of cultists to carry on the mission, kinda like Rogue Legacy and picking your descendant, but they're just a randomized character.
What gives the game its real twist though is the art and the enemies: textures are designed by AI and the enemies are procedural generated monstrosities dragged from the depths of machine learning and AI.
So what you end up with is a fusion of Gothic architecture and Geiger-esqe textures. The game likes its gore but it's that weird, stringy, Geiger-y gore that puts you in mind of insects as much as it does flesh.
In terms of gameplay, it's more ranged focused than melee focused. You get rings and items to equip that grant you spells and you fight with those. Lots of spell flinging, lots of shooting enemies that are just off screen. The game LOVES its physics. There's physics objects everywhere. Your spells fling you around. Enemies knock you around and send you flying. Because of this, it handles in a very floaty fashion. Platforming is hit or miss but luckily so far there's not a ton of it. When you damage enemies, they gib harcode. Parts go flying everywhere, corpses mound up, limbs come sailing down from the sky 20 seconds after you've killed a thing. They've dialed the physics up to 11. There's some decent variety to the spells but they feel a little uneven. On one side you have simpler workmen-like spells that do the job just fine, and sound and look good, but are just kind boring. Like 3 different kinds of magic missile spells (slower but more damage, multi-shot but less damage, and then really fast firing multshot but low damage.) Two varieties of "flame thrower", one for fire, one for lightning. Resuable "turrets" that cast these same spells.....But then on the other side, you have screen shaking, exploding fireballs. Wave spells that will hit enemies dozens of times if they're in the path of it. Giant boulders that are actually physics objects and can smash enemies around. A goddamn BLACK HOLE. The cool spells keep me playing to see what else they have, but there are some runs when you get stuck with the less sexy spells and it's a little lame. All the gibbing and exploding goes a long way toward making everything feel satisfying, but if you subtract out all that glitz and glam, some of the spells rock and some kind of blow.
It's the enemies though that are the real stars of the show. They are weird and almost completely unreadable, a mass of flailing limbs and mouths. Sometimes you catch the vague hint of something recognizable but then it's moving too fast or got gibbed too hard and it's gone. It's like everything you fight was run through that Deep Dreaming website. While it's cool, in practice what it means is most enemies are squidlike, multi-limbed things that crawl, flail around and then launch themselves halfway across the screen to get you. In order to help you understand what bit is dangerous, one of their inevitable tentacles lights up with a big purple light to let you know it's time to get out of the way. Bosses are enormous, screen devouring monstrosities where you can barely ever get a glimpse of the whole thing, probably because your mind couldn't handle seeing it in its entirety.
Unfortunately I think, the texture and the creature gimmick does what most computer generated things start to do: look too samey. Yeah any individual monster may have one or more tentacles, eyes, things that shoot death balls at you, and per run in an area you can be like "ok the big green things that crawl on the ground like to leap at you and break apart twice into new monsters as you kill them." But that's about it as far as you can really appreciate them. And with the texture work, it's better but after a while your brain goes a little numb to the intricate and weird textures the AI cooked up.
Overall gameplay is kinda fast paced with lots of "holy shit what just happened" "omg that dude blew up 6 ways from Sunday". There's some finesse but it's not a precise game. It's quite messy in a lot of ways. It's hard to know sometimes what flailing purple bit is actually dangerous, when. Or hard to react when it's both purple and sailing across the screen spinning in circles. It's hard to predict how enemies are going to behave as they flop up through platforms or contort themselves to turn corners or climb, and then suddenly explode into lateral movement. In response, lots of the time you're just furiously dodging backwards, firing off every spell or attack in your arsenal at a mass of flailing death that just keeps exploding into more blood and ichor and limbs and gibblets, while your own attacks are tossing you around or screen shaking everything. You're unsure if it's actually dead so you just keep flinging spells, and there's more crunching and squashing and exploding. There's damage numbers in there, and health bars, but both are pretty much immediately lost in the flesh hurricane, or dudes seem to have way more life in the last 10% of their health bar than they did in the first 90%. So you just keep flinging spells into a pile of flesh and thrashing tentacles until it FINALLY stops moving and you hear the sound of money and blood being collected.
It's fun, but messy. There's not a lot of the precision of a well-timed parry, or super strict platforming tolerances like has been seen in other games. In the first level it feels fairly easy to judge things and avoid a lot of unnecessary damage, but the level following, both its design and the enemies start turning everything into kind of a clusterfuck.
Someone really added the "crunch" to the effects in this game. Spells sound good, feel good, feel like they have weight for the most part. (Although a lot of them sound like straight up space lasers.) There are copious amounts of sucking, squelching, crackling, crunching, roaring, chittering noises to accompany everything, to where when you're blasting 5 things at the same time and they're all blowing up, it's a truly disgusting symphony of noise.
There's a couple other bits to the game that I don't know if they add a ton of value, more like it feels tacked on. Like it's got a stat system and does Diablo style loot with random modifiers on it and a Diablo-style inventory (for a...rogue-lite?) with possible the busiest texture I've ever seen in a video game, courtesy of the AI. They say it's an homage to the "gritty days" of Diablo 2, but I dunno. Just kinda seems slapped in there, and with what I've seen in game so far, the items on offer and the variation potential there, there's not really enough to justify a Diablo-style loot system. Oh boy, a Tier 3 Fireball Ring comes with 5% Arcane Resistance, stop the presses and wake up Cthulhu.
Post game it's your typical rogue-lite. You earn blood from killing enemies, spend it between runs to get advantages to carry into the rest of your runs like unlocking new classes, more Estus Flasks to use, more dodges, unlocking higher tier items to show up in runs, etc and so forth. The game hub is a pretty massive cathedral with NPCs to talk to and areas looking like they'll be more to do there later. Hard to say at this point how far they'll go with it, or if it's just a lot of art and empty space for its own sake. Games like Blasphemous and Salt and Sanctuary, while great, never really fleshed out their content to the degree you'd get from a AAA game like Dark Souls. They don't have elaborate hubs with dozens of NPCs with long quest chains and yadda yadda. So I sort of doubt SoM will either. The trappings are there, but it's an indie rogue-lite for $16 and that should be kept in mind.
I think the idea of this game was based on the technology more than anything, and I think it works in a sort of body horror grindhouse explosion fest. Not quite sure about the story or what the point of everything even is but I guess that's Souls-like games for you. It can be easy to appear deep by just not having much to say. It's also easy just to slap Lovecraftian on there because of everything it brings with it, while not really living up to much of it. I can say at least the game looks and acts like it's a work of love so far. It might be worth a look little later on down the line when it's more....ugh, fleshed out. The first few levels feel pretty complete and I've yet to beat it, but there's obviously a lot more coming to the game, and maybe some balance and polish will help.
Post by: Robsoie on September 30, 2021, 02:13:07 pm
... and i was very surprised that i prefer old Europa Universalis 2 (that i still play).
I'm not sure what exactly makes me getting more into EU2 , as EU4 feels the same in term of gameplay (at least in the base/no DLC game) , that allowed me to very quickly start playing without being lost, despite some changes for some features (the trading by example works very differently , it feels more involved in EU4).
Maybe it's more a matter of taste, the visuals visuals of EU2 are much better for me than EU4, probably because they make EU2 atmosphere being more "boardgame", while EU4 with everything 3D and textures lose that atmosphere for me (at least there are some different display modes in EU4 to work around this).
The musics of EU2 were simply iconic it was sad to not get something similar in EU4, but again it's a matter of taste.
What made the difference to me is that in EU4 the user interface feels more busy, it seems there's more buttons and so more panels and more stats to check, and i could swear countries in EU4 are divided into a lot more provinces, making things more complicated to me.
But that's probably because i'm too used to EU2 , because it's obvious EU4 is still a very good game, just not as enjoyable for me as EU2 is.
Post by: Stench Guzman on September 30, 2021, 07:43:53 pm
I gave a try to this week epic freebie "Europa Universalis 4"
... and i was very surprised that i prefer old Europa Universalis 2 (that i still play).
I'm not sure what exactly makes me getting more into EU2 , as EU4 feels the same in term of gameplay (at least in the base/no DLC game) , that allowed me to very quickly start playing without being lost, despite some changes for some features (the trading by example works very differently , it feels more involved in EU4).
Maybe it's more a matter of taste, the visuals visuals of EU2 are much better for me than EU4, probably because they make EU2 atmosphere being more "boardgame", while EU4 with everything 3D and textures lose that atmosphere for me (at least there are some different display modes in EU4 to work around this).
The musics of EU2 were simply iconic it was sad to not get something similar in EU4, but again it's a matter of taste.
What made the difference to me is that in EU4 the user interface feels more busy, it seems there's more buttons and so more panels and more stats to check, and i could swear countries in EU4 are divided into a lot more provinces, making things more complicated to me.
But that's probably because i'm too used to EU2 , because it's obvious EU4 is still a very good game, just not as enjoyable for me as EU2 is.
EU4 is a victim of its own success in a sense. It's got about a dozen DLC and each one adds a few minor mechanics. Over time it's become overloaded with little things to do and you lose sight of the big picture.
Post by: Aoi on October 04, 2021, 07:04:10 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: "Late-game spoilers" (click to show/hide)
Post by: Mephansteras on October 04, 2021, 11:36:27 am
Post by: Aoi on October 04, 2021, 04:04:26 pm
Honestly, the mechanics kind of grate (for me) around Act 4 because, by then, you should have figured out how to manage the RNG in a passable manner by then and the difficulty increases are mostly numeric so it's just a matter of builds that can synergize well and have enough punch to not get worn out.
It's also presently save scummable, which I confess to doing on the Act 6 boss after a few tries, because that thing is such a finicky mess and has minor UI bugs.
Post by: JimboM12 on October 04, 2021, 04:34:46 pm
Hero's Hour has a nice, free demo on their website
https://thingonitsown.itch.io/heros-hour
Spiffing Brit playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEOyrahKuoE
... a real time, almost mount and blade HoMM style rpg/4x game with pixel graphics, where your units aren't abstracted into a single figurine?
thats like throwing candy to a fat kid or 40k figurines to nerds, sheesh
this is the kind of creativity im more than willing to support with a purchase.
also brit's video on it made it look very appealing.
Post by: Frumple on October 04, 2021, 05:49:49 pm
Pretty solid, does some neat stuff from what I've seen. Highest difficulty is apparently legitimately fairly brutal. Probably get around to getting it proper whenever it goes on sale on steam :P
Post by: Robsoie on October 05, 2021, 03:57:08 am
The heroes "supply train" works too (make a few heroes that are only there to carry new troops to other heroes, until they reach your main hero) and is always a requirement to not get destroyed by an enemy hero after you lost troops on a location and your castle is too far.
Still not used to the real time battles, as while in the beginning when you don't have much troops, they're rather controllable and tactical, once you start to have large amount of units, things get out of hands quickly and you'll just increase the speed and wait for the result hoping your army AI will do a better job than the enemy one.
I got a crash when my main hero party was hunting an enemy one , clicked to move the party to the enemy and it froze the game until crash. Odd as things had worked correctly until then, but without logs no idea what happened.
Post by: Kagus on October 05, 2021, 01:16:11 pm
Stuff like the "on death, your units have a chance to cast a destructive spell" skill. What it doesn't tell you is that those destructive spells are generally large AoE rain effects with 100% friendly fire. Which, yes, will indeed set off a chain reaction that brings down the heavens upon the battlefield... But it'll also do a fantastic job of killing your own troops before the enemy even gets to them.
Also those spells keep going for a while, including after the battle is over. This can result in losing troops after you've already won if you're not fast enough at clicking "end battle".
Oh yeah, there's also a building that can randomly spawn on the map which lets you sacrifice units in order to turn them into increases to the spellpower and mana stats for a hero. There's also no cap on how much you can increase those stats.
And this is how you end up with a hero with +2400% spellpower who can straight up one-shot an entire endgame army with a single spell, and who has enough magical reserves to cast that spell 20 times in a battle.
Post by: Frumple on October 05, 2021, 01:33:43 pm
Balance is indeed still somewhat wonky :P
Post by: Iceblaster on October 05, 2021, 01:59:02 pm
Oh yeah, there's also a building that can randomly spawn on the map which lets you sacrifice units in order to turn them into increases to the spellpower and mana stats for a hero. There's also no cap on how much you can increase those stats.
And this is how you end up with a hero with +2400% spellpower who can straight up one-shot an entire endgame army with a single spell, and who has enough magical reserves to cast that spell 20 times in a battle.
Gonna be honest I love overpowered stuff like that entirely bc of how much effort it takes to get there, something about gimping yourself in order to build up to something outstandingly OP is fun.
Post by: Kagus on October 05, 2021, 03:10:57 pm
Along with the other undead dragons that showed up in the party for free.
But yeah, the game does seem to match the design philosophy of "Overpowered vs. Overpowered"
Post by: Robsoie on October 06, 2021, 09:41:52 am
Googling around it looks like the game has monstrous memory leaks (probably explaining why it never crashed on a specific action, but always seemed to crash for me if i play for a long time), hopefully the dev will be able to fix that as it crashes too much for my taste.
I found the skirmish mode not as fun as i thought (skirmish mode is about fighting a specific army, you're given X amount of gold to build your army to beat a level)
Now for the good, the demo is very packed with content, so you can spend a lot of time on it. And out of the real time messy battles it's very faithfull to the Heroes of Might and Magic gameplay.
Post by: Kagus on October 06, 2021, 02:06:21 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on October 08, 2021, 12:25:45 am
https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/
Best to describe it, I think, is Sunless Sea/Skies, but turn-based.
There's a very rich world to explore, with tons of quality text. Definitely a reader's game. The writing is not quite at the level of the Sunless series, but is also less flowery and more down to earth. The post-apocalyptic fantasy Rome setting may at times feel forced. The whole thing reads like an >extremely< competent amateur RPG campaign.
The day-to-day loop involves mostly ferrying cargo between settlements and following up on pieces of information to open up story/opportunity/companion bits.
Escorts, raiding, and bounty hunting are an option, but combat is brutal - losses are easy to incur and relatively costly to replace. The game lets you start with a more combat-oriented caravan, but so far I can't see making any profit this way until one has earned a bit of coin other ways.
The map looks lovely and is a joy to explore. Movement is with action points between fixed nodes, which works much better than I anticipated. Caravan management takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it feels right.
In addition to the free-form play there's also a more on-rails story campaign.
And there's a short demo that nonetheless gives a very good overview of how the various game systems work. Check it out first.
It's a recent release, so there are bugs to squash and kinks to iron out.
Post by: AlStar on October 08, 2021, 10:14:39 am
Here's something you guys and gals might find interesting:Reading through the reviews, a point that I came across several times is that profitability is balanced on a knife's edge, and that any disruption to that (including story missions that require you to quickly change your destination) can cause you to spiral into insolvency.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/
Another was that combat isn't very rewarding, since most of the rewards you win are cargo-based, but those cargos probably don't stack with what you're carrying and you won't have anywhere to put them (since you need to constantly have a full cargo or you'll be losing money in travel), forcing you to ditch the goods.
Are these problems that you've run across?
Post by: Il Palazzo on October 08, 2021, 11:38:57 am
Are these problems that you've run across?I've been avoiding combat like the plague after some initial poking around, so I can't say too much about it (but sometimes it finds you and you just have to bite the bullet). The way it works, far as I can tell, is that you really shouldn't just go and pick random fights hoping for kewl lootz. The generic loot from some raiders or undead is going to be meh, and is unlikely to offset the cost in supplies and rehiring of lost crew. Taking a well-paid mission, or following on some story bits should nett better results. Rare non-cargo curios, like jewellery etc., don't take up space and can bring some good coin.
If you know what you're doing, and why you're doing it - it should work. But I don't think you'll ever be overpowered enough just go looking for trouble.
As for the general economy balance - it's tight, but not unfairly so. I'm on my first run, other than early tutorialising, and I'm seeing a steady influx of cash doing mostly just trading/cargo missions.
It's much like Sunless Sea/Skies, down to literally the same type of complaints you hear. If you're familiar with those games, the way to make money is by combining as many ways to make profit on a given route as you can.
Take any ferrying missions, buy some stock you know is in demand along the way, maybe consider taking passengers if they're going in the same direction. As long as you take care to exploit all available opportunities, you should be fine. What bleeds money is empty runs, buying random cargo and hoping it'll sell, and overhiring (caravans can be easily downsized and later upsized again, at a rather modest loss).
Unlike the Sunless games, there's a sensible save system, so you never lose everything to a single bad decision and can experiment with what works or doesn't, more easily.
Post by: Kagus on October 08, 2021, 12:34:59 pm
Sure, I made less money than if I wasn't constantly going full afterburner mode, but doing that made me feel better as a person. So I did it.
Post by: scriver on October 08, 2021, 01:03:17 pm
My drar fellows, I can't describe to you how annoying this is. In this game. When you zoom in. You zoom out. When you zoom out? You zoom in. Yes. They tied zoom out to scroll up and zoom in to scroll down.
I have no idea how they could possibly manage to get the scroll directions so wrong in the first place. But then it gets worse. Yes, worse. Why? It's simple. Because not only did they make it completely backwards to begin with. But. They won't let you change it.
Complete and utter madness. I'm reminded of the old of the old song by Nick Cave, https://youtu.be/uny3pYb1fsI (https://youtu.be/uny3pYb1fsI), and it's famous lyrics: "The ladders of life we scroll merrily // move mysteriously around // so when you think you're scrolling up, man // in fact you're scrolling down"
Also, when I originally wrote this on my computer while tabbed out my computer froze :(
I think I made my money in Sunless Sea by grinding salt blocks up until I could afford the freighter-y ship, packing the mod that prevents your engine from exploding on top, and then choo-chooing at maximum overspeed back and forth between the westernmost and easternmost parts of the map with something that was apparently profitable.
Sure, I made less money than if I wasn't constantly going full afterburner mode, but doing that made me feel better as a person. So I did it.
I loved the concept of Sunless Sea, but I have up on ever getting any enjoyment from it because of how it expected you to have huge caches of cash while seemingly having no way that I could understand to actually make a profit. Sadface.fileformat
Post by: scriver on October 08, 2021, 04:29:54 pm
Post by: scriver on October 08, 2021, 07:32:11 pm
I have since developed a whole other bunch of less humorous issues with the game, though. Probably not picking it up again.
Post by: Aoi on October 09, 2021, 10:17:51 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on October 11, 2021, 07:49:26 am
Quote
Dear Community,
Thank you for your patience and for giving us the time to investigate the release of HITMAN GOTY on GOG. As promised, we’re getting back to you with updates.
We're still in dialogue with IO Interactive about this release. Today we have removed HITMAN GOTY from GOG’s catalog – we shouldn’t have released it in its current form, as you’ve pointed out.
We’d like to apologise for the confusion and anger generated by this situation. We’ve let you down and we’d like to thank you for bringing this topic to us – while it was honest to the bone, it shows how passionate you are towards GOG.
We appreciate your feedback and will continue our efforts to improve our communication with you.
Post by: Kagus on October 11, 2021, 08:03:12 am
Post by: Astral on October 12, 2021, 09:14:32 pm
There are also currently a number of bugs and oversights, along with some rather head-scratchingly odd design decisions.This stacks well with the set that allows you to keep 50% of your summoned units after the battle is over - lots of high tier summons for free leading into an infinite loop of power every week. Only limited by how quickly the game will crash with that many units on the battlefield.
Stuff like the "on death, your units have a chance to cast a destructive spell" skill. What it doesn't tell you is that those destructive spells are generally large AoE rain effects with 100% friendly fire. Which, yes, will indeed set off a chain reaction that brings down the heavens upon the battlefield... But it'll also do a fantastic job of killing your own troops before the enemy even gets to them.
Also those spells keep going for a while, including after the battle is over. This can result in losing troops after you've already won if you're not fast enough at clicking "end battle".
Oh yeah, there's also a building that can randomly spawn on the map which lets you sacrifice units in order to turn them into increases to the spellpower and mana stats for a hero. There's also no cap on how much you can increase those stats.
And this is how you end up with a hero with +2400% spellpower who can straight up one-shot an entire endgame army with a single spell, and who has enough magical reserves to cast that spell 20 times in a battle.
Post by: Robsoie on October 13, 2021, 04:51:06 am
Total Chaos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7IITZDBvqE
Solace Dreams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMXtXurGQ0E
Sonic Robo Blast 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia097A0pKNM
Recently spotted another coding genius doing something rather incredible for the old engine :
Doom Fighters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWiJztMAzxo
https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-fighters/news/doom-fighters
Post by: delphonso on October 13, 2021, 06:56:51 am
Post by: Cthulhu on October 14, 2021, 03:35:09 am
AC1 is pretty decent. It hasn't aged well and it's repetitive, but it's kind of a marvel how stripped down and simple a triple-A game could be back then, compared to nowadays when every big game that comes out is a bloated nightmare with 400 hours of bullshit. A lot of features that are ruin every modern video game are here in prototype form, rhythm game combat, "open world" full of repetitive shitty side tasks, parkour, etc. Still, everything fits together nicely in this one and nothing becomes overbearingly awful the way it will in future games. 3/5 for me, solid game.
AC2 is great. It's just Assassin's Creed but bigger and better. Starting to see the Ubisoft Formula in the way the open world is set up, but the hide in plain sight style stealth is improved, parkour is improved, combat is easy but flashy and satisfying. The main story is decent, Ezio is a better character than Altair who was monotone and boring, and the metanarrative with Abstergo, along with the "Truth" stuff with the Annunaki just continually gets more insane as the series progresses. A lot of people hate that stuff but I love it, it's completely unnecessary to the games being good, extremely self-indulgent, but they just continually double down on it and even in the modern games they're still doing it. The game kind of falls apart in the last act though. Everything past Silvio Barbarigo is terrible, the game massively overstays its welcome. You steal the apple and have a swordfight, and there's an "all my friends are here to help" moment which isn't earned because the enemies don't feel threatening. Then the guys from A Clockwork Orange show up and steal the apple, and you kill them, and then Savonarola shows up and steals the apple, and you kill him after an agonizingly long and un-fun series of mini assassination missions, and the game still keeps going after that, leading up to a climactic fistfight with Rodrigo Borgia, who was a terrifying in literally every scenario except a fist fight.
Up until that point the game was a 5/5 for me, but the last 3 or 4 hours of the game being shitty is too big a flaw to ignore so it drops to a 4. Oops.
Post by: Kagus on October 14, 2021, 03:39:54 am
Also, be aware of the DaVinci cutscene QTE. You don't get a second chance at it, and it's pretty terrible to fail.
Post by: Aoi on October 14, 2021, 08:07:02 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Akura on October 19, 2021, 11:30:22 am
They're changing Bronze orders to be able increase a soldier's rank(which otherwise currently requires sacrificing three troops of the same rank to get one of them back), but they haven't implemented that one yet. They're also going to do the same with weapon orders.
Honestly, it'd be better if Bronze orders were usable to do something like purchasing a bottom-rank recruit with the minimal equipment for their job, and costing more orders for bottom-rank specialists. That would still allow freemium players some measure of progression based on participation rather than luck and throwing money at the screen.
EDIT: That have added ranking troops up via Bronze orders. My mistake on that.
EDIT2: Completely unrelated to the rant above, but I just saw that the Star Trek Armada games are coming to GOG. I remember ST:A2 being fun enough. I had heard that there were some messy licensing issues involved with the Armada games that would have made it all but nearly impossible to get the games on GOG, but it looks like those were cleared up?
Post by: Robsoie on October 21, 2021, 05:05:51 pm
If you never heard about it, i had no idea what to expect myself, this is a game in which you're playing in 1st person view a 2 years old child that goes through some kind of nightmare in search of his mother. During said very odd nightmare you'll recollect memories and events hinting at your family story in a way a 2 year old child may percieve them.
The game is very short (you'll complete it between 2 and 3 hours at max) and very linear (out of a place in which i could go 2 ways , but said paths will have to be followed anyways), and there's no real replay value once you complete the story.
There is a short "hide&seek" part in a couple of levels that had some good "Alien Isolation" atmosphere but that part is super short unfortunately. The "puzzles" are rather straightforward (majority are of the "find the item that goes there to open the path") , though at least it makes sense as you're a 2 years old.
But despite that, it's a very original experience that i think is worth playing once (as you'll play it probably only 1 time anyways to complete the story)
Post by: Jopax on October 21, 2021, 07:11:47 pm
It's a pretty neat lovechild of Factorio and a twinstick shooter.
First off, graphics and optimization are pretty fantastic, you get hordes of critters coming at you while you blast at them with a wide variety of weapons that go brrrt, zzap and boom (the nuke especially) and it never chugged a single FPS for me.
Basic premise is that you're the first colonizer on a planet, sent ahead to build up a proper base of operations and a gateway to link back to Earth. To help with this you've got a big stompy mech that can build buildings and equip various weapons and mods. You build your base to gather various resources and process them into useful shit. The logistics are way way simpler than Factorio, and balancing production is fairly simple and straightforward, most of the base building challenge comes from making a defensible layout and having enough room for growth. A big part of the gameplay is focused on exploring the various biomes to get access to new stuff and survey the flora&fauna to unlock new stuff as well as defending from the regular hordes of unhappy critters coming to get your base.
The main campaign is not terribly long and is somewhat linear at the start/end but the middle is fairly freeform in what route you want to take in terms of progressing your tech and base.
All in all, a neat little game, very satisfying combat and exploration with a decent, if a bit simple base building component. Devs have mentioned coop coming eventually down the line and possible expansions of some sort, which should be interesting to see where they take the game next.
Post by: Folly on October 21, 2021, 07:38:52 pm
My main concern was seeing how the campaign panned out. The demo didn't give me much impression of what kind of persistence or story could be used to string together a series of skirmishes to create a satisfying lengthy experience. And while the skirmish was entertaining the first time, I didn't see it having much replay value without that campaign.
Unfortunately, all of the reviews I've read since release seem to bear out my concerns. Apparently the campaign is nothing more than waiting on a series of tedious research timers, broken up by waves of enemies who are trivial by the time they arrive. And the skirmish mode does not seem to offer any variety in the experience between sessions, outside of sliders the player can set to directly manipulate the frequency and types of enemies.
I really wanted to like this one, but can't justify the purchase price based on all I've seen.
Post by: Mephansteras on October 21, 2021, 08:57:26 pm
Post by: Jopax on October 22, 2021, 04:55:56 am
YMMV but that's decent value for the asking price to me, and I'll probably get back to it eventually.
Post by: Robsoie on October 22, 2021, 11:38:33 am
But actually interesting is that there are many items (that are unique to the events) that can be acquired from using those "nihl bonbon" the enemies will drop at some ufo that landed for the event in the archology bridge :
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/628670/view/4893716326544887978
the event is going on for every version of the game (even the gog one from what i just experienced)
Also noticed there's a dlc in the work for Hellpoint :
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/628670/view/5232606492415918343
Post by: Robsoie on October 23, 2021, 05:35:20 pm
A few days ago the dev landed version 1.7, a "game changing update"
Quote
So! Today I bring with me a new update. Kind of like the uncle that brings a new girlfriend and you just know it won't last. But I bellow: "This is a Game Changer!" Because this is the game changing update. Zero bugs, no jank, and no more imbalanced strategies. "I've changed," I say with pride - the v 1.7 update looks at me with enchanted eyes, and the rest of the family nods with overbearingness.
Spoiler: changelog for 1.7 (click to show/hide)
the free version has also been updated to 1.7.1 and can be downloaded there :
https://thingonitsown.itch.io/heros-hour
Managed to win the tutorial mission without a crash with this version, so i guess that's a good update :D
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Rolan7 on October 23, 2021, 10:52:17 pm
Its story is a lot to get into (kinda all over the place actually?) but in the order I played:
tldr; The 2:Aftershock campaign is *crazy* accelerated, and they kinda played that for a brick joke in 3:Afterlight which is on a "terraforming an entire planet" schedule. "Hello we are the Terrans, praise biomass-ARGH! ...Disregard previous message, we're the Terrans, we have spacecraft (and crazy warp-rifles) and stand ready to assist you."
It's a little funny too that at least one member of the Mars colonization team fought the original invasion, and bears a grudge against Reticulans. Or at least, she's an expert in their anatomy... technically she could *heal* them better! Why would her damage bonus ever matter... ;)
Edit: Aftershock's speed is also probably due to "mining" the abundant detritus of Earth civilization, plus tons of crashed Reticulan technology. Like I mentioned in passing, something odd happened to the Reticulans too close to Earth when they completed their project... Something the Reticulans fail to mention in the third game, as they "generously" aid the Mars colonization project.
Post by: Mkok on October 24, 2021, 07:13:06 am
I need to talk about the UFO: AfterX trilogy for a minute.
Its story is a lot to get into (kinda all over the place actually?) but in the order I played:
1) Reticulans arrive and seed Earth with toxic biomass, killing almost everyone in days. Bunker-dwelling survivors pull an XCOM and manage to adapt alien technology to stop the biomass and even launch a ship to board the alien mothership, where they're offered with an odd choice.
This really makes sense only after playing Aftershock, but from what I gather there are a few hints in Aftermath pointing to the story of Aftershock, so I guess the devs did have this story in mind from the very beginning...
3) It's 50 years after the deal was struck. The Reticulans not only honored the deal by housing the human survivors on floating Laputa satellites, they've even facilitated a Mars colonization project. They consider humans to be allies, as long as the Earth biomass project is undisturbed.
Shortly after beginning the exploration and early terraforming of Mars, a signal is received from Earth. Human-biomass cultists, offering friendship. Survivors on Earth? Is that part of the project??
And then a few brief weeks later, AKA a handful of battlescape missions, some Laputans contact Mars and vaguely explain that everything is fine now, that the cult has been defeated. HUH?? My point is that it's weirdly fast. You barely get to meet the cult before they're gone, and you've got this Earth-faction powerful enough to help you in any way you want. Apparently the project is over. In weeks!
Over a year or two probably, the Mars project (with terran aid) manages to terraform Mars despite like... 4 other factions getting involved. I'll just say that there are the Reticulan "allies", and then there are *other* Reticulans who show up, not to mention anything buried underground. The game is good about letting you choose your allies, and it's a bit grey any way you slice it.
The real order you are supposed to play is Aftermath (optional, only managed to win this one with the peace offer), Aftershock and then Afterlight. Though Afterlight is more of a spin-off, so there are parts of story that twist to make it fit. Most of the story explanation is in Aftershock, Afterlight mostly only references these. For example I believe there is no explanation who myrmecols are in Afterlight, just a remark that they invaded mars at some point in the past and martians were the winners of the "breeding wars" and they also relocated the original inhabitants the beastmen, which doesnt really make much sense if you dont know who the myrmecols are from Aftershock...
2) It's 50 years after SOMETHING happened to Earth, with the "last" humans living on spaceborne platforms called Laputa. Long story short, few people remember what happened (and they're strangely vague about it). A group of youths realize their Laputa is falling apart, and rebel - escaping to one full of brain-dead Reticulans. Taking control, they contact an Earth that has human (and transhuman) survivors!
What's crazy here - which I didn't fully realize at first - is that things happen *extremely* quickly here for an XCOM-style game. No watching the globe spin for 3-4 days until a contact appears. The Laputans with their advanced technology work *fast*, as do the cultists, making allies and "researching" technology almost hour-by-hour. These kids grew up with Reticulan biotechnology and have libraries of data, and their terran allies are desperate for help against roiling biomass (and other threats).
I guess the speed is a bit fast, but I imagine the alternative would be to make the game even more prolonged then it already is, as in all three games there comes a time when I get so bored with repetitive missions I just stop doing them, or choose only the easiest ones I must do (so many destroy object missions in afterlight...).
Both Aftershock and Afterlight are interesting in that in both humanity is actually the technologically most advanced (at least once you "rediscover" your stuff) compared to the other aliens. Id say only the expedition or martians compare.
It's a little funny too that at least one member of the Mars colonization team fought the original invasion, and bears a grudge against Reticulans. Or at least, she's an expert in their anatomy... technically she could *heal* them better! Why would her damage bonus ever matter... ;)
You know, what if, in a super rare chance, the lucky reticulan did not go down in the first shot like they all do, the bonus just might be what finishes him off :D
... something odd happened to the Reticulans too close to Earth when they completed their project... Something the Reticulans fail to mention in the third game, as they "generously" aid the Mars colonization project.
Again, this is kind of mentioned in the passing at some point (IIRC), but they really mostly reference Aftershock...
Post by: Akura on October 24, 2021, 03:12:26 pm
Good:
Dungeon runs are pretty fun.
Everything looks prettier.
They got rid of that ridiculous pirouette move the AI did.
Bad:
Runs a lot slower it seems. Not just frame rate, everything just feels a bit slower. My graphics settings might have been reset though, since my controls were too.
Mods are broken, of course.
I need to redo my keybinds; crouch(I think is new?) is R-pad slide-down while kicking is R-pad press-down. So now to kick I have to crouch first. Likewise, jump got changed to R-pad slide-up when I had it press-up. So now I jump every time my hand goes near the menu key(which is the magic menu).
The ridiculous pirouette was replaced by an even more ridiculous flying lunge that's nearly impossible to block because it's more animation than physics. They use it too damn much too. And of course, they do it with weapons that shouldn't lunge, like axes.
Post by: Iduno on October 24, 2021, 03:44:41 pm
Very atmospheric and enjoyable so far.
Edit: There is a demo available as well. It's all early-game stuff, but the card game doesn't really change, so you'll figure out if you like it or not.
Post by: vjek on October 26, 2021, 02:22:50 pm
IMO, It's very DF-like, in that there are priorities of tasks, jobs, stockpiles, designations, and similar. Designate water, designate gather berries, designate gather stone, branches.
You need to build tools for certain professions to do their jobs (like a pick is required for a miner in DF)
It's a top down game, and they claim you can dig into mountains and build there, or above ground. (like rimworld)
I haven't played enough to check into z-levels yet, so can't confirm/deny that, so far.
Your minions get better at something through use, and have enjoyment bonuses and dislikes for certain types of tasks.
There are seasons, temperature, hunting, cooking, crafting, adults and children, moods, preferences, and fires that spread. :o
Post by: Folly on October 27, 2021, 11:06:29 pm
Characters are cute anthropomorphs. Story is interesting enough. Weapons have varied mechanics which each take time and practice to learn and master. Definitely enough content here to justify the purchase price, and then some.
Post by: Kagus on October 28, 2021, 08:00:50 am
Shootas, Blood & Teef (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324530/Warhammer_40000_Shootas_Blood__Teef/) is a Warhammer-licensed game that finally places us in the bootz of the orks. Honestly, orks have always seemed like a far more appropriate representation of the player demographic than the more popular protagonist choices in the universe...
...unfortunately, at a glance it... Looks a bit simplistic. Its claim to fame is that it's from the same people as Guns, Gore & Cannoli, and the developers appear to have smashed expectations by... Doing exactly the same thing as before.
I dunno, it's obviously a bit too early to really tell anything, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for a good waaagh...
Post by: nenjin on October 28, 2021, 10:15:23 am
So there's a new WH40k game on the radar... This time taking a detour from the more traditional strategy titles, and going for a 2D action-platformer.
Shootas, Blood & Teef (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324530/Warhammer_40000_Shootas_Blood__Teef/) is a Warhammer-licensed game that finally places us in the bootz of the orks. Honestly, orks have always seemed like a far more appropriate representation of the player demographic than the more popular protagonist choices in the universe...
...unfortunately, at a glance it... Looks a bit simplistic. Its claim to fame is that it's from the same people as Guns, Gore & Cannoli, and the developers appear to have smashed expectations by... Doing exactly the same thing as before.
I dunno, it's obviously a bit too early to really tell anything, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for a good waaagh...
It's like if a Flashgitz video got made into a video game.
The art style is kind of an instant turn off to me.
Also, what kind of Ork game doesn't include a bunch of Orky dialog? You'd think that'd be in the trailers.
Post by: Iduno on October 28, 2021, 01:44:08 pm
So there's a new WH40k game on the radar... This time taking a detour from the more traditional strategy titles, and going for a 2D action-platformer.
Shootas, Blood & Teef (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324530/Warhammer_40000_Shootas_Blood__Teef/) is a Warhammer-licensed game that finally places us in the bootz of the orks. Honestly, orks have always seemed like a far more appropriate representation of the player demographic than the more popular protagonist choices in the universe...
...unfortunately, at a glance it... Looks a bit simplistic. Its claim to fame is that it's from the same people as Guns, Gore & Cannoli, and the developers appear to have smashed expectations by... Doing exactly the same thing as before.
I dunno, it's obviously a bit too early to really tell anything, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for a good waaagh...
I think the first 2 Warcraft games were the best Warhammers ever made. Got the orks pretty much right and everything.
Post by: Robsoie on October 31, 2021, 02:19:03 pm
Recently finally installed it and managed to have some fun.
Seven is basically a mix of
- Thief (you're playing a master thief that best weapon is stealth and you should really fight only on your own term to avoid getting swarmed as you're not a blademaster)
- Tenchu (climb on higher grounds and things to stab-drop on an enemy, or stab them from behind or just stab them)
- Hitman (the disguise system is very similar and enemies can see through it if you come too close and for too long, or if you crouch in their view)
- Mario (well :D i mean the world is as very big horizontally AND vertically so expect tons of things to climb and jump on to find more paths)
All mixed into an impressively gigantic world full of details (there's no boring part in that world as there's always something to do, fight, stunt, explore) , tons of optional side quests and things to do and explore freely on your own.
While the intro and tutorial mission hints at some big Blade Runner-like metropolis environment, you're quickly sent to a giant island that has a very different atmosphere and a mix of very different environment. You're set into some open world freeroam, not exactly at first as the giant island is cut in zones and you need to purchase a visa to move from zone to zone, but once you have those visas, the world is fully open.
It's in the RPG genre but for a change your character does not progress in experience and level, but in equipment, special skills and etc... that you find, craft, enhance etc... in various ways, unlocking various things (like the fast travel using the rail system, you must find and hack (hacking the various devices in Seven is a simple minigame) each fast travel "overseer" point to control them).
I'm so in awe of what i saw of the game so far and explored that i find it sad there are some important shortcomings .
- super horrible collision detection, how many times my various combos did not hit and go through the enemy like if he's a ghost, the opposite never happen, any enemy strike will hit you if you don't dodge. Sometime i can hit an enemy several time in a combo, but sometime all the strikes of the combo are going through the enemy model without being registered. I wonder if it's another case of framerate-depend collision detection like it was sadly in Hellpoint.
Combat is overally not as enjoyable as they should have been. At least the stabbing and running away works :D but that inconsistent fighting collision detection is destroying a lot of the interest.
- camera is rather far to give you a large view (can be zoomed in/out too) of the whole surrounding so you can plan your move and various acrobatics, but in the same time it makes characters , enemies, other npc look very small and sometime a bit painfull to identify, that's a problem because on top of that there's this "cartoony line" shader that put those darker lines around all the models and is more annoying than actually nice.
- the controls are a bit clunky on my mouse/keyboard, maybe because the game was made for a controller, but to compensate the character is very reactive and the various climbing/jumping does not require pixel precision from what i experienced, the character is nicely able by himself to fetch a platform edge regardless how tiny it is to save your nearly failed jump, that's a big plus.
- the map is not as usefull as you would think (despite there's lots of icons , filter, etc.. to pinpoint every location of importance, tasks, merchants, etc...) as sometime moving from an area to another can be very hard to find and the map is useless at showing you those connections (recently got lost in the Haunted Ruins/Mire area, was going mad as i couldn't find how to move back to another area until i noticed a broken bridge that you reach with some acrobatics and climbing lead after some more jumps to a building that connect to other zones)
But all in all once you manage to get over the shortcomings (not easy as they still bother me a lot) and get used to some of the gameplay mechanics, Seven is a very impressive stealth rpg with a very detailled environment. Oh and instead of stabbing or axe murdering people, it's also possible to choke them instead for more pacifist way to take out sentries and annoying guards in patrol
Post by: Iduno on November 01, 2021, 09:15:41 pm
Post by: Robsoie on November 03, 2021, 12:37:28 pm
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1886143857/zero-sievert/
There's a trailer video and in the end of the description you can download the current alpha version
Post by: Robsoie on November 04, 2021, 04:04:02 pm
It's not the city builder of the year, but so far it's entertaining me.
For the first mission there are a tons of objectives to complete until you get the final one (building a Earth History Center and keep it running for 1 sol cycle) that allow you to complete it.
There are some danger coming (parasites, spores, ice shards) but they're not serious as they're extremely easy to deal with (and the anti-threats are automated once you build the correct buildings), the real threats are keeping your expanding colony well fed and having enough energy and water while satisfying the new objectives popping up regularly and having prepared well enough to go through the various winters all the while remembering that needs increase with the new migrants.
Sadly :D running a colony here is following a democratic system, so you'll need to keep moral good enough to get elected every few cycles. But i never managed to get less than 70% of satisfaction every time , so keeping moral up seems easy.
Anyways, probably as it's the first mission the game is nothing hard, especially if you're used to city builder games. The next mission throw you into a sandy and rocky environment with some hints that some new FUN! will come during this one.
A simple hint : when making farms, by default there are a bunch of crops you can't cultivate , and some of them are needed for a few objectives.
Just click on the checkbox in the farm menu, it will allow you to use those crops. I didn't noticed it at first so it puzzled me for a while on how to obtain those requied crops. I wonder why they had made this checkbox unticked by default.
edit : for some reason the mp4 videos that are playing in the main menu are stuttering on my notSoGood PC while the game play normally.
Odd because reading them directly in VLC have no problem, so i guess whatever is the UE4 video player that comes with Aven Colony is probably not as performing as VLC with HD videos on my system.
If someone is running into the same trouble, you can replace
MainMenuLoop1.mp4
MainMenuLoop1_30fps.mp4
(that are located in ...\AvenColony\AvenColony\Content\Movies\ )
by the one that can be downloaded there :
Code: [Select]
https://www.mediafire.com/file/f2wnnhz70i3blg4/AvenColMenuVideosLQ.zip/fileAnd no more bizarre stutter in the main menuPost by: Robsoie on November 10, 2021, 10:19:18 am
Being a former DLC i was expecting this new game would be a very short and small scale one, but oh wrong i was, it sure is not as huge as a Borderlands 2 but there's tons of stuff to explore, destroy, lots of quests and action with the same gameplay as the Borderland serie (grinding, leveling, looting more weapons etc..).
It's also very fun, as the story is that you're basically playing inside a D&D session led by some crazy "Tiny Tina" and her bizarro friends, with lot of ingredients coming from D&D (the "critical failure" quest :D ).
I loved the voice acting (at least in my language) of the side quest featuring growing up a treant and helping it to destroy an orc village, the nature spirit that talks to you during that is hilarious as she does not really care about what happens and it really show in her voice and lines :D
Anyways, very good game worth a try, though i imagine for those that already played Borderlands a lot it's probably just more of the same .
Post by: Folly on November 10, 2021, 10:44:44 am
I appreciate a lot of things about the Borderlands series, but every entry seems to be plagued by critical oversights; little things that should have been easily remedied with a bit of forethought, but instead they end up holding back an otherwise 'great' game decisively in the 'kinda good' category.
Post by: Robsoie on November 10, 2021, 10:57:16 am
From what i read in the original DLC you were supposed to be at a high level from the start.
But they rebalanced that in this standalone version as you start from level 1 and so far it seems to work good in the progression, so it seems that at least they have put some thoughts on this version.
Post by: Iduno on November 10, 2021, 02:34:30 pm
The main thing I remember about playing the original DLC version of Tiny Tina's Dragon Keep, is using a melee-focused Zer0 and reaching a part of the story where I needed to fight flying dragons to progress. Which did not work out very well.
I appreciate a lot of things about the Borderlands series, but every entry seems to be plagued by critical oversights; little things that should have been easily remedied with a bit of forethought, but instead they end up holding back an otherwise 'great' game decisively in the 'kinda good' category.
Yeah. One of the very few good things about Middle-Earth:Shadow of War was that you could increase the level of loot. Being able to keep the cool thing you found makes you actually vaguely interested in the random loot you found, because it isn't obsolete ten minutes after you find it.
Post by: Robsoie on November 13, 2021, 05:33:26 am
For a "small scale" Borderlands (as it was originally only a DLC for Borderlands 2) there's still enough content packed in it to have 10 hours of gameplay if you don't grind (i ended the game in 12 hours) so enough to get this kind of "grind-loot" gameplay without the game "overstaying its welcome", keeping it fun until the end.
The humour (and the very good acting for the dialogue, at least in my language) really helps to go through it without feeling the repetition.
And the loot/various drops are more generous (probably to follow on the smaller size of the game in comparison to Borderlands), so you will get those eridium and seraph crystal very often.
It's just sad that the later levels re-use enemies from past levels too much as until then every new maps discovered had their own type of opposition in them, fortunately all the maps look very different from each other to avoid the feeling of deja-vu.
All in all it's heavily recommended for something free, as with all the classes and their different skills and builds you have a good amount of replay value (there are some post-endgame content, but it's minor : an arena and a raid boss).
Now when it will be out of the free week and back to being whatever price it was, i don't think it's anything other than a cash grab that you should avoid, and instead get a Borderlands game as you'll have a huge lot more content in the same type of gameplay.
There's a Tiny Tina much bigger game coming soon too ( Tiny Tina Wonderlands ) if the story and humour of this temporary freebie interested you.
Funny anecdote, the session of the D&D clone Tiny Tina and her friends are playing through the game campaign is named " Bunker & Badasses " and they got the idea to actually make a real version (though they have apparently tons of manufacturing/delivery problem with covid times so the thing is out of stock until the end of the year )
https://tinytinagames.com/
Post by: Kagus on November 13, 2021, 03:10:56 pm
The main thing I remember about playing the original DLC version of Tiny Tina's Dragon Keep, is using a melee-focused Zer0 and reaching a part of the story where I needed to fight flying dragons to progress. Which did not work out very well.
I appreciate a lot of things about the Borderlands series, but every entry seems to be plagued by critical oversights; little things that should have been easily remedied with a bit of forethought, but instead they end up holding back an otherwise 'great' game decisively in the 'kinda good' category.
I originally played through it as Krieg, and don't remember having much of an issue except for when I tried to take on the three optional raid boss dragons singlehandedly. ...I had to go and level up a bit first, then I did it.
Then again, Krieg can't die, so I can understand that mortal characters may have some difficulties along the way.
Post by: Rolan7 on November 13, 2021, 09:53:22 pm
I mean every BL2 class has excellent support potential! By design! But being able to insta-rez my friends at a distance was maaaaybe more supportive than the Gunzerker's ability to bullshit more bullets into our guns.
Playing solo for a long time - Maya does okay since I can pause the minibosses, and also pull everyone nearby into an elemental nova of explosions. But for actual bosses? My primary ability just bites a little off the health bar. It's a sizeable chunk, to be fair, but Maya is not especially good at the pick-up game (scoring a kill on a goon in order to gain a second wind <3 )
Post by: Aoi on November 13, 2021, 10:17:34 pm
Post by: Robsoie on November 14, 2021, 06:02:16 am
Had a very hard time in the starting areas (the docks) due to extremely crappy guns until i finally got my first level and could finally get the robot summon and could finally get a breath when terminator was cutting down skeletons left and right for me.
Since then i discovered the "never reload manually your weapon and get anarchy points each kills" skill that makes her incredibly overpowered as those anarchy points never go away (unless you accidentally reload manually) and increase -vastly- the damage of every weapons
The hilariously good shotgun that shoot swords that explode into other swords (even the game tells you it's the best game because of this weapon :D ) kills bosses a very lot faster with her than when i was using the guy with his support turrets.
Post by: Kagus on November 14, 2021, 01:48:31 pm
Post by: Rolan7 on November 14, 2021, 02:46:14 pm
I don't know whether that's just FL4K or if the other characters have options for single-player.
Post by: JimboM12 on November 14, 2021, 05:52:20 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on November 14, 2021, 07:20:06 pm
Doing a new run in Tiny Tina , this time i've been using the woman character that support ability is summoning a flying robot with mighty claws and laser beams.
Had a very hard time in the starting areas (the docks) due to extremely crappy guns until i finally got my first level and could finally get the robot summon and could finally get a breath when terminator was cutting down skeletons left and right for me.
Since then i discovered the "never reload manually your weapon and get anarchy points each kills" skill that makes her incredibly overpowered as those anarchy points never go away (unless you accidentally reload manually) and increase -vastly- the damage of every weapons
Yeah, like Kagus said, the Close Enough skill is great. Especially when you pick up a Class Mod that increases the skill level. The robot is also good enough stay alive while you recharge your shields, even if you never put other skills into it.
Edit to add: The achievements giving you (tiny) bonuses is nice if you want to replay as a character who is worse at solo play. Gunzerker and Mechanimist are both good solo, although mechanimist dies a *lot* even after getting Buck Up - the second level Best Friends skill that lets your robot fully recharge your shields. Anarchist Mechanimist is *not* a good sniper, though. I was sniping one of the 4 Stumpy (small ents) moving around. When I zoomed back out to reload, I had killed all except the one I was aiming at. Get an SMG or shotgun.
Also, I'm remembering how many jokes in the game were too edgelordy when they were new, and have aged badly.
Post by: Robsoie on November 15, 2021, 05:36:27 pm
What surprised me a bit is how they tried to make the ending of Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep (in comparison to how much humourous the whole story has been up to then) oddly very emotional (not going to spoil it but even without having played Borderlands 2 there are enough hints during the game that you understand where it's going in its ending) .
Anyways, completed it for the 2nd time already with the robot summoner woman (first time was with the man with the support turret) and again slightly more than 10hours, i think to avoid repetition this is very good that the game is not too long, as it allows you to replay with other characters without things feeling like a grueling long grind again and again.
In fact you don't really need to grind much as the game has been balanced differently than Borderlands 2 in term of loot and chance of good stuff (and you level up faster). Though i have only played in normal mode for now, not the higher unlocked difficulties.
Post by: dragdeler on November 16, 2021, 01:33:58 pm
You know, back in the day, everybody I knew got guild wars 1 because it basically marketed itself like an mmorpg without subscription model. As an mmorpg substitute, it was not that outstanding. But nowadays, that I occasionally revisit old games, and judge them on their own merits, and do not weigh them against the whole market ecosystem of their time, I couldn't care less if you can't jump in guild wars 1 today. If you judge it as a classical tactic game ŕ la heroes of might and magic, or x-com, or socom, or pillars of eternity, or neverwinter nights, it suddenly makes a lot more sense and seems more appealing as a product. Can't say I am not hooked right now, and there is like easily 400h of gameplay before you stand a chance of finishing all campaigs, my oldest char has like 560hours and they're like 2,2/4 campaigns done.
What surprises me is how active the reddit seems, maybe even more active than the dual universe reddit. I mean the barrier of entry is much lower and the game is much older so it kinda makes sense, but since in my head I mostly considered the game a failure it still feels odd. Feel free to pm if you want to add me, currently I am having a blast playing around with heroes (they weren't a thing in prophecies and I hardly played factions and nightfall and eye of the north), trying to really cheese a game that was meticulously designed to have equal power levels accross the board (there was a little power creep, but each campaign alone is kind of balanced). But the heroes do have their limitations, and I still remember the days were you had to play with humans, because with only henchmen this game was terribly difficult to beat. Nowadays one could probably beat the whole content with a team of heroes with the same skills throughout. But the last 5 missions of prophecies have me trying and tuning a lot allready, I dread factions :D those zones are nasty.
Post by: Aoi on November 16, 2021, 03:38:11 pm
Can't say I am not hooked right now, and there is like easily 400h of gameplay before you stand a chance of finishing all campaigs, my oldest char has like 560hours and they're like 2,2/4 campaigns done.
I have several thousand hours on GW1 so my perspective is way off... But I have fond memories of speed running the campaigns. If you know what you're doing and have support, you could actually get through all the campaigns within the free trial periods for each campaign. So people were just rolling new characters, each with the trial duration, and repeat.
Post by: Rolan7 on November 17, 2021, 05:38:18 am
If nothing else, there's a special high-quality download for the soundtrack. I haven't checked it out yet - I'm afraid that I won't be able to tell the difference, especially since I "Welcome To the Party Pal" myself every month or two.
(And Dan really needs to stop asking me about the ceiling lamps. The ceiling lamps. The ceiling lamps.)
Post by: Salmeuk on November 17, 2021, 01:03:21 pm
Iji got another update back in July (https://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php). From a glance at Reddit it's not as extreme as the 2017 update that allowed true pacifism and so much more dialogue, but a few comment do hint that there might be subtle changes.
If nothing else, there's a special high-quality download for the soundtrack. I haven't checked it out yet - I'm afraid that I won't be able to tell the difference, especially since I "Welcome To the Party Pal" myself every month or two.
(And Dan really needs to stop asking me about the ceiling lamps. The ceiling lamps. The ceiling lamps.)
holy crap I used to play that game a really, REALLY long time ago. what an indie darling!
Post by: Egan_BW on November 18, 2021, 12:22:20 pm
Seems Iji 1.8 didn't add anything quite worth starting a new playthrough over, found a changelog
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on November 18, 2021, 06:38:44 pm
The initial concept seemed nice , guild management sending adventurers to their death or unlikely victory to increase the guild money so they can expand more.
From the concept there is then a lot of potential, unfortunately in practice it is very far from living up to half the potential.
The problems i had were many :
The game is -very- heavy on luck, on a same fight you can either easily win or lose without hope depending on your luck on yours and the monsters order of card random picking. It's very frustrating to have the card battle system being entirely out of the players hand like that depending on if you're lucky or not, as unlike a normal card game you can mitigate this by building your deck , there your deck is dependant on the guy class + whatever loot you can do (and cards can be really poor) and optimising your deck requires you to grind again and again as your deck is reset to what it was once you leave a dungeon.
Managed to beat a boss with a underleved guy , just because i had incredible luck with picking my best cards while the enemy had crap after crap each rounds.
And lost another guy that had a superior level to a basic enemy because i experienced just the opposite.
To make sure you don't want to get attached to an adventurer, everyone you send to a dungeon (only 1 , can't send a party regardless of how many guys are in your guild) is completely expendable : his level reset to 1 once he complete a dungeon and all the equipment he found disappear and in the case he dies there's a new one replacing it after the next dungeon expedition.
If a guy survive a dungeon, he can gain a trait that can give him a bonus or two , usefull but considering adventurers are dying by dozens easily in some dungeons until you get the perfect "luck" , those character development are basically useless as they don't stay for the adventurers replacement and your guy with his traits will die soon enough anyways.
Now the dungeon exploring, the idea to put tiles yourself to build the dungeon, place enemies and treasures is nice (some of them having time limit requires you to build it efficiently, assuming you have enough luck to have the good tiles coming and not lot of dead end or corridors that don't fit) but out of specifics configurations there's absolutely no real use to develop the dungeon much (out of grinding some levels for your characters) as out of the pre-placed enemies and treasures, the ones you can place yourself aren't varied enough to provide some exploring fun.
The bard singing the situation when you upgrade your guild, send a guy to a dungeon , then lose or win, at first i found this funny and very original but after you start losing lots of people this is easily getting on your nerves and you just turn that off (fortunately you can).
Money (even despite the guys dying) flow quickly enough, until you have all the tier 1 guild upgrades , the tier 2 are a very lot more expensive and it takes a lot of grinding to get enough for one. It's just not fun anymore at that point.
So as a conclusion, the game is a good 15mn fun (for those 15mn i truly enjoyed it) , but ultimately the lack of depth and things to do, along the previously mentionned problems will make Guild of Dungeoneering not something you'll come back to play more than once or twice more as the grinding when you progress does not offer enough in term of gameplay to keep the game fun.
There's an "ultimate edition" coming (the freebie on the epic store is actually used as a promo for that new edition, it even appears in the game main menu). No idea if it will fix my annoyances with the game and i'm not really interested to know more after my session with it.
Post by: Akura on November 18, 2021, 08:34:12 pm
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on November 19, 2021, 01:01:05 pm
The campaign releases on Dec 8, with presumably some more content and forge? I am still quite worried about the singleplayer. On one hand I hear promising things, but then I hear stuff like "haha, lore was never why people like Halo in the first place" which I mean is not true. So I am LEGITIMATELY hopeful, but the jury's still out.
Post by: Iduno on November 19, 2021, 03:56:55 pm
Factory Town (https://store.steampowered.com/app/860890/Factory_Town/) left Early Access yesterday, and is on sale for 50%. It's a belts-and-factories game like Factorio, plus town-building management. I've only played the first two campaign missions so far, but it seems pretty good. The goal seems to build up a town, using various factories and shops to supply your houses with different goods, while your houses provide your worker pool. This is important, because you need workers to run your factories. Early on, your workers will also be needed to move goods manually and collect resources. Later on, you'll get conveyor belts and the like to transport goods and automated producers to collect resources - they still need workers to run, but produce faster(and possibly infinitely) than having the workers collect it.
I was going to come by and ask if anyone had tried it. Looks like the half off sale also extends to itch.io. $10 for the game and it includes a Steam Key. It was just updated 2 days ago there, so I assume it's the most recent version.
Post by: Jopax on November 20, 2021, 10:26:54 am
It's nice, I don't wanna say it's factorio lite because that doesn't do the game justice but it's probably the most apt description. It isn't terribly complex, at least the first several hours aren't, maybe it gets complicated further down the line. But just because it's somewhat simple doesn't mean it's bad, it's easy to pick up and a fairly satisfying little town/factory builder. Setting up multiple different chains of production ends up giving you a neat little bustling town feeling with workers and stuff zipping around the place.
That said, it has some UI/UX issues, nothing too major, but for how long it spent in early access you'd think they'd figure out that hiding something as important as deleting/moving structures behind two menus would be a bad idea. You can probably drag them out to the hotbar, but that has limited space and these functions are kinda important enough that I'd reckon they deserve their own separate buttons on the main game window.
Still, fairly relaxed and not terribly complicated little game, well worth the price if you're looking for something of a factory building game but can't be bothered with something as massive and in-depth as factorio or dyson sphere program.
Post by: Persus13 on November 20, 2021, 11:20:57 am
Halo Infinite multiplayer is actually pretty darn good--for those of you who like Halo or are still playing FPS games. I am obviously not the best guy, but I found both the 4v4s and the 12v12s to be very fun. Mechanically, it feels great--much closer to the older Halos than 4 and 5. Warthog is still badass and the Wasp feels like they finally nailed the UNSC aerial vehicle. I've got some nitpicks here and there, but so far probably the best Halo game in 343's repertoire (which I mean, dubious, but maybe this is the start of the golden era yea?)I've been having a blast in Halo Infinite too. Really feels like a proper successor to the older Halo multiplayer experience while still having new weapons and modern shooter QoL stuff.
The campaign releases on Dec 8, with presumably some more content and forge? I am still quite worried about the singleplayer. On one hand I hear promising things, but then I hear stuff like "haha, lore was never why people like Halo in the first place" which I mean is not true. So I am LEGITIMATELY hopeful, but the jury's still out.
Post by: Akura on November 22, 2021, 07:49:52 pm
I agree the UI could use some work, but it's not game-breaking. You can hotbar everything in the build menu, which is helpful. There's a lot of things that aren't adequately explained, for example a very common complaint I'm seeing is that the game doesn't tell you that chutes and minecarts can only take a limited selection of items. Mainly raw resources; stones, logs, crops for the most part. Not refined goods such as planks and cloth. Another basic thing that you'll probably quickly find out is that if you're using wagons(and later, caravans) to move stuff around - which you will in the beginning or if it's awkward to use conveyors - make your roads two, or better, three, tiles wide. They can't occupy the same tile, and need a space to maneuver around.
Today I found out you actually require building farm tiles/tree planters on crops in order to be able to water and fertilize them. I also just realized there's a lot of potential for vertical construction. Houses only need to be in the town center area, and have a road connection to the various shops(or can be supplied directly, but that's dumb). As far as I know, there's no vertical limit on the town center area, so there's nothing stopping you(besides building materials) from just building a big tower with houses on each "floor" with ramps connecting floors.
Post by: Aoi on November 23, 2021, 05:26:33 am
Spoiler: "Short version: Not recommended at this time." (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on November 25, 2021, 04:49:25 pm
Managed to hunt 3 deers so far (either got lucky or the game has been very generous in making the preys rather dumb at my start), and nearly got a black bear (missed it and it ran away) on my first exploration of the Layton Lake map while following the missions given. But more than the actual hunt i oddly enjoy a lot walking around the scenery.
Recommended even for those not fan of hunting games, as it's rather relaxing to walk in such very well modelled environment.
For some reason the game crash every first time i try to launch it, then on the 2nd time always have no problem.
edit : you have a camera that can be used to take photos (some missions you're getting use that feature).
the photos/screenshots took with it are saved in :
C:\Users\YourUserName\Pictures\Epic Captures\
"YourUserName" being of course whatever is your window 10 user name.
edit 2 : as you probably know Call of the Wind is one of those game filled with features cut from the game so they can sell them as DLC.
It's very playable without any of them, as the game comes with 2 reserves (that are very giants maps to explore, walk and hunt on).
There are a lot of DLC reserves, and if you play in multiplayer you can join a session that happens in a DLC reserve without having it yourself.
Post by: Blue_Dwarf on November 26, 2021, 04:33:24 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlF9TwOO414
It's in Early Access, but the main game loop is already pretty finished, they just need to add the remaining chapters of the content. The three chapters they have already are enough for about 10-15 hours at least.
Post by: Akura on November 27, 2021, 04:21:39 pm
It's also part of their new Creator DLC program. They claim it's not paid mods, and in fact their support page (https://support.hatintime.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410077796498-Is-Creator-DLC-paid-mods-) states that previously free mods will not be put into this program. But it also doesn't say who gets what of the price($3 for this one).
The reviews on it are mixed at the moment, from what I'm reading in the comments it's because public matchmaking is broken. Which is a shame because it looks fun. On the other hand, this DLC also gives access to Online Party mode(the base game's co-op), even if you don't have the Nyakuza Metro DLC.
The base game and all the other DLCs besides this one are all half off right now, and the full bundle is 65% off.
Post by: Robsoie on November 29, 2021, 06:58:57 pm
Some observations regarding the actual hunting :
On average i observed that walking on Hirschfelden Hunting Reserve produce more noise than walking on (roughly as vegetation and soil aren't really the same) similar grounds in Layton Lake District.
Meaning that hunting in the german reserve is harder as you really need to move slower and find good spots to wait , while hunting in the american reserve allow for more mistakes.
I felt like in Layton Lake when i was taking cover in a bush or thanks to a tree, my visibility gauge was making me a lot more stealthy than in Hirschfelden , allowing me to sneak around the bush without my cover being blown, while in the german reserve my visibility gauge wasn't allowing for moving a lot around my cover without getting more exposed.
Basically, in term of hunting it's better to start on Layton Lake than on Hirschfelden , it will be less frustrating and you will learn the gameplay basics and the stealth faster.
Hirschfelden has a, actual shooting range, so you can train your aiming there , ammo being free there
https://thehuntercotw.fandom.com/wiki/Rathenfeldt_Schiessstand
On both reserves walking while standing is never a good idea unless you're crossing areas you are sure there's no game to target (or if you just aren't in the mood to shoot), it will produce 1 red bar in the noise gauge (and usually 2 on the german reserve), and on heavy vegetation it will produce 2 red bars and you don't want that if you're trying to get closer to an animal, in that situation it's better to crouch and move like that.
If you find a good spot, that keeps you very hidden (check your gauge) and have a good view on a feeding/drinking/resting zone you discovered, learn to be patient and you'll be rewarded if you came there at the correct time.
When i started playing there was an extra rifle in my inventory, a .270 gun, the ammo isn't free (unlike the "normal" starting .243 gun ) but the .270 ammo has better penetration (good for larger animals and piercing more organs) and "expansion" (that seems to be linked to how large a bleeding can be)
So basically unless for some reason you're very short on ingame money (you shouldn't really, just don't buy those hunting cabin to build yourself that you find regularly on the maps as they're not very low on price and not that usefull) there's no real reason to use the .243 gun that is outmatched in every ways by the .270 (hurting more means the prey will die faster so you will not have to follow it for as long as if you were making it bleed with the .243)
In the game there's the concept of "pressure zone" , basically when a prey dies, it generate a pressure zone what it means is that animal smell death and will start to avoid the area, the more overlapping pressure zones there are, the more chance an animal will not enter it.
Too many overlapping pressure zones will lead to the feeding/drinking/resting areas disappearing from that high pressure zone.
The only way to lower a pressure zone, is to killl a lot of preys in another area to make a stronger pressure zone there.
Another alternative is to delete all the "animal_population_X" (with X being a number) you can find in your
C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents\Avalanche Studios\Epic Games Store\COTW\
saved game folder (on steam it may of course be somewhere else) , there may be more of those files in subfolders there.
Doing this will reset the animal population like it was originally and will also remove all the pressure zones
Post by: King Zultan on November 30, 2021, 04:18:55 am
Post by: delphonso on November 30, 2021, 04:24:19 am
Post by: King Zultan on November 30, 2021, 04:39:28 am
Post by: Robsoie on November 30, 2021, 06:08:47 am
Does the game yell at you if you run over animals with a truck like other hunting games do?
Running over animals ?
No ... In theHunter : Call of the Wild, it's animals that are running over you :
https://old.reddit.com/r/theHunter/comments/r521ij/picked_this_game_up_last_week_1010_on_the_realism/
:D
edit : from what i read there's a patch coming for all platforms this tuesday, the most important thing is that it is supposed to "boost performance" .
I really hope it's true so i can finally increase a bit my game resolution without the game slowing down noticably.
Post by: Robsoie on December 01, 2021, 02:29:10 pm
https://www.moddb.com/groups/2021-mod-of-the-year-awards/news/mod-of-the-year-2021-kickoff
can't believe it's already nearly 20 years that moddb do those awards.
Post by: JimboM12 on December 04, 2021, 08:43:36 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1527950/Wartales/
it promises to be a 3D version of battle brothers with some hints of mount&blade. i haven't bought it yet but it immediately caught my attention and a spot on my wishlist
Post by: scriver on December 05, 2021, 07:56:02 am
Post by: AzyWng on December 05, 2021, 12:51:03 pm
I played it during a "all the demos" week on steam. I'm not sure what, but despite looking very interesting it was just something offputting about it when I tried it.
Can you elaborate on that? It certainly looks interesting to me, but I haven't given it a try yet.
Post by: MCreeper on December 06, 2021, 12:14:55 pm
Art is really impressive for this kind of games. Might be the best of all there is on RPGMaker for all I know, but I’m not knowledgeable in that regard. It even has proper cutscenes.
Soundtrack is one of my all-time favorites, along with, but not similar to, Higurashi (Matsuri), Sunless Sea and The House In Fata Morgana. If you are not going to play the game, check out the OST. If you are going to, don’t, music will have that much more effect.
Horror – mostly not. There is only one creepy area in the game, containing one jumpscare (and oh I have seen it coming). If the horror part is a bother for you (like me, eh), then it’s okay.
Story – it’s there? I feel it got rather bland towards the end, perhaps because of grizzliness overdose (amount, not severity). Endings are fine, though.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And the bad is, often to proceed further you need to do stuff like click one of absolutely identical walls, or unassuming piece of scenery, or at very least check around which door has randomly unlocked this time. Sometimes to infuriating degree. I would probably sooner dropped the game than found one of those in chapter 3 without walktrough.
So yeah. If you like playing games about anime girls getting trapped in a murder maze, it’s worth a try. With perusing walktrough if need be. :P
Post by: Robsoie on December 11, 2021, 12:39:01 pm
https://www.giantswd.org/?file=60
(very latest version of this 1.5 patch is there : https://hipstercat.fr/GPatch )
So far worked greatly on my gog version.
Unfortunately the Meccaryns campaign really aged badly : most missions are going between boring and very boring, enemies are completely bullet sponges (even when focused fire from your 3 troopers) sometime ridiculously more than a building, until you finally get more advanced weaponry that slightly increase your damage output (sniper rifle by example so you can at least try to headshot) and make the enemies ... bullet sponges, but slightly less :D while your character can die very easily (make sure to always have a healing item in your inventory, always go back to a shop to get another one once you used it as you never know what stupid missile will land on you from a blind spot)
Kept at it because i remembered having fun in one of the last Meccaryn mission that felt like a 1st person RTS with base building and wanted to at least reach it again. And what came after, the Delphi campaign was also better in my memories (looks like none managed to make an AI for the skirmish in that game would have been fun in multiplayer :/ ) so hopefully i can complete the Meccaryn part quickly enough before getting too bored..
Post by: Kagus on December 12, 2021, 06:20:49 am
I've put loads of hours into Citizen Kabuto... Janky, hideous, lovable mess that it is. That game really played like an alpha, at the best of times. And yeah, the bullet-sponginess of things is kinda ridiculous. I don't think I ever really used the sniper rifle much though, I mostly went for heavy ordnance and as many explosives as I could carry.
The Meccs don't really have the best equipment as far as I remember, but then you open up Delphi and get her stupid time stop and fire spells and everything just melts. Plus the bullshit bows.
...and then you get to Kabuto's campaign, which I remember as just being pain.
Last I checked, I think Planet Moon was doing mobile games or something. A real shame, their writing was fantastic. The cutscenes were always the best parts of their games.
Post by: Folly on December 12, 2021, 08:10:46 pm
All the usual colony sim stuff seems to be here. Gather resources, build housing and storage and tradeskill places, keep people happy and defend your home from invaders.
There does seem to be fairly deep unit personality, with individuals having various preferences and remembering things that have happened to them.
The major gimmick here is that you can leave the eagle-eye view, or take a third person view over your leader, manually controlling them to gather resources or fight off invaders.
Looks like it could be fun! Going to keep an eye on this one as it launches.
Announcement Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8KCYvl0TWg)
Post by: Akura on December 13, 2021, 12:36:16 pm
EDIT2: Completely unrelated to the rant above, but I just saw that the Star Trek Armada games are coming to GOG. I remember ST:A2 being fun enough. I had heard that there were some messy licensing issues involved with the Armada games that would have made it all but nearly impossible to get the games on GOG, but it looks like those were cleared up?
GOG now has both Star Trek Armadas. Haven't bought either of them, but I'm seeing a few posts for the first game saying there's some fiddling to get it working. No idea how the second game might work out of the virtual box.
Post by: Robsoie on December 13, 2021, 06:33:36 pm
Good to see for once a game running well on the unity engine
Played the 1st mission (that was the mission that came with the demo of the game) and despite a few mistakes (my Commando skills are rusty :D ) managed to complete it, thanks a lot to Mugen's amazing murder blades that overkill things and Hayato's shuriken of stealth doom. I found myself not having to use Takuma's sniper rifle of total killing, but in the last part i attracted a bit too much attention that sniping would have probably solved better.
But those murder blades !
Took my time and nearly got the mission done in a hour, apparently one of the challenge badge is hinting that 11mn should be enough in the highest difficulty (i cowardly played on the lower one :D )
If you liked Commandos and Desperados, this one is really a worthy game in that tactical stealth genre, heavily recommended.
Post by: scriver on December 14, 2021, 02:22:23 am
Post by: MaxTheFox on December 14, 2021, 04:49:26 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 14, 2021, 04:52:45 am
I was just about to ask, the look of the game and the sales blurb basically makes me think this is Desperados in Japan, is this basically Desperados in Japan?Yes it is, very similar gameplay mechanics, the "Quick Action" is there too (called "Shadow Mode") and some of the characters skills are the medieval japan version (throwing shuriken instead of knife, etc..)
Post by: Robsoie on December 14, 2021, 01:31:58 pm
If on the main menu i select Load then load a saved game, it takes stupid amount of time and at some point the loading bar stop increasing and nothing happens (out of pressing ALT+F4 to force quit the game)
To play on your saved game, just select Continue in the main menu and once you're ingame select your save/quicksave to have it actually load .
Post by: Frumple on December 16, 2021, 02:12:59 pm
Been awhile since I've played it, but I'm probably going to check back in sometime in the next few days.
Post by: Robsoie on December 18, 2021, 07:43:30 pm
Reading a bit about its various system, i found that it does difficulty scaling differently than some other similar games like Hellpoint. That lead me to read something that is a bit worrying about the game progression.
https://old.reddit.com/r/remnantgame/comments/crpvbt/what_is_the_point_of_upgrading_weapons_and_armor/
Quote
So i tested this last night by creating a new character, using an editor to upgrade my starter hunting rifle to +20. I then went out to the very first zone and to my surprise, my hunting rifle took 3 body shots to kill a lvl 1 trash mob. Thats with 337 base damage per hit. Compared it to an unapgraded hunting rifle that deals 55 damage per hit and the same lvl 1 trash mob took the exact same amount of body shot to kill, 3.
It looks like basically in that game the more you upgrade your items on average, the more the enemy will level up as a developer mentionned there
Quote
The game uses a weighted average to determine your potential. It searches each slot and finds the highest level item and uses it for that weighted average. So, if you have a +5 gun (so level 6 behind the scenes), a +3 secondary gun, a +2 sword, and +1 armor (all 3 slots) your weighted afterage is probably level 5. Now, each NEW area you go into will be 5+1 (so 6). Your level 6 gun will be doing work, and your armor will be below-par.
Additionally, the resource drops to upgrade your gear is based on the ACTUAL average level. In the above example, using the same gear, your average level is 3.16 (so level 3). It will keep dropping regular Iron until your average is +5. Then it will start dropping Forged. This is to compell you to keep leveling up your weakest gear.
To me that sounded rather silly and counter productive to leveling and upgrading as what's the point if you never really have your character get stronger because all the enemies will level up with you anyways.
... Until i read this bit of information in one of the dev replies :
Quote
Just to be clear, once a zone is spawned at its level, it NEVER levels up again until you reroll the entire campaign. This is so each level starts at a challenging level and allows to you power up and get stronger, thus making it considerably easier should you decide to do so!
So basically once you enter a new zone , that zone enemies are locked at the default zone level, or at the level -you- the player are (in case you are of higher level than the default level of that zone).
But once that zone have been entered, you can continue to level up your character items but the enemies will not, so there's indeed a real benefit to level as you will get stronger. Then the next zone you'll move to after beating the zone boss will then be set to your level (if you overlevel its default one).
It's made like this to make every new zones you discover a challenge to your character, meaning if you overlevel in the 1st zone and destroy everything and boss in it by sneezing, the next zone will still be challenging (until you overlevel everyone again)
Post by: JimboM12 on December 18, 2021, 09:03:52 pm
oddly enough, the basic assault rifle (a fairly rare (i only got the random event for it once in 5 sessions) find) stands above the rest of my guns when upgraded. im sure now with the expansions there must be others but i love my simple guns.
honestly any of the beginner kits are fair when upgraded for most of the game.
Post by: Aoi on December 19, 2021, 12:12:05 am
Quote
Just to be clear, once a zone is spawned at its level, it NEVER levels up again until you reroll the entire campaign. This is so each level starts at a challenging level and allows to you power up and get stronger, thus making it considerably easier should you decide to do so!
So basically once you enter a new zone , that zone enemies are locked at the default zone level, or at the level -you- the player are (in case you are of higher level than the default level of that zone).
But once that zone have been entered, you can continue to level up your character items but the enemies will not, so there's indeed a real benefit to level as you will get stronger. Then the next zone you'll move to after beating the zone boss will then be set to your level (if you overlevel its default one).
It's made like this to make every new zones you discover a challenge to your character, meaning if you overlevel in the 1st zone and destroy everything and boss in it by sneezing, the next zone will still be challenging (until you overlevel everyone again)
That's actually a pretty nice touch-- though it might be mildly awkward once you hit the level cap, as if you're having trouble, you can no longer just grind your way past things.
Unlike some other RPGs where things scaled to your current strength, indefinitely... or in one case I recall, actually scaled up faster than you did, and, unlike you, wasn't subject to stat caps, so you basically had to exploit broken mechanics if you actually levelled like a normal person, instead of just fleeing from every combat.
Post by: Robsoie on December 19, 2021, 11:34:15 am
But sometime it can be absurdly hard, in the sewer dungeon while i was shotgun exploding (i play the Scrapper class, shotgun is awesome) i got suddenly a bunch of AI and what seemed to be a semi boss (a damned thing with 2 huge sword that is invincible when it does not attacks) that came from the corridor behind me.
Nearly managed to kill everything but the 2 swords monster got me. Wish you could have a companion AI in solo for case like this as this kind of random waves seems to be designed to be dealt with by coop players.
At least you don't seem to lose anything on death and respawning.
Post by: nenjin on December 19, 2021, 02:18:17 pm
Post by: Robsoie on December 23, 2021, 01:47:29 pm
And after reading a lot of negative posts about it, i didn't had any positive expectation then.
After playing it for a while, i really like it a lot. Great to have read so much negativity before trying then it could only positively surprise me :)
The beginning isn't very interesting (you're just running away from a vampire hunting group) but once that early part of the game is done, it start becoming better until the end of the first chapter after which you feel the real game begins (as the 1st chapter was mostly a tutorial with forced fights that were really good but were there for you to learn the stun mechanic, how to hit and switch between melee and gun).
The combat is rather generic and more of a button mashing than anything (out of the "boss" fight that ended the first chapter in which i had to dodge a couple of time but i guess i could have managed without) but maybe because at that point i have not yet leveled abilities much.
Sad point is when i was pushed by my bloodthirst and charmed a poor badly wounded bugger to lead him into a dark corner , i had a choice between feeding and releasing him. I wanted to have my character resist the urge but i pressed the wrong key.
Goodbye and goodnight poor badly wounded bugger, he died from a "oops wrong key" :D
Post by: Kagus on December 24, 2021, 05:17:47 am
Goodbye and goodnight poor badly wounded bugger, he died from a "oops wrong key" :D
And with that, you are now locked out of the good ending. Yay!
Post by: Robsoie on December 24, 2021, 07:16:27 am
Ran into a werewolf-looking creature in the sewers in one of the side missions at chapter 2, had a very very harder time with that creature than against everyone else, his health goes down only little by little and it's so easy for me to keep pressing the wrong key when trying to dodge :D
Fortunately after dying a couple of time, i went back out of the sewers and did a few more side mission to have enough scrap to upgrade my weaponry and improve my vampire abilities (there are several enemies you can kill for XP without consequences in Vampyr , like members of the vampire hunters group and the Skals).
Hitting harder allowed me then to beat the werewolf.
Post by: Robsoie on December 26, 2021, 01:35:53 pm
But man, the coding part is simply horrible :
enter the world map -> X seconds loading time -> move into your capital to sell whatever you looted -> X seconds loading time -> walk to your castle -> X seconds loading time -> once in your throne room go to your Kingdom menu -> X seconds loading time -> from there select the city and go to management screen -> X seconds loading time -> exit the city management to go back to Kingdom menu -> X seconds loading time -> exit Kingdom management and be i your throne room -> X seconds loading time -> exit the castle and go walk in town -> X seconds loading time
X varying between 5 and 15 (or sometime more) , that's truly annoying and so sad considering how good the actual game is at transposing some Pathfinder RPG sessions into a videogame.
Is it that absurd in the other Pathfinder game (Wrath of something) ?
Post by: scriver on December 26, 2021, 01:55:29 pm
Post by: Robsoie on December 27, 2021, 08:13:06 am
In the same time it's running on the Unity engine, and people have often pointed that Unity has terrible slow asset management, leading to very long loading time in comparison to other games running on better engines.
Post by: dragdeler on December 27, 2021, 10:07:22 am
Post by: Egan_BW on December 27, 2021, 12:27:44 pm
Well, a lot of the badly optimized unity games use the professional version, but I'm pretty sure that there's lots of horribly optimized games using unreal too.
Post by: Iduno on December 27, 2021, 02:49:43 pm
Post by: nenjin on December 27, 2021, 03:19:04 pm
So very not sure how to feel about what they've done here.
They haven't take anything away from the original, it's only additive. But what they've added....hrm.
First off, the game's cardinal sin is that the action-portion of the remake isn't good. The sprites are awful for the most part, particularly the Master, the guy you play. It has this ugly blurry quality, like they ported over the sprites from the SNES into a comparable 3d graphical style of just a few years later. It's bad. It also doesn't handle very gracefully. It feels like a first pass. Serviceable but unrefined. The sound effects are also pretty inadequate. And somehow, the hardest hitting track from the original, the Bloodpool level music, doesn't hit as hard as the original. How did they fuck that up?
When compared to the changes in the town management portion of the game, it almost feels like the two parts of the game were worked on by separate studios. In the town management portion, there's anime characters for everyone now, and a lot more dialog. It's almost all empty dialog around what happens in the original game but if you like people kissing your ass as a deity, there's a whole bunch of that. They've also added heroes in each map, which are a whole chain of "quests" and character development. Heroes matter because they've also added sieges, which take place on the same town map. You can build fortresses and arrow towers and barricades and order your heroes around to fight back the horde that trickle in and walk down your city streets. You can use the same miracles you do for the town management portion offensively during sieges as well. At first I liked it but they have you do it 4 to 5 times per chapter, and sometimes randomly. They're not hard except when you stop paying attention and then they can be lost in the blink of an eye. You can summon heroes from previous chapters to fight in your current chapter's sieges too, which is about the only interesting part of the whole thing once you've played it a couple times.
So all in all while the game is longer and feels richer in terms of the story and the world, it's still fairly repetitive. And the thing you look forward to, to break up the monotony of the town management, isn't very enjoyable. The additions feel low effort. The heroes are one note with meaningless levels and stats that don't really have any context. Who cares what someone's attack or defense value is except in relation to another hero, it's not like you know what the stats of the monsters during sieges are or can really do anything with it or about it. The heroes manage themselves as far as fighting, you just tell them where to go. The hero and quest and dialog structure really gets repetitive. By Chapter 3 of 6 you're already familiar with the flow of things and it's really just the town building and upgrading that makes up the lengthiest part of game play. Which, obnoxiously, the game wants you to vaporize your own settlement buildings as your city levels up, to force your people to rebuild structures as higher level versions, because they won't upgrade it themselves. I spent like 25 extra minutes on a level because I didn't realize I needed to nuke my Level 3 Farms so they could be replaced with Level 3 Rice Farms. Maybe it was like this in the original, I can't remember. But it would have been nice to to have to systematically nuke every building your town twice over. At least in the remake you can cast miracles at higher levels with a wider AoE, so you don't have to go house by house.
The city looks nice and it is gratifying to watch it grow still, especially from the World Map screen where you can see them all filled out in pretty good detail. But Actraiser is from an older era where you don't make any real decisions. In the remake you get to choose where to build forts and arrow towers, but it's pretty thin.
If you really liked Actraiser it might be worth a look. But I found myself more bemused or disappointed by it than enthralled. I gave it a solid night's play but I don't know if I'll be back to it any time soon.
Post by: Aoi on December 27, 2021, 04:30:57 pm
Which, obnoxiously, the game wants you to vaporize your own settlement buildings as your city levels up, to force your people to rebuild structures as higher level versions, because they won't upgrade it themselves. I spent like 25 extra minutes on a level because I didn't realize I needed to nuke my Level 3 Farms so they could be replaced with Level 3 Rice Farms. Maybe it was like this in the original, I can't remember. But it would have been nice to to have to systematically nuke every building your town twice over. At least in the remake you can cast miracles at higher levels with a wider AoE, so you don't have to go house by house.
If you wanted to max out your population, you had to use lightning bolts to raze your low-density housing. I believe the farms would auto-magically grow... wheat? once you pick it up from whichever region and drop it off in the new area; you didn't have to burn those down.
Even more fun is that on fairly rare cases, they'd build alternate structures, instead of the high density housing, so you had to blow it up again until they figured it out.
Post by: Kagus on December 27, 2021, 04:53:23 pm
but I'm pretty sure that there's lots of horribly optimized games using unreal too.
Oh god yes, plenty of junk cash grabs out there based in UE4, with godawful framerates thanks to them just building one gigantic room and then filling it with all the random 3D assets and always-on particle effects and AIs they could find.
When it comes to more professional handlings, I'd say that in my personal experience I've seen more Unity games that chug with optimization/cleanup problems than UE4 games that do the same, but this likely also has something to do with the popularity of Unity over UE4.
Post by: Stench Guzman on December 27, 2021, 06:30:12 pm
It's pretty good.
I think Descent 1 and 2 are still better.
Post by: Frumple on December 27, 2021, 06:43:33 pm
Post by: MCreeper on December 29, 2021, 05:41:51 pm
"There are two known episode are:
Episoide 1: Supergalactica Neptunia Galaxy of Peace and Chaos. God of The Gamalatica.
Episoide 2: Supergalactica Neptunia Galaxy of Peace and Chaos: Rinne Somnium.
Episoide 3: Supergalactica Neptunia Galaxy of Peace and Chaos: Memory of Kagami."
"This is kind like KonoSuba mixed with Star Wars element were afterlife, the goddesses, fantasy planet, laser guns, magic sword and spaceship were include in this story. Remember, this is the story about the bullying even there are fantasy setting, funny stuff or lead the space army or laser sword to fight against the evil space alt-right force that want to destroy her and her galaxy because this is the story about the bullying"
I might just read this load of hogwash sometime. :D
Post by: Rolan7 on December 30, 2021, 12:23:44 am
Check the number four - good kid.
Outer Worlds - that kid.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mO7vkdkJhg)
Post by: Robsoie on December 30, 2021, 02:19:47 pm
Now that's optimisation.
Post by: nenjin on December 31, 2021, 01:21:40 am
There are times I really like the game, despite hide and seek horror not really being my thing. And then there are times it can be irritatingly vague.
Like we moved up to the higher difficulty, feeling like we have a good sense of the game now. But most of our games in intermediate is us trying everything to find the identifying traits of the ghost and coming up blank. Are we even in the right room? Your "setup time" is really your "find the fuckin' ghost's hang out spot" time and start deploying all your tools before it goes ape and starts choking people. When you can't even locate the right room before first hunt starts....chances are you'll struggle to find the other clues with an angry ghost constantly attacking.
It's a bit of a party game, which don't tend to hold my interest for long, but I have to give credit, it is pretty interesting even without being in VR. And we had some genuinely fun moments. I just wish it was a little less vague.....but I guess that's where their design had to lead them. "Only shows when passing through the DOT Projector AND is being filmed on a video camera." "Only shows itself on video when people aren't around." That's kinda of annoyingly specific to have to figure out by the process of elimination, and the possibility for a false flag too.
For example, some ghosts can be identified because they can make your EMF meter go to 5. But only at specific times. Usually when they make their presence known in some way, with sounds or maybe they actually do materialize. Whatever. Point is, the moment that EMF reading can happen can be at any time, and maybe in different places. Whether you have your EMF out, and turned on, and not using some other tool or a flashlight, all these factors play into whether or not you can identify the ghost. And the EMF reader is just one tool out of like a dozen.
Maybe when you play the game enough to start recognizing tell-tale signs of specific ghosts so you don't have to do as much guesswork. But that's kinda what it feels like at times, doing guess work with not enough information and too many/too specific combos to check. And then you die.
It's a cute game and a cool execution. I just wish it felt a little less....like it was intentionally holding back info from you, so you waste time, so it can kill you.
Post by: Rolan7 on January 01, 2022, 01:52:58 am
I played extremely cautiously, mostly waving the EM reader around and asking the spirit questions with my actual voice. I even went in alone, into dark rooms, trying "taunt" the spirit into manifesting. Not churlishly calling it names (usually) but being alone. In the dark. Local-talking to it, trying to enunciate its name.
I very rarely died, somehow. Probably my best experience was attempting a mission that was FAR too large for the three of us, an old school with loooooong hallways. The EM and flashlight went wild and I was like "Fuck okay, I'll run. I've never seen an apparition move particularly fast."
Supposedly that was the wrong response. However, I did survive.
Second best experience: Being in a small cabin and having the apparition spawn almost on top of me, on a stairwell, and me hurrying under the stairs. Where one of my friends was looking directly at me, basically staring daggers. She got me, I think he escaped. We laughed a lot afterwards! But honestly they sorta acted like I'd done something wrong - meh.
Dying... is pretty creepy.
I would never play this game with external VOIP. Most of its impact comes from the radio dropping, hiding/fleeing, and having to reconnect and share notes in the aftermath of the surge.
"H-hey, I-"
"You're alive! Did you see it? Where was it?"
"I... I don't know, I just ran... all these corridors..."
"Try to remember. We're on our way down. also you're a dumbass for running, you're supposed to hide"
"Yeah okay whatever just, get down here, please? I... keep talking, it's dark down here"
Post by: Robsoie on January 01, 2022, 06:10:52 am
Despite the clunky tank controls, i had so much fun that i completed both games.
But past the 2nd game i never could get interested anymore in the further releases, probably a bit too much "more of the same" and the environment weren't atmospheric or interesting anymore (the first game was probably my favorite because of that, and the music of it was just fantastic).
So i started playing the 2013 reboot Tomb Raider without knowing what to expect gameplay-wise.
And wow, it really surprised me on how they actually vastly improved the character control, i was fearing a return of the tank control but no, Reboot Lara is incredibly reactive to your moves in a natural way (even playing with mouse/keyboard as i have no controller) and basically can catch everything that's near her when she jump or fall.
It also got rid of the pixel precision of the games of old, oh i still have nightmare of some levels with a really hard serie of jump and the save crystal being far ...
In this Tomb Raider reboot i nearly haven't missed a jump at all on those action sequences in which everything crumble or explode around you and you need to run and jump on many falling platforms (out of a few in which the camera mislead me at first) , i guess they thought of the old folks like me .
What i liked a lot less is that they added QTE, fortunately they have a -very- generous timing, but the problem is that they display an icon and not giving much of a hint to what is the actual key i have to press (considering i have different key binding than the default) , fortunately as the timing isn't too short i can deal with that.
But still that's annoying.
After that the characterisation change of Reboot Lara with the "must be puzzled/vulnerable/weak/crying/relatable all the time", i think it's not really a great change but i must say the actress voicing (at least in my language) really does an amazing job at the emotions and everything portraying the character evolving a bit through the story. Making the characterisation at least tolerable.
Now the story, whoever wrote this must be a complete sadist and because of that some moments in which you're supposed to care about Reboot Lara are turned into you laughing as if it was a parody.
I mean, imagine the situation : you have Lara running and whatever platform she's running on is crumbling and she fall on the lower floor.
In normal way, she falls and probably hurt herself a bit then stand up and resume her runnning.
But that's not what happens most of the time, in that Tomb Raider reboot she's running , the platform crumble and Reboot Lara starts to fall.
Then she manages to hold a bit, a guy come and kick her in the stomach, then she falls on a badly placed wood trunk that probably break her vertebrae, she rebound and impale her leg into a metal spike sticking on the wall, she then continue to fall scraping her face to some nettles vegetation in the wall, and finally she land on her head on the granite ground.
After getting back to her senses she starts to stand but there's another guy that come and beat her with a baseball bat probably breaking her ribs and most of her head, then a wolf jump out of nowhere while savagely biting her leg while she desesperately try to roll away, causing the ground to crumble again and she fall through a bunch of more or rocks, wood and metal that hurt her a lot more while a powder keg explode right near her until she finally land a dozen of meters below nearly broken in half.
Once getting to her sense, she finally stand up and resume her running.
I exaggerate a bit (just a bit) , but this kind of situation happens -a lot- to Reboot Lara in the game, so after a while it loses unfortunately the "poor girl she can't take a break" thought and that exaggeration become mostly comical.
But the game is not only visually great and run very well and smooth, it's also a really good game, i'm enjoying it a lot.
Post by: scriver on January 01, 2022, 01:02:30 pm
I exaggerate a bit (just a bit) , but this kind of situation happens -a lot- to Reboot Lara in the game, so after a while it loses unfortunately the "poor girl she can't take a break" thought and that exaggeration become mostly comical.
They overdid it by far, I agree. I liked the game enough to finish it (which is extremely rare) but in the end it just felt too sadistic. Like as if -- you know how in many games and movies the plot has something really bad happen to the hero just before the final climactic fight so they have to fight after being stabbed it shot or explosioned or with a broken arm or something -- as if that, except Lara had one of those major dramatic injury moments every other scene. "It's supposed to be the story of how she becomes the badass Tomb Raider Lara Croft" my arse, I'm surprised that after that plot she didn't spend the rest of her life in physical rehabilitation (not to mention the ptsd!) xD
Also -- and this is really just a minor narrative vibe thing -- but did anyone else feel like there was this weird dissonance between how much the game wanted to press the whole "first adventure" thing while also having a plot that felt like it was more like a large climax to an epic, several instalment long series or something?
Quote
And wow, it really surprised me on how they actually vastly improved the character control, i was fearing a return of the tank control but no, Reboot Lara is incredibly reactive to your moves in a natural way (even playing with mouse/keyboard as i have no controller) and basically can catch everything that's near her when she jump or fall.
It also got rid of the pixel precision of the games of old, oh i still have nightmare of some levels with a really hard serie of jump and the save crystal being far ...
In this Tomb Raider reboot i nearly haven't missed a jump at all on those action sequences in which everything crumble or explode around you and you need to run and jump on many falling platforms (out of a few in which the camera mislead me at first) , i guess they thought of the old folks like me .
I also thought the games flowed very well with movement and targeting and stuff, particularly with making moving from snimstoom type to animation type look less janky than if often does even in modern games.
One of the things I didn't particularly like about it was that I never really felt there was any real choice in where to try and climb, so it always ended up feeling like I was on a track. Ie, if the metaphor is a obstacle course, then more like an athletic course where you have a clear route just with hinders on it rather than an area where you have to figure out how to get to the end yourself using the features at hand. Now, and I admit that the following may just be because I was a dumb kid with no problem solutive skill when I played the Tomb Raider games of old, but that puzzling out the route was some of the stuff I liked about those games. So I missed that.
I also got the second and the third new game because I kinda fell into a "wow I actually finished a game for once, i gotta get the next one" trap and then got bored of the second before the end and never finished it. But I did actually pick up another game, a Star Wars game called the Fallen Order or something, that was basically Star Wars Tomb Raider with Jedi stuff that I liked and did finish. It was so much Tomb Raider that I swear they were reusing some of the animations.
Post by: Robsoie on January 01, 2022, 02:08:20 pm
One of the things I didn't particularly like about it was that I never really felt there was any real choice in where to try and climb, so it always ended up feeling like I was on a track. Ie, if the metaphor is a obstacle course, then more like an athletic course where you have a clear route just with hinders on it rather than an area where you have to figure out how to get to the end yourself using the features at hand. Now, and I admit that the following may just be because I was a dumb kid with no problem solutive skill when I played the Tomb Raider games of old, but that puzzling out the route was some of the stuff I liked about those games. So I missed that.
Yes, that's something that annoyed me too , you have that very large environment but there's basically only a single path nearly all the time (sometime there's a secondary route that lead to an hidden and optional "tomb" , "tomb" not looking really like a tomb anyways like that flooded lab room with electricity) .
So much of the game takes place outdoor and we have this single path only like in the old TR games, basically it's a linear game with the illusion of open world.
I haven't yet played any of the sequels (i'm rather close to the end of this first game by now) maybe they opened alternate paths better.
Still i'm enjoying the game a lot more than i thought i would, so much hourly nights wasted in it already :D
edit : one of the dlc that is included in the egs version of the game by default adds an optional tomb in a very early area (the forest zone in which you will have to hunt food then will climb down a ladder in a small bunker) .
the tomb puzzle is about burning a few locations to create a chain reaction that will break a crashed plane, so you can climb the part up to get the treasure.
Problem is that there's a tree that is supposed to be destroyed during the chain reaction but does not and will prevent you to climb on the last part of the now broken plane. A bug that never was fixed.
fortunately the solution to that is simple, just go back to the main menu and load the last saved game (or the last camp save if you prefer), go back into the tomb and the tree will have been removed as it should have, allowing you to get to the treasure.
Post by: Robsoie on January 03, 2022, 11:07:51 am
Only thing i didn't like is that most of her support cast was very annoying, only 2 of them were great.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Started to play the sequel "Rise of the Tomb Raider" , as expected performance isn't the same as i had to lower more options to get it smooth, but loading time that were only a couple of seconds in "Tomb Raider" are noticably a lot longer, fortunately they only happen when you load the game, as ingame there's no loading time.
Now i couldn't help but notice they changed the character face, basically it's like if in a movie sequel they change the actor for the same role, and it's frankly annoying because the new model face seems to be in constant "bewildered" status regardless of any emotion the character is supposed to have : character is in "serious" mode -> looks bewildered, she's supposed to look sad -> looks bewildered, she's supposed to be afraid -> looks bewildered etc... she's supposed to be in a hurry -> looks bewildered.
Wish there was a mod to bring back the previous character model that at least had her face more in par with the current emotion at play.
For the character direction, i thought it would be better than before but now instead of the character development being about Reboot Lara growing up from clueless lost little girl into an experienced adventurer we have Reboot Lara being filled with lots of "daddy issues" while looking constantly bewildered :D
And honestly i think it's worse.
And for some reason they also changed the character model from the "support friend" Jonah that made it from the previous game (they got rid of all the other surviving cast for some reason too) , fortunately you don't see that guy as often as in the previous game so you're not stuck with "who is that guy ?" thoughts until you realise that's supposed to be Jonah :D
Now the environment is more detailled in the extreme (explaining probably the difference in performance) as the view is a lot more open (previously on the island there were a lot of forest allowing to avoid rendering the far away world, but in this one there is the rendered faraway world even when it serves no purpose (like in early game in Syria you're on a mountain corner, ready to enter an underground tomb, and you have this huge town in the background .
The gameplay is mostly the same but there is less combat (at least so far) to do . That balance the game more toward exploration but in the same time there's a very noticable loss of "urgency" that in the previous game was keeping me on my toes most of the time .
The atmosphere also changed and do not get me immersed in it like it did on the previous game.
So far it's a good game, but not as good as the previous one.
Post by: dragdeler on January 03, 2022, 11:42:07 am
Post by: Robsoie on January 03, 2022, 12:41:39 pm
Post by: None on January 03, 2022, 11:35:51 pm
Northern Journey. Stop here if you're particularly arachnophobic or thalassophobic, 'cuz the game plays hard on both.
It's a one-man project that may loosely call itself a first-person shooter, or more directly from the store page, a 'norwegian happysad game set in a northern land.' You're a nameless red-gloved protagonist tasked by a traveling flutist (who also happens to have sunk your boat) to recover a handful of stolen things.
It's also eurojanky as hell and beautifully so.
Perhaps my best summary for it would be that it's like STALKER, except instead of a radioactive zone, it's nordic fantasy. Environments are equal parts lush and bleak, the cast of characters you'll encounter are peculiar and uncanny, there's a handful of hidden life and ammo boosters to find for the nosy, ammo is a bit scarce. Your arsenal is pretty small, all told, and a little bit clumsy, but it works. Perhaps that's precisely why it works.
It's so many parts uncanny, mystifying, bleak, lighthearted, solemn and self-confident. It's a feverish experience carried on its ambience, compelling if you'd only step into the dream logic that runs its world. There's no sidequests or pointless backtracking, no equipment upgrade gimmicks, no exp bars- one of my favorite levels in it doesn't have combat at all! It's just distilled, inviting uncanniness and intrigue. Step in, get lost, and load your Bear Crossbow. Eight bucks on sale right now, or twelve at full price. Totally worth it at full price, if you think you'll enjoy it.
Post by: Kagus on January 04, 2022, 06:11:37 am
While the idea of sailing long distances alone with historical equipment is frankly terrifying and insane, the game does throw several bones your way in order to make this task slightly less daunting. Namely, basically the only "historical equipment" available is the spyglass, quadrant, and compass. The other pieces of navigational gear you can buy have no real-world equivalents and are frankly a bit magical. This includes the "chrono compass", which if it had existed would've been the holy grail of pre-digital navigation as it's a compact piece of equipment providing information including: Magnetic north, latitude, longitude, and even time of day. Even the chip log is this fancy automatic tool that just gives you your speed in knots on a dial when you send the chip overboard.
However, while a lot of the rigging has also been simplified, it's still definitely a bit daunting trying to manage two or even three masts of sails on your own during storms or when coming in to port (Dear Dragon Cliffs: "Why?"), and there's a definite sense of accomplishment when you manage to make your first long voyage successfully and see that glorious shadow of a landmass on the horizon after days of infinite sea and the looming dread that maybe you made a miscalculation and have become lost.
The game also has survival elements, so you need to make sure you have enough fresh water to drink for the entirety of your journey, and either food reserves or fishing equipment + time enough to keep yourself from starving. Most interesting of these is the sleep need, as sleeping is both your kind of "fast travel" and an incredible risk that needs to be managed. You are of course sailing alone, so any time you bunk down is time the ship is being left to its own devices. It'll *probably* keep on the heading you've set, but some stray gusts or waves might blow it off-course and you'll spend a few hours going who-knows-where. Time while sleeping is sped up though, and allows you to make very long journeys more bearable as a player by just sleeping through large portions of it. You'll wake up automatically at various intervals and also if a storm blows in, the boat starts taking on water, or if you bump into something. But beyond that, you can't control when you wake up and basically have to commit to each nap you take.
Note: While the chrono compass does allow you to read longitude and you do know the longitudinal positions of all the ports ingame, it's still not super precise and just running a latitude is a perfectly fine way of getting places.
Additional note: There's honestly a bit of a grinding cliff in the early game, as two of the three starter boats really don't have cargo space or weight tolerance to support more than 2-3 missions worth of goods at a time, and trying to take those small vessels into the open ocean for longer journeys is daunting at best. So earning enough money to buy one of the larger boats is a bit of a stretch. However, this can be circumvented (or circumnavigated, ah? Ah? ...nah) by the fact that the goods trading system is currently borked and once you've garnered enough reputation to get a discount on bulk goods you can just buy them and then sell them back to the original merchant for a profit.
Post by: scriver on January 04, 2022, 08:50:07 am
Post by: Kagus on January 04, 2022, 10:53:35 am
I'm a bit sad that it isn't co-op, honestly. I don't really play co-op games but it just seems like the idea if a neat little sailing co-op game would be neat.
I do quite like co-op games, crew sims especially, and I'm also very sad that it's not co-op... It's technically on the dev roadmap, but listed under "??? Maybe? Someday?", so I'm definitely not holding my breath for multiplayer to be implemented.
And honestly, I can kinda understand it in a way... The major risk that would be allayed by having a teammate is sleeping and having something go wrong underway. ...however, sleeping also speeds up time and is essential in not spending 12 real life hours on making a crossing. And you wouldn't be able to do the time warping unless both players were sleeping at the same times, which kinda defeats the purpose.
Still think it would be fun though. Heck, I had a hell of a time even with completely different stuff like Blackwake. And while I haven't personally gotten to it yet, the current largest ship in Sailwind has something like 11 different winches you're supposed to be taking care of while underway. That's a lot to deal with all at once when a squall comes in out of nowhere :P
Post by: dragdeler on January 04, 2022, 06:46:34 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 04, 2022, 07:31:58 pm
Of course both game have their underground stuff too.
The atmosphere of both games is very different so it makes it worthwhile to play both.
Post by: dragdeler on January 04, 2022, 07:54:22 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 04, 2022, 08:09:04 pm
Post by: Iduno on January 05, 2022, 12:22:40 pm
It's a bit like Mastermind, with words. Except a bit easier, because it tells you which answers belong to each letter (grey for "not in this puzzle", yellow for "right letter, wrong place", and green for "right letter, right place"). You get 5 guesses to get the right word, and there's only one word per day. Obviously finding some words with a lot of useful letters helps (I'd go with H, T, C, S, and several vowels). Everyone gets the same word, so try to not post spoilers.
Edit: My Strategy:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on January 05, 2022, 01:00:55 pm
I assume someone else has heard of it, but I haven't seen it posted, so: Wordle (https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/)
Well, that was interesting. Got today's in 3... and I accidentally used a 'dead' letter in the second guess.
I'm assuming that every word is, well, a word, not random letters, and every letter is different?
Post by: Iduno on January 05, 2022, 01:13:44 pm
I assume someone else has heard of it, but I haven't seen it posted, so: Wordle (https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/)
Well, that was interesting. Got today's in 3... and I accidentally used a 'dead' letter in the second guess.
I'm assuming that every word is, well, a word, not random letters, and every letter is different?
They are all words, but I'm not sure if repeated letters are allowed or not. My last 3 guesses were trying to find the correct middle letter, and I ended up getting it on the last possible guess.
Post by: Mobbstar on January 05, 2022, 03:53:28 pm
They are all words, but I'm not sure if repeated letters are allowed or not.
Repeated letters are allowed. I got "siege" once. (Incidentally, that was my only 2-guess-victory thus far.)
A friend and I accidentally both came up with the following word as ideal first guess:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I usually try to narrow it down to three yellow letters (or two green ones) before making earnest guesses. Of course that's not possible with "hard" mode.
In a similar vein, there's Guess My Word (https://hryanjones.com/guess-my-word/). Unlike Wordle, the only hint you get is alphabetic order. There is a public leaderboard (which kindly hides spoilers if you haven't completed today's challenge yet).
Post by: Aoi on January 05, 2022, 05:13:20 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Edit:
Spoiler: Guess My Word, 01/06/2022 (click to show/hide)
Post by: Mobbstar on January 06, 2022, 03:44:38 am
I thought my first guess was a pretty good one--
Oh that is a good one. Yoinks, it's mine now! >: )
P.S.: With today's Wordle (201) I got the four last letters green and for a second went ???
Post by: delphonso on January 06, 2022, 04:00:41 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on January 06, 2022, 05:55:06 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Mkok on January 06, 2022, 06:56:27 am
Also can confirm that letters can repeat in a word.
Post by: delphonso on January 06, 2022, 08:17:52 am
Post by: Robsoie on January 06, 2022, 09:08:41 am
Still managed to get the good one in 4
Things i went this way :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
today i got it but still in 4
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: AlStar on January 06, 2022, 10:11:44 am
today i got it but still in 4I'd think you'd always want your first guess to be something that only uses one of each letter, yeah? More chances to find and/or eliminate letters.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on January 06, 2022, 10:24:06 am
Post by: Iduno on January 06, 2022, 02:08:18 pm
Third guess* was helpful despite containing a letter I knew wasn't part of it, and with the eliminated letters and probably 10 minutes of playing around with combinations, I remembered the answer was a real word.
*
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Mobbstar on January 07, 2022, 04:15:13 am
As for other games, I've enjoyed Morphblade (https://store.steampowered.com/app/494720/) a lot. It is a puzzle game that packs surprisingly tactic and strategic depth into quick sessions. And it features the classic Tom Francis Defenestration™ *.
*may not involve shattering glass
Post by: Kagus on January 07, 2022, 08:12:00 am
Sailwind (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1764530/Sailwind/)
Been playing more of this and getting a bit involved in the community lately...
Now, the game is about historical methods of navigation at sea, and classically a very important way of determining your general direction was through dead reckoning, or charting a path taken based off of calculations made with your recorded speed and heading. And while this definitely isn't necessary in the game, and even needs extraneous tools in order to actually chart anything, a number of players have been attempting to do dead reckoning for the fun of it.
...which is where we run into a slight problem. Namely, while the in-game chip log does measure in real knots, the in-game miles have nothing to do with real measurements and it's not explicitly clear how long a game hour is.
So I've just spent some time this morning working stuff out with a couple other community members, and with several combined calculations, empirical measurements, and poking at the code; we've arrived at 1 knot = 0.643 game miles per game hour. Huzzah! Now dead reckoning is actually possible!
...I'm still mostly just gonna run latitudes and hope for the best though :P
Post by: Aoi on January 07, 2022, 08:58:16 am
...classically a very important way of determining your general direction was through dead reckoning, or charting a path taken based off of calculations made with your recorded speed and heading.
Is that the actual historical usage? I always thought it was more along the lines of 'Point it in what should be the right direction and try and stay there.' or much more of a blind guess than you're making it sound, which is a calculated best course that's constantly revised, albeit to the limitations of the day.
Or, as the old saying goes, "It's called dead reckoning because if you don't reckon it correctly, you're dead."
Post by: Kagus on January 07, 2022, 09:38:27 am
Why they called it "dead reckoning" is, frankly, not entirely known. There doesn't seem to be a firm etymology in either that saying or in the "it's an abbreviation of deductive reckoning" explanation.
Sailors just have weird names for stuff.
Post by: Folly on January 07, 2022, 11:16:04 pm
First of all, they've produced a pretty cool little video that explains some of the story behind the game. Definitely recommend checking it out.
https://youtu.be/aZyd1e51YMo (https://youtu.be/aZyd1e51YMo)
Icarus is yet another survival game; thankfully, not another attempt to make the genre PvP. Icarus is PvE, with a fairly large array of missions, each of which constitutes an isolated game instance. So you drop down with almost nothing, craft your tools and build up a base and technology until you feel ready to venture out and tackle your quest objective, then leave behind everything you made before preparing for the next quest. You keep your character level and the various blueprints and talents you've unlocked. You can also spend resources earned from these quests to unlock and build 'Workshop Items', which you can take with you between missions and really help save time on new missions by basically skipping the first few tech tiers.
Playing with friends is strongly recommended. Death comes with a harsh xp penalty, which can be avoided by simply having a friend come revive you. And the talent tree offers a lot of opportunity for specialization, so it's nice having different people who can excel at gathering different resources.
I really like the feel of combat. Every other survival game I've tried has really janky feeling PvE; monsters who get stuck on terrain, or can't run as fast as the player, or are otherwise extremely easy to cheat. None of those issues are present in Icarus; enemies can climb anything you can climb, and will tear through buildings at a speed that is not too quick or too slow. And enemies will run faster than a player, though players may have some limited success weaving through trees and tall rocks to get some distance.
And these other games usually have no 'right way' to do PvE, just button mashing the monsters as they hit back and hoping their health bar empties first. Icarus PvE is not super complicated, but it gets the job done. Stealth attacks give a healthy burst of damage, as do headshots. Precise but timely aiming at these moving targets will be rewarded far more than button mashing. And simply picking the right time and place to fight so you don't get overwhelmed when your target calls all of it's friends over to play with you.
Steam reviews are currently 'Mixed', which is pretty bad in a market where even mediocre games usually end up with 'Very Positive' ratings. Indeed, the only reason I gave Icarus a chance is because a friend wanted someone to play with an offered to buy it for me. If I'd known how much fun I would have, I would not have hesitated to pay for it myself. There are a few bugs, but none game-breaking. Development is still ongoing, but plenty of game elements have already been implemented for a full experience. Icarus easily deserves better ratings than it's getting imo.
Post by: Iduno on January 08, 2022, 11:43:27 am
Icarus
First of all, they've produced a pretty cool little video that explains some of the story behind the game. Definitely recommend checking it out.
https://youtu.be/aZyd1e51YMo (https://youtu.be/aZyd1e51YMo)
Icarus is yet another survival game; thankfully, not another attempt to make the genre PvP. Icarus is PvE, with a fairly large array of missions, each of which constitutes an isolated game instance. So you drop down with almost nothing, craft your tools and build up a base and technology until you feel ready to venture out and tackle your quest objective, then leave behind everything you made before preparing for the next quest. You keep your character level and the various blueprints and talents you've unlocked. You can also spend resources earned from these quests to unlock and build 'Workshop Items', which you can take with you between missions and really help save time on new missions by basically skipping the first few tech tiers.
Playing with friends is strongly recommended. Death comes with a harsh xp penalty, which can be avoided by simply having a friend come revive you. And the talent tree offers a lot of opportunity for specialization, so it's nice having different people who can excel at gathering different resources.
I really like the feel of combat. Every other survival game I've tried has really janky feeling PvE; monsters who get stuck on terrain, or can't run as fast as the player, or are otherwise extremely easy to cheat. None of those issues are present in Icarus; enemies can climb anything you can climb, and will tear through buildings at a speed that is not too quick or too slow. And enemies will run faster than a player, though players may have some limited success weaving through trees and tall rocks to get some distance.
And these other games usually have no 'right way' to do PvE, just button mashing the monsters as they hit back and hoping their health bar empties first. Icarus PvE is not super complicated, but it gets the job done. Stealth attacks give a healthy burst of damage, as do headshots. Precise but timely aiming at these moving targets will be rewarded far more than button mashing. And simply picking the right time and place to fight so you don't get overwhelmed when your target calls all of it's friends over to play with you.
Steam reviews are currently 'Mixed', which is pretty bad in a market where even mediocre games usually end up with 'Very Positive' ratings. Indeed, the only reason I gave Icarus a chance is because a friend wanted someone to play with an offered to buy it for me. If I'd known how much fun I would have, I would not have hesitated to pay for it myself. There are a few bugs, but none game-breaking. Development is still ongoing, but plenty of game elements have already been implemented for a full experience. Icarus easily deserves better ratings than it's getting imo.
A survival game balanced for co-op? That's a thing I've been looking for.
Edit: Aw, too bad it's Steam-only. I'll keep looking.
Post by: Niveras on January 10, 2022, 01:34:22 pm
IcarusBased on the video and what I can infer from gameplay, I like the concept as a new spin on survival/crafting, but I need to try a uhhhh demo before I drop money on it. There's a lot of leeway in terms of whether the execution and mechanical gameplay is enjoyable.
First of all, they've produced a pretty cool little video that explains some of the story behind the game. Definitely recommend checking it out.
https://youtu.be/aZyd1e51YMo (https://youtu.be/aZyd1e51YMo)
Icarus is yet another survival game; thankfully, not another attempt to make the genre PvP. Icarus is PvE, with a fairly large array of missions, each of which constitutes an isolated game instance. So you drop down with almost nothing, craft your tools and build up a base and technology until you feel ready to venture out and tackle your quest objective, then leave behind everything you made before preparing for the next quest. You keep your character level and the various blueprints and talents you've unlocked. You can also spend resources earned from these quests to unlock and build 'Workshop Items', which you can take with you between missions and really help save time on new missions by basically skipping the first few tech tiers.
Playing with friends is strongly recommended. Death comes with a harsh xp penalty, which can be avoided by simply having a friend come revive you. And the talent tree offers a lot of opportunity for specialization, so it's nice having different people who can excel at gathering different resources.
I really like the feel of combat. Every other survival game I've tried has really janky feeling PvE; monsters who get stuck on terrain, or can't run as fast as the player, or are otherwise extremely easy to cheat. None of those issues are present in Icarus; enemies can climb anything you can climb, and will tear through buildings at a speed that is not too quick or too slow. And enemies will run faster than a player, though players may have some limited success weaving through trees and tall rocks to get some distance.
And these other games usually have no 'right way' to do PvE, just button mashing the monsters as they hit back and hoping their health bar empties first. Icarus PvE is not super complicated, but it gets the job done. Stealth attacks give a healthy burst of damage, as do headshots. Precise but timely aiming at these moving targets will be rewarded far more than button mashing. And simply picking the right time and place to fight so you don't get overwhelmed when your target calls all of it's friends over to play with you.
Steam reviews are currently 'Mixed', which is pretty bad in a market where even mediocre games usually end up with 'Very Positive' ratings. Indeed, the only reason I gave Icarus a chance is because a friend wanted someone to play with an offered to buy it for me. If I'd known how much fun I would have, I would not have hesitated to pay for it myself. There are a few bugs, but none game-breaking. Development is still ongoing, but plenty of game elements have already been implemented for a full experience. Icarus easily deserves better ratings than it's getting imo.
Post by: dragdeler on January 10, 2022, 07:38:04 pm
edit: OK GAME ILL JUST SPAM A-D-E-F ALL AT ONCE, YOU DISRESPECT ME I DISRESPECT YOU, HOW ABOUT THAT HUH?!
Post by: Frumple on January 10, 2022, 11:54:12 pm
... resident evil has a similar non-place in my heart, though it was the PSX controls instead of PC that did it for me, there. Moral of the story, don't be the poor bastard playing or implementing early PSX era 3D games.
Post by: King Zultan on January 11, 2022, 03:33:29 am
Post by: Robsoie on January 11, 2022, 06:36:32 am
So the first tomb raider... IDK. Those quicktime events are atrocious, stop making up the rules, what the fuck is "hand", what the fuck is "hand" after two times circle once leftrightleftright quickly >:( can you at least make all commands as explicit as leftrightleftright quickly? I swear even the first quicktime event I died a bunch of times trying a different button each time, and once I made it the game told me the button during the success animation. It doesn't help that it's buggy either: it doesn't allways register touch, and it doesn't like being pushed too early, you can spam the button multiple times just fine though. Maybe it's 72 fps on 144hz settings, maybe it works better in 60? Wouldn't be unheard of. God this made me angry.
edit: OK GAME ILL JUST SPAM A-D-E-F ALL AT ONCE, YOU DISRESPECT ME I DISRESPECT YOU, HOW ABOUT THAT HUH?!
My experience in the beginning exactly, took me so many tries to figure out what was the exact key i have that correspond to that stupid icon the game is displaying.
Fortunately after failing so much i finally got to the point my mind finally had imprinted those, so it started "oh that icon again, easy it's that key" and the game finally started to be great. But the beginning of the game was atrocious when the first qte started to appear and got me puzzled on what the hell was the key the game wanted me to press.
But keep at it, once you finally got the icon->that key automatism starting to take over in your brain, the game is fantastic.
Quote
The first tomb raider's controls were so staggeringly ass I've never played a game from the series since, for what it's worth. Something about the original 90s PC/DOS implementation was just wildly shit. Don't even remember the details because I've intentionally memory holed it, but good gods did whatever the hell they did sour me hard to every part of the series that came after.Ha, the famous "tank controls" , i liked a lot the previous gen Tomb Raider 1 & 2 , but i liked them -despite- the controls.
I remember there was a specific set of move you always had to do to manage most jumps : walk to the exact border of the platform, then move back (lara make a small jump back) , then run forward and jump immediately.
Failing to do that, probably 80% of the platforming would lead to your death because platform distance were exactly made for this exact jumping timing.
In modern gaming you may think "bah i'll just try again", but you simply then never played the original TR games with their "crystal" save that were often put far from the area that would kill you, so you often had to get through a lots of stuff to finally reach your dying point again.
That's something they changed completely (along with the controls fortunately) in the modern reboot of the TR serie, as it seems every dangerous spot has your progression saved so you can restart from your fail nearly immediately.
Post by: scriver on January 11, 2022, 07:09:32 am
I also gave up trying to play early Resident Evil games because of their crap controls, also the terrible fixed camera angles also turned me off of them.
The camera angles are the best part!
Post by: delphonso on January 11, 2022, 07:49:06 am
Post by: Frumple on January 11, 2022, 07:54:53 am
Post by: n9103 on January 11, 2022, 10:22:23 am
The camera wasn't completely fixed, and would pivot or pan to your position, and you didn't have to tell it which direction to attack, just what to attack.
Those, paired with the fact it was semi turn-based, made the less than ideal movement much more forgiving.
Every single other time I've run into tank controls after 2000 has been an instant uninstall for me.
Post by: Robsoie on January 11, 2022, 10:51:23 am
Never played this version so i can't say if it worked great.
Post by: AzyWng on January 11, 2022, 11:15:05 am
Every single other time I've run into tank controls after 2000 has been an instant uninstall for me.
But yeah, I can understand the sentiment. If one is operating a literal tank (like in Brigador), it's more understandable, but... people generally don't move like that, and it can take one out of the experience to a degree.
Post by: Frumple on January 11, 2022, 03:39:24 pm
It was generally goddamn miserable getting around in the intial forays into that kind of design. Those old early 3D games were not designed around that sort of control scheme well :V Maybe it got better as the series in question iterated, couldn't say. Haven't played them and probably won't, heh.
Post by: Aoi on January 11, 2022, 09:18:18 pm
And more related to just camera angles but-- I really liked the execution of this kind of quirky puzzle game called The Experiment, or Experiment 221, or something like that, where you wake up in a control room of some kind, and somebody else wakes up in some building, and you're trying to navigate them out, mostly by toggling room lights. Because you're going through camera feeds, there are things you can see that they can't and vice versa... The camera limits become an integral mechanic, not a practicality of gameplay.
Post by: Robsoie on January 12, 2022, 11:02:40 am
But still the first one of that serie (the 2013 "Tomb Raider") remains my favorite, i have difficulties to pinpoint exactly why, maybe the sense of urgency and pressure that seemed to be constant and was keeping me on my toes everytime, while in Rise of the TR there were much more "relaxed" moments.
The only low point to me is the change in the character design, while "useless Jonah" is visually a completely different character than in the 1st game, Lara herself rework of the face (and especially eyes) was for the worst : nearly everytime she had a different emotion, it always ended in her eyes opening big in a "bewildered" look that after a while had me more laughing than actually caring as most of the time that "bewildered" look was out of place in the situation she was in.
Oddly the 2013 TR version of Lara face has more appropriate emotion portrayal with the "bewildered" eye happening in the correct situation.
I haven't tried the optional tombs and the famed "expedition" mode (that is the main reason why Rise has the most replay value of the 3 reboot TR) so i'll have a lot to do later, but so far i'm more curious on how they're going to end the story.
I started to play the last title of the serie "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" and noticed they changed again both Lara and "useless Jonah" face, but this time they did it for the better, Jonah looks actually like the original Jonah just a bit older (as it should as some years happened since the original reboot TR) and Lara facial expression does not have the "bewildered" eyes stare at every different emotion, in fact she has a lot more range of emotion and facial expression (and everytime appropriate to the moment) than even the 1st game. They even managed to appropiately make her having the eyes look more tired after the years of adventuring.
After that the gameplay seems to have more work and importance on the stealth, that's very good, excepted in the last level i played that takes place is a huge tsunami and while super linear and filled with QTR was one of the most spectacular action level of the modern serie.
Can't wait to see more, but so far the game is very good too.
Post by: dragdeler on January 12, 2022, 11:29:24 am
I will admit the first manages to keep up a certain pressureand you can really enjoy killing the ennemies...in the third one the moral categories are less clear cut, the combat was less enjoyable, even in the end when she has her reasons to get more rampagey. Yeah get used to some scenes being overly bombastic in the third one, a few times I rolled my eyes... thoughthe fact that she apparantly goes through the whole first game with a puncture on the hip makes me cringe too. I like Jonah but I only know the one from the third so far ^^.
Post by: Robsoie on January 12, 2022, 11:57:30 am
Post by: Akura on January 14, 2022, 04:41:08 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 15, 2022, 01:23:25 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
It was a very long journey to get there, packed with different adventures, in fact can't believe how much content there is in that game, truly an epic.
Definitively one of the best crpg i have played so far, and i still have 3 chapters to go !
(if only the coding wasn't that horribly crap with insane amount of loading windows to load even the tiniest locations, probably 20% of your gaming time in Pathfinder Kingmaker is spent in a loading window that's ridiculous)
found during my gaming time that there are really "must have" mods that fix several of the problems i had with that game
(the mods for this game requires you to download the Unity Mod Manager (https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/21/) :
Cleaner (https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/39) , it adds a "Clean" button to the panels that popup when you leave an area, allowing you to definitively delete the more or less worhtless items that you left on the ground in the area (and there can be a lot) , as those items left behind can inflate the saved game, increasing save and load times.
No History (https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/190) , keeps an useless history file at 0kb instead of ever inflating in your saved games
Skip Intro (https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/138) , there are way too many loading through the game, so at least it make going to the main menu faster when you launch the game.
Inventory Tweaks (https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/210) , can't believe this has never been made default in the game through its development time, it allows you to have in your inventory stacks of the same items instead of separating exact same items (allowing you a lot less click to do during item management)
No Grain filter (https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/197) , there's some grainy filter in the game, maybe some people like it but i always find it simply ugly , this mod really improves the visual a lot.
Post by: Robsoie on January 19, 2022, 05:43:47 am
- when you enter in an area of a specific world (dungeon/new map, anything you access through a door/loading time), the monsters are generated to your current gear score , they will stay at this level forever as long as you will not re-roll your campaign.
- gear score has nothing to do with what you have currently equipped, it has to do with some kind the best item you have in your inventory, meaning if by any chance you have all level 1 weaponry and armor equipped but in your inventory there's and helmet you leveled to 10 , you're in for a huge pain each time you'll enter a new area as monsters will be level 10 (monster level influence their health and their damage).
- adventure mode is generated the same as campaign : your gear score determine the level of the opposition.
But mid and world bosses have a minimum level set for them. Meaning if you don't level your items to at least their level, you're at a disadvantage when fighting them. In campaign a trick can be to fight them with your gear score on par with them (by example earth world boss with your gear score at 5) and if you really can't manage to beat them, upgrade your gear to get an advantage, but remember next new area you'll visit will be leveled to your new gear score.
Quote
Earth world boss : level 5
Rhom world boss : level 7
Corsus world boss : level 9
Yaesha world boss : level 12
note : the Undying King is level 14 in case you wish to fight him in Rhom, but for a first playthrough better help him instead
- there are many optional areas in a world, but a campaign will only generate a few of them , so everyone own campaign may not have the same areas/dungeons/boss/world boss in the same world.
- you can generate and switch to adventure mode at any time in your campaign (when next to a cristal) instead of re-rolling the campaign (that would reset it), adventure only generate 1 world (and may generated different areas/bosses than the ones you got from your campaign) , it's an excellent way to grind a bit (as it regenerate traits tomes) and to access areas/bosses you never had in your campaign in order to get specific loots/items/traits rewards you couldn't get in campaign, you can switch back to your campaign at any time too. And you can re-roll a new adventure at anytime.
- in case you're looking for a specific item/boss/area for your adventure, you have this tool (https://github.com/Razzmatazzz/RemnantSaveManager) that can analyze your save to see what your adventure has generated (so you can generate another one if you don't want to deal with what has been generated)
- some traits you gain/unlock from playing the game are very usefull (try your best to get the elder knowledge for increasing xp , more xp = more traits points coming) , do not neglect them as their bonus can really deliver and give you an edge in damage dealing/resistance
- love the weapon mods, love them they can make the difference between death and victory in many situations.
- weapon mod energy regenerate slowly with you shooting their weapons, but notice that it can also regenerate by itself if you use some of the ex-cultist armor that has mod regen ability built-in (even if you're a different class, just buy his armor on the shop) and make re-roll adventure on Earth until you finally can get the Spirit trait (max it) in case you didn't started the game as an ex-Cultist, just google to check which area you need to have generated in your adventure
- weapons obtained from boss material comes with a mod already applied, but unlike other weapon it can't be changed or removed
- boss weaponry is more powerfull than normal one so their level count double for the gear score, if you level a boss weapon to 5 , its actual gear score is 10 so be cautious, remember gear score is the level of your next area generate enemies.
- on the Rohm world there's a chance you may find an area with the Merchant, make sure to get in the correct position near his dog to have the interaction possible with the animal : you'll gain the dog as a weapon mod and he's awesome, easier companion to get than the amazing 2 little gremlins (that requires to defeat an area boss that can be hard if the game decide to generate it "enchanted") that are my favorites or the 2 turrets that requires to beat 2 optional bosses.
- there are alternate way to kill some boss (and all world boss) , by example killing the Ent by breaking his leg first or not, providing a different reward in the end but be sure to check on google which reward is the most usefull for your playstyle.
Post by: Iduno on January 19, 2022, 08:53:34 am
Edit: It's a combat-based game, balanced around people who have been playing longer than you have, have characters you can't get, and who have nothing to do in-game other than endlessly grind for better equipment. In general, the best equipment has a fraction of a percent chance of dropping, and less of a chance of having stats you want, and less of a chance of being upgraded the way you want. It has some good ideas in it, but they're mostly badly-implemented/buggy.
Remnant from the Ashes
That sounds a lot like the level scaling from IVAN, except IVAN's had a randomly-spawning high-level weapon that would disappear after you used it.
Post by: Frumple on January 19, 2022, 09:28:53 am
Think some of the later/branch development changed that somewhat, but in general if your difficulty/scaling is "like IVAN" there's decent odds you've done something wrong :P
Post by: Robsoie on January 19, 2022, 11:36:50 am
the boss area is a bunch of corridors and stairs leading to a few slightly more open rooms, in each of those rooms there's a generator you must destroy, each of them have a rather high amount of health so it takes a while to take one out.
But from the start a bunch of slow (though able of making a rushing attack for some reason) zombie-like enemies are coming and fighting then quickly those enemies are replaced by small and extremely fast enemies that can also teleport at will right on you, create electricity shockwaves when teleporting and their strikes are rather powerfull just because why not.
This puzzled me a bit as even when summoning minions it was never enough to make a diversion (even the weed rattle as it is taken out too fast and it takes time to regen its mod power to summon another), i never had enough time to take out even a single of those generators because those idiotic teleporting super fast electro enemies were just tearing me apart if i started to aim at generators instead of them.
Looking around i found the solution, and man what the hell : it's "don't look at walls"
Yeah, you need to enter the boss area while looking at your feet and move to each generators (that you can look at without problem) to destroy them without the enemies legions, because the insane opposition only spawn if you look at the walls.
Nowhere in the game there's a single hint about that kind of mechanics for that area. I really wonder how people figured that out.
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 19, 2022, 12:09:31 pm
Did anyone pick up GalCiv3 freebie on Epic? I see weird missing/garbled text in descriptions, and it says 'test branch' in the launcher. Don't see any obvious ways to get around it.
Post by: Robsoie on January 19, 2022, 01:43:50 pm
Code: [Select]
* Galactic Civilizations III (App name: 5f1c66366b2c4a6496d535d88c56e6cf | Version: 4.21.273666a)
* Galactic Civilizations III (Test branch) (App name: 8931f79300d04c5889799bffc8ef70bd | Version: 4.21.273666a)
when i downloaded and played, it was the normal version, not the test branch (but it looks like both have the same version number, so maybe they're actually the same) and after creating a normal game (not campaign) quickly i don't see unreadable/missing text so far.Try changing the resolution to see if by any chance the game engine is bugged with some of them ? (im playing with fullscreen enabled, not windowed in case it makes a difference)
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 19, 2022, 06:23:42 pm
Post by: Folly on January 19, 2022, 11:25:25 pm
Genshin Impact...In general, the best equipment has a fraction of a percent chance of dropping, and less of a chance of having stats you want, and less of a chance of being upgraded the way you want.
Dungeons can be run 8 times per day with the available free stamina, or 4 times with double rewards with the expenditure of some very easily farmable resources. Each run of the highest level dungeons(which are not hard, and can be done in multiplayer if you're struggling) yields 1 piece of top tier equipment, randomly selected from a pool of 10 pieces divided between 2 5-piece sets. Two of the equipment slots have fixed mainstats, so no RNG there. The other 3 slots have roughly 6 possible main stats each. You only need 4 pieces to get a full set bonus, so the 5th equipment slot can be from any set. I'm no mathimagician, but I think that's a bit better than a fraction of a percent.
It usually only takes me a few days to build a set with the main stats I want; a week or two if I decide to get ideal sub-stats also. The main stats are more than enough to do all basic content and events. Sub-stats are only needed for a few challenges, which yield no unique rewards and are mostly just for bragging rights.
The events page usually shows the latest stage of the main story, and one current event unrelated to the story.
The main story has been regularly updated since launch so it's pretty lengthy at this point, but there's no outstanding rewards for doing it as it's released, so no urgency there.
The other events do occasionally have challenging high level content; but more often than not they are scaled for any level, or not dependant on level at all. The current event is basically a pvp hide-and-seek game which anyone can easily participate in.
Post by: Robsoie on January 20, 2022, 01:13:54 pm
As mentionned at first it seems there's no real interest in leveling your weapon and armor past gear score 14 (and that is in case you want to fight the Undying King) as after that every new area generated will be of your level.
But there's something enemies can't level up with : your traits .
Traits are what you want to grind the game and adventure mode (out of getting more items from areas/bosses that didn't generate in your campaign) as experience from kills (normal enemies and bosses) should really want to always increase, because higher level of traits (each trait can go up to level 20) will give you some very noticable edge over opponents that are of the same level as your gear score.
With unlocking more traits (defeating some opponents, dealing specific amount of damage, etc... unlock more of them) and increasing their level you may find that some areas that were hard for you on your early gear score will get more easier when in adventure mode despite the enemies will then have leveled to your superior gear score.
But all those bonus given by your traits will make you more powerful at equal gear score, and being percentage of extra stuff will get then better and better the more your equipment gear score is, making it then interesting to get gear score higher than 14.
Tough as long s you're not yet having some good traits at high level, gear score above 14 will not really give you a benefit.
So in Remnant, it's very important to grind adventure mode for both getting more traits and traits level, and additionally to unlock items, weapons and weapon mods that are awesome but didn't generate in your campaign.
And above gear score : level your equipped weapons and armor the same, as if you have a shotgun and a handgun both at level 12 and your armor at level 7 , all enemies you'll meet next will be level 12 and will deal damage that will be way above your pitifull level 7 armor (and in the game enemies can deal rather high damage to start with).
So better level your gear score slowly but equally between armor and weapons
Post by: Iduno on January 20, 2022, 03:00:49 pm
Dungeons can be run 8 times per day with the available free stamina, or 4 times with double rewards with the expenditure of some very easily farmable resources. Each run of the highest level dungeons(which are not hard, and can be done in multiplayer if you're struggling) yields 1 piece of top tier equipment, randomly selected from a pool of 10 pieces divided between 2 5-piece sets. Two of the equipment slots have fixed mainstats, so no RNG there. The other 3 slots have roughly 6 possible main stats each. You only need 4 pieces to get a full set bonus, so the 5th equipment slot can be from any set. I'm no mathimagician, but I think that's a bit better than a fraction of a percent.
Quick math for the most likely possible item would be 2/3 (getting a hydro item from the cryo dungeon, or similar) with 10% for the most likely stat. So about 6.7% chance assuming your mainstat is guaranteed (and those tend to be bad mainstats). 0.67% (2/3 of 1%) for the most likely possible artifact with no guaranteed mainstat, assuming each piece is equally likely. More likely you're looking at 1/3*5%*5%, or 0.083% or less, before upgrading the artifact, and that's including the assumption you got the piece you wanted (which is not guaranteed).
I don't know about the hide-and-seek event. I quit after the newest terrible combat one where my max-level characters couldn't survive the 4 events necessary to get the lowest-level rewards on the easiest difficulty, and the advice was mostly to use characters who haven't been available during the time I've been playing (over half of the time the game has existed).
Post by: Aoi on January 27, 2022, 01:47:49 am
Concise to describe, surprisingly fun, but currently kind of light on content and feels like it needs a balancing pass... I've found exactly one strategy that can take out the first boss, and it's a 1v1 setup, which makes it awful for the rest of the game. Alas.
Post by: Robsoie on January 28, 2022, 02:57:46 pm
The Exile game : https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=26835
Minetest : https://www.minetest.net/downloads/
(version 5.5 of Minetest is in the work, you can get a release candidate here : https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&p=406163 )
A walkthrough for an older version to see how it works :
https://github.com/jeremyshannon/Exile/blob/master/doc/Walkthrough_022.pdf
Post by: delphonso on January 28, 2022, 11:20:55 pm
Post by: Iduno on January 30, 2022, 12:27:21 pm
Biggest drawbacks are: character generation needs more options and a random option so the base characters don't all look the same, stats are a bit complex and take some time to figure out, too many controls for the like 5 weapon slots you have (although 2 of those are just extras to switch with your main weapons, so they can be ignored). I'm still not sure what all of the controls are when you're out of your
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 01, 2022, 07:09:27 pm
Post by: Robsoie on February 02, 2022, 06:37:01 am
https://github.com/XProger/OpenLara
It was a cross platform open source engine that can play the old tomb raider serie. Engine that was also implementing some better graphic stuff (water shaders by example, shadows...) , he ported the engine to various platform too.
As a demonstration, it was then possible to play the first Tomb Raider demo in your browser :
http://xproger.info/projects/OpenLara/
(it's possible to load the levels of TR1/TR2/TR3 if you have the games to play them)
But the genius coder went even further, he implemented Tomb Raider ran by his engine in a GBA !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igEUjEci-eg
Post by: Iduno on February 04, 2022, 01:10:57 pm
It's a dumb game about totally-not-Gundams (called Arsenals) fighting AI robots after the world is mostly destroyed, and then fighting other Arsenals. The plot is. When you or your teammates kill other Arsenals, you can take 1 piece of loot from them (legs, left arm, right arm, body, head, or various weapon/aux slots). You can also find different decals as graffiti, and paint them on your Arsenal to customize it. Cell-shading means the Switch can handle it, and it mostly looks good unless people's faces have a shadow on them.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Sword and smg so I can get in close and end the fight quick, or die hilariously trying.
Post by: Iceblaster on February 05, 2022, 10:20:58 am
Maybe some people remember OpenLara
https://github.com/XProger/OpenLara
It was a cross platform open source engine that can play the old tomb raider serie. Engine that was also implementing some better graphic stuff (water shaders by example, shadows...) , he ported the engine to various platform too.
As a demonstration, it was then possible to play the first Tomb Raider demo in your browser :
http://xproger.info/projects/OpenLara/
(it's possible to load the levels of TR1/TR2/TR3 if you have the games to play them)
But the genius coder went even further, he implemented Tomb Raider ran by his engine in a GBA !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igEUjEci-eg
This is legitimately the coolest thing I've seen in a while, if only bc it's amazing that it's running in my browser at a very smooth and stable framerate wow
i also have no idea how to play even the demo of tomb raider but still! neat!
Post by: Robsoie on February 05, 2022, 11:35:41 am
a nice option is that the default controls :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Oh and even cooler with that browser version of OpenLara : you can load and play with the individual levels that are included in the Tomb Raider map Viewer :
https://github.com/andrewsyc/Tomb-Raider-1-2-3-4-5-Map-viewer-and-levels
(not all of them may work as their original version though)
Post by: Robsoie on February 11, 2022, 12:35:12 pm
It is a roguelite before anything so expect a lot of frustration (fun stuff like losing all your hard earned progress, boats, items, crafts, going back to chapter 1 ...) if you don't choose the "Story" mode (that allow you to keep your progress, only going back the beginning of the current chapter you're in when dying) .
The goal of the game is to complete each chapter (unless you're masochist and choose Endless mode in which there's ... no end but you still lose all your progress on death ).
Each chapter is an archipelago that is procedurally generated, each islands may have a few different biomes/monsters/items.
To complete a chapter, you must find 3 ruins that are on 3 different islands (not all islands of the archipelago have a ruin but you may want to visit to gather materials to craft things and boats) and trigger their light (located on their top). Then you'll have to sail to another island that contain a giant portal, that can only be reached by having triggered the light of the 3 ruins.
Once gone through the portal, you learn a bit of the lore and navigate an odd dark place to the entrance of the next chapter
Before entering you'll be able to choose a few (depending on how much you'll have gathered in your archipelago exploration) blessings from a random list.
Then the next chapter has a new procedural archipelago and you'll have to find and trigger again 3 ruins to access the next portal.
Things are not that simple, because the game out of being a roguelite is also a survival game : in which you'll need to hunt for food , cook , gather and etc... to keep your stamina and health at good enough level to avoid getting one shot or drowning, avoid sprinting all the time to not burn your stamina faster than you can heal it.
The combat gameplay isn't really great, but still manageable (you can lock on target to be able to dodge/parry , but you'll never be as fast as if you don't lock but dodging/parrying seems oddly not working as good as when locking).
Everything you find/gather/hunt can have an use other than only food : you craft tools, weapons, special items, boats, boat equipment, repair etc ...
Some early larger monster that is easy to avoid must in fact be hunted (great chance to die) because their materials are necessary for some tools .
Don't be like me and find yourself in chapter 2 and a rock prevent you to trigger the last ruin light, rock that can be mined out with a tool , but tool that require to kill a big monster that was appearing alone in an island in chapter 1 (that i avoided) but now walk with a buddy, and with the combat system and my poor old reflexes , avoiding getting hit by both at the same time is way too hard :D
Now the sailing : it's oddly relaxing despite requiring you being involved.
With your first crafted boat you'll use the oar to move, but quickly enough after some upgrading and rebuilding, you'll sail with the wind, having to deal with wind changing their orientation, being careful to not get wrecked by a reef you may see underwater, careful of those fracking crabs that can jump from a reef into your boat, damaging it (kill it fast to avoid heavy repairs).
One of the first crafting you want to do is a bag, because without it you can only carry very few different items (making item management hell), with the 1st bag craftable it's a lot better.
You can also craft special bags you can attach to the boat that can carry even more.
Overall it's a lot more fun than i thought it would be, but don't be decieved by the Disney like appearance
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
It's sometime easier to die than you may think.
Oh and performance is excellent , good point in a time in which optimisation isn't really a focus in development anymore, especially amazing considering that it's the Unity engine.
Low point is that in the long run it may be a bit repetitive, and it seems you can't rebind your key, it's super annoying to me but i guess i'm one of the few guys not playing with a controller in this age, but still can't believe the devs haven't implemented that (at least AutoHotkey is always helpful in those cases).
Anyways, good game at first but i doubt it will stay fun for long from the reports i read on further chapters.
Post by: Iduno on February 11, 2022, 07:11:00 pm
Daemon x Machina, last week's free Epic Game.
It's a dumb game about totally-not-Gundams (called Arsenals) fighting AI robots after the world is mostly destroyed, and then fighting other Arsenals. The plot is. When you or your teammates kill other Arsenals, you can take 1 piece of loot from them (legs, left arm, right arm, body, head, or various weapon/aux slots). You can also find different decals as graffiti, and paint them on your Arsenal to customize it. Cell-shading means the Switch can handle it, and it mostly looks good unless people's faces have a shadow on them.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Sword and smg so I can get in close and end the fight quick, or die hilariously trying.
What. Why are those thumbnails?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on February 13, 2022, 01:45:34 am
I clocked 52 minutes according to Steam, with about 5 minutes staring at Nerdle at the title screen, 5 minutes of character creation, 3 minutes of actual combat, of which one minute actually required an attempt at effort, because I forgot the free 70 healing potions were a thing, so I was actually dodging attacks. The rest of that time was basically trying to speed through dialogues/cutscenes, or walking from one dialogue/cutscene to the next.
Trying, because, the delay in the dialogue is so long that a fast reader can catch all the text even when you mash the next-line button, and what feels like half the cutscenes are unskippable on the first playthrough. Or so I'm guessing; it flashes 'First Clear' or something like that next to the icon of the skip button when you hit it. Or maybe once you get out of the prologue, things get better, but I got suckered into playing through it because it's some pseudo-quest to do it and it was so godawful boring that once I finished it, I could only muster the will to follow a handful of the quest markers in town (more dialogue to ignore...), one of which was explicitly how to use the dance emote. And it doesn't register instantly, but slowly enough that I wasn't sure if I was standing in the yellow quest circle correctly. Three more rounds of 'follow the quest icon on the minimap and mash skip' later, I nope'd my way out, without even getting to exit town yet.
Oh, and it's a 70gb download.
Post by: Akura on February 13, 2022, 06:48:27 am
Post by: Aoi on February 13, 2022, 08:22:45 am
Chat in town was pretty funny though; there was like three people trying to cyber, and fifteen people discussing the cybering.
Post by: Jopax on February 13, 2022, 11:49:27 am
Yeah the story is whatever and most of it is mashing the skip button, but so far, the combat has been super satisfying and meaty, playing as the "Totally not dragonball" chick so flying about kicking and punching shit is pretty fun. Some of the other classes look pretty cool as well so I might give those a go eventually.
That said, I have so much on my plate gaming wise, right now as well as in the next two weeks that I don't mind putting this one on the back burner for the time being.
Post by: Iduno on February 13, 2022, 11:50:54 am
I was considering that one myself, but the massive install size, and the fact that it's published by Amazon, put me off.
Sounds like those are good instincts.
Post by: Nighthawk on February 13, 2022, 01:49:21 pm
Whether it continues to keep me amused for long is up for debate, but I see no reason to take a massive crap on the game after 30 minutes because it has the usual trappings of an MMO. I have my own criticisms to offer, of course, but the game costs nothing to play, so I don't really feel cheated.
I think a lot of people go into free to play games anticipating disappointment (understandably so) and overreact with negativity when their minds aren't completely blown. Inversely, after a person sinks $60 (or more, God help us all) for a game, they often want to believe it's good so they can justify the money they spent on it. And hey, even if said $60 game is objectively bad, maybe they had fun anyway.
Edit - Just to clarify, I'm not saying it's amazing. At best it's like a Diablo with more entertaining attack skills and a story that is equally unremarkable. I just feel like people are a bit too quick to take a dump on free-to-play MMOs because there's a (somewhat justified) stigma around them. But what do I know; I'm dumb as a rock. Hitting stuff fun. Haha, big explosion go BRRR.
Post by: Folly on February 13, 2022, 03:37:52 pm
If you like dialogue, exploration, and collect-a-thon, then Lost Ark is can fill all those needs quite impressively; even more so when you consider that it's free to play.
Personally, I prefer MMORPG's that focus more on the multiplayer and combat aspects. Massive online worlds are much more satisfying when there is incentive to explore them with a group of friends. And beating up monsters is much more fun than delivering letters for an NPC.
Post by: Aoi on February 13, 2022, 05:47:21 pm
I went into it knowing nothing about it other than "big new ARPG breaking Steam records", with the article at the time saying it just broke #2 most concurrent players, so I was expecting... at least something novel, but after about 40 minutes of "When do I actually get to play?", I was legitimately wondering what exactly I was missing about it (though I admit my phrasing was much more irritated), because...
Lost Ark very much follows the Korean MMORPG structure. Several hundreds of hours of running around talking to NPC's, and if you can endure that, you eventually get to group up with other players to raid some dungeons or whatever.and I've clocked into the thousands of hours with its ilk already.
And does Steam prohibit outside-of-Steam downloads or something, because I've seen Korean MMOs allow background downloading of assets twenty years ago. 70 freakin' gigs...
Post by: Nighthawk on February 13, 2022, 06:52:58 pm
I played FFXIV for probably 100 hours at the behest of those who promised it would "get good," and haha, no. Level 60 was the same as level 1; I was still spamming the same attacks at enemies, albeit slightly more attacks, and said attacks never felt like they amounted to anything more than a damage number thanks to the awful hit feedback.
I'm a lot happier with Lost Ark so far compared to that game because A) there are a good number of different skills to use and combo right off the get-go and B) when I hit enemies with a massive weapon, they actually react as if they're being hit. It's satisfying to carve a path through hordes of mobs because the game does such a good job communicating that I'm actually doing something.
Still too much pointless dialogue and not enough hitting, but I think I've had more fun in the first five hours of Lost Ark than I had in all of the time I spent playing FFXIV, and I actually had to pay for FFXIV. That game definitely left me feeling cheated.
Post by: MCreeper on February 14, 2022, 05:02:26 pm
Also, just now they announced Pocket Mirror remastered (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1899060/Pocket_Mirror__GoldeneTraum/), and i can't help but wonder what for, from player's standpoint (getting some moneys for once is always fine reason for dev :P ). Original game hardly lacked in art department, so much so that this thing appears to barely change anything without comparing side to side, besides new cutscenes, of course. And new music? By the way, i feel like i heard something strikingly similiar to first 10 seconds of the trailer not too long ago, but where was it? Umineko? Touhou? This (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRPE_mL7z3o), perhaps ;D
Eh. I wish some youtuber would make a Pocket Mirror playtrough while fully appreciating it or at least not letting his inflated ego get in the way. I searched for one (not for too long, mind you) with some simple requirements that youtuber has to meet for me to even consider watching him:
1. Name of the game in video name.
2. No caps in video name.
3. No face ever in game videos.
Succeeding that,
4. No being a dick, which involves no speaking in vile tongues and no swearing without proper reason.
And guess what? I haven't found one. ::) I know just the man for the job, but there is no chance in hell he will make a playtrough of this particular game, of course.
Post by: MCreeper on February 16, 2022, 10:47:17 pm
So true, so true. I once knew a guy who sometimes took to raving about communism and conspiracies in chat, and there always was someone who got along with it. Hilarious.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
For first playtrough ended up in a vicious circle. Maxing affection means game over, as Ame goes stark raving loving. Affection is best dropped by sexy streams, which raise mental darkness and stress like crazy. Mental darkness is baaaad, since it randomly prevents streaming once it gets high. IIRC it can only be lowered by sleeping it off (barely) and fucking (which dramatically raises affection). In the end most streams turned out to be sexy streams, breakdown streams (i feel bad, pity me... but even if you do, i'll get stressed out as hell anyways! >:( ) and telling people to not do drugs on subscriber count celebration streams (like hell they are worth it, raising mental darkness so high). And the ending was her quitting streaming and fucking me all day. :P
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Rolan7 on February 16, 2022, 10:51:27 pm
Post by: Robsoie on February 17, 2022, 10:04:32 am
Anyways, after completing the Ruined Temple (the boss can be extremely hard or easy depending if you can avoid or not to aggro the 2 ghosts at the same time) , i was left with 2 locations to go, the optional Pitchwood and the Siam Lake (that is required on the story).
Siam Lake is a short zone but home to the most magic spamming/hard hitting boss of them all, the Witch of the Lake. While Pitchwood has a boss said to be very easy but that has some drop that are very interesting to me in order to transmute my good 2 handed sword i am using since the Sodden Knight into a stronger one.
So of course, i decided to go to the optional zone, should be easy.
Spoiler: or so i thought (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on February 18, 2022, 01:34:40 pm
Spoiler: Defeating the boss of the location (click to show/hide)
and the optional boss that was found in a hidden big area of the crypt.
The spoilery nature of the optional boss present there was a surprise and a rather huge twist that hint about what has really happened at some point of the world history.
It made me much more interested in the lore hidden behind all the events and locations you're going through in Salt&Sanctuary . Lore is often vague as in most soul-like and is hinted from the few NPC dialogues and the many descriptions of every items and loot.
For people interested in world building and lore about Salt&Sanctuary
Inspired by "The Paleblood Hunt" , a Bloodborne analysis by Redgrave :
https://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comments/3vaq4r/the_paleblood_hunt_finalized_and_revised_with/
There exist "The Drowned Tome - A Salt and Sanctuary Lore Analysis" by Asuko_XIII , it's an interesting reading on the world behind that strange island, trying to tie informations together to answer the mysteries left behind and present the world around the game.
you can download the pdf/docx/epub there :
https://www.reddit.com/r/saltandsanctuary/comments/4g8o47/the_drowned_tome_a_salt_and_sanctuary_lore/
Post by: nenjin on February 18, 2022, 03:26:40 pm
Post by: Robsoie on February 18, 2022, 05:45:33 pm
Anyways Salt&Sanctuary for me was an odd experience at first after getting it as a freebie on the epic store.
Up to the Sodden Knight it was fun and original, i had some trouble beating that boss as i had invested in my tree skill in totally wrong way :D , but then i stopped playing because out of the blue absolutely everything was one-shotting my character regardless of armor or shield. After repeated death again and again without feeling i was progressing anymore and having to come back from far again, it just ceased to be fun.
Only recently i learned why : i simply took the wrong passage (as the game seemed to point me there the most obviously), meaning that i was way under leveled for the zone that was my unfun wall.
Sure some people may like that, after all there are some player that edit their save to start directly in NG+ with a level 1 character.
After going in the correct area (for the story progression) this time things got back to be fun, often challenging but enjoyable, it was also fun after beating a few bosses and zones to finally come back to the area in which i was underleveled (as the story progression had to go there now) and dealing with the challenge at the proper level (and better equipment, better focused skill tree) became way more interesting.
I only have the last boss to beat in order to complete the game and it's been a lot of fun, so yeah it's a really good game when you follow the proper zone order :D
Sad they never published the game on gog (especially as Salt&Sanctuary is reported as being DRM free), hopefully for the sequel they'll do.
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 18, 2022, 06:17:08 pm
Anyways Salt&Sanctuary for me was an odd experience at first after getting it as a freebie on the epic store.Ok, where are you supposed to go after sodden knight and which way is it?
Up to the Sodden Knight it was fun and original, i had some trouble beating that boss as i had invested in my tree skill in totally wrong way :D , but then i stopped playing because out of the blue absolutely everything was one-shotting my character regardless of armor or shield. After repeated death again and again without feeling i was progressing anymore and having to come back from far again, it just ceased to be fun.
It's been a while, but from what I remember my experience was pretty much like you describe. That plus getting confused as to where I am and how I got there. I think I eventually gave up after having wandered into some bullshit platforming in the trees (I don't know, maybe that was the optional area with the horse-things you mentioned earlier).
Post by: Robsoie on February 18, 2022, 06:40:48 pm
This i very likely accidentally clicked too much as this is a part of the dialogue i never saw.
I don't remember where was the exact entrance as it's been more than two dozen of hours since i went there, but i remember the opposition was -much- more appropriate to my level.
Platforming wasn't really fun in Salt&Sanctuary, especially some part later that need you to bounce from walls (a power you'll get later) and "double jump" in the air (another power you'll get from later), coupling that with platforms flickering in and out of existence, long space between them up/down or left/right and it can quickly become extremely infuriating.
Nearly a miracle i managed to move through some area without throwing my monitor through the window.
Post by: Akura on February 20, 2022, 08:01:17 pm
Some of the comments are people being reminded of various old flight sims from TCA's graphics style. The one it reminded me of, and I haven't seen any comments mentioning it, was the old freebie YS Flight Simulator (https://ysflight.org/). And I forgot I still had that one installed, haven't thought about that one in years. Looks like it was still being updated up 2018, though multiplayer hasn't worked since 2015 if I'm reading the version notes right.
Post by: Robsoie on February 21, 2022, 07:19:46 am
YSFlight was a truly amazing piece of freeware, i especially liked how the "mouse as a yoke" was implemented, allowing me to have lots of fun even without a joystick. Some of the various islands you could download were very nice in their stylised way.
It's been years i haven't tried it, apparently the recommended version is 20150425 for compatibility and 20120701 for performance (it's the one i last used) , the latest and 2018 test ones seems to have a lot of issues.
edit : on something different, i noticed (there : https://saltandsanctuary.wiki.fextralife.com/Maps ) some had drawn map of the whole Salt&Sanctuary environment :
https://saltandsanctuary.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Salt-and-Sanctuary/isle_of_salt_web.jpg
Same map but made of ingame screenshots :
https://preview.redd.it/dm11z4ctbpf41.jpg?width=13909&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=55aafc38e3d8e5afe41f607bab6214cbac933fb9
Post by: Aoi on February 22, 2022, 10:09:21 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: scriver on February 28, 2022, 07:35:51 am
It's basically a classical jrpg-style (pastiche?) game about mice living below the streets.
It got my attention from the start just because of this awesome concept art: (https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/40616084/6a863f04e47a9bcfb40acec73de1e4b35557d351_960x311.png)
and promo screenshots from the game like this:
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1320140/ss_921cb7efe60885280768ff58b23d540cf8e1cc44.1920x1080.jpg?t=1645562379)
I just love the idea of the hero mouse with the jrpg trope of the unwieldable giant sword but it's just a swiss knife
as for the game I haven't played much yet but it seems fun
Post by: Aoi on February 28, 2022, 08:41:15 am
Post by: Egan_BW on February 28, 2022, 02:35:48 pm
Post by: Iduno on February 28, 2022, 03:28:39 pm
I just need to plug this cute little game I found and fell in love with during Steam's demo-showcasing week (still going on as of now): Small Saga (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1320140/Small_Sag)
It's basically a classical jrpg-style (pastiche?) game about mice living below the streets.
It got my attention from the start just because of this awesome concept art: (https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/40616084/6a863f04e47a9bcfb40acec73de1e4b35557d351_960x311.png)
That first picture looks a lot like Mouseguard. Although, while trying to look up the name I found like a half dozen other mouse-themed TTRPGs, so there might well be several valid influences.
Post by: Robsoie on March 04, 2022, 09:02:32 am
https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news/the-darkmod-210-is-here
https://www.thedarkmod.com/posts/the-dark-mod-2-10-has-been-released/
Post by: Mkok on March 05, 2022, 11:18:58 am
Post by: Robsoie on March 06, 2022, 08:38:18 am
There was an armor i was overlooking , the Lamprey set (that can be found in the Sunken Keep) that apparently has a special effect that inflict damage on an enemy that is hitting you.
Additionally the Ashen Effigy shield (that can be found in Ziggurat of Dust) has a similar special effect.
So after upgrading both the lamprey armor set and the effigy shield to their max (that is +7 and fortunately only require lot of Crypt Keeper grinding for the items required highest level of its upgrade and that by now i had truckload of them) i started the bosses hunting.
And so far in that NG+2 , Sodden Knight, Queen of Smiles and the Krakean Cyclops have been killed by .. just shield blocking their attacks (and with lots of stamina + items that reduce stamina use, you nearly never need to rest between blocks) until they finally killed themselves :D
Takes some time as in NG+2 they have a lot more health than in previous, but it works.
Only the Mad Alchemist was involving me having to sword murder him as his attacks aren't direct (he throws stuff around that create clouds/electricty/enemy slimes that attack you)
Wish i knew that earlier, that Lamprey set and the Effigy shield will make some of the bosses hilariously easy.
Of course doing that against bosses and enemy that have a grab attack is a complete mistake.
Post by: Robsoie on March 17, 2022, 12:22:32 pm
Last time i played, for Fallout 1 i've been using Fallout Fixit (https://www.nma-fallout.com/resources/fallout-fixt-full-all-fixes-and-mods.8/) that was a giant all in one compilation of mods and bugfixes and for Fallout 2 the Fallout 2 Restoration Project (https://www.nma-fallout.com/resources/fallout-2-restoration-project-unofficial-expansion-windows-installer.10/) that restore tons of cut content into Fallout 2 (but also change some stuff like increasing vastly the rate of random encounters in world map) .
So after googling a bit, i found out some mods i never heard about before but looks very noteworthy :
Fallout et Tu
https://nma-fallout.com/resources/fallout-et-tu.124/
That basically allows you to play Fallout 1 with the engine of Fallout 2 (and probably why that mod name is a play on "BG1Tutu" that was allowing to play BG1 in the BG2 engine) , there is also several submods for this including many QoL additions.
Fallout 2 Restoration Project expansion
https://nma-fallout.com/resources/fallout-2-restoration-project-unofficial-expansion.123/
That's a continuation of the Restoration Project
Fallout Nevada
https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/fallout-nevada-extended.207311/
Now this one is for Fallout 2 and seems rather amazing
Quote
Fallout: Nevada is a fan-made prequel to the original Fallout. It's a total conversion, made using content and engine of the original game with the inclusion of scripts, story, dialogues, characters, locations and mechanics created from scratch specifically for it. Gameplay is heavily focused on quests, setting and lore of the Fallout universe, as opposed to "dumb fights". The in-game locations are made with high degree of authenticity.
The story revolves around the life of Vault City citizens before the events of Fallout 1 & 2. The main character's task is to find a stolen device, which is critical to the lives of dwellers of the Vault 8. But this quest is child's play, compared to the unexpected turn of events that will take you on this potentially dark journey. Life in the wasteland is just beginning to appear. Settlements are scarce, roads are almost non-existent. The world is engulfed in anarchy, even more than before. It will be tough for your body and mind to survive.
The game features:
Brand new story
More than 100 quests
New world map - 12 major cities and tons of random encounters, including 12 special ones
2,7 Mb of game text (compared to 1,7 Mb in Fallout and 3,5 in Fallout 2)
Original soundtrack from Nobody's Nail Machine
Post by: Cthulhu on March 18, 2022, 05:58:16 am
Essentially it's Nioh 3 but set in Final Fantasy universe. It's mission-based, very little in the way of travel or long in-town gameplay scenes like you get in normal JRPGs. Combat is very character action, something like FF15 but more difficult. It's real time final fantasy by the guys who made Nioh, and it feels like it.
Plot is simultaneously very paint-by-numbers and very fucking bizarre. It's a rehash of FF1, the four warriors of light have to restore the four crystals, whatever, you've seen the exact same plot a million fucking times. Every JRPG has the same plot. What makes it weird is the characters have this progressive amnesia, not just the usual JRPG amnesia but they actively continue to lose their memories over the course of the story, and there's other weird stuff, like Garland is the first boss but only the princess seems to remember Garland the knight ever existing. Somebody's fucking around with the structure of the game world and I'm not sure who or how or why. Some of the loading screen lore tidbits seem to imply there's multiple universes and some kind of unseen manipulation going on. Which is weird.
All the warriors of light feel this powerful compulsion to kill Chaos, despite not knowing who that is or if he even really exists, with the king even straight up saying Chaos is a myth. Most obsessed with Chaos is Jack, who may or may not be from Earth, you remember him from the memes. He's a douchebag, like a full on faux hawk tapout shirt douchebag. At one point early on when a character tells him Chaos isn't real, he just says "bullshit" and ends the discussion by pulling out his phone and blasting limp bizkit. He's the best and worst part of the game. In a different game he'd be annoying, but when the rest of the world is the most extreme florid final fantasy bullshit, jack's stone-faced refusal to engage with any of it is mostly hilarious. It's like if a side character from Gears of War accidentally got put in a JRPG and was pissed about it.
I'm still getting a feel for the combat system but it seems fun. Kind of awkward sometimes and a lot of enemies have pretty weak tells and attacks with low poise damage so sometimes you don't realize you're getting hit until you suddenly die.
Overall I dunno. I haven't played enough to give it a solid verdict. It seems fun, the storyline is a bizarre mix of final fantasy/kingdom hearts people spouting off the most inane flowery bullshit dialog and jack just being a huge prick and refusing to play along, which is mostly weird and awkward but sometimes really funny. The combat is alright. We'll see how it goes.
Also, it has an absolutely absurd amount of Anime Grunting. I don't get this shit. I guess it makes sense for anime since anime uses a lot of reaction shots but also limited animation, noises make sense as a workaround to get reactions without having to animate their faces, but in a high fidelity 3d game I don't see why people need to constantly fucking grunt and moan and gasp every two seconds. It gets on my nerves.
Post by: Robsoie on March 21, 2022, 04:58:56 pm
https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/a-new-saga-begins.11101351/
Post by: dragdeler on March 23, 2022, 04:32:43 am
Quote
All I want to know is if it has Character Creation. I didn't like any of the previous games because i had to play Geralt.
So you'd rather have a character creator + silent protagonist, than voice-acted storytelling... There is this thing avout people screeching for features that make litterally no sense, when there is alternative product (wink at ubisoft etc) that have the precious jack of all trades master of none these kiddos clamor for.
Sigh... and then they go on and on about how they matter as customers real karens.
Post by: Frumple on March 23, 2022, 06:49:20 am
You know I haven't played any of these yet but when I read the comments...ftfy, haVideo gamecustomers are allmost exclusively insufferable idiots aren't they?
... but seriously, nah, most game buyers don't go so far as to comment to begin with. You're seeing a fraction (idiot) of a fraction (potential customer who comments) of a fraction (people who buy or consider buying a witcher game) of game buyers. That's not even a little exclusive, it's just annoyingly loud.
Post by: Robsoie on March 23, 2022, 07:03:37 am
Having silent protagonist joe/jane running around would certainly lessen the impact of the story and the interactions.
Now apparently from the hints this new Witcher game will very likely be about someone else than Geralt, i wonder if it's going to be a follow up to the games, or setup in the (more or less far away) past before Geralt's days, after all those witchers have been around for a very long time.
Though it can be around an adventure during Geralt life as while he did a lot in the books , there's a lot of time that moved on in which none know what Geralt lived through.
Why not have the player being Eskel, just to say a big "frack you" to the tv show "writers" ?
Or even better for a complete change of storytelling, why not have the player in the shoes of a real antagonist like the bounty hunter Leo Bonhart , he had seen and done a lot before appearing in the books, lots of material for a game.
Post by: Robsoie on March 30, 2022, 04:13:26 pm
I noticed that it's on the unity engine and really i don't know if nearly none using that engine can optimise their code or if it's the engine that isn't good, but despite it is very unimpressive graphically it seems to run oddly slow despite nothing looks "hd" at all (and the game is turn based), even navigating the various overly busy (as they make the game look more complicated than it actuall is) menu feels "floaty" despite it's only in 2D.
Additionally it eats a lot of memory ( huh ? why ?) and a lot of GPU (odd considering how it looks rather low res, and in the same time there's nearly no graphic option to tweak and the "beautifull" and "fast" setting looks nearly the same without any performance difference too)
Every turns takes near to a dozen of seconds to complete after you press the next turn button for some reason (despite from what i read AI factions stay on their ground and never expand, so out of a few monster party roaming aroud, why are turns being so long ?)
After turning off the vsync and limiting to 30fps that was recommended on some googling, the improvement is not very noticable but it still is there.
Oh well, despite those sad technical issues, the game has a good potential as it combine survival elements, 4X and roleplaying, the combats works with a card system (your poeple being the cards and they have various abilities).
There are deities to unlock for further new games (at the start there are only 2 choices)
But man i wish people making games would optimise them a bit ...
Post by: nenjin on March 30, 2022, 04:57:44 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 30, 2022, 05:43:46 pm
Post by: Robsoie on March 30, 2022, 07:21:39 pm
There's a lot of "doing nothing" turns to research, time spent to gather and craft stuff instead of exploring and adventuring, and even those turns doing nothing still have those 10 seconds of waiting for the end turn for no obvious reason other than slow code (as nothing is happening at all on the island i've explored).
The few times i adventured out of my newly built town , i found it was mostly to gather away ressources (so more turns spent doing nothing) more than actually adventuring, as the few "dungeons" that spawn around weren't really more than just a text leading to a fight , either a fight against an enemy party or a fight against symbols (example of symbolic fight : there's a heavy storm and you're running for cover, so you have that fight against "things" to simulate you're not getting trashed by the storm).
At least sometime the reward for victory can be good (as in ressources i have no access for now). Apparently the atmosphere is supposed to be using slavic myths, but honestly out of the small demons with "funny names" nothing really make a difference between this and a generic heroic fantasy world.
For the fight, there's an appearance of depth with the cards and card abilities that represent your characters or enemies or symbolic stuff, but after those fights i found out that it's actually very simple just made complicated by the amount of clicks to place everything in the pre-fight rounds.
After spending time placing your card and selecting amongst the (very few) abilities to use to buff/protect your cards, the actual automated card fight play alone for 2 rounds and then instead of leaving the survivors on the playfield (so you could have kept things, or removed/replaced what you wanted only), it will then remove all the cards and you have to place them again (and the abilities) manually.
A lot of people seems to share that opinion about Thea 1 being much better than Thea 2 from my googling around (and apparently mention that it does not have all those silly technical issue with heating your GPU for nothing or being that heavy on ressource, like why the hell a 2D menu can 90% your GPU ? despite it's turn based and not looking really good).
There are lot of potential, but out of the technical part it would need a rework of the pacing to live up to that potential : the developping story mention some high stakes regarding the Shattering but i don't feel it at all in the game by example.
noticed that Thea 2 "fullscreen" isn't true fullscreen, it's just borderless fullscreen but in Thea 2 this borderless resolution -is forced- to your monitor resolution (and so will ignore whatever resolution you setup in the launcher), the custom resolution only work if you play windowed.
no wonder even changing the resolution had no impact, because the game does not even take your desired res in account in "fullscreen".
Post by: Robsoie on March 31, 2022, 01:15:32 pm
It was like night&day comparing to Thea 2 despite TA:W is way more visually busy and much more "high definition" and the battles not being turn based.
The total war serie has always been very impressive regarding the optimisation, i remember how very impressed i was when i played Total War: Rome (the first one, and the first of the serie in full 3D) on what was a potato PC at the time and seeing how good it looked like and how smooth it was (on par with the older Shogun and Medieval that i had no problem running at the time but that were mix of 3D for terrain and 2D for the units).
Though i had never played a Total War made after the franchise fell in sega's hand so i wasn't sure what to expect regarding the game smoothness. But it was a pleasant good surprise.
Post by: Criptfeind on March 31, 2022, 01:56:47 pm
Post by: Robsoie on April 01, 2022, 04:28:28 am
On a total war note, i just learned that unlike what i thought, that first Total War : Warhammer still have the denuvo drm (on top of the store drm) , i thought i had read it had been removed as the game is old (must have mistaken it for another ex-denuvo game), but sadly even on this free version it still is there.
Damn, i wish i knew that before downloading it as i boycott games featuring it, sure it's a good game but there are other good games without that crap .
Oh well uninstalled, hoping one day sega will remove it from their old stuff so i can reinstall .
Post by: Iduno on April 01, 2022, 02:01:08 pm
Post by: Rolan7 on April 01, 2022, 03:11:41 pm
It took a few minutes for me to realize that you're supposed to rely on the autopilot instead of manually thrusting. Selecting a target lets you set a desired relative velocity (Delta V) via mouse or arrow keys, and autopilot takes care of the details... though it's up to you to watch for other asteroids. It's pretty cute and less than a GB.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/846030/V_Rings_of_Saturn/
Post by: Il Palazzo on April 01, 2022, 04:33:48 pm
For anyone who remembers that old Sean Connery film 'Outland' - the game feels like you're one of the ordinary schmoes working in the background, no grand plot for you, just another day making a living in a glorified mine. Or, what The Expanse wants the Belters to be.
Which is also kinda the problem with it. There's very little to work towards. No goals, no story line. No clear upgrade ladder. Just mining some ore. A bit of salvaging or fighting on the side (but again, why do it?).
At least that's how it looked liked maybe a year ago. I've been occasionally reading the updates, and so far haven't seen a whole lot of changes in that area (but then again, it's easy to miss when they're adding something, since they're writing those in-character). The version number is still <0.5, though. So it's kinda still in alpha.
But for ye olde zen-like space mining it's better than Elite (and cheaper).
Post by: JWNoctis on April 01, 2022, 09:29:48 pm
Supposedly there is a storyline, though I haven't found much clue yet, and it's supposedly optional. Regarding the version number, it's supposed to be largely feature-complete as far as the itch.io page went.
There's also combat that reminded me a lot of Children of a Dead Earth - Hypervelocity mass-driver slugs make short work of mostly any ship, and there aren't any useful defensive upgrades at all - On the open market as far as I've seen, at least. I have a feeling that the combat AI is intentionally tuned down so as to not insta-frag the player two screens away before they even saw a pirate. Maybe they just don't want to kill unless they have to, unlike the players who may have less qualms for anything without a transponder.
It's also useful to get acquainted with manual control, since some of the more dangerous adversaries -will- fry and stun-lock your ship's computer with microwave first, which will disable HUD, targeting, and autopilot. You could do the same.
Thrusters, especially the main engines, are also one of the most powerful if too short-ranged weapons that come standard on any ship. There's even an appropriately-named forward-facing thruster mounted on weapons hardpoint. They also make for nice mining tool that does not dump much excessive momentum on the valuable ores at all.
Post by: delphonso on April 06, 2022, 02:01:14 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 06, 2022, 05:09:54 am
https://fumbbl.com/p/blog&c=Grod&id=14742
Quote
Features
Play a complete LRB5/6 client.
Select different team rosters. Download your own favourite rosters from FUMBBL and add them to the "teams" directory to see them in action.
Make your own Bot! Check out the open source example that is provided. Everything is available to make a fully featured Bot, including the source code of the GrodBot to use as a starting point.
Play against a Bot, or play two Bots off against each other! The packaged Bot (GrodBot) is not too bad. Probably plays an average defense, and below average offense.
Instructions to play AIBowl
Simply dowload the package from the URL above. Unzip it. Click on the file "AIBowl.jar" to launch the game, or (using a command prompt for example) navigate to the directory and type java -jar AIBowl.jar
Instructions for Bot developers
Download the program from the above link and unzip it. Look for a file in the main directory: "instructions_to_Bot_Building.txt". This describes in detail how to get started in the world of BloodBowl AI Bot making! Note that I would start with the "GrodBotAdvanced" which has been cleaned up a bit with comments and been given the latest code updates. If anyone would like to be on a FUMBBL mailing list to be notified of updates, please let me know.
I recently learned that some guys have been making a "Botbowl" python thingy to make tournaments with AI vs AI
https://github.com/njustesen/botbowl
The 3rd AI competition (with sponsors and etc involved) happened last year :
https://github.com/njustesen/botbowl/blob/main/docs/bot-bowl-iii.md
Post by: delphonso on April 06, 2022, 07:38:01 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 06, 2022, 11:38:29 am
I think the AI strength is also helped by how Blood Bowl is very dice based with how pure luck can easily destroy a well built strategy or transform your poor tactical knowledge into near legendary touchdowns :D
Post by: AlStar on April 06, 2022, 01:04:54 pm
I'm very far from being experienced in blood bowl (mostly only know the basics), but i have been rather impressed by the AI in the AIBowl application i linked to, not only because it was kicking my sorry bottom a lot but because it was also using the tactics actual people use a lot in that game (like that famous "cage" ) .
I think the AI strength is also helped by how Blood Bowl is very dice based with how pure luck can easily destroy a well built strategy or transform your poor tactical knowledge into near legendary touchdowns :D
The trick in Bloodbowl is to embrace the dice - basically, structure your turn so that bad dice can't kill you.
Start the turn with everything that doesn't require a roll; like standing up and basic movement (without GFIs, moving out of control zones, etc.). Then you move on to important, low-risk things - picking up the ball with a high-dex player (in good weather), or tackles where you've got a massive strength advantage; dodging with elves, moving that requires GFIs, etc.
Then, and only then, do you start the 2d or 1d tackles, crazy passes, moving through control zones, etc.
Occasionally you'll still run into situations were you roll triple-skulls, rerolled into triple-skulls; and that's just Bloodbowl... but at least you're not starting your turn hitting with a 1d with someone who doesn't have block.
Post by: nenjin on April 06, 2022, 01:08:44 pm
...except by the AI on PC, who will Go For It with their first move, fail, and injure their own player in the process.
Post by: delphonso on April 06, 2022, 11:37:43 pm
It was then that I fell in love with this game.
Post by: askovdk on April 07, 2022, 02:58:29 am
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10000176 (https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10000176)
I've come to the realization, that Returnal is one of the few games I play just for the enjoyment of playing! :-)
It's so darn hard, that I'm still only in the 3rd of 5(?) biomes, but the gameplay and gunplay is so satisfying, that I don't really mind my lack of progression, as each (failed) run is so good.
Even with Elden Ring I can't escape the feeling, that my actions are partly 'work' to advance my abilities to eventually complete the game.
Post by: dragdeler on April 07, 2022, 07:41:48 am
I'm peculiar about pinball I like it a lot but not all tables, this might be my new favourite... Pokemon pinball and judge dredd pinball and space cadet are cool sure, and I generally prefer pinball with balls that feel light, but there is something to be said about 1440p 144hz pinball and I feel like the nudging mechanics is teaching me to play well, instead of just juggling the ball up for as long as I can.
Went from 5m games, to 70m games, and at this point i regularly crack 200 million points.
Post by: Robsoie on April 07, 2022, 10:01:38 am
Started well with my Human team vs AI Orc team, linemen were blocking successfully with some nice dice rolls, even managed to nearly kill an Orc on a double attack, then my thrower picked up the ball
I then moved some teammates to build my cage and started to move, hoping for some good dice rolls.
Spoiler: But the AI wasn't willing (click to show/hide)
Post by: delphonso on April 07, 2022, 07:12:34 pm
Post by: AlStar on April 08, 2022, 09:03:47 am
Against a low-armor, high-value team like wood elves, all it takes is one good hit, then a skink boot to the neck to even out the field.
Post by: delphonso on April 08, 2022, 06:28:06 pm
Still - it's very addictive, and fits into my lunch break at work...so...get back in there, lizardboys.
Post by: Aoi on April 08, 2022, 10:02:13 pm
Post by: delphonso on April 08, 2022, 10:29:47 pm
FUMBBL's java client is lightweight enough to run on my laptop as well (which is pretty weak) - though unless you're playing versus yourself, you'll need a constant internet connection. FUMBBL mostly uses the BB2020 rules - however there are some leagues that are older versions (mostly for people who have had their teams on FUMBBL for like...10 years)
Let me know if you want to play - I'm still learning and am happy to lose as long as I get to throw goblins occasionally.
Post by: Aoi on April 09, 2022, 09:00:24 am
Robsoie is using AIBowl (https://fumbbl.com/p/blog&c=Grod&id=14742), which I think is with the rules active during its last update in 2014.
Let me know if you want to play - I'm still learning and am happy to lose as long as I get to throw goblins occasionally.
Ahahaha... travel wifi... this connection thoroughly falls onto the 'dys-' side of the 'functional' spectrum. Ran a speed test two days ago and was getting .02mbps downstream, 1.1mbps upstream (!?)... and 1200ms latency. Which also kind of ignored the factor that a bunch of stuff was just not working at all.
Post by: Robsoie on April 10, 2022, 08:12:25 pm
And the AIBowl program does not seem to have those team value/inducement things as you can't manage team value, and so none can buy some advantage or star player (though you can edit manually all the teams rosters by editing the html files located in ...\AIBowl\teams\ ).
What's interesting with AIBowl is that you can set both the opponent to AI instead of playing against it (or against yourself) , and because the bot know to play much better than i do, after watching Orcs vs Humans, i noticed the result were very different from when i was playing as humans (and getting half my team taken out by the much stronger orcs) teaching me some stuff i was really overlooking (especially how you shouldn't really look for melee fight as a human against the orcs, as their players are better at that than humans, most of the time avoid to follow up when ou pushed back an orc as a human as it's a recipe to get destroyed next turn by a few orcs pilling up on you, let the orcs move so only the one using blitz will be able to directly attack ).
It's no wonder that this Grod AI has won the 1st AI tournament they did and placed 2nd on all the other that followed, when watching it playing against itself you can see it's -very- good at knowing when it should risk a dodge, when to avoid attacking or when to do so, how to defend and how to place its players for increasing its attacks.
I often avoid risking a move in a player zone of control as most of the time i get my guy punched and lose my turn, but after watching the AI sometime doing it, it looks like taking the risk can lead to massive good results (or break your attempt completely, but in the case of my human attempt considering how stronger the orcs are in an equal block, maybe it's the best chance humans have sometime).
Post by: delphonso on April 10, 2022, 09:02:56 pm
Stunties(such as goblins, halflings and skinks) are reliable dodgers out of enemy control zones. I also matched Grodbot against itself and tried to learn a thing or two. It's good for getting the sense of how to defend a ball and how to crack open a cage, though quite a bit of that is helped by skills, which are all different in the current ruleset.
And yeah, you'd have to edit the htmls to simulate earnings and team progression. Because the rules are different as well, it's unfortunately impossible to export your current fumbbl team to it.
Post by: Jopax on April 11, 2022, 07:18:36 am
It's a neat blending of various things, mainly a defence game with a good dose of Carcassonne and some rogue-lite and deck building stuff thrown in. It has a free demo that has a sizeable chunk of gameplay in it and should give you a good insight into how the final thing should play.
I really enjoyed what was there, the mashup works quite nicely with you building out your board with roads and villages and using castles as defenses, they also seem to be planning on having different factions (so far there's only one) with possibly wildly different styles of play, since the special of the Runesmiths is basically having spells that permanently buff your castles in various ways and some buildings that support that style of play, so having a faction without that stuff should change stuff up considerably.
Also the art style is really really cool, it's not really pixel art but it's close to it I'd say, very reminiscent of an actual boardgame with painted pieces and tokens. Does chug a bit in terms of performance in the later stages when you have a shitton of enemies spawning, but that might be tied to playing at higher speeds, not sure.
Post by: dragdeler on April 11, 2022, 10:54:46 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Two weeks ago I thought I was a mediocre pinball player. Today I am (barely hehe) in the top 200 of demon tilt's billionaire club.
Spoiler: tres commas baby! (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on April 11, 2022, 04:38:57 pm
After discovering in Demon's
Spoiler: My best score is only just below 6 millions (click to show/hide)
It looks like that unlike Devil's Crush that is the obvious inspiration to Demon's Tilt, there's no special levels that you can access during the gameplay, i wish they had that too as it was always some nice fun.
Post by: Il Palazzo on April 11, 2022, 04:46:50 pm
Anyone here check out ORX (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071140/ORX/)?Hey, it's pretty neat!
Post by: dragdeler on April 11, 2022, 05:37:02 pm
Then I had this weird thing where I would nudge up just after touching the ball to give it extra speed, usually on the opposing thumb.
Now I'm getting much more deliberate, basically try to control the ball to avoid pitfalls (very important in the middle board), keep it longer on the highest board (bounce up shortly after touching the pink corona thingy that blocks, and accelerate sidewards if the ball comes down an awkward slide). Sometimes when the ball is slow I draw beautiful curves with the analogue and the nudge, I feel like it tracks longer than the first direction it measures, maybe that's just an illusion.
What you want to do is train to send the ball on the 2 outer slides in the middleboard, that will teach you the most control, this also helps when you have more than one ball the slides take a fair while and aren't too unpredictable. When you're up try to do the trickshot, the blue thing all on top that sometimes shows, once you've done that you can lock the ball in the wheel on the left, once you locked 3 balls, you get mutliball insano-mode and global multiplicators. When you're down good luck, tactics differ from situation to situation but it's never easy, you can go hard at the first boss, he's treacherous but it's early game, but the 2 after that I usually try to keep them alive, n°4 is nasty, n°5 is scary, after that it loops. Usually after you beat a boss the green portal at the very bottom activates that takes you to the middleboard. Make gratitious use of that portal there is no shame in nudging straight down if it's there, it doesn't stay very long. You can use nudge to stop the ball more reliably on a raised flipper, if you want to aim at something in particular.
Post by: Robsoie on April 15, 2022, 06:09:12 pm
Spoiler: i wanted to keep Bastakos in the ring after that (click to show/hide)
(King of the Dragon Pass)
Post by: feelotraveller on April 16, 2022, 01:00:34 pm
It's sad that the first year is mostly a tutorial and you're not free of your decisions
Try the 1999 version. It got somewhat dumbed down for mobile in 2011, tutorial being a case in point. Still a great game though. :)
Post by: Robsoie on April 16, 2022, 02:03:22 pm
In further years after the unfortunate demise of a few of my clan ring members, i could get back Bastakos the trickster in the Ring
Spoiler: Bastakos the Wise (click to show/hide)
Post by: feelotraveller on April 17, 2022, 10:27:08 pm
It's not really dumbed down
Well the euphemism that the developer used was 'simplified'... whatever we think that really amounts to.
Off the top of my head we lost the ability to decide the number of crafters and what types of goods they worked on, we lost pigs and sheep which disappeared into abstractions rather then needing to carefully balance different herds for different purposes (and keep sufficient extra of each type for use in the different temples/ceremonies), and we lost the ability to plant different types of crops (barley, wheat, rye) that each had different yields, tolerances and strategic purposes. There's probably more I'm forgetting, but even the above amounts to a significant dumbing down - or... um... simplification - of the game.
Yes a few extra events are nice but losing a number of the knobs and levers used to play the game is a cost that is far too high to my mind.
Post by: Robsoie on April 18, 2022, 12:12:35 pm
Oh well, fortunately it's still a very good game.
But there IS a very annoying bug and i have a difficult time to see how this one could slip unpatched for years considering it's not rare :
In some of the random events you'll have to select a clan (by example like an event in which your clan may be hit by some kind of curse and the shamans you contacted may have managed at best to redirect it elsewhere, and you may choose which clan is going to be on the nasty recieving end).
And most of the time you don't have the full list of clan to choose from, only the 7/8 first clan in the alphabetical order, there's no way to scroll down or change page to the remaining clans.
Post by: Robsoie on April 18, 2022, 01:55:23 pm
But it looks like despite the years there are still noticable unpatched issues, like this one i just ran into :
That's probably a side effect of having map parcels being randomly assembled together when you get into a mission, as if a parcel in which X can spawn is generated outside of the map area, you get a chance (rare fortunately as lots of parcel can spawan things) to have that nasty bug. Though i imagine if the xcom devs wanted they could have fixed that , after all i read that in the Long War mod developement they ran into a similar bug , but the mod devs fixed it (https://github.com/long-war-2/lwotc/issues/784) ...
But even so, there are some design decision that are way too silly to not be bugs , but apparently they're not bugs :
During a mission, at many steps of them, you will have your contact in the HQ talking (i think there's a meme about that guy considering this has annoyed nearly everyone at some point), but instead of talking while you are playing, the game will take away any controls from you, will wait for 3 to 5 seconds with you staring at the screen wondering .. why ? (because why not make you wait uselessly ? ) then will have the HQ guy start his speech "oh here are the enemy", "hey be careful with that enemy", "rescue that guy before it's too late", "don't wait too much to evac" ... and finally you can continue to play.
Yeah all those stupidly captain obvious remarks that will play in every missions (because you are apparently to dumb to understand things by yourself after being told once, then twice then ...) will all remove your control on the game, force you to wait 3 to 5 seconds then play the stupid speech.
There are mods like "Stop Wasting my Time" that cut down a lot of the silly delay between things, but does not seem to do much regarding that idiotic delay with those obnoxious speech thing unfortunately.
But out of those annoyances, the game is fun but i don't have the same kind of fun i have with the OpenXcom mods. Still i can see why the newer xcom game has been popular (even without any of the DLC), there are some interesting game mechanics are well made and the gameplay loop isn't repetitive.
Post by: Rolan7 on April 18, 2022, 03:12:23 pm
What's bizarre to me is the loading times between levels. They might be better (my computer is MUCH better) but they're still pretty long... compared to the expansion, War of the Chosen, where they're only a handful of seconds. That's frustrating to me since I find the expansion to be an overcomplicated mess I couldn't take at all seriously (though the Alien Hunters DLC does that too).
It's all moot since I won't be playing XCOM 2 ever again. Friday it crashed my new-ish video card so hard that it wouldn't operate again until I left my computer unplugged for an hour, then manually re-enabled my video card in the device manager. Saturday after turning the settings way down, it did the same thing after just a few minutes... so fuck it. That might not be their fault but I'm definitely staying away.
Oh also sometimes a VIP will be counted as murdered... Either if they're with the last person you evac, or NOT the last person (posters seem to disagree). It was introduced with the Shen's Last Gift DLC and hasn't been patched, so a big MEH from me.
I'm disappointed because the setting has a lot of potential but I feel like they made a complete mess of the UX and, eventually, the setting. Plus the mission timers and campaign timer (Avatar project) are annoyingly harsh - something ELSE they fixed in War of the Chosen (with an option).
Post by: Robsoie on April 18, 2022, 03:54:18 pm
From what i tweaked in the XComEngine.ini, there are a lot of very heavy/taxing graphic features that aren't even tweakable from the ingame options, and they make a huge difference in term of framerate, i lowered a lot of things thanks to the .ini file allowing me to run this smoothly despite i have by now an old computer (that is below the official minimum requirement) , that tells a lot on how they could have certainly made it run better but didn't cared enough if by editing the files you can get something like that smooth on potatoes.
And about the loading time, what can be said of that game optimisation if after completing a mission when your squad is in the airship on his way back to the base by pressing CAPS/LOCK you cut completely the -very- long loading time ...
https://www.vg247.com/firaxis-kind-of-explains-why-the-caps-lock-trick-works-in-xcom-2
Anyways, while it's good and fun, i still enjoy the openxcom mods much more.
And about the xcom2 setting , the openxcom mod i mentionned in the other thread, "From the Ashes" has a storyline inspired by the "xcom failed and you're now the resistance against the aliens" , i'm certain with time it will get even better.
Post by: dragdeler on April 20, 2022, 08:33:06 am
Will the endgame still launch if I manage to keep avatar project derailed? It feels like my game is not going to end at the pace I'm uber-effectively protecting earth ( I savescum )
Post by: Robsoie on April 20, 2022, 10:46:11 am
A possibility i see then is that the xcom2 devs just screwed up and probably used some old xcom2 code base for the epic version from before they patched that bug out of the steam one...
Back at xcom2 hard crashing Rolan7 GPU , even with my low settings (low from editing the XComEngine.in because low settings from the ingame options aren't really low at all) i noticed the game will still use 100% of your GPU nearly all the time, even in the game main menu in which nothing really happen (you just have a xcom guy in cover and a couple of enemy soldiers waiting in the background). No wonder it can crash as the window display needs to use some GPU too and will then have to wrestle with that game to get some % of it.
Googling around it seems to happen to nearly everyone, showing that indeed optimisation wasn't really done, after all it was so hyped by all the media under payroll that never mentionned the noticable technical issues that they knew xcom2 would sell a lot so why even invest time and money in optimisation ...
I also found that if i use Riva Tuner to limit the game fps to something like only 10 to 15 fps, the GPU usage will drop from 100% to 60%, and being turn based you don't really notice the noticably lower framerate ingame and it still run smoothly.
So yeah there's definitively something that could have been done in regards to optimisation.
I wonder how the gog version is doing in regard to GPU usage, as it's drm free and who know how much whatever drm is in the steam and epic version are screwing up the code.
Post by: Robsoie on April 26, 2022, 11:39:38 am
Apparently it's made with RPGMaker so i don't know if it's related to that fact and that the RPGMaker engine has its issues, but despite World's Danw has such antique visual and animation, is rather slow paced and is a 2D game with rather limited areas displayed at once (as you have some kind of loading everytime you enter a building or move from a part of the map to another), you'll see from time to time when moving around some very strange micro stutter.
Maybe it will get better but so far it feels there are much better alternatives if you want to play a Harvest Moon-like game.
Post by: Frumple on April 26, 2022, 01:25:19 pm
Post by: Robsoie on April 29, 2022, 01:57:34 pm
It's there, at the current time it's r9370 (wow, it's far from the version i had used last time) :
https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/index.php?t=msg&th=24648&prevloaded=1&&start=0
As apparently there may be some problems with window 10, i used this :
https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/index.php?t=msg&th=24787&start=0&
as it only involved dropping 3 files from the DXWrapper utility into the game directory and things worked completely right. But to be honest i had not given a try without those DXWrapper files.
And the amount of new features and options between the old 1.13 version i was used to and this new one is rather amazing.
A lot of these new functionalities is due to a magic coder genius nicknamed Flugente :
https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/index.php?t=thread&frm_id=283&
I also noticed an option that is probably new "Logical Bodytypes" that will display on your mercs during gameplay (and on every soldiers in the game) the actual equipment he has instead of the generic troops visuals the game had. That must have been a gigantic amount of artwork to do (especially with all the soldiers sprite facing directions), but it works really great.
I also wanted a second install of JA2 but without the 1.13 mod that change so much the gameplay, but default JA2 may be problematic on modern OS, and there were many bugs left unfixed in the latest official patch.
But no more problem, there's the Stracciatella Project that deals with that and is still very developped.
https://ja2-stracciatella.github.io/
And no need of the dxwrapper files for this to work out of the box, it's just fantastic for those that only want the original JA2 gameplay but with all the fixes and capable of running on multiple modern OS.
Post by: scriver on April 29, 2022, 05:48:54 pm
Post by: Frumple on April 29, 2022, 06:05:00 pm
Post by: Robsoie on April 29, 2022, 06:07:11 pm
Trailer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48b3BIU7vVY
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084160/Jagged_Alliance_3
Judging from the short gameplay part of that trailer, it's using the xcom2 engine for the battles (so the game will run on the unrealengine apparently)
Post by: scriver on April 30, 2022, 01:38:16 am
There's been a smattering of stuff like that (mostly of a "be careful what you wish for" nature, looking at it), ng.
No you misunderstand me, I mean there were no sequels *wink wink*
Cool to hear about that new one though, I will have to follow it. Xcom isn't exactly what I'd prefer for a JA game but I liked them, at least.
Post by: Rolan7 on May 01, 2022, 12:08:53 pm
It's all moot since I won't be playing XCOM 2 ever again. Friday it crashed my new-ish video card so hard that it wouldn't operate again until I left my computer unplugged for an hour, then manually re-enabled my video card in the device manager. Saturday after turning the settings way down, it did the same thing after just a few minutes... so fuck it. That might not be their fault but I'm definitely staying away.Okay well, I saw there was an update (I hadn't cleared the HD space quite yet) and gave it another try on minimum graphics settings (instead of merely reduced). No problems today. The update was probably for War of the Chosen, but whatever. My GPU fan still spins up hard while I'm in the base, but seems to calm down when I'm in missions.
So, credit where it's due.
Loading times are still really long compared to War of the Chosen which is stupid, but whatever. Also I've yet to actually confirm that.
Post by: Robsoie on May 01, 2022, 12:39:39 pm
Post by: Mephansteras on May 02, 2022, 12:23:27 pm
Loading times are still really long compared to War of the Chosen which is stupid, but whatever. Also I've yet to actually confirm that.
It is very true. It has to do with a bunch of map/mission stuff that got optimized in WotC. No idea why they haven't gone back and updated the base game with those fixes, though.
I think there is a mod out there that does similar stuff for the base game.
Post by: Robsoie on May 03, 2022, 06:35:59 am
But man, it was much harder than i remembered when i did in 1.13 , mostly because of the very limited choice in guns (only basic pistols up to that point) as i play with options mostly on normal with the JA2 options, not on plenty and the only good guns at early game are the ones that are default equipment from some of the AIM mercs (Reaper and his nice Colt Commando by example).
Fortunately at that point of the game the opposition isn't really having much better so it overall equalize the field somehow.
But unfortunately couldn't find a wire cutter anywhere, and the online shop had none yet, so i had to plan my night assault from the SAM site gates instead of trying to infiltrate from the wire fences.
The battle was divided in 2 parts, the gates/building and the location with all the SAM as both area of the map had their troops, with the gates/building having a lot more opposition. So the 2nd part was much easier.
And despite all odds, my team prevailed, but we lost my IMP and Nails, one of my AIM merc , both were knocked out by a grenade (i wasn't expecting one there) and enemies focused fire on both while they were incapacited, sad but not that unexpected.
Fortunately they were avenged by Reaper and Raider .
Surprisingly considering how hurt she was Ira survived in the end of that battle , unfortunately Raider decided to call it a quit and refused the extension of the contract, having other things to do.
Maybe related to his wife (the AIM merc Raven ) having been killed in a mission somewhere else (wanted to recruit her along Raider but she was already taken by an external job), hopefully i'll be able to re-hire him once his external assignement will be complete, assuming he survived it.
Next direction : going all the way to take Chitzena (far from here but it's always the easiest town to take after Drassen, and it has a mine too for more money making), this will also improve the gun selection at the Bobby Ray online shop. Reaper got a NVG out of the SAM site battle, so he'll be able to spot things further away at night.
M.E.R.C. website also opened , so i could hire mercs Biff and his secret crush Flo (Flo is my favorite character to try to keep alive and level up) as a replacement for Raider and the deceased Nails, not a good exchange in term of quality but certainly more funny and way cheaper :D
From now then, it seems everyone has some level of body armor, so normal and HP ammo become vastly inferior to AP one.
Only use of normal/HP ammo is in the case you run into Bloodcats, those damned beasts, fortunately it's rare so AP ammo all the way.
Post by: Robsoie on May 07, 2022, 10:32:18 am
It's a game that i found strangely paced and that at first was putting on me some level of anxiety that no other games did before (even supposed horror games), and probably why my play time was so erratic. I wondered if it was the incredibly well done very oppressive bizarre atmosphere or the insane difficulty at first (dying so fast so easily).
But after grinding a bit and getting some health upgrade i started to notice that i nearly never died anymore , that lowered half ot the pressure i felt (the oppressive environment still oppress :D ) .
And then when things started to get a bit repetitive is when the game genius start to appear : you will unlock some superpowers to your character by doing some special tasks, and you can craft more guns with different effect (shotgun-like, sniper-like, machinegun-like etc...) and improve them with weapon mods you're grinding through, and also improve the guns amount of equippable weapon mods so you end with weapon of massive enemies annihilation.
And why it is genius as other games do that too ? it's because it opens you a lot of options and possibilities to play and fight, changing a very lot the actual gameplay for the better.
While at first the repetition of those battles were going to be just annoying in the long term, it ceased to be annoying when you could then do those many battles from a lot of different ways, using very different methods and etc...
How about throwing part of the environment, walls or anything to the face of your enemies ? With one of the superpowers you can find, it's possible and hilarious fun.
How about possessing enemies (that were already people possessed by the "Hiss") and make them fight each other ? With another superpower you can find, it's really enjoyable
Those homing rockets coming at you ? Either make superpowered dodges while laughing at the enemy attempts or grab the rocket mid flight with psychic power and send them back !
And as i just unlocked today, why run and sprint ? Just fly like Superman ! That is so delightfull (and as if it was a metroid/vania allow to reach even more areas of the already truly massive game zones) especially when you can use guns and other powers while flying.
So overall Control is a game that gameplay start very average and gets boring but that will become much better the longer you'll play it due to the new options you'll unlock to deal with things. Probably why i felt it was strangely paced.
Post by: Robsoie on May 08, 2022, 07:02:52 am
In Control when you start to complete some of the main story missions, in the game main menu there will be a "Mission Select" option that will be added.
This will allow to replay storyline missions you had completed without restarting a new game. That sounds nice, well if it was designed as you would expect it to be.
What happens in practice : when a storyline mission appears in your current playthrough (basically when you complete the previous storyline mission) , a special save is made and is added to the Mission Select option.
Then when you select a mission in the Mission Select option of the game main menu, it will in fact load your character state as it was when this mission appeared.
So far nothing wrong.
But where it goes wrong is that if you load a mission in that Mission Select it will -overwrite- you main saved game, making you lose everything done after.
You may think "oh, but to get back to my progress, i'll just have to load the latest mission in Mission Select"
And you're then going for a shock.
Because it means everything you did after the main storyline mission you unlocked last will be lost (every side missions you may have completed after your last unlocked main mission, every points gained, upgrades you have done, mods found, collectibles discovered etc...) definitively.
So because you can't make manual saves or your own custom saves, there are 2 solutions to not lose a lot of your progress :
- always BACK UP your current save -before- you want to use the Mission Select mode
- never play a mission through the Mission Select mode.
Save location for Control : https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Control#Save_game_data_location
Post by: Iceblaster on May 08, 2022, 08:07:31 pm
they wobble, they're dogs, and they get horribly inbred really quickly.
Post by: Robsoie on May 11, 2022, 12:01:35 pm
The visuals are very Kingdom Rush-like, meaning they're cartoony pleasing to the eyes. It also take from it the fixed emplacement for towers.
But that's unfortunately the only things that are inspired by Kingdom Rush , because under the coating you have in fact what feels like a generic tower defense that lacks the fun of what made Kingdom Rush (i remember a flash game named Incursion that was very Kingdom Rush like but was also very fun and entertaining).
While many of those kind of games are trying to include more or less original gimmicks to improve the genre, Royal Defense does not and you could easily switch to another generic tower defense without noticing really a gameplay difference.
It has a ton of levels though if you like tower defense games, they're set in a few campaigns (seems like you need to complete one to unlock another), but don't be expecting too much in term of level design, because each levels will actually appear 2 times during a campaign, only the enemies or a tower emplacement will change so variety isn't great despite the number of levels.
Out of this, you have the usual tower defense grinding to do, meaning some levels are impossible until you have upgraded enough your towers damage/cost/etc...
The good thing with the grinding is that when going back to a previous you can use your upgraded/unlocked towers without the usual restriction (like replaying the 1st level that was originally restricted to the basic tower will allow you to use high end stuff) and can continue to earn more coins (there's no max coin restriction by level, even already completed ones).
A bad thing is that some branching upgrade feel more like a downgrade (by example the artillery tower that can branch into rocket tower, rockets that will deal small damage to only 1 target, though at longer range, instead of the more usefull artillery big damage to big area that can destroy some dangerous enemies) or some upgrades feels not really different (the canon tower branching into machinegun tower does not seem to kill anything faster despite the increase fire speed animation).
Maybe it gets better with different branching, but i have not yet played enough to unlock more.
And there are a lot of grinding to do because each upgrade being exponentially more expensive you'll need to replay levels a lot (fortunately there's a "faster" button) to prepare for some of the harder levels.
So overall while it's a decent but mediocre tower defense game, it's definitively not up to par with the best ones of that genre.
Post by: Robsoie on May 15, 2022, 08:07:58 pm
I had some odd experience with it before getting completely hooked on it.
At first the interactive prologue reminded me so strongly of the Half Life similarly interactive start that i was rather delighted as it promised some nicely immersive experience.
But quickly (once the prologue and its surprising twist quickstart the actual game) i started to like it much less as things seemed to devolve into some basic shooter with a gun that was so weak that it was near useless against anything that is not a basic mimic.
Making you understand that you should spend most of your time running away or stealth around, but unfrotunately it seems the stealth mechanics may not be very solid, as often i was spotted despite being behind walls by enemies that shouldn't have been able to see me (yeah, despite crouching and moving slowly all the time and having the stealth 1st skill allowing crouch walk hiding).
And much more annoying those maintenance vents, some of them are simply bugged : it seems there's a bad collision detection that block you from moving through the bugged entrance/exit, i found for those bugged parts i must approach as close as possible (just before the game automatically try to make you move your head down) and small jump toward them. Fortunately most of the vent entrance works correctly, but for the couple of ones that are super bugged, try the "be very close then mini jump inside of them"
So for a while i was wondering if that was going to the same "not really good" game for hours as i felt it was (though the Gloo gun is fantastic), but still i continued to play as i remembered having read so many enthousiastic player reviews of that game that were hinting to what i was experiencing wasn't really going to be the whole thing.
And indeed they were right, at some point once i started to get more and more neuromods and usefull items, getting some skills from the various skill trees i finally started to get actual options instead of just running away or shoot with a pea shooter, and when i finally obtained a shotgun a big smile on my face as the thing really hurt .
Finally i felt the actual game was starting : i could make traps, i could stealth move around better (not just crouching), i could use the verticality (jump/skill power jum or use the gloo gun to build some self made ladder or even go into space :D ) of most of the areas to find alternative ways to avoid enemies, i could repair stuff, hack computer and enemies and etc... lots of options and things to do to deal with the opposition now .
And that without even mentionning the tons of more strange abilities you can get if you invest in the various alien skill trees (you can keep at using the human skill tree too, as depending on your choice the ending will change and depending on you using alien stuff or not, and some of the game mechanic can also be impacted (remember those protective turrets detecting aliens and saving your sorry ass sometime ? imagine what happens if there's too much alien dna in you :D ).
It's really that good, once you get out of the time between the end of the prologue and when you finally get access to more items and neuromods the game will start to shine and click with the player completely.
A tip : ammo is more sparce than you would think and that shotgun is so good you want to shoot all the time with it :D
But the mineral type of material is used a lot in anything you can fabricate, including ammo, so make sure to not waste any shots as you may run out of that material to craft more when you need it the most, try to deal with most stuff by filling them with enough goo so they can't move for a few seconds and use that time to strike them with the wrench as hard as you can. At least it's ammo free.
Post by: Mephisto on May 16, 2022, 09:34:04 am
Demo (https://thejaspel.itch.io/backpack-hero)
I backed at a level that gives me two copies of the game. If you like the existing demo and want the full game (eventually) and, in the meantime, a more up to date demo, let me know and I'll ship a Steam key off to you.
Post by: AlStar on May 16, 2022, 01:09:19 pm
I actually managed to win the current demo on my third try - a bow that gave +1 to all arrows it shoots, about ten arrows with a +2 damage diamond in the center that buffed everything touching it, then two boss relics: +1 action (when not touching armor) and another that gave all my arrows an additional +6 damage as long as none of them were touching any armor. (I basically went 100% berserker - kill everything before it gets a chance to fight back - and it worked!)
Post by: Mephisto on May 16, 2022, 01:32:00 pm
I used to think I needed to have loads of armor. That's one way to play but it's so much more fun to mess around with items and see what's possible. Archery builds are definitely fun and can do massive damage.
Post by: Robsoie on May 19, 2022, 10:52:49 am
Spoiler: maybe a bit too much (click to show/hide)
Post by: AlStar on May 19, 2022, 11:44:58 am
The only one that I absolutely could not make work was Biff, mostly because all the AIM mercs hate his guts, but also because he's got 0 medical skill, which means that he can't even bandage himself, and can never learn the skill, ever.
Post by: Robsoie on May 19, 2022, 12:43:15 pm
At least Nails that dislike strongly Biff died in my game to unfortunate serie of grenades and bullets landing on him before bullying Biff too much.
Biff and Flo are the pillars of my Squad 1 , or so they think :D.
Post by: Folly on May 20, 2022, 04:36:31 pm
VR is a survival game at the core; so harvest wood and rocks to craft axes and hammers to harvest more wood and rocks so that you can build a base where you will craft better axes and hammers that let you harvest more wood and rocks, and so forth...
VR has drawn comparisons to Valheim, another survival game set apart by PvE content with dungeons and bosses which yield tools and resources required for progression through the resource tiers. Compared to Valheim, VR has significantly more bosses, and each time you defeat one you gain a new vampire power which can dramatically expand your options when customizing your combat style.
Official servers have PvE, PvP partial loot, and PvP full loot options. You can also host your own locked server to play alone or with friends. Encounters seem to be oriented towards small 2-4 person groups; so you can get by solo if you like a challenge, but it will feel more balanced with a friend or two.
After playing for just a few days I'm really enjoying this one. The low purchase price and small download size make this an easy one to try out. Definitely recommend if you're into this sort of thing.
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 20, 2022, 07:02:33 pm
Post by: Folly on May 20, 2022, 08:37:56 pm
If for whatever reason you want to build a majestic castle much larger than necessary, and you want to avoid combat while building it, you do have the option of just going out and chopping trees and smashing rocks yourself. But the game definitely encourages and rewards a more aggressive approach.
Post by: Kagus on May 21, 2022, 03:25:26 pm
Just unlocked bear form, was hoping that "can break large resource nodes" would actually return some resources. Smashed a couple huge boulders, and got... Nothing. I'm basically just trying to find some way of farming good quantities of stone so I can actually build something more than two tiny rooms out in the woods, while also re-killing the V bosses in the hopes of unsullied hearts so I can finally build a chair big enough that I can tell my sworn underling to actually do things (things besides getting himself killed by the local golem, anyway).
...yeah. It's a bit grindy. And painfully slow starting out. Gonna keep with it a while longer to see if/how much it opens up later on, but the beginning is definitely... Woof.
Post by: Frumple on May 21, 2022, 03:41:34 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 21, 2022, 07:46:16 pm
Post by: Akura on May 24, 2022, 03:16:06 pm
Obviously, since it's Hardspace, of course your save is wiped. Hopefully for the last time.
Post by: Robsoie on May 24, 2022, 07:07:50 pm
I had of course to weak .ini and etc.. in order to have it run smoothly on my low end system (to the point it looked much worse than previous Borderlands games for a similar framerate, hinting at the thing not being as optimised as past games) but i was happy enough to have it run smoothly and enjoy the gameplay.
Now for the game itself it's very solid, i enjoyed playing a very lot of hours, maybe too many hours :D (probably why i managed to complete it in a week), the progression is very well done and i never felt stuck.
Some of the quests/side quests provide some variations in gameplay so it does not feel too repetitive (despite repetition is always part of grinding for better loot).
The levels are varied but there are some repetition, but still it provides different environments to avoid the grinding getting too boring.
Game balance isn't great tough : by example while i completed the game at level 36 (side quests gives tons of xp) but in my carried weapon list there was a sniper rifle i have been using since level 24 because (Firestorm i think it's called) it was simply much better than anything i found of higher level, killing things fast on large areas and murder elite troopers too better than higher end sniper rifles.
Now for the bad, and it's really very bad sadly :
My last played Borderlands was the Tiny Tina Assault on Dragon Keep standalone version of the old Borderlands 2 DLC , it was a hilarious parody of a D&D session, the NPC were fun and every dialogues and jokes delivered , and surprisingly considering the humour tone of the game, the under layer story of a young girl coping with tragedy was interestingly done... basically despite it was too short, it was very good in story and characterisations and in gameplay.
Then Borderlands 3 as a story .... what the hell happened ? was it a different writer that wrote the story, the npc and their characterisation in Borderlands 3 ?
what happened to the humour that is actually funny ?
Because the NPC are all unlikable and utterly useless (usually people hate the very punchable Ava character as her stupidity lead to the death of an apparently beloved character, but man they're all as badly wrote as this one) , out of the guy in cape and speedo that should have been the NPC lead character :D
Then the 2 antagonists, they're not good at all, i understand they're a parody of social media edgelords with their followers and etc.. just more psychopathic with superpowers than the usual youtuber but everytime they start their dialogues it unfortunately simply never deliver anything good for the game, you simply think "will they shut up soon ?" not helped by the characters having no real charisma to play the villain role, Handsome Jack was far from the greatest videogame villain but he was much better at it.
About the death of the "beloved" character, as i had no previous attachement to that one as the gameplay of that character in B2 and Tiny Tina wasn't interesting to me, it also fell flat because the character not only died very stupidly considering the powers said character had to deal with the situation, but it was not helped by the fact B3 "storytelling" failed to to make me care (and the presence of Ava didn't helped :D ).
Finally that lead to the end game with the *spoiler* sacrifice and that "this girl is on fire" song that play after, a moment that should have felt like some big epic heroic with the song adding a nice touch over it, but in truth instead of achieving that again it falls completely flat because whoever wrote those characters failed completely to make you care about the guys involved in that moment.
Basically Borderlands 3 is a game you'll play -despite- its story and characters, as you'll enjoy it for its gameplay and mechanics.
Now if only they had made the caped guy in speedo the lead character it would have saved the story :D
Post by: Rolan7 on May 24, 2022, 07:47:44 pm
I was late to pick up 3 because of the high system requirements but it wasn't quite as heavy as I expected, and an enby friend kept talking about how cool the robot druid is. As a summoner they seem particular good for a solo run, with the pet even able to revive you. It's also just good silly fun to summon a pet, who's constantly exploding, in the middle of an enemy group.
Also: Pocket rakks! (shouted like "pocket sand!") ehehehe.
Actually that's something I think it did even better than BL2: encouraging, not merely allowing, periodic respeccing of abilities. That also meant I got to enjoy all three of the pets, and their various subtypes.
Edit: I just realized I have no idea who the other playable characters even are. I don't change characters much. Also my main character in BL1 was Roland, so I might be cursed :o
EditEdit: I enjoyed the PreSequel too, particularly the gimmick of playing as bosses from BL2. Though I don't remember fighting Athena, which is what I played (along with a friend who played the claptrap). The energy-absorbing shield was fun... I'm impressed at how many characters they gave unique abilities, particularly considering DLC.
Post by: Robsoie on May 24, 2022, 08:40:27 pm
I wish they had focused on a better writing for the storyline, building up the important characters so you actually care about them (caped speedo is their best written character if it can say something about how bad the other are)
Post by: Aoi on May 24, 2022, 09:02:54 pm
Mixed feelings on Wonderlands so far, unfortunately. The humor just feels a bit too tabletop parody, and I'm rather enjoying the robot character that acts as the straight man.
Post by: Robsoie on May 24, 2022, 09:35:40 pm
Post by: Folly on May 25, 2022, 03:20:37 am
I feel the need to point out that literally more than half of the characters in the game are in same-sex relationships and very vocal about it. Sometimes it's worked in casually so it feels natural; but often it just feels like blatant pandering.
The quests honestly run the full spectrum. Some are absolutely hilarious. Some are epic in scale and impact. Some are tedious snore-fests that I just kept wanting to end.
I really appreciate weapon and class balance. Compared to BL3, where at launch some weapons and classes felt utterly useless and others simply wiped out every enemy in sight instantly, prompting multiple waves of massive balance overhauls in the months that followed. Wonderlands has also had some balance patches, but from day 1 I generally felt that no weapons were particularly OP or UP.
I also really like the endgame. They've done away with the 'New Game+' that has been in every past Borderlands, forcing players to go through the entire story multiple times in order to progress. Now the endgame is a simple treadmill, completing trials within a short series of semi-randomized dungeons for a burst of loot and the option to crank up the difficulty a little bit more, gradually unlocking higher tiers of equipment. There's enough gimmicks within the dungeon to keep it feeling varied and exciting, but they can also be a bit overwhelming at times.
The one big disappointment to me is the continued lack of any sort of anti-cheat for online play. Joining random people online will more often than not pair me up with someone whose hacked gun trivializes all content, and then they spew copies of their hacked gear all over the ground, trying to get me to join in. Not what I signed up for.
Post by: Robsoie on May 25, 2022, 09:16:57 am
They're really lucky the games gameplay is top notch.
Borderlands 3 post endgame content seems to be linked to that new "Mayhem" feature that is unlocked at that point, it apparently allow you to increase enemies difficulty, XP and rewards with a gauge without having to start a new game from scratch in a higher difficulty setting.
Not that bad of an idea , so you can continue to grind without having to suffer that very bad story and dialogues all over again, as the loot is also improved.
Post by: Rolan7 on May 25, 2022, 09:34:14 am
(FL4K falls into the ironic trope of non-binary robot, most notably being referred to with they/them in the skills tree. It's very easy to miss unless you're looking for it because FL4K's voice is charmingly masculine (which is BETTER than an inhuman robo-voice). It's a rare bit of representation that unironically got my interest. Eyeroll for the NB representation being yet another robot, but kudos for actually making them sound and act like any other person. also I like robots, and I guess the game is pretty queer-friendly otherwise, so yay)
Post by: Robsoie on May 25, 2022, 10:20:04 am
Had they done their characters with this kind of subtlety i'm sure it would sure have resulted into a much better storytelling without you wanting to face palming most of the time.
Post by: axiomsofdominion on May 26, 2022, 01:26:56 pm
Post by: nenjin on May 26, 2022, 04:44:58 pm
That's not fair! Some of the pandering is subtle, like FL4K :P
(FL4K falls into the ironic trope of non-binary robot, most notably being referred to with they/them in the skills tree. It's very easy to miss unless you're looking for it because FL4K's voice is charmingly masculine (which is BETTER than an inhuman robo-voice). It's a rare bit of representation that unironically got my interest. Eyeroll for the NB representation being yet another robot, but kudos for actually making them sound and act like any other person. also I like robots, and I guess the game is pretty queer-friendly otherwise, so yay)
The VA for FL4K is SongWon Cho. Semi-famous youtuber and VA. His youtube channel has some good content on it. Not surprised FL4K is so likeable. SongWon brings a lot to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SungWon_Cho
Post by: Robsoie on May 26, 2022, 04:57:14 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0SZV-u0Hjg
No wonder they hired him, the guy is really good at it, i'm sure he could do a whole cast of characters all by himself.
Post by: delphonso on May 27, 2022, 08:36:51 am
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 27, 2022, 01:18:28 pm
As in the game by iD.
I first played it in 2016. It started off very promising, but had a terrible late game and a plot that doesn't really go anywhere. I finished a second playthrough on a harder difficulty a day or two ago. My opinion is about the same.
But this time I played through the game with the DLC pack. It's a modest amount of content for a modest price. Not great, not bad either.
Post by: nenjin on May 27, 2022, 01:57:45 pm
His youtube (mostly ten second vines/tiktoks) is always a nice place to browse for a bit when you need a good chuckle.
Honestly I love his "Let's try...." series of videos the most. Watching him eat every version of a product is so weirdly cathartic for me. Even taught me somethings, like there's something out there for Ramen better than garbage ass Maruchan.
Post by: Robsoie on May 27, 2022, 05:26:13 pm
After the initial start in which everything is very well designed and rather immersive with the early locations very interesting, after a short while there are many places that seem to just become "generic corridor/room shooter FPS" and break the feeling of being in that giant underwater city.
Things then start to feel like the area could just be some random base somewhere.
The gameplay also got old, the arcade style running speed feels really end of the nineties' FPS , the lack of stealth mechanics probably do not help , along with the encounters not feeling natural (as things spawn in already cleared area when you reach a certain distance from them, sometime you even know enemies will spawn there due to how said room is designed as you know you'll have to come in that room again).
Too bad the ravage of time didn't spared Bioshock gameplay and design (once you get out of the very well designed beginning areas), the nice world building with all those dialogues/tapes you find and some of its universe interesting quirks (the plasmid that help to avoid "the only solution is to run&gun all the time", the big daddy/little sister dynamics) added something.
That without mentionning the tons of crashes that were never fixed. Fortunately you can lower, a lot the amount of crashes by disabling reverb, and setting many options in the Bioshock.ini file according to many websites suggestions, but you'll still crash from time to time for no obvious reason (by example got a crash just bringing the map despite i have been using said map several time prior it)
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 27, 2022, 06:16:35 pm
Post by: Robsoie on May 27, 2022, 07:24:52 pm
Managed to save 3 little sisters after wasting lots of ammo to kill their big guardians (died a lot too in the process, forcing me respawning from those chamber devices), i then obtained in a gift for those 3 saves the "hypnotize" plasmid just before a boss battle.
Sounded usefull to get those big daddy thingies fighting for me, excepted that there's no big daddy alive anymore on that level :D , dying a lot in that fight and coming back, i was hopefull that i could then win the attrition war.
Then i crashed, again.
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 27, 2022, 09:09:17 pm
Post by: King Zultan on May 30, 2022, 03:12:34 am
Post by: Iduno on May 30, 2022, 10:01:49 am
I also really like the endgame. They've done away with the 'New Game+' that has been in every past Borderlands, forcing players to go through the entire story multiple times in order to progress. Now the endgame is a simple treadmill, completing trials within a short series of semi-randomized dungeons for a burst of loot and the option to crank up the difficulty a little bit more, gradually unlocking higher tiers of equipment. There's enough gimmicks within the dungeon to keep it feeling varied and exciting, but they can also be a bit overwhelming at times.
That sounds like a huge improvement. Now if they'd also steal the only good part of Middle Earth:Shadow of War (you can level up your gear which lets you keep interesting gear until you find something actually better), it'd be a pretty good game. Also, they need to quit with the tryhard shit that makes up half of their jokes.
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 30, 2022, 04:12:48 pm
I never really did melee in ether game, so was I missing out on anything by not going melee only?
It saves the hassle of switching between multiple plasmids and weapons and ammunition types. My memory is that Bioshock 2 is more balanced. It's been a while since I've played it though.
Post by: Robsoie on May 30, 2022, 04:21:29 pm
Hopefully it will help to spare some ammo (so i can use it on those "big daddy" bullet sponges without worry).
I'm currently in the area with lots of trees that is suddenly filled with poison gas and i'm working to stop that, but i really miss the 1st area of the game (that was absolutely great and immersive) as the environment design has noticably gone downhill since it.
Also, they need to quit with the tryhard shit that makes up half of their jokes.
That depends on who they hired for the writing, like i experienced in the 2 last borderlands games i played :
Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragons Keep : very good writing and storytelling, good characterisations, most of the time very funny jokes.
Borderlands 3 : horrible writing and storytelling , terribly bad characterisations, most of the time unfunny jokes.
Post by: dragdeler on May 31, 2022, 09:24:03 am
Got epic in english, I switch any language prompt to english but sure install the game in system language and don't let me change it -.- I hate when they presume, allways give me the language I'm asking for.
I've allways enjoyed the story on an "ironic" level, like yeah yeah claptrap is cringe let's be good sports about it.
Post by: Robsoie on May 31, 2022, 10:18:05 am
Despite the horror of his art, i didn't even killed him in the end after completing his "masterpiece" when he showed up to admire the work as things entertained :D
Then resumed the story progression that had me exploring an area in order to build a big bomb and finally putting it in the core of what seemed a nuclear-type reactor, something that sounded and looked ridiculously insane and dangerous ... and all of that just to open a closed door , sometime i wonder what the guys that wrote this were thinking :D
Post by: nenjin on June 01, 2022, 11:39:53 pm
I'd seen this come out a while ago but honestly there were too many games to play, and I've dithered on getting it several times. I've already watched several reviews of it and they were all middling to good.
But with Darktide coming eventually I figured it was the time and...
Well it's only the early game. The long-term meta of play has some issues, but setting all that aside...
Good lord. The environmental detail is simply stunning. Streum On (Eye: Divine Cybermancy, Space Hulk: Death Wing) continue to make hands down the best and most absurdly detailed and flavorful 40k settings. Every single inch of the game has beautiful, crisp details. It's the kind of obsession where you'd not be surprised to look at a rivet and see that it's a little skull. It's a gorgeous game....mostly.
Character models are similarly really detailed, but then you see like an ogryn....and it's this flat, almost baby-like texture work. Smooth and without features compared to the richly designed gangers and other NPCs.
The game is going for a fast-paced DOOM-like combat, where it wants you up close. You get an overshield recharged by pickups, some instant health packs, and can replenish HP by doing damage to someone that just hurt you. It has melee insta-kills you can use at close range, although unlike DOOM they don't refill you.
Just like EYE, there's.... a lot going on in the game in terms of features, sort of all over the place. Lots of weapon customization, from scopes to stocks to foregrips, muzzles, magazines....augmetic enhancements to your bounty hunter for new abilities, better health, the usual. There's wall running, slow time. You even get a Cyber Mastiff pet to sick on dudes, although tbh it already feels like a mechanic I'll forget to use.
It sounds pretty great and some of it is, but then there's big ol weird cracks in design that leave me scratching my head after the first mission. There's chests to discover in each mission that yield guns and two different kinds of trinkets for equipping to your person or your weapon. But at the end of each mission, it only lets you keep 1 type of each gun you found, and a limited amount of trinkets. The rest gets converted to cash. Guns and trinkets have semi-randomized properties, so the same kind of pistol can have significantly different stats between different drops. The same kind of pistol might in one version have better range but less handling, while another drop is the opposite. And the way you manage your loadouts feels clunky and rough, the number of screens you have to go through and the way they look. There's definitely what I would call some Euro Jank here, of a very familiar kind from Space Hulk: Deathwing and even EYE.
The story is so far kind of hit or miss, and seems somewhat needlessly complicated up front. It pretty much hot drops you into the middle of Necromunda gang politics & warfare with a murder mystery of some big wig as the reason you're there in the first place. If you really know 40k and Necromunda lore it'll all flow pretty well but I imagine someone ignorant of 40k would just be like...."Ok, I don't know what any of this shit means, on to gunning people down." It feels like a game made for 40k fans and less for general audiences.
All that said, I'm really looking forward to getting into more of it. It's yet another quirky game from Streum On but it delivers the roleplay atmosphere. As an RPG shooter I'm not quite sure where it stands yet. I started on hard and it definitely already put me to the test in the first level. It expects you to move quickly through difficult terrain while continuing to shoot, and your enemies do not patiently sit in cover and wait for you to kill them. Lots of times I'd zip into cover to reload and just catch a break and guys would follow me right into my hiding spot and continue blasting me. I turned off a lot of conveniences like auto-reloading and enemy outlines to make the game feel grittier and be tougher...and yeah, it's both of those things.
Anyways, I'm pretty f***ing immersed so if you want an amazing 40k setting to get immersed in and blast some gangers, give it a look.
Post by: scriver on June 02, 2022, 05:56:54 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 02, 2022, 11:09:32 am
I thought the good ending would have been making things harder but despite saving the little sisters instead of killing them deliver you less fluid, i could still buy/get every upgrades and most (at least the most usefull ones) tonics and plasmids, so there was no real reason to not go for the best ending from the start.
The final boss went down easier than i thought, but i was equipped for that so it was no surprise.
Spoiler: and stabby little sisters did their job to help (click to show/hide)
The world building was nicely done through the audio but overall i found the game was uneven : some parts of it were really good, but other were mediocre.
The main problem (as it was what made or unmade the immersion) was the level design, some levels were making you really feel you were in an underwater city (most of the beginning of the game succeed at that), but unfortunately many other levels of the game (past the beginning unfortunately) could have took place in any generic warehouse in the world and the underwater feel was completely lost.
Also the heavy linearity of the game makes it so you don't actually feel in a city but only in a couple of buildings/warehouses.
Started playing Bioshock 2 and so far the level design feels a very lot better, though i'm still early so hopefully things will stay like that.
Post by: nenjin on June 02, 2022, 11:39:50 am
Post by: AlStar on June 02, 2022, 12:00:46 pm
Post by: nenjin on June 02, 2022, 12:40:41 pm
But it’s the dev’s curse: when you make shit you want people to use it, and gate keeping it behind moral choices means many wouldn’t.
Post by: Egan_BW on June 02, 2022, 12:51:04 pm
Post by: Robsoie on June 02, 2022, 03:45:14 pm
Most fun though is making a human neuromod only run, then on the new game plus (so you keep all your acquired neuromods and make the hostile turret a no-problem by having high enough hacking level) you start taking the typhons ones and open more options to deal with everything around.
Post by: AzyWng on June 02, 2022, 04:24:24 pm
DK:AC is a side-scrolling shooter made by the creators of the Door Kickers series. As such, Action Squad has some of the same elements as the other Door Kickers games - hostages, kicking doors, and the fact death can come very quickly if you're careless.
It's pretty fun, though I've only started the second series of missions and still haven't been able to get very far into the Infinity Tower.
Post by: Robsoie on June 03, 2022, 01:15:46 pm
I had this game since its release so many years ago, unfortunately couldn't make it work anymore when updating OS until some people created some wrapper, and this gog version very likely include one straight out of the box.
Managed to complete the first mission without problems, i mean without technical problems ... as unfortunately lost 3 of my 5 space marines by forgetting how krak grenades can be really vicious at destroying their armors (similarly to the wh40k mod for openxcom, that play a lot like Chaos Gate)
Oh and avoid keeping the aimed shot enabled when you're setting a space marine on overwatch as it consume too many action points, and you really need as much shots as you need to avoid getting in range of enemy grenades, fortunately the 1st mission many cultists usually get one shott-ed (out of when you have bad luck on rolls), the main problem is from the chaos space marines that are waiting in the temple (as they are as well equipped and resilient as your marines).
Don't forget to equip manually your squads, as by default everyone has a bolter, and you very likely want at least one of your guy to carry a heavy bolter for some serious chaos bottom kicking.
Missed how good the sound environment and the musics were.
Post by: Stench Guzman on June 03, 2022, 06:31:21 pm
Post by: Kagus on June 04, 2022, 10:56:20 am
A game about exploration, braving the elements, exploring through old tombs and caverns in search of knowledge and treasure, deciphering old inscriptions and carefully avoiding traps... What's not to love?
...well, frankly: The execution. It's made abundantly clear that combat will not give you anything for the trouble (and will in fact be highly UNproductive, even if you do everything right), and then proceeds to shove a bunch of it in your face. While not providing a lot of satisfying alternatives to solving the problem of whatever's trying to beat you up.
Additionally, you run into some bizarre twists of fate that end up compounding failure upon failure... You cross a stream, which makes you wet, then get inevitably lost on your given trail so you become fatigued before reaching a point where you can rest.
If you rest without a fire, the "wet" effect will make you cold, applying more debuffs and interacting with your fatigue to do even worse things. If you leave that location without resting, the "fatigue" effect will hurt your character's hope, which can potentially cause them to permanently lose certain beneficial traits selected at character creation. However, the "grove" location you're at apparently doesn't count as having access to wood (despite being surrounded by trees), meaning that you are physically incapable of lighting a fire to get rid of the wet effect.
But hey, that's just RNG, right? It's a roguelite after all, not every character is meant to make it! ...except that when a character dies, a few years pass ingame and allow for the "big bad" to field more troops, take more land, and make the world overall more dangerous for your next character. ...even if you have gained absolutely none of the special treasures that can be passed down to further characters, meaning your next start will simply be meeting more adversity than the first, and the third being worse off than the second, and so forth.
I believe enough persistent failures can result in that save becoming effectively unplayable, forcing you to create a new save file and abandoning any persistent rewards you actually did manage to accrue.
The combat system they throw you into is also just... Weird. And seems deeply weighted against you in most circumstances, unless you have a bunch of super high-tier loot that then turns everything into a mindless cakewalk instead.
I dunno, it... I really wanted to like it. But after getting repeatedly pushed over by complete bullshit, my interest in the exploration and survival mechanics was firmly outweighed by my desire to do anything else but continue playing the game.
Post by: Robsoie on June 05, 2022, 06:33:09 am
I googled a bit to see if there was some new good maps or even check if there was some new mods when i ran into some bit of warning in some board that may prove usefull to someone that wants to buy the game :
There's Heroes of Might&Magic 3 - HD Edition" on steam but, and it's a big but ( :D ) , this version does not include any of its expansions (and so all the contents and features they add) , it's really only the basic HoMM3 only .
If you want the full game, you should instead go buy Heroes of Might&Magic3 Complete on gog that not only is cheaper in price, but will feature everything, and apply the HD Mod (https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/) (that does not only allow better resolutions, but adds tons of options and a great compatibility with modern OS) .
Oh and about HD Mod , be sure in the tweaks section of its launcher to change
Code: [Select]
<Sys.CPU.ReduceUsage> = 0from 0 to 1 or 2 ( 2 is beta apparently but should work better according to the changelogs) to avoid that old game to take too much CPU that it does not need.
Post by: Robsoie on June 07, 2022, 04:21:32 am
The main problem you'll have in Sanitarium then is to find said correct item and the place to use it (sometime that place is only a few pixel big), don't expect items or locations to use them to be highlighted though and after a while you'll start getting mad :D
By example on Chapter 2 (the village with "Mother" and all the children) at some point you will understand you need to get a fish rod to fetch an item (despite the item is in water very close to your path you wonder why the hell your guy can't pick it up himself and need a fish rod) as your character hint at needing to fish the item out of water.
Convenientely there's a kid that is fishing in the small beach, and of course the game does not give you a way to simply ask him to kindly let you use the fish rod temporarly before giving it back to him.
So after clearing all the available discussions subject you can with him (you will need to talk about everything to every npc you see, as it's what gives you hint on what to do and what sometime allow you to pick an item you'll need later, as some items can be unpickable without such thing), one of them hints at him loving to go for the mass in the church to pray.
But due to *spoiler* he can't do that because none can ring the church bell anymore ... well don't wonder why he needs that bell to pray but whatever, you know your goal is then to find a way to ring that bell so he stops fishing (so you can probably get his fish rod then).
The bell is of course on the top of the church, as the normal way to ring it has been destroyed it looks like the only way is to throw something at it to make noise.
Except that you can't throw anything, there's nothing to pick up that the character will accept to throw at that bell.
Then you start getting really annoyed and remember the old and very boring point&click trick : click every pixel around the screen.
Oh you just picked a "rock" ? That's odd considering there are so many rocks around and you clicked already on so many of them without result.
And that's the problem i have with this genre... find the correct group of pixels.
Post by: Robsoie on June 07, 2022, 10:56:04 am
Fortunately ScummVM support that game now, it's a good idea to use it for Sanitarium, as it run very smoothly and does not have those annoyances.
You need (at the time) the latest 2.6 preview release ( ScummVM 2.6.0pre Release Candidate Build - Windows Installer (recommended) ) :
https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily
Install it, you will also need of course to have Sanitorium installed.
Launch ScummVM and click on "Add Game"
Browse to ...\yourSanitariumdirectory\Data\ folder
by default on a gog install it's C:\GOG Games\Sanitarium\Data\
Click OK and ScummVM will detect the game.
From then you can then launch the game by having the game selected and clicking on the "Start" button.
At that time there will be a warning as Sanitorium support is recent it may not be fully stable
But so far i reached the chapter 4 without any problem (well problem with the game, as i got mad enough from some of the puzzles)
Post by: Robsoie on June 10, 2022, 03:28:06 pm
Visually it reminds a bit of the semi cartoony artstyle used in Fable but more "janky" in control and overall feel.
No idea if it's a combination of the game engine age and window 10 , but i noticed a lot of flickering with the shadows so i had to turn the details low enough to disable them as they were an annoyance for the eyes. I noticed some people mentionning turning the "screen effects" to off may also help, but the details on the lowest to disable shadow did the job anyways.
That said, while so far (i'm still very early ingame) the story is something that i feel have already saw in many games, the whole atmosphere still has some kind of charm around it, the heroine is likable so that is probably helping.
Looks like there are a lot of techniques and power branches to discover and learn with the xp you'll get so there may be some interesting leveling choices to do.
No idea how big or small the world is, as i'm still in the village at the beginning with some people giving me some tasks to do.
Combat is simple, there's key to roll to dodge attacks but don't expect anything close to a soul-like or a monster hunter as the controls are much less precise.
But for now i feel there's some potential with this game, i'll see how it turns out.
Post by: Iduno on June 10, 2022, 05:54:08 pm
Just tried out Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy.
A game about exploration, braving the elements, exploring through old tombs and caverns in search of knowledge and treasure, deciphering old inscriptions and carefully avoiding traps... What's not to love?
...well, frankly: The execution. It's made abundantly clear that combat will not give you anything for the trouble (and will in fact be highly UNproductive, even if you do everything right), and then proceeds to shove a bunch of it in your face. While not providing a lot of satisfying alternatives to solving the problem of whatever's trying to beat you up.
Additionally, you run into some bizarre twists of fate that end up compounding failure upon failure... You cross a stream, which makes you wet, then get inevitably lost on your given trail so you become fatigued before reaching a point where you can rest.
If you rest without a fire, the "wet" effect will make you cold, applying more debuffs and interacting with your fatigue to do even worse things. If you leave that location without resting, the "fatigue" effect will hurt your character's hope, which can potentially cause them to permanently lose certain beneficial traits selected at character creation. However, the "grove" location you're at apparently doesn't count as having access to wood (despite being surrounded by trees), meaning that you are physically incapable of lighting a fire to get rid of the wet effect.
But hey, that's just RNG, right? It's a roguelite after all, not every character is meant to make it! ...except that when a character dies, a few years pass ingame and allow for the "big bad" to field more troops, take more land, and make the world overall more dangerous for your next character. ...even if you have gained absolutely none of the special treasures that can be passed down to further characters, meaning your next start will simply be meeting more adversity than the first, and the third being worse off than the second, and so forth.
I believe enough persistent failures can result in that save becoming effectively unplayable, forcing you to create a new save file and abandoning any persistent rewards you actually did manage to accrue.
The combat system they throw you into is also just... Weird. And seems deeply weighted against you in most circumstances, unless you have a bunch of super high-tier loot that then turns everything into a mindless cakewalk instead.
I dunno, it... I really wanted to like it. But after getting repeatedly pushed over by complete bullshit, my interest in the exploration and survival mechanics was firmly outweighed by my desire to do anything else but continue playing the game.
That's hilariously bad game design.
Post by: MCreeper on June 11, 2022, 08:48:32 am
Most jarring thing to me about overseers with music boxes is that they really don't behave like they ought to - and i wouldn't pay it any mind, if not for NPC banter on that same missions. Say, the one at Boyle party. He (and neither anyone else) doesn't react if you jump three meters into the air, teleport right in front of him, or, if my memory serves me, fire a pistol beside his ear. And that's sort of okay, but you can overhear guards outside the mansion speaking about how pair of those overseers arrested street performer because she lost voice at inopportune moment. But no reaction to an obvious sorcerer, no. ::)
Even worse in Knife of the Dunwall DLC. Overseers attacked a hideout of teleporting magic ninjas and won thanks to music boxes. Now they bunched up and wait for head teleporting magic ninja, who is the magicest of them all, to kill him. So why, for the love of god, they spin the handle only when they see you directly? (Because devs didn't want to program new behavior just for DLC :P ) They can spin it constantly, but only in set pieces with captive ninjas. Sort of applies to main game overseers too, but there it is just bonklers.
And there is just a surreally idiotic thing in Boyle party. One of the ways to second floor is blocked by a massive wall of light. It's power room is a forbidden zone - but nobody can react to you entering it because they can't see you inside. Nobody reacts in the slightest when you disable the wall either. But if you tiptoe your way past the line where the wall was (What? I didn't know i can't go there!), guests immidiately start running and screaming and guards start shooting you.
Another jarring lack of reaction is Masochist Geezer's in Golden Cat mission. Pendlton in the top suite gives off a hilarious monologue if he hears you raising a ruckus, but this dude is on rails and won't react any diffirently no matter what you do. Even if you walk in to him as the very courtesan that was supposed to go to him. Even if she them vomits right at his knees. NOTHING. Of course, you can't predict everything players would come up with, but seeing those two side by side is a tad odd.
I'd like to see someone helpfully collating and hilariously narrating all the silly stuff you can do in this game in the manner of it-he.org guy. I strongly suspect there must be some way in the whole game to put a conscious guard into a closed garbage bin or simillarily unorthodox place, but have never got around to properly searching for it. :P
Dishonored 2 is bad in an odd way. I replayed first Dishonored many times, but 2 is just bo-o-o-ori-ing. And i can't put a finger on why. I tried to start it three times, thinking how the hell is this possible, shouldn't there be at least some fun? but never got past mission 2. And Death of the Outsider is so bad that i didn't even hear anything about it except that it exists.
Post by: Rolan7 on June 11, 2022, 09:35:34 am
I'd like to see someone helpfully collating and hilariously narrating all the silly stuff you can do in this gameOoh, like-
in the manner of it-he.org guy.YEAH!!
Hehe I exclaimed out loud, it's great I'm not the only one still appreciating his screenshot wrong-plays in current year. The only one I haven't read is Arx Fatalis because I keep meaning to play it myself first. (I never played the Ultimas either but I don't think I'd enjoy them myself).
Post by: Egan_BW on June 11, 2022, 02:31:26 pm
Post by: Robsoie on June 11, 2022, 06:43:35 pm
Don't talk to him.
In theory if you talk to him at that point, he will offer you to pay him so he goes and spread some good word about you around town to help increase your reputation.
But in actual gameplay talking to Leon will crashes to desktop after he starts to explain what he will do for you.
There's no fix and that CTD bug will happen to every player.
The only way to continue to play is simply to not talk to Leon, fortunately it does not prevent anything to happen so you can continue playing and your reputation will progress nicely anyways if you do quests (something you should do anyways for more XP and money).
Post by: Kagus on June 12, 2022, 03:52:36 am
Note about Venetica, at some point in Venice you'll join a guild probably (i don't know if there is an alternative, but i joined one anyways), after more story progression and quests completed, Leon will pop up at your guild.
Don't talk to him.
In theory if you talk to him at that point, he will offer you to pay him so he goes and spread some good word about you around town to help increase your reputation.
But in actual gameplay talking to Leon will crashes to desktop after he starts to explain what he will do for you.
There's no fix and that CTD bug will happen to every player.
The only way to continue to play is simply to not talk to Leon, fortunately it does not prevent anything to happen so you can continue playing and your reputation will progress nicely anyways if you do quests (something you should do anyways for more XP and money).
Goddammit, Leon.
As an aside; Source of Madness, the roguelite with procedurally generated enemies, is on sale for 25% off for the next 30 hours or so. I'm kinda considering picking it up despite it apparently being a little bit jank, if only to support the exploration of wacky game concepts like that.
Post by: nenjin on June 12, 2022, 02:49:44 pm
It's a good and interesting game but one that makes me put it down regularly.
Post by: MCreeper on June 14, 2022, 07:51:17 am
This got me thinking that one could make Touhou Souls with that. :P A janky touhou questline based on a janky mod based on a janky game. Triple horribleness! Particullarily horrible because there is no touhou mods for Skyrim, of all things.
EDIT: Ah yes, Skyrim modding at it's finest. Mechanics are in mod, but animations you should get from a lengthy list of "recommended" mods... and some of them directly overwrite each other's... loose animations files. I thought that kind of anecdote-like stupidity was reserved for porn mods, authors of which during production think with the same thing user does when he tries to install them. Alas, it isn't. That might be worse than a mod that overwrites itself during installation, and not with update files.
Post by: Jopax on June 14, 2022, 01:51:53 pm
Gotta say, as stupidly complex and overwhelming it is at first, it's pretty damn fun early on as you scramble to grab and hold allies and it's a big brawl in the dark as the factions slowly reveal themselves and their agendas. Then the aliens start fucking with stuff and the hold on territories solidifies and it turns into more of an economic management thing as you try to hold what you grabbed while developing your tech and capabilities to go and exploit space in some form before the aliens (which vastly outmatch you in terms of tech and weaponry) lock it all down. And this shit is involved in terms of systems and stuff you gotta keep track of. Getting shit into space is expensive and inefficent so you really want those orbital manufacturing capabilities, but that stuff is expensive to get going and before you get there you'll have to rely on shipping stuff off of Earth. Meanwhile, back on Earth you're having to deal with alien incursions, potential giant monsters and dumbass alien cultists who are actively trying to fuck shit up (in my playtrough they managed to somehow lock down China and it's now crawling with aliens which are starting to spill over into other countries).
And this is all before you get to designing and building your own starships to take the fight to the aliens, for which you'll need to consider a ton of things like the engines, do you want them efficient or do you want more power to be able to maneuver in combat, do you want kinetic weapons that have big damage or do you want stuff like missiles and torpedoes that have some targeting (but if it's low then the aliens can just dodge), or just not worry and go for pew pew lasers.
And the tech tree, hoo boy the tech tree. Since the game covers such a massive time scale and it insists on some semblance of realism there's a shitton of things to research. You have a stupid amount of just drive techs, all with their own little niches that you may or may not want or need to use. Like, to drive the point home, the tech tree has a compact view that hides most of the sub-techs so it doesn't lag out the game whenever you open the damn thing :V
Anyways, fun game, give it a whirl if you can since it's free. Can't wait for a full release myself.
Post by: Stench Guzman on June 14, 2022, 02:43:12 pm
It has a disappointing ending, but that game has some really smooth motion controls.
Post by: MCreeper on June 14, 2022, 02:50:53 pm
Mod woesYou know, that shit deserves a vid. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw7_KGsJPRw)
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 14, 2022, 07:39:45 pm
Anyways, fun game, give it a whirl if you can since it's free. Can't wait for a full release myself.I've had this on my radar for a while now. Thanks for the heads-up.
As for the demo gameplay, I kinda feel there's too much irrelevant(?) data clutter, and too many 'provinces'. I haven't even started building habitats in the wider solar system, and I'm already overwhelmed by what's going on where, and by trying to gauge which of the many tiny numbers are important.
So far, the game feels like an overly complex take on Twilight Struggle, with aliens thrown into the mix. Kinda fun for those who like figuring out the inner workings of new systems.
Post by: axiomsofdominion on June 15, 2022, 08:18:53 am
Terra Invicta, the X-com by ways of a grand strategy by the Long War folks is having a demo week on Steam. You can play a single faction for seven years.
Gotta say, as stupidly complex and overwhelming it is at first, it's pretty damn fun early on as you scramble to grab and hold allies and it's a big brawl in the dark as the factions slowly reveal themselves and their agendas. Then the aliens start fucking with stuff and the hold on territories solidifies and it turns into more of an economic management thing as you try to hold what you grabbed while developing your tech and capabilities to go and exploit space in some form before the aliens (which vastly outmatch you in terms of tech and weaponry) lock it all down. And this shit is involved in terms of systems and stuff you gotta keep track of. Getting shit into space is expensive and inefficent so you really want those orbital manufacturing capabilities, but that stuff is expensive to get going and before you get there you'll have to rely on shipping stuff off of Earth. Meanwhile, back on Earth you're having to deal with alien incursions, potential giant monsters and dumbass alien cultists who are actively trying to fuck shit up (in my playtrough they managed to somehow lock down China and it's now crawling with aliens which are starting to spill over into other countries).
And this is all before you get to designing and building your own starships to take the fight to the aliens, for which you'll need to consider a ton of things like the engines, do you want them efficient or do you want more power to be able to maneuver in combat, do you want kinetic weapons that have big damage or do you want stuff like missiles and torpedoes that have some targeting (but if it's low then the aliens can just dodge), or just not worry and go for pew pew lasers.
And the tech tree, hoo boy the tech tree. Since the game covers such a massive time scale and it insists on some semblance of realism there's a shitton of things to research. You have a stupid amount of just drive techs, all with their own little niches that you may or may not want or need to use. Like, to drive the point home, the tech tree has a compact view that hides most of the sub-techs so it doesn't lag out the game whenever you open the damn thing :V
Anyways, fun game, give it a whirl if you can since it's free. Can't wait for a full release myself.
I give this a solid 6/10 on a scale where 1-10 are equally sized and not the nonsense 7-10 scale of modern games press. UI is messy and slow, tutorial is pretty mediocre. both of those are like 4-5/10. The game is is very slow and there is that weird combo of turns/ticks vs real time. Probably 6/10 on that but the gameplay itself is a solid 7. Having mostly 5 but eventually 8 agents I think is too few. You just feel like you are mashing the speed 5 button a lot.
Maybe it gets better in the full release.
Post by: Kagus on June 15, 2022, 08:51:15 am
What I was hoping for: A cult simulator where I could grow a devout flock and use their worship and sacrifice to expand my rule and unlock dark powers.
What I got: Clunkier Binding of Isaac, with resource gathering.
Post by: axiomsofdominion on June 15, 2022, 12:45:51 pm
Just tried out the demo for Cult of the Lamb.
What I was hoping for: A cult simulator where I could grow a devout flock and use their worship and sacrifice to expand my rule and unlock dark powers.
What I got: Clunkier Binding of Isaac, with resource gathering.
Isn't this just Shadows Of Forbidden Gods? Or you want like a town simulator as well?
Post by: Kagus on June 15, 2022, 01:59:15 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 15, 2022, 02:15:02 pm
Anyone understands how this works?
Post by: Robsoie on June 15, 2022, 02:44:19 pm
Post by: Chiefwaffles on June 15, 2022, 03:04:15 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 15, 2022, 03:07:34 pm
Post by: axiomsofdominion on June 15, 2022, 03:19:53 pm
Ehhh, Shadows... I love the concept (and the soul of the whole series), but the production went in a couple directions that didn't really jive with me during development. I'm sure the release build is fine, and I'll most likely play it at some point, but there are some things in there that really just didn't catch me as much as SBtT 2
SBtT2 had way more politics if I recall. And some other differences. I don't play either personally, just too few agents and the systems are too simplistic.
Post by: Kagus on June 15, 2022, 03:36:21 pm
Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.
Post by: axiomsofdominion on June 15, 2022, 04:52:56 pm
Yeah, more politics (which was incredibly opaque if you didn't know how it worked, and then super useful and actually pretty straightforward once you did), and it was actually possible, albeit difficult, to do stuff in secret.
Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.
Oh the profile-menace system from That Which Sleeps? Did SBtT2 not have that? Haven't played in ages.
Post by: Kagus on June 15, 2022, 05:24:02 pm
Yeah, more politics (which was incredibly opaque if you didn't know how it worked, and then super useful and actually pretty straightforward once you did), and it was actually possible, albeit difficult, to do stuff in secret.
Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.
Oh the profile-menace system from That Which Sleeps? Did SBtT2 not have that? Haven't played in ages.
Nope. Instead, agents performing most types of tasks would leave behind "evidence" in the hex, which certain enemy agent types could spot and start researching. Once they'd finished researching a piece of evidence, they'd get a negative opinion modifier of the pertinent agent defined by the "evidence strength" of the given evidence. Then they'd usually start beelining towards the nearest lords and spending a few turns presenting this evidence to them, which would in turn make those lords hate your agent the same way. Eventually enough lords would be mad enough at your agent that the nation would banish them from their country, sending troops to attack them and causing attrition damage when inside that country's borders.
...however, there were a number of ways around this. Evidence got "cleaned up" when a particular agent spotted it, meaning that if you killed or corrupted that agent before they could spread the word, their information would die with them. And while creating/converting agents would result in evidence right off the bat, if you could clean up that loose end then the agent could run around completely without suspicion. And there were plenty of useful acts they could perform without generating new evidence.
Additionally, since agents were completely generic and didn't accrue levels/skills, they were more replaceable even if they *did* get too much heat on them... And "too much" in this case meant that they were no longer allowed in any of the nations you wanted to use them in, since suspicion and banishment were tracked individually and were based solely on who the evidence-gathering agents felt they should alert.
This also made The Flesh incredibly useful for subterfuge, interestingly enough... Any hexes the Flesh covered was considered its own nation, and that nation was inherently hostile to all enemy agents. Meaning they'd never investigate locations that required pathing through Flesh-controlled spots, and couldn't chase your agents into those territories.
In Forbidden, back in the beta test, I just got the overpowered one-time vampire lady to show up, handed her the utterly game-breaking rats ability, and had her murder people to the point where the heroes were so obsessed with running to die by her hand that they refused to do anything else against my holdings.
Post by: axiomsofdominion on June 15, 2022, 07:38:24 pm
Yeah, more politics (which was incredibly opaque if you didn't know how it worked, and then super useful and actually pretty straightforward once you did), and it was actually possible, albeit difficult, to do stuff in secret.
Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.
Oh the profile-menace system from That Which Sleeps? Did SBtT2 not have that? Haven't played in ages.
Nope. Instead, agents performing most types of tasks would leave behind "evidence" in the hex, which certain enemy agent types could spot and start researching. Once they'd finished researching a piece of evidence, they'd get a negative opinion modifier of the pertinent agent defined by the "evidence strength" of the given evidence. Then they'd usually start beelining towards the nearest lords and spending a few turns presenting this evidence to them, which would in turn make those lords hate your agent the same way. Eventually enough lords would be mad enough at your agent that the nation would banish them from their country, sending troops to attack them and causing attrition damage when inside that country's borders.
...however, there were a number of ways around this. Evidence got "cleaned up" when a particular agent spotted it, meaning that if you killed or corrupted that agent before they could spread the word, their information would die with them. And while creating/converting agents would result in evidence right off the bat, if you could clean up that loose end then the agent could run around completely without suspicion. And there were plenty of useful acts they could perform without generating new evidence.
Additionally, since agents were completely generic and didn't accrue levels/skills, they were more replaceable even if they *did* get too much heat on them... And "too much" in this case meant that they were no longer allowed in any of the nations you wanted to use them in, since suspicion and banishment were tracked individually and were based solely on who the evidence-gathering agents felt they should alert.
This also made The Flesh incredibly useful for subterfuge, interestingly enough... Any hexes the Flesh covered was considered its own nation, and that nation was inherently hostile to all enemy agents. Meaning they'd never investigate locations that required pathing through Flesh-controlled spots, and couldn't chase your agents into those territories.
In Forbidden, back in the beta test, I just got the overpowered one-time vampire lady to show up, handed her the utterly game-breaking rats ability, and had her murder people to the point where the heroes were so obsessed with running to die by her hand that they refused to do anything else against my holdings.
The Baroness is still strong but sounds like she got the nerf bat since you played.
I'm not a huge fan of profile/menace. I wonder why he changed it to a less engaging system.
Have you read the Axioms thread regarding intrigue?
Post by: Kagus on June 17, 2022, 05:50:26 am
I'm not a huge fan of profile/menace. I wonder why he changed it to a less engaging system.
I believe it was a combination of wanting to try something new, and elements of the community being firmly against the previous system and wanting something else like this. This was a discussion that cropped up numerous times on the Discord, with some occasionally very deep lines being drawn in the sand between members.
And no, haven't seen anything about Axioms, I usually only haunt the same 4-5 threads here nowadays :P
Post by: axiomsofdominion on June 17, 2022, 08:36:21 am
Yeah, before when summoning the Baroness, one of the abilities you could give her would fill any vacant henchman slots with 1/1 rats whenever starting combat. This ability singlehandedly broke the game and made her unkillable if you played with even the slightest amount of caution.I'm not a huge fan of profile/menace. I wonder why he changed it to a less engaging system.
I believe it was a combination of wanting to try something new, and elements of the community being firmly against the previous system and wanting something else like this. This was a discussion that cropped up numerous times on the Discord, with some occasionally very deep lines being drawn in the sand between members.
And no, haven't seen anything about Axioms, I usually only haunt the same 4-5 threads here nowadays :P
The Axioms thread is still on the front page. Barely. Gotta write an update soon. Basically fantasy Map&Menu game with focus on [ D ] [ I ] [ P ], [ D ]iplomacy(foreign affairs), [ I ]ntrigue(shadowy affairs), and [ P ]olitics(domestic affairs). Heavily social simulation driven layer on top of a detail strategy layer.
Post by: Frumple on June 17, 2022, 09:03:24 am
You'll want the nobbc tag when doing that particular thing, probably, otherwise the I catches the italics thing and makes your post look funny :V
or just use paren instead of brackets, that works too
Post by: scriver on June 17, 2022, 02:17:53 pm
It's pretty good. Unlike Hard West's slow rampup in supernatural stuff this one goes whole hog Demons on a Ghost Train in the very first mission, though. That's a bad sad, I really liked the slow pace in the first game.
Post by: Robsoie on June 19, 2022, 10:28:06 am
After reaching the main menu that look very fallout like, even with the green font.
Started the game, visual look very good, similar point of view as in Fallout 1/2 , that is quite nice, all of that to say that i was eagerly expecting a Fallout 1/2 - like.
But after a minute, it's not that at all, it's not a Fallout-like as it turns out that Beautiful Desolation is in fact a point&click game : with the same type of gameplay as the other games in this genre : find an item in the available location, find where to use it or how/where to combine it, repeat until you can progress more and move to next location .
With the main difference with other point&click games i have played is that the items and where to use them are highlighted so there should be less head scratching.
Story so far is intriguing, but disapointed that even if it's a good one (and it is) it's only a point&click game :/
Post by: Frumple on June 19, 2022, 10:33:55 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 19, 2022, 10:46:30 am
But it takes a lot out of Fallout when it comes to the interface
edit : some of the character design is rather wild
Spoiler: Mina (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on June 22, 2022, 07:43:45 am
And i had a lot of fun with this platformer/metroidvania game, the sprite artstyle is very well done and make things looking deceptively (because you'll miss a platform and die if you don't focus) joyous .
Excepted when characters talk to each other as by then they use a very different "generic anime-like" artwork than the sprites that to me is unfortunately not as good as them (those sprites all have a very lot of personnality in comparison), though it's a matter of taste i guess.
The level design was nice up to the couple of last islands in which it felt they took much less time to create them . The last one, that is air themed, is very noticably taking a huge dive in term of design especially the background, just nothing, some spike and chains you float around, then nothing much , then a couple of platforms, etc ...", but up to then it was visually very "agreeable".
In term of difficulty, it was very well done, there are some spots with a minor difficulty spike but fortunately they're short and once you're through you're good and with some of the new items you find it's fun coming back to a level and trying to get into previously unavailable/unreachable zones.
It's much closer to the difficulty curve of Mario 3 than Mario Lost Levels if you know what i mean.
But that is until you complete all the islands and then go after the final boss.
And the stage leading to that boss ... oh wow ... it's not a difficulty spike they decided to do, but make the whole very long levels as huge difficulty mountains with teeths made out of difficulty spikes :D . Yeah, there you go from a game that was overall on a Mario 3 difficulty spike right into Mario Lost Level worst stuff of nightmare.
Fortunately each 2 levels of that last stage you can enable a shortcut (so if you fail or things get on your nerves enough to stop playing you can skip those 2 levels you completed) but that's already super hard to complete those 2 levels on a row .
After completing the 3rd level of that stage and starting to want to throw my monitor through the window in the 4th level , i decided it was time to give up, as after checking a video to see if i was not just playing the whole thing wrong, i noticed there were much more of this kind of level to go through before completing that stage and reaching the boss ... then i thought maybe i would have actually more fun playing something i would actually enjoy ? Just maybe i'm not masochist enough for this last stage ?
Too bad for me for this last stage made of frustration built over frustration, it's like the guy that designed the whole game was fired and replaced by some insane designer :D just at the end because up to there it was a very fun metroidvania.
Post by: MCreeper on June 25, 2022, 08:07:50 am
A very solid RPGmaker piece that really overstays it's welcome. Like, a lot. It was inspired by Umineko a lot, so it carried over the main Umineko's schtick - wateryness. Characters are repeating things over and over again and there are loads of empty prattling. Half of the game is just fetch quests that are almost completely disconnected from main story (and dear god, screw that fishing minigame). Many dialogues are unscippable for "dramatic effect". Even without those story would quite drag on. There are four lenghty loops, then long awaited bonus chapter... that doesn't really tell anything new. Boo. And then there is happy end of the same size - one, but there should have been four.
Story itself is fine, but nothing special. Graphics are fine, but nothing special, except sheer quantity of character images. Music is fine, but nothing special, except again, sheer quantity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQraZa5i5sk). Overall, the game, rather uniquely for this genre, took quantity over quality. But if you ever wanted an RPGmaker "horror" the size of a long visual novel... :P
EDIT: Words in brackets on top of the post are mostly an unrelated joke about myself. Even when i try to praise a thing, it often comes out as a long list of flaws that probably leaves the reader scratching his head about why i would even recommend it. Not this time, though. Only really praise-worthy thing there, i feel, is Ashe in his own chapter. Finally, for once, a clown that is consistently funny instead of annoying!
Post by: Robsoie on June 27, 2022, 04:13:19 am
And wow, it's hard to understand how can a game be that good and that crap at the same time, it's incredible.
Spoiler: own review (click to show/hide)
So in conclusion, you have a masterpiece of FPS linear gameplay , that is really good, but sadly features one of the worst crap of "relatable" storytelling
Post by: Chiefwaffles on June 27, 2022, 05:54:22 am
snipI… really have to ask. Why the strange assumption that every story beat was done with the sole intention of making characters relatable?
Post by: Robsoie on June 27, 2022, 06:28:53 am
Quote
The team attempted to develop Blazkowicz into a character that players could relate to, as they felt that players are generally unable to relate to video game protagonists. "The goal is not to have a protagonist that's so neutral that you can project yourself into them; the goal is to have a protagonist that is so relatable that you become them", said Matthies. They tried to make players become "emotionally in sync" with Blazkowicz, using the morality choice in the game's prologue to do so.
Except at no time you feel in sync emotionally in any ways with whatever they're doing with the main character, it's why i insist on this "relatable" because you see their attempts in all those cutscenes hilariously failing everytime.
... out of the time he finally get back into being conscious again in the sanatorium, just in time to kill some nazis again, at least this part was very well done and ... relatable.
Post by: Mephansteras on June 27, 2022, 11:11:56 am
Basically, you have three heroes and have to defend a town against swarms of monsters every night. During each day phase you can build stuff (buildings or defensive structures), level up your heroes, buy equipment, and the like.
The heroes ostensibly have melee, ranged, and magic as their archetypes but really you can build most heroes in any direction. And, in fact, each hero has two weapon slots that you can swap between so I often give everyone at least one ranged or magic option.
So far I've just been trying to beat the first town (well, non-tutorial town). You get 5 normal nights and then a huge boss fight at night 6. The ramp-up in the boss fight is huge, and I have not even come close to being able to beat that yet. Which I assume unlocks the next town, so it makes sense.
It's a rogue-like, in the sense that each run gets you unlocks that help future runs (and often the current run). I assume based on how the runs have been going that I'll need to unlock a bunch of stuff before I'll be strong enough to beat the first boss.
In any case, the combat is fun, the pacing is pretty good, and I keep unlocking new stuff to play with. 11 hours in and still lots of fun!
Post by: Magmacube_tr on June 27, 2022, 07:26:48 pm
It is a minimalist god sim done right. It is cute and random, yet diverse enough in the tools it gives, and very capable of generating compelling stories.
If anything, just follow one random soldier of a random village of a random kingdom. The soldier may be a sixty year old war veteran or a nineteen year old idiot who is about to die young. Then just wait and watch as he gets killed by a soldier from another kingdom. The follow cam switches to the killer, so you start following that one as he goes around.
You can continue like this for in-game centuries, from one soldier to another, until inevitably one of the soldiers just die of old age.
Post by: Iceblaster on June 28, 2022, 02:49:02 pm
I really like this game called Worldbox.
It is a minimalist god sim done right. It is cute and random, yet diverse enough in the tools it gives, and very capable of generating compelling stories.
If anything, just follow one random soldier of a random village of a random kingdom. The soldier may be a sixty year old war veteran or a nineteen year old idiot who is about to die young. Then just wait and watch as he gets killed by a soldier from another kingdom. The follow cam switches to the killer, so you start following that one as he goes around.
You can continue like this for in-game centuries, from one soldier to another, until inevitably one of the soldiers just die of old age.
Yeah it's honestly one of the more satisfying god games imo bc it can just be the standard sandbox stuff, or you could have really neat stuff like the above without having to worry about the game not supporting it as much bc you aren't trying to blow everything up.
Post by: Kagus on June 28, 2022, 04:33:18 pm
It's cool stuff! I love the biome update.
Post by: Folly on June 29, 2022, 12:02:00 am
Been playing a fun little turn-based tactical town defense game called The Last Spell.
I caved and bought this.
I was skeptical at first because of the basic pixel graphics, but this game has real meat on its bones. Great music, interesting lore, and meaningful character customization.
What I really appreciate is that I get to feel powerful, but not overpowered. My first game I had a tank who could shrug off most attacks, but had trouble killing fast enough to keep the horde at bay. A mage who could nuke down large groups or do huge damage to single targets, but struggled against multiple small groups of enemies. And my archer could snipe dozens of enemies in a single turn, but her arrows bounced harmlessly off shielded and armored opponents.
Together, they could cover each other's weaknesses. But then the creepers started coming from three different directions at once, forcing me to split my defenders and leaving them exposed to their weaknesses.
Still, I was feeling pretty cocky as the first boss succumbed to a combination of poison and focused magic blasts.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Thrain on June 29, 2022, 06:00:42 pm
Anyhow that's my bad pitch for a great game, super fun if that is the kind of game you are enjoy!
Post by: Mephansteras on June 29, 2022, 06:40:52 pm
Still, I was feeling pretty cocky as the first boss succumbed to a combination of poison and focused magic blasts.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Yeah, actually winning that boss fight is rough. I'm on run #7 now and getting closer but the enemies get harder every run so I'm still not quite there yet.
Spoiler: Hints (click to show/hide)
Post by: Folly on June 29, 2022, 07:49:39 pm
Yeah, actually winning that boss fight is rough. I'm on run #7 now and getting closer but the enemies get harder every run so I'm still not quite there yet.
I just won on my second run.
Something important that I don't think the game tells you, it's instant victory when the boss dies; you don't actually need to clear every enemy on the map.
I had hordes closing in on my Mana Ring from all sides and knew I wouldn't last much longer, so I just sent all my heroes at the final boss and burned their action points to bring her down. It was such a relief to watch all the mobs fall in unison and cut to victory scene.
Getting infrastructure on the first few nights seems to be important. Build gold mines first, then use the gold to get more workers and then scavenger huts. Then you should have plenty of materials to pile on defenses later, and gold to buy stuff in the shop. And do check the shop each day! A few expensive weapons and armors will really help your heroes keep 1-shotting things. And potions and scrolls are both reusable, so make good use of them!
Post by: Mephansteras on June 29, 2022, 09:11:48 pm
Yeah, I learned that reading some stuff yesterday. Probably could have won my 2nd or 3rd run if I'd known that, but I spent too long trying to clear lesser enemies and it never worked.
Ah, well, I'm compensating for the ramped up difficulty pretty well now, so I expect I'll get a win as soon as I can get some decent item luck.
Post by: Iduno on July 01, 2022, 02:09:22 pm
I run as Moze, the gunner with a mech. Each skill tree has a weapon you can equip on the mech, up to two total equipped at once, can do two of the same. They are a minigun, a railgun, a rocket pod that fires 3-6 rockets, and a teddy bear that pilots for you.
I am suddenly curious what happens when I equip 2 of the teddy bear pilots and no other weapon.
Post by: dragdeler on July 02, 2022, 02:19:37 am
Post by: Aoi on July 02, 2022, 07:02:53 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on July 03, 2022, 05:47:34 pm
Post by: Frumple on July 03, 2022, 06:43:15 pm
Post by: n9103 on July 04, 2022, 09:30:58 am
I remember having fun with the HoMM2-like gameplay with completely different combat. That latter part definitely took some getting used to, but having a lot of experience with the early HoMM games definitely helped.
I enjoy the most of the art, as it's definitely reminiscent of HoMM1/2. The overall style could use some work to make the terrain art distinctly different from the interactibles (soft borders on the terrain, harder ones on the items?).
Edit: Mistaken game being discussed. Also, after seeing they're doing a paid DLC before finishing the core game makes me retract my endorsement.
Post by: Robsoie on July 04, 2022, 09:40:36 am
Hopefully they'll fix that problem.
Post by: Il Palazzo on July 04, 2022, 02:02:52 pm
There's a demo of it I think.Doesn't seem to be the case. Your memory must be all topsy-turvy, like. My money is on you have it confused with Songs of Styx.
Post by: n9103 on July 04, 2022, 02:47:27 pm
Post by: a1s on July 04, 2022, 03:02:30 pm
Also, after seeing they're doing a paid DLC before finishing the core game makes me retract my endorsement.Hero's Hour is fully complete. And they have a really nice demo with lots of gameplay.
Post by: E. Albright on July 06, 2022, 12:47:53 am
Post by: a1s on July 06, 2022, 06:24:13 am
And there's an Android version, meaning you can play on your commute.
Post by: Aoi on July 06, 2022, 07:48:15 am
that one online text-based AI-in-charge-of-a-colonyship-full-of-sleepers game
Seedship?
If you like that kind of a thing, you might want to give Away Team (I know I've seen it in a few Itch.io megabundles, not sure if it was in this latest one as well) a shot; it's another cold colony ship text-based game where you control a team of people who are awake tasked with finding a place for the ship land. Each character has their own traits, which affect some kind of RNG rolls that happen-- though I'm not sure how on earth I once had a guy in a wheel chair survive jumping from one section of a crumbling station to another, while the marine failed it.
Note that I'm not actually sure if it even has a "and we found a new homeworld for humanity" kind of an ending. The best (and furthest) endings I ever got were either
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: a1s on July 06, 2022, 08:15:45 am
If you like that kind of a thing, you might want to give Away Team (I know I've seen it in a few Itch.io megabundles, not sure if it was in this latest one as well)Is it The Away Team (https://underflow-studios.itch.io/the-away-team)? or Away Team (https://doublesquare.itch.io/away-team)? That second one is free and the first one is in a different abortion bundle (https://itch.io/b/1471/worthy-of-better-stronger-together-for-reproductive-rights) (or, if you hate human rights, it's also on sale for 4 bucks)
Post by: Robsoie on July 06, 2022, 08:22:00 am
Post by: a1s on July 06, 2022, 08:30:02 am
Post by: Aoi on July 06, 2022, 08:32:53 am
If you like that kind of a thing, you might want to give Away Team (I know I've seen it in a few Itch.io megabundles, not sure if it was in this latest one as well)Is it The Away Team (https://underflow-studios.itch.io/the-away-team)? or Away Team (https://doublesquare.itch.io/away-team)? That second one is free and the first one is in a different abortion bundle (https://itch.io/b/1471/worthy-of-better-stronger-together-for-reproductive-rights) (or, if you hate human rights, it's also on sale for 4 bucks)
Wasn't there a Star Trek game named Away Team too ?
Who'd've guessed; Away Teams come in six-packs... ::)
The one I was referring to is the one labelled The Away Team... though if you look at the logo, it says Away Team, without the 'the', despite the URL and some developer-produced materials having it. On the other hand, the logo also has the subtitle of Lost Exodus, which makes it clearer, I suppose.
The link again, to remove ambiguity: https://underflow-studios.itch.io/the-away-team
Post by: Robsoie on July 06, 2022, 08:49:11 am
Quote
However, others were less positive. There was criticism of the linear storyline, with IGN comparing the game to the X-COM franchise saying that Away Team didn't allow for any customisation and the pre-made characters had no impact on the storyline. Because of this, the review also criticised the role-playing experience of the game, saying that "Even a game like Panzer General provides more role-playing than Away Team."
Computer Games Strategy Plus also compared the game to X-COM, with elements of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines added. It said that the lack of artificial intelligence meant that the need to pause the game repeatedly to give commands resulted in order to allow the characters to fight back against attacks.
GameSpot called that lack of artificial intelligence a "giant step back from the real-time combat in X-COM: Apocalypse".
The Washington Post found that the characterisation was lacking compared to Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force.
Made me wish there was an openxcom mod, as thinking about it the Star Trek setting would fit very well : many documented hostile or friendly species with their own quirks and "powers", equipment and items that would fit lot of researches, different type of craft for interception or transport, replacing the world map with space sectors, etc...
Post by: Chiefwaffles on July 06, 2022, 09:02:02 am
But I really just can't. Space Exploration should be an insanely cool mod. And I'm sure it is. Different planets, making spaceships, space elevators, space stations, asteroid mining, all that stuff. But what gets me is the huge changes to every part of the game before you get to that stuff. The extreme majority of recipes have been heavily modified. So many things are changed.
And it's just. Nearly all bad changes! Complexity for complexity's sake and unbelievable amounts of busywork. Vanilla Factorio is very tightly designed and balanced and this mod just ruins it for motivations I have yet to discern. There's a pointless heavily expanded burner tier where every single thing you build has to be individually fed fuel to operate. You need to make burner assembly machines. Burner labs. Tons of research has been split up into having to effectively unlock each building that the old technology used to unlock; it feels like you have to research each tech and building and item individually. So many recipes have pointless extra steps added. Did something require stone before? Now it requires stone bricks! Why? Because complexity is fun! Want to make an inserter? Fuck you, now you have to make a burner inserter first! Same goes for making drills and assembly machines, you need to make their pointless burner versions first to make the actually-useful ones! And you get to deal with the extra pointless complexity in each useless added step of the way.
It's almost infuriating and it sucks that it's making the rest of the (as far as I can tell, having not played it) interesting mod effectively inaccessible. "Change for change's sake" is the motto of the mods as far as I can tell.
Post by: Aoi on July 06, 2022, 09:38:02 am
Putting it here since it's not really worth resurrecting the game's thread for it, but I've been trying (keyword on TRYING) to play Factorio. Specifically, Factorio with the Space Exploration mod (& required submods -- which I believe are mostly responsible for the changes I'm about to mention).
I just can't get into SE. I've done IR2 (expanded early game with a steam-powered phase between burner and electricity, slightly more complex mid/late-game), AngelBob's (greatly expanded mid/late game, plus entirely new avenues of production that let you bypass crude oil entirely), and even a third of Py (T2 Py is more complex than an entire vanilla setup... I gave up when I loaded a mature Py base and realized my system doesn't have the specs to support it), and SE just kind of makes me glaze over.
Post by: AzyWng on July 07, 2022, 06:41:23 am
Even worse in Knife of the Dunwall DLC. Overseers attacked a hideout of teleporting magic ninjas and won thanks to music boxes. Now they bunched up and wait for head teleporting magic ninja, who is the magicest of them all, to kill him. So why, for the love of god, they spin the handle only when they see you directly? (Because devs didn't want to program new behavior just for DLC :P ) They can spin it constantly, but only in set pieces with captive ninjas. Sort of applies to main game overseers too, but there it is just bonklers.
Just a comment - the music box switches off all powers when active and can also damage and push a player.
So having a suspicious overseer become a primary target for bullet/bolt application sounds both interesting and unpleasant, if admittedly more realistic than someone only turning the crank right when they see the player.
Post by: Folly on July 07, 2022, 06:06:42 pm
It's a co-op game played in short rounds, where you are a Blacksmith girl slapping together weapon parts for picky and impatient customers, with the goal of earning enough money to buy yourself a cute hat.
It's pretty amusing. Price tag is Free, download size is small. Give it a shot.
Post by: Kagus on July 09, 2022, 12:55:52 pm
Turns out: It is. Got right back into it and set about digging my way through the campaign again after all these years... And, just this evening, finally rounded off the last couple Northern Expansion quests, which I think marks the very first time I've ever completed every single mission in the campaign without using cheats a single time.
Sure, I did the cheese strat for Legendary Heroes... But, seriously, screw that mission :P
After the madness of that and Valley of Serpents, Vigil seemed like a cakewalk in comparison. Spires was a bit finicky, but still ended up getting sorted without too much bother. Day of Reckoning still kicked my ass a fair bit too, until I learned the trick about phantoms that saved my bacon
Post by: axiomsofdominion on July 09, 2022, 02:28:04 pm
Been kicking around on a bit of a nostalgia bent recently, so I ended up reinstalling Majesty and seeing if it was still fun.
Turns out: It is. Got right back into it and set about digging my way through the campaign again after all these years... And, just this evening, finally rounded off the last couple Northern Expansion quests, which I think marks the very first time I've ever completed every single mission in the campaign without using cheats a single time.
Sure, I did the cheese strat for Legendary Heroes... But, seriously, screw that mission :P
After the madness of that and Valley of Serpents, Vigil seemed like a cakewalk in comparison. Spires was a bit finicky, but still ended up getting sorted without too much bother. Day of Reckoning still kicked my ass a fair bit too, until I learned the trick about phantoms that saved my bacon
Still waiting for someone to take Majesty 1 and make a proper sequel. Deeper guilds, maybe some extra resource/citybuilding, more enemies, a more detail hero system.
Majesty 2, Driftlands, etc all didn't quite get there.
Post by: Akura on July 09, 2022, 04:15:05 pm
Anyways. Update 11 for Blade & Sorcery out. Major overhauls, especially to the player home. There is a tutorial now, which takes place on(a different part of) the home map. There's a new inventory system that, while neat, is a pain to use. You have to jam your hand into your chest, hold the magic menu button to open it, twist your hand to select, and grip to take. One item that's always available is the zipline tool. Using that near the end of the tutorial, where you zipline down to your house, I nearly died(and nearly shat myself) when it came loose off the rope and I fell.
Along with Gravity, Fire and Lightning now have dual-hand effects. Fire is supposed to be a big explosion, while Lightning is supposed to be an electric beam, but I haven't found out how to fire off either one. Gravity can also be used to slow your fall by holding it behind you. They did not, however, fix my most favorite glitch of all that let's you fly while holding onto a corpse's throat and one hand, and Gravity-TKing their leg with another.
Supposedly, enemies have better attack animations and flow between them, but I've seen them derp out more often than not. Maybe I'm used to the Medieval Mega-Pack weapons, but it feels like all my weapons have blunted edges.
The new home map looks great. The house itself is the same, but now there's a massive outdoor area to explore. The only bad part is that you actually do have to go outside to reach the level select map, as it's no longer in the house.
Post by: Uristides on July 09, 2022, 04:41:30 pm
My only complaint so far are the goddamn power grid system. The connections it makes are way too chaotic, and the power connectors(the game's equivalent to power poles) always feel like they are 1 grid square short of connecting to the next one, making you build two of them instead.
I really like this game called Worldbox.Picked it up to help me procrastinate at work. Quite good stuff, I think it gets as close to "hands-off dwarf fortress" as I've ever seen. My only grievances are that orcs are way too overpowered and having to populate the world by hand wrecks my right hand. Very excited to see where development for it goes, especially wishing for more QoL and legends-like stuff being introduced.
It is a minimalist god sim done right. It is cute and random, yet diverse enough in the tools it gives, and very capable of generating compelling stories.
If anything, just follow one random soldier of a random village of a random kingdom. The soldier may be a sixty year old war veteran or a nineteen year old idiot who is about to die young. Then just wait and watch as he gets killed by a soldier from another kingdom. The follow cam switches to the killer, so you start following that one as he goes around.
You can continue like this for in-game centuries, from one soldier to another, until inevitably one of the soldiers just die of old age.
Post by: Frumple on July 09, 2022, 04:51:54 pm
Driftlands is in the same setting as Majesty?Not the same setting, but the gameplay is similar, yeah. Game itself is... it's alright? Majesty was better, tho'.
Post by: axiomsofdominion on July 09, 2022, 07:55:46 pm
Driftlands is in the same setting as Majesty?Not the same setting, but the gameplay is similar, yeah. Game itself is... it's alright? Majesty was better, tho'.
The Island system and some of the spells in driftlands are awesome. Mounts are cool. Otherwise Majesty is superior. Better style on graphics, better guilds, better enemies. More complex economy. The citybuilding in Driftlands is my least favorite kind though I like the concept in the abstract. Honestly Driftlands could have been so good. As is it is barely better than my open source GlestAE fork that built on Majesty. Actually given a few months to polish that I'd prefer it over Driftlands generally. Again, discounting the islands thing which is pretty cool.
Post by: MrRoboto75 on July 11, 2022, 03:59:47 pm
Its like if Earthbound and Yume Nikki had a kid; the game is half that earthbound/undertale "that's weird" brand of humor yet the other half is a creeping dread of wrongness. A lot of it is characters dealing with loss, friends drifting apart, apparently the main character was in some sort of depressive stupor for four years. Also a theme of overcoming phobias, ironic for a horror game. 75% of the game is in the main character's dream world, the rest in the "real world."
I haven't gotten stuck yet, though the last two bosses I barely got passed, like "I'm at 3hp, the party's dead, if this hit doesn't drop them it's over" close. Half the party's underleveled, as bosses give gobs of XP but if you're toast you don't get any. Part of it was dodging random encounters, random enemies would often be able to two-shot your characters so it hardly seemed worth bothering with unless you halt the flow of the game to spam the save points for free party health/mana refills.
Absolute banger boss themes tho
Post by: Kagus on July 12, 2022, 06:23:48 am
Quote
WorldBox
Cute and good fun, but still a little lacking in depth at the moment despite the plethora of random/attainable traits on mooks. Definitely looking forward to it getting a little more solid as time goes on, but even now it's a fun distraction to just blow stuff up for a while.
Fun fact: Dragons can be afflicted with the zombie virus, and when they turn their fire traits all get swapped for acid variants and they start breathing acid gas on things. Which can even cause wasteland biome to crop up!
Bizarrely, despite the many (and at times rather egregious) achievements ingame, this somehow isn't one of them.
Post by: AlStar on July 13, 2022, 10:43:06 am
I answered the prompts as I imagine I would have, if put in that situation, and ended up with 'Boring Cop', which actually gets pleasingly meta near the end, with your character remarking that "I always seem to pick option 'D' when these kinds of things show up." I'm already planning on another playthrough where I go hardcore communist or capitalist, just to see where that takes me.
Your partner, Kim, is just the best guy ever. The way he reacts to you is just perfect, and it honestly made me, the player, happy when he approved of my in-game actions.
Post by: a1s on July 13, 2022, 11:25:25 am
Post by: Frumple on July 13, 2022, 11:42:55 am
E: Cheers for taking the appropriate next step :V
Post by: Akura on July 15, 2022, 06:41:19 pm
I didn't know it beforehand, but hearing Moxxie's voice as the main protagonist makes my soul smile.
Post by: Aoi on July 15, 2022, 08:12:19 pm
Conceptually, it should be interesting-- it's like taking Majesty's hands-off style of play and giving it a roguelite metagame, with unit customization via assembly of bodyparts that are loot. Except it just doesn't seem to come together for me.
Has anybody else tried it and can weigh in on if I'm just missing something fundamental to the experience?
Post by: Frumple on July 15, 2022, 08:26:27 pm
Post by: Robsoie on July 17, 2022, 11:49:43 am
Quickly people noticed there was something wrong, apparently whoever at Firaxis and 2K is tasked to make or maintain their game release decided to take an older build (before some bugfixing patches) of XCOM2 without checking twice and uploaded it to the epic store.
And because they couldn't care about the unfortunate people that purchased the game there instead of steam or gog, they never patched it up to their latest version.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/u8qhra/psa_epic_game_store_bugs_and_inconveniences/
The most obvious bug is in VIP missions in which the objective simply spawn outside of the level and so can never be reached. But some people posted a workaround :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/u6b1at/rescue_vip_from_advent_vehicle_mission_vehicle/
For a different game, but the problem is very similar , a developer that do not care at all to check or fix their mistakes, i spotted some people reporting that the game "Bloodbowl 1 Chaos Edition" on gog has been bugged since its release on that store , the major one being that player turns are locked (regardless of your settings) to 40 seconds only even when playing vs AI.
https://www.gog.com/forum/blood_bowl_series/blood_bowl_chaos_edition_bug_issues/page1
Bug that does not exist anymore in that game on the other stores because the developers patched it, but they never did on the gog version in several years.
So be sure to know of those problems in case you're thinking of buying that game on gog.
Post by: Robsoie on July 19, 2022, 09:18:13 am
The base game also recieved an update adding some stuff
Spoiler: changelog (click to show/hide)
Post by: Niveras on July 20, 2022, 11:08:07 am
I really can't decide how I feel about Necrosmith.I tried it for about an hour but I felt the frequency of enemy waves vs. how many monsters I could create (both in terms of parts and mana) vs. how much I had to micromanage put me off.
Conceptually, it should be interesting-- it's like taking Majesty's hands-off style of play and giving it a roguelite metagame, with unit customization via assembly of bodyparts that are loot. Except it just doesn't seem to come together for me.
Has anybody else tried it and can weigh in on if I'm just missing something fundamental to the experience?
What few monsters I could create tended to get themselves steamrolled before they could destroy lairs, and I couldn't micro them because I had to constantly keep 1 strong minion on micro near my castle to efficiently deal with the enemy waves. Maybe that opens up as you unlock more gold-progression stuff but I didn't feel like grinding to solve that.
Post by: MCreeper on July 21, 2022, 05:37:06 pm
I don't really play the game, but watching this slow-burning dumpster fire of a development is... why, infuriating. ::) :P ;D :( >:(
Post by: E. Albright on July 21, 2022, 05:45:42 pm
Post by: Kagus on July 23, 2022, 04:32:07 pm
There are definitely still issues there... Some of the mechanics/interactions are a bit opaque and I'm still at a stage where I feel like I'm not doing anything right, with all the options available. And some parts of balance are certainly not, well, balanced...
...but more than anything else, I still can't get over just how gorgeous this game is at times. The series has always had incredible art direction for their environments, and even the random maps can end up spitting out some very pretty landscapes. But with a bit of a guiding hand putting things together, such as in the campaign, and it becomes outright stunning. And I love the feature that lets you zoom out to a simplified "paper" map, where I only just recently noticed that they took the time to put in "hand-drawn" graphics for each climate's version of a given feature. Heck, even the "impassable mountain" tiles which are just used as a not-so-invisible wall in scenarios have their own little variation on the normal mountain graphics to make them stand out.
And then... In the leader designer, the halfling folds his arms behind his back, resulting in their flesh flensing off the bone and stretching out into jagged wings of skin. Mistakes were made.
Post by: Frumple on July 23, 2022, 05:30:22 pm
Post by: Kagus on July 24, 2022, 03:55:14 am
Post by: AlStar on July 26, 2022, 01:41:16 pm
Picked up Library of Ruina from the latest card-builder bundle from Humble.
The story's a little out there - you're playing as a group of 'librarians' (plus an everyman who got stuck in the middle through apparent happenstance) who send out invitations to people to come try their luck in the library for fame and fortune... then you kill them and turn their memories into books.
Your units get stronger by equipping pages from these books, which are either individual moves, or even an entire new body for that librarian to inhabit, which usually comes with increased stats and/or special abilities.
Oh, and it's set in the world of Lobotomy Corporation, so as you grow out the Library you also deal with the Lovecraftian horrors from that game.
I'm enjoying it; would recommend.
Post by: Iduno on July 26, 2022, 02:53:29 pm
I'm still using the starter characters, because the rest are expensive (buy them instead of upgrading between runs), take some getting used to or a decent part of a run to power up, and don't seem to have as good of base stats as the first starter character (hp, speed, and damage stats seem to be a balancing tool based on how good your weapon is, but if you ignore the base weapon, good stats and some luck will work very nicely together).
It's also interesting that running the endless mode gets you worse rewards than going through the single scenario repeatedly. It's early access and hopefully there will be more scenarios added.
If anyone else has played, what are your favorite collaborations? I'm running Fujoshi (book+axe), Elite Cooking (lava+spiders), light beam (glowstick+fan), and breathe-in Asacoco (tail+bomb box). I try for the first 2 first, because defensive powers are nice, especially early in a run when you aren't just walking around destroying everything.
Edit: The light beam and breathe-in (molotovs) seem bad, because they make it hard to see what's going on. Just a screen full of lights. But there isn't a box+glowstick combination.
Post by: Frumple on July 26, 2022, 04:53:59 pm
Of the second set of characters, the feather and the leaf ones actually have genuinely really good main weapons -- they both gain homing on final upgrade, and will start to seriously carry their weight. Dice chick is probably one of, or the, strongest for an endless run -- her passives really take off after a while. Of the first set, the very first one has a pretty bleh primary but her puppy dog is probably one of the best passive effects in the entire game, since it runs around and picks up XP for you. Scythe chick will probably end up nerfed -- you can just about hit endless using just her primary weapon right now, it plus her passives are very, very strong at the mo'.
There's definitely other levels planned. Game's twitter says next update will be sometime in august, iirc.
Post by: Iduno on July 26, 2022, 07:35:15 pm
Picked up Library of Ruina from the latest card-builder bundle from Humble.
Sounds good. If only there were non-Steam options.
Of the second set of characters, the feather and the leaf ones actually have genuinely really good main weapons -- they both gain homing on final upgrade, and will start to seriously carry their weight.
Mumei (feather) was the one I was thinking of when I said some take a bit of time to become good. 7 levels in one particular skill isn't always fast, but that and 1 in Friend (about as good as the dog) is quite nice.
Post by: Il Palazzo on July 27, 2022, 05:45:32 pm
Picked up Library of Ruina from the latest card-builder bundle from Humble.Yeah, a whole lot out there. It's confusing af. The logic behind how it all is supposed to gel together keeps eluding me. Half of the time I don't know why or what I'm doing. I mean, I get it in the game-y sense: click here to get this to happen. But the fluff facade slapped on the mechanics is ill-fitting, to say the least.
The story's a little out there
People turn into books. You use books to send invitations. You also burn books to gain cards. And you equip books to change how you look. Why any of that? What's the logic? Who knows. It's books, man! Go with the flow!
It's a whole string of loosely connected concepts that you're asked to check out your common sense for in quick succession.
People act all cheerful and innocuous before deciding to get murdered. - 'Hello, I hear I can find some nice books here' - 'Yes indeed. Do proceed this way, my assistant will promptly kill you all' - 'Oh, how excellent. Cheerio'. Sort of how it plays out so far.
Is anyone told they'll have to fight for their life in the invitations? No. But it doesn't register with the main characters that they're running an elaborate entrapment scheme preying on random people.
It's all a bit off.
The anime aesthetic is kinda grating too.
Post by: Robsoie on July 28, 2022, 09:38:51 am
And wow, the potential for this is insane.
At its base, you're in a large siberian area in which have to survive temperature and hunger like in a simple survival game, you'll have to hunt, making fire, collect items, craft more stuff, level up your Lara etc... until you collect a specific amount of artifacts and escape the area, of course there are also enemies and various other dangers.
All the while time is moving on through day and night
Quote
The map is a procedural generated forest filled with tombs caves and other locations to be scavenged for relics. According to Crystal Dynamics, the size of the map is made up of 100 hexagonal segments, with 60 foot sides to each hexagon.
The map is filled with enemies such as predatory animals and Trinity soldiers, who become even more deadly as the days pass, to the point where the getting food will mean the player has to fight wolves or a bear.
It's tons of fun and super replayable.
Post by: Iduno on July 28, 2022, 11:38:36 am
At its base, you're in a large siberian area in which have to survive temperature and hunger like in a simple survival game, you'll have to hunt, making fire, collect items, craft more stuff, level up your Lara etc... until you collect a specific amount of artifacts and escape the area, of course there are also enemies and various other dangers.
All the while time is moving on through day and night
That does sound good.
Post by: Robsoie on August 01, 2022, 08:31:18 am
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/been_charged_twice_and_still_dont_have_my_games/page1
Post by: Aoi on August 01, 2022, 01:46:50 pm
Frankly, my favorite entry of the ~10 horde survival games I tried last night.
Backpack Hero... another pre-release/Steam demo, except this like Luck Be a Landlord: The RPG. Effectively, you've got a Tetris-style inventory, and you're pulling from there to attack, use items, block, etc. The twist here is that your item positioning greatly impacts the effectiveness of an item. Boots benefit from having extra inventory slots above them; helmets must be in the top row, heavy items will drop to the bottom of your bag, etc. A more dramatic example? Cleavers are fairly weak, 1x1 weapons... but there are two rarer variations-- 'When used, use the adjacent above cleaver.' and 'When used, use all adjacent diagonal cleavers.'
Post by: JWNoctis on August 05, 2022, 10:14:47 am
It's basically a collection of eight different puzzle and programming games, some of which are visibly direct descendents of their early browser demos, and two of them are (again!) variations of solitaire. There's even a surprisingly immersive modeling sim in delicious 2D 8-bit colour pixels.
The polish is as always incredible, despite an installer size barely larger than that of TIS-100.
EDIT: Of course, most of them are also molar-breaking hard, and loading games one by one at dial-up speed brings back fond memories.
Post by: Rolan7 on August 05, 2022, 01:40:15 pm
Lots of other gems, plus their polished steam releases.
Post by: Egan_BW on August 05, 2022, 04:08:08 pm
Post by: Stench Guzman on August 05, 2022, 06:35:58 pm
Playing it for the first time. It's pretty good.
That is all.
Post by: Rolan7 on August 05, 2022, 06:45:21 pm
The polish is as always incredible, despite an installer size barely larger than that of TIS-100.Dang you weren't kidding, 157MB. A rare sight these days.
Post by: Great Order on August 08, 2022, 09:11:55 pm
As for the game itself...
It's nice and relaxing, which is why I've played it so much. I play it when I just want to chill, there's something nice to me about retreading known ground. The actual gameplay's simple, you're unpacking. You need to put things into the right place. However what the game does is actually follow a character, and you learn more and more about their life as you go through the years from 1997 to 2018. The first three stages are a nice, chill introduction, and the story picks up properly in the fourth stage. You don't learn about their life through written stuff or anything like that, you learn about it simply by virtue of *what* you're unpacking and where, and the places you're unpacking. For example...
Spoiler: I'd recommend not looking at this if you ever plan to play (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Even bigger spoilers (click to show/hide)
Overall, if you're willing to drop Ł15 for 3-4 hours of chill and wholesome fun, I'd advise it. If it sounds good but too expensive, I'd wait. If, like me, you can play the same relaxing game fifty times in a row without stuff changing, go and get it. The issue is I think most people fall into the second category, which is why I can't unequivocally recommend it.
Post by: JWNoctis on August 08, 2022, 11:33:48 pm
Very good games which are for people smarter than me. I played Mobius Front on the easy mode they had to add and I still never managed to finish it. v.vThat's one of their apparently not-as-well-received forays into the wargame genre. One reviewer described it as too hard for most, but not hardcore enough as regards its simplistic rules and mechanics for wargame grogs. The closest hardcore wargames with similar settings and style are the Flashpoint Campaigns series (not to be confused with the much-better-known Operation Flashpoint) and Armored Brigade, both Matrix/Slitherine stuff.
I've never got far in that, either. Infinifactory and Opus Magnum are a lot more accessible, at least in their main-story levels.
I know, right? All the assets are laid bare and not packed in any way as well, and close to half of that is the OGG audio soundtrack. I half expected MIDI at that size.The polish is as always incredible, despite an installer size barely larger than that of TIS-100.Dang you weren't kidding, 157MB. A rare sight these days.
Of all its eight games, 20th Century Food Court is probably my favourite so far, though it's starting to give me the infuriating feelings of trying to make square pegs fit into a round hole with an inflatable hammer, barely into the third row.
Post by: vjek on August 09, 2022, 09:00:42 am
A game called Noble Fates just caught my attention. It's a colony sim, coming to Steam EA December 14th.Been playing this one the past few days. It's got ~16 Z Levels below the embark level, and it has the equivalent of breaching the HFS/Circus too. Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold and Stone for mining. Wood, seeds, plants, farming, make your own weapons, armor, sell to traders, all that. As your Nobles become more prestigious, they want better stuff. You can build out of wood or stone, but some enemies use fire arrows and catapults. You decorate with cloth, wood, and stone. There are work rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, and the value of room quality. Carpets can be added on top of flooring. Drapes can be added on top of walls/doors/beds.
All the usual colony sim stuff seems to be here. Gather resources, build housing and storage and tradeskill places, keep people happy and defend your home from invaders.
There does seem to be fairly deep unit personality, with individuals having various preferences and remembering things that have happened to them.
The major gimmick here is that you can leave the eagle-eye view, or take a third person view over your leader, manually controlling them to gather resources or fight off invaders.
Looks like it could be fun! Going to keep an eye on this one as it launches.
There are strong likes and dislikes of and for every entity in the world, and the storyline is pretty entertaining.
Of particular interest is the way they present the Z Levels:
(https://i.postimg.cc/HjC4D45H/noble-fates-screenshot1.png) (https://postimg.cc/HjC4D45H)
When you take control of the leader, it's pretty much exactly how I would imagine a Dwarf walking around a dwarf fortress, in terms of first person perspective. The art style is cell shaded/cartoony, and it fits the light hearted narrative. Doors can be locked, but invader pathing is a bit different than DF. Even so, you can setup things like shooting galleries, murder holes, and similar for defense. You can, if desired, build everything on the surface, or simply build a stairway down, start digging, and build it all underground.
Also, there are hundreds of text files that comprise the configuration, and you can alter things like stack size, input to workbenches, outputs from workbenchs, inputs for item creation, outputs from salvage, opinion weights, racial and attraction parameters, how many seeds you get from crops, and how likely certain skills will produce Rare or Epic quality items. It has weddings, feasts, and you can offer serfdom to conquered invaders, or accept petitions to join your kingdom/colony. You can adjust how long it takes to create and/or learn things, and adjustment of things like XP per denizen is very straightforward in CE, if you're a fan of memory editing ala DFHack.
Anyway, I've found it very fun. 8)
Post by: Cthulhu on August 09, 2022, 06:08:29 pm
Last Call BBS 1.0 is out. Supposedly the very last game from Zachtronics.
It's basically a collection of eight different puzzle and programming games, some of which are visibly direct descendents of their early browser demos, and two of them are (again!) variations of solitaire. There's even a surprisingly immersive modeling sim in delicious 2D 8-bit colour pixels.
The polish is as always incredible, despite an installer size barely larger than that of TIS-100.
EDIT: Of course, most of them are also molar-breaking hard, and loading games one by one at dial-up speed brings back fond memories.
I love this game. I like how the presentation ties into the ideas behind it, the game is an old computer you get from a family member who used to be big into computers and the internet, but is moving on from that life, and the "story" elements are a little bittersweet with that, which is exactly the meta story too.
The games are mostly great. I'll list them with my thoughts.
Dungeons and Diagrams: This one's kind of like sudoku with a fantasy theme. You have a board with monsters and treasure chests, and have to place the walls of the dungeon according to a set of rules; monsters must be in a dead end, treasure chests must be in a 3x3 room, etc. I honestly can't do this at all, and I consider myself pretty good at sudoku. I beat the first puzzle and gave up on the second. I can't fault the concept though, my brain just doesn't run that way.
Chipwizard Professional: Integrated circuit design game, designed to look like a pirated CAD program. Build different circuits with metal traces and silicon. Very similar to Engineer of the People if you remember that from ye olden days. Not the hardest on the list, if you know how to build logic gates out of PNP and NPN you know mostly everything you need, but the playable space is extremely small and forces some non-linear thinking to build solutions that actually fit.
20th Century Food Court: This is a weird one, and the most "modern zachtronics" of the games. Set in the distant future where people go to mall food courts as a historical tourist attraction. Build automated production lines for stuff like nachos, soft serve, and hot pockets. Despite being in the future all programming automation is done with giant rack-mounted logic controllers that you wire together with headphone cables. This one's really fun, I like it a lot, and the aesthetic is very nice. Spoiler for one of the early puzzles, to give an idea of what I mean (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FZrVVDaXwAAZmQT?format=jpg&name=large)
Hack Match: I think this was in Exapunks? I didn't play that one. A japanese arcade game where you swap falling blocks to match 4 colors, with a versus theme; matching more than 4 blocks in one go damages your opponent for each block. Each enemy has an ability to turn blocks into garbage which is fixed by matching blocks next to them. Not super hard at first but ramps up big time, the final enemy can just turn your entire field into garbage.
The Forbidden Path: Bizarre cellular automata puzzle game. You play a black magic pilgrim seeking immortality through forbidden flesh magic. There is very little english text and none of it tells you how to play. I won't say anything else about it, experimenting and figuring it out yourself is half the fun and core to the Lovecraftian concept, the Great Work doesn't come with instructions.
Sawayama Solitaire: Just regular klondike solitaire, the kind that came with your computer. Three card draw and no re-stacking the deck makes it reasonably challenging, it's easy to put yourself in an unwinnable position, but once you've drawn the whole deck the deck slot is a free cell for one card. I dunno what else to say, it's solitaire.
Kabufuda Solitaire: Like Freecell but with Japanese kabufuda cards. Match 4 and place them on an empty cell to remove them (and the cell) from play. On higher difficulties you start with fewer free cells but unlock them when you remove a set from play. Pretty damn hard, requires a lot of thinking ahead and very economical movement.
Post by: Kagus on August 13, 2022, 04:11:11 pm
It's worse that the only in-game hints towards this being the case, and how to go about it, are ludicrously vague and unhelpful and under no reasonable circumstances would actually result in someone understanding what needs to be done. And making one mistake (not talking to a particular dark blob the first time you see it, or fighting the aforementioned boss) will permanently lock you out of that ending for the entirety of your run. So you've gotta be careful even in NG+, or else you'll have to plug through the entire game again in order to get another shot at it in NG+2.
It's downright insulting that even if you do everything perfectly and unlock the prerequisites for the true ending, the special boss won't spawn until the end of your NEXT playthrough.
Given that each NG+ cycle only lets you carry over your levels and skillpoints, and none of your weapons, equipment or consumables (including the finite hidden consumables that grant you +skillpoint when used, a resource otherwise only granted by defeating the bosses which are also naturally a finite resource. Better make sure to chow down before pushing the one button that ends the game!), you can't even zoom through the route faster than normal since you still have to run around to every nook and cranny getting your necessary items (not to mention your build) back.
Bah... Y'know, I really do like a lot of what Unworthy has to offer. But there are some truly hostile game development choices that were made along the way.
Post by: Aoi on August 14, 2022, 04:10:03 am
To the gameplay-- There's no energy system; it's straight up attack-and-response in 1v1 matches. Each card has a red/blue theme, with red generally being damage, and blue being generally support (surprise, surprise).
So what's major twist this offers? Every turn, there are three possible enemy counters, and they're red/blue themed as well... and you have to play one of your cards of a matching color to that counter. Once the turn resolves, the response flips over, with a different response and other color. Playing your cards require 1-3 responses of the appropriate color, so if you want to play a 3B card, if the current counters are BRB, then it's unusable. This means that you have to keep in mind what the enemy's six actions are, what your deck requires, and how they fit together.
Edit: In other news, opening a bold tag and closing an italics tag dun't werk. -_-
Post by: Akura on August 14, 2022, 06:04:31 pm
Also, some story stuff happened.
Spoiler: I haven't really followed the greater story, but... (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on August 14, 2022, 06:18:25 pm
I knew Twitter was a mistake.
Post by: King Zultan on August 15, 2022, 02:06:10 am
Post by: nenjin on August 15, 2022, 11:22:22 am
Newly released, published by Devolver Digital.
It's basically BoI meets the cult management elements of Cultist Simulator.
It's got two parts: one the dungeon crawl, the other the Cult management part.
It doesn't do either section to the 9s (one cannot really compete with the variety of BoI on first release), and the Cult Management part by and large takes the form of building a few buildings, upgrading a tech tree, and a lot of daily busy work like farming, cleaning up poop, giving sermons, claiming Divine Inspiration from shrines that your cultists power up for you.....
That said, it's hella addictive. The *pacing* is all there. The busy work is busy work but it's about as quick as something like farming can be. The combat in the dungeon is snappy and responsive with a good amount of crunch and screen shake to keep it exciting. There's not the depth of transformative elements like BoI but it's a solid framework for more to be added. And the fact the game operates on a day/cycle means you're always measuring the seconds, moving through a dungeon as fast as possible to get back to your cult, maximizing efficiency while you're at your base so you can leave them it in a good place, so you can go on another dungeon run....good stuff.
There's lots of flavorful cult management features too, like dissidents you have to deal with, burial, brainwashing, cannibalism, rituals....all the stuff you want out of a game about a cult.
I basically haven't stopped playing it since I installed it. One downside is that the tech tree for the cultists buildings, cult attributes (called Commandments) and your own character's tech tree are completed long before you've even cleared the initial 4 bosses and their regions. So that's a little disappointing, but understandable in a game where you're constantly amassing upgrade resources on a daily basis, and the game doesn't FORCE you to seek out the dungeon every day. So if you want to just sit around your base and manage and build things, you're still progressing. But do too much of that and you'll find there's not much left to advance while you still have a lot of the dungeon gameplay to look forward to.
Anyways, I think the price is ok for what you're getting at $25. It's a rock solid base of a game that's enjoyable right out of the box, and they're talking free DLC updates which is promising for the future. Right now the game just needs MOAR, but what it has is already quite excellent. The style of the game is cute/evil with pretty nice animations and a quirky, enjoyable soundtrack.
Post by: Niveras on August 16, 2022, 01:44:43 pm
Especially in a game like cult of the lamb, you'd think you could train some of your cult to go with you into the dungeons. I think Portia let you hire mercenaries to clear dungeons, unless I'm confusing that with something else entirely.
The question, of course, is how to balance it against simply playing the combat directly. For certain, it should be preferable to actually play though the game element as intended, this alternate path would only be intended for people who aren't so interested in combat elements of the game, without getting completely locked out of resources that can only be found through combat.
Post by: nenjin on August 16, 2022, 02:09:36 pm
That said, you can convert your followers into DEMONS that follow you around like a pet when you're in the dungeons.
But yeah. It's a weird oddity of the game that you have to balance dungeon delves with maintaining your village. Your cult can't seem to maintain the faith or keep shit running without you for more than 2 days, it seems, before real problems start to pop up.
Post by: Aoi on August 16, 2022, 03:30:24 pm
The problem is that in a lot of games, it's almost guaranteed to end up worse for you-- I think it was Planetfall where the combat autoresolve was so miserable that I could manually do battles with no losses that had effectively no chance of auto-wins.
Post by: Iduno on August 16, 2022, 05:37:20 pm
One thing I always felt missing from those "village simulators with combat" is a means to engage with the combat system without having to do so directly, necessarily. Basically hiring NPCs to actually do and tank the damage while you're there acting as support (probably activating healing/buff type spells and effects).
There was a game where you ran a store selling goods to adventurers, and could get better stuff to sell by doing the dungeon yourself. You could win by ignoring the dungeon entirely, and probably by ignoring the store entirely. But I don't remember the dungeon being very responsive, and store-management games only have so many playthroughs before you've done everything interesting.
Post by: n9103 on August 17, 2022, 03:42:40 am
Sounds sort of like Recettear, but I can think of a half dozen others that are in the same vein.One thing I always felt missing from those "village simulators with combat" is a means to engage with the combat system without having to do so directly, necessarily. Basically hiring NPCs to actually do and tank the damage while you're there acting as support (probably activating healing/buff type spells and effects).
There was a game where you ran a store selling goods to adventurers, and could get better stuff to sell by doing the dungeon yourself. You could win by ignoring the dungeon entirely, and probably by ignoring the store entirely. But I don't remember the dungeon being very responsive, and store-management games only have so many playthroughs before you've done everything interesting.
Post by: nenjin on August 17, 2022, 11:36:10 am
Games with Day/Night cycles and NPC aging just.....argh.
I'm about 60 days into this playthrough. I've buried close to 20 cultists (those left corpses at any rate heh) in that time. They grow old in the span of like 4 days, aging 25 years in a 4 day span.
I hate this disconnect, even though I know it's reality. It's almost always an issue of tweaking the value but man.....give me a game with a day night cycle where people don't age 10 years a day. It makes the whole mechanic just seem pointless. People can die in games for all sorts of reasons, but specifically aging and then dying just is never balanced against the day cycle of gameplay appropriately.
Post by: axiomsofdominion on August 17, 2022, 12:14:47 pm
Also, random pet peeve that CotL made me remember yet again....
Games with Day/Night cycles and NPC aging just.....argh.
I'm about 60 days into this playthrough. I've buried close to 20 cultists (those left corpses at any rate heh) in that time. They grow old in the span of like 4 days, aging 25 years in a 4 day span.
I hate this disconnect, even though I know it's reality. It's almost always an issue of tweaking the value but man.....give me a game with a day night cycle where people don't age 10 years a day. It makes the whole mechanic just seem pointless. People can die in games for all sorts of reasons, but specifically aging and then dying just is never balanced against the day cycle of gameplay appropriately.
There's virtually no game except like mp survival games that need a day night cycle or which a day night cycle makes sense. RTS for instance often try a day night cycle and then you farm like 2 food and it has been a week.
Post by: nenjin on August 17, 2022, 01:01:56 pm
It's really the intersection of "Days", and "Aging." No one is going to play a game for 54,000 in game days to see someone grow old, they want to see that mechanic realized sooner. So either the days have to speed up (not feasible for gameplay) or aging does. So people leverage aging instead. I think they just go overboard. Especially in games where NPCs can die from all sorts of factors, I think death from old age should be relatively rare. That way it's memorable. I stopped paying attention to my cultists in CotL for the most part because, eh, I'll recruit them and an hour later they'll be pushing up daisies. Them dying of old age is a mechanical inconvenience due to how it's designed, rather than a flavorful gamepaly mechanic.
Post by: Sirus on August 17, 2022, 01:10:15 pm
Maybe if they aged a "year" every two days, or had an average lifespan of 60 years before hitting Old rather than 40, it'd be more bearable.
Post by: Iduno on August 17, 2022, 07:09:48 pm
There was a game where you ran a store selling goods to adventurers, and could get better stuff to sell by doing the dungeon yourself. You could win by ignoring the dungeon entirely, and probably by ignoring the store entirely. But I don't remember the dungeon being very responsive, and store-management games only have so many playthroughs before you've done everything interesting.Sounds sort of like Recettear, but I can think of a half dozen others that are in the same vein.
Yes! That's the one.
Post by: Frumple on August 17, 2022, 08:03:47 pm
Post by: n9103 on August 17, 2022, 08:06:33 pm
Yes! That's the one.Cool. Glad to help.
Chantelise, a game by the same team, mostly forgoes the shop/merchant aspect in favor of much more interesting dungeon adventures. (as in the dungeon is more exciting than it was, not that the dungeon is more exciting than the rest of the game)
Post by: nenjin on August 17, 2022, 08:49:36 pm
I agree that the aging process in CotL needs to be slowed down some. I named my initial cultists after Discord buddies, but before long they started dying off one after another and I ran out of buddies.
Maybe if they aged a "year" every two days, or had an average lifespan of 60 years before hitting Old rather than 40, it'd be more bearable.
I think quite a few things in the game are over-tuned. And I think that goes along with the pace the game is trying to set. Like, I feel like you blaze through the Lamb's tech tree and commandments because there's SO MANY sources of faith and divine inspiration, just taking a little time off from dungeoneering gets you tons of upgrades. I really like CotL but I would take most of the systems at 20% slower speed. People don't age so fast, you aren't unlocking something new every single day and you're not "having" to go collect divine inspiration 3 to 4 times a day, not even bothering to assign anyone to actually worshiping. It's part of what gives the game its pacing and it's still pretty fun. But it's more on the twitchy side of the spectrum versus the chillaxed one. The only cultists I even deign to remember anymore or check up on what they've been up to are the ones I gave (what seems like the Eternal Life necklace) to. My first cultist got one and he's in his 90s now and still hasn't aged into the olds yet.
Post by: Sirus on August 17, 2022, 08:54:34 pm
Post by: nenjin on August 18, 2022, 10:14:19 am
Post by: Sirus on August 18, 2022, 10:22:40 am
So far the longest I've been able to be gone is a two-boss dungeon run.
Post by: nenjin on August 18, 2022, 10:30:55 am
About the only solution I've found is dose the cult with mushrooms and then immediately go on your excursion, and hope you make it back within two days before the mushrooms wear off.
Post by: Aoi on August 20, 2022, 03:57:29 am
Backpack Hero... another pre-release/Steam demo, except this like Luck Be a Landlord: The RPG. Effectively, you've got a Tetris-style inventory, and you're pulling from there to attack, use items, block, etc. The twist here is that your item positioning greatly impacts the effectiveness of an item. Boots benefit from having extra inventory slots above them; helmets must be in the top row, heavy items will drop to the bottom of your bag, etc. A more dramatic example? Cleavers are fairly weak, 1x1 weapons... but there are two rarer variations-- 'When used, use the adjacent above cleaver.' and 'When used, use all adjacent diagonal cleavers.'
Playing the updated EA version, instead of the Itch.io demo...
One of the new classes' basic mechanic is actually really nifty, and I feel like there's an entire game buried in its mechanic alone. (I also feel like I've seen something very similar before, but can't quite place it.)
Spoiler: Screenshot and explanation. (click to show/hide)
Though, one thing I do find kind of... almost offensive is that the default post-game endless mode becomes nigh mechanically impossible starting floor 15 or so; a run is officially over after the boss of floor 9.
Part of the problem is that curses (a negative item that you are forced to put into your inventory or take damage) never reset their damage counter-- eventually, they'll 1-shot you, or you'll be RNG'd to death because one particular curse can only be removed my medics, and there's no guarantee you're going to find one... I was running around with 16 inventory slots wasted because of that, but still alive, until...
Poison. I was fighting something that could inflict 23 points of poison a turn, uninterruptable (other than killing them), with 40hp, and poison penetrates all forms of defenses. There's something like ONE weapon that can remove 2 points of poison every time you use it, and a handful of consumables that can remove it all. Except it'll just reapply it next turn, So... yay... Note that there IS specifically an Endless Mode that has no poison or curses, but that doesn't feel right either, since curses are a very reasonable way to screw with the player's carefully constructed inventory... or take a reasonable damage hit. (Maybe let the medic reset the counter.)
Post by: Kagus on August 20, 2022, 07:55:49 am
Another weird thing is again related to the same exploration/experimentation aspect... Trying to actually talk about your experiences becomes extremely difficult if you don't want to A) Spoil something for someone, or B) Have something spoiled for you. So that's about as much as I can say.
So now here's some technically kinda spoilery ranting from someone who's had one standard victory and sub-30 hours of faffing around.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on August 20, 2022, 10:35:56 am
(I also feel like I've seen something very similar before, but can't quite place it.)It's just the old pipes type puzzle game. They've been around for a long time (earliest a half-hearted googling can find is 1989 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Mania)), and have both dedicated games for the mechanic as well as being a common mini-game in other games. Backpack hero has a neat implementation of it going on, but it's definitely not a new idea, heh.
Post by: nenjin on August 20, 2022, 12:50:33 pm
At the end of the day, winning CS comes down to two things in my mind: knowledge (which you largely own forever after your first win or near win) and trawling expeditions to find what you need. Repeated playthroughs of CS, that's what gets me. Where I know what I need and how I need to do it....but I have to run most/all the expeditions to find it.
My first win was Forge and I think it's fairly easy because it doesn't demand much of you in terms of upkeep. Unlike Grail.
Post by: Aoi on August 20, 2022, 01:49:52 pm
(I also feel like I've seen something very similar before, but can't quite place it.)It's just the old pipes type puzzle game. They've been around for a long time (earliest a half-hearted googling can find is 1989 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Mania)), and have both dedicated games for the mechanic as well as being a common mini-game in other games. Backpack hero has a neat implementation of it going on, but it's definitely not a new idea, heh.
I meant specifically as a RPG-esque combat mechanic... similar concepts are common as point-A-to-point-B puzzles (often lockpicking or circuitry), or as another riff on Pipe Dreams's arcade-style play, but I can't quite place where I've seen it as an optimization puzzle.
Post by: Robsoie on August 23, 2022, 04:43:21 am
Now Stasis follow the classic point&click system : move your mouse everywhere to not only read the description but to find which area of the screen can be interacted with , then find items and find where items can be used (and for a few case which item must be combined with which item) to find your way into new areas.
With said item use sometime being unfortunately not always very obvious , a problem of point&click, like this case that i had to google because i was stuck there :
Spoiler: that example (click to show/hide)
Fortunately the majority of the time the item used are making sense so you don't get stuck for too long on each puzzle situation.
Oh and you can run, thanks to the devs as in a point&click you very often move back&forth between areas to check if some newly discovered item will help with a puzzle , running around really helps to cut the back&forth time
Post by: Robsoie on August 24, 2022, 02:06:36 pm
Only a few times i was completely stuck and needed to google a solution to something blocking me without me seeing how to progress further (most of the time it was in fact me missing an item or a clue/pos-it on some wall/table/monitor prior the area where i was stuck).
It's also a large game, much larger and longer game than the free CAYNE (that is setup in the same universe) that is available on gog too.
And as expected it was very grim and very dark (even more than in CAYNE, that had its share of it), even the ending was making sure to kill any hope you had at finally getting out of the grim and the dark.
Unlike CAYNE in STASIS there's no joke (in CAYNE sometime despite her horrible condition and situation Hayley still made some jokes to try to cope with the horror) as John from the start is in a very bad condition and things go worse and worse until the ending that is in the "things always get worse" that is the STASIS universe constant :D
Anyways, if you're looking for a good point&click adventure i very heavily recommended it , BUT i must say that it is not for the faint of heart or people that have some depressive mood, because the setting is really "scifi horror" + "grim" + "dark" + "things get worse" + "there's never any hope" .
Oh and about the events and the ending and some things that seem to make no sense, there's something the dev mentionned but that you may have overlooked during gameplay , i sure overlooked it as i was too focused on solving the various puzzle stuff that were on my way :
Spoiler: John the main character (click to show/hide)
Post by: Great Order on August 24, 2022, 11:08:50 pm
https://orb.farm/
I like to just put it on when I'm in the mood to relax.
Post by: Iduno on August 25, 2022, 06:06:09 pm
I like the story, a bit, but more the worldbuilding. You get a feeling that the villains have a good point, and there really isn't a correct side who has the power to do anything. The worst parts seem like they were trying to be like Genshin when they shouldn't have, or are a lack of content because the game has been out less than a month.
Small, nice browser game where you have an orb that you can fill with water and make a small, very simple ecosystem in.
https://orb.farm/
I like to just put it on when I'm in the mood to relax.
I'm enjoying it. Stone builds shapes vertically (but falls), and wood just stays wherever you draw it. Everything else falls. And fish eat a lot.
Post by: Laterigrade on August 25, 2022, 08:07:15 pm
Post by: n9103 on August 25, 2022, 09:49:53 pm
I haven’t seen a Legends of Runeterra thread yet, but god this game is good. A completely, actually free to play CCGSo no Premium or MTX at all?
Post by: Uristides on August 26, 2022, 11:00:17 am
And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.
Post by: Robsoie on August 26, 2022, 03:56:12 pm
So far :
- for a 2D side scroller+platformer visuals are good , it really delivers very well the atmosphere.
- animations are very "janky", making the fist fighting really clunky and not really engaging in term of gameplay, later you'll get your hands on ranged weaponry but your character is stuck with fist fighting for a while from the start.
- there's some stealth, but it's unfortunately extremely basic as stealth is only possible if there's a special crate that allow you to hide behind, if that specific crate isn't there, there's no way (all the other crates are just eye candies) you can hide anywhere if there's not an upper or lower platform around (as it seems enemies can't see you on an upper or lower platform than where they are). You can insta kill someone from behind as long as you aren't seen, unless they're bigger/taller people or armored.
- performance is very odd, it's a 2D game with very few effects and very few enemy onscreen at the same time, and while most of the time it's running smoothly, there are many situations in which there's a very noticable performance problem, from what i see on changelogs that is fixed in patch v7 but sadly it has never be made available for the gog version.
- the story seems to be very good up to where i currently am, very cyberpunk and shadowrun-like, things you learn about your character and the surrounding people and situation make sense within this setting.
- there are some side quests and for some situation you are left with a few different way to solve them (at the very start to get out of the sewers by example)
- the game has excellent voice acting, that really build the characters as they sound like you would imagine them to do so, with correct voice tone at the correct time.
All in all , despite the jank it has potential , hopefully the unfixed bugs of the gog version will not strike too hard (as some have reported some "blockers" in some quests). That made me want to reinstall Shadowrun Dragonfall :)
Post by: Aoi on August 26, 2022, 04:01:36 pm
And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.
Have you looked at Last Epoch? It's a B2P ARPG (multiplayer is slated for later this year) that I turned a few PoE players onto. It's still in EA, but it's got the most potential of any competitor I've seen.
Post by: Uristides on August 27, 2022, 09:09:10 am
Yes, I've been hearing good things about it in the ex-PoE community, I'm just wary of jumping into it now because I'd seen Wolcen get propped up as the PoE killer before and that got nowhere really fast. Any thoughts on how early access is going for it and how competent the devs seem to be at managing and delivering expectations?And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.
Have you looked at Last Epoch? It's a B2P ARPG (multiplayer is slated for later this year) that I turned a few PoE players onto. It's still in EA, but it's got the most potential of any competitor I've seen.
Post by: Jopax on August 27, 2022, 10:22:50 am
This might be me, but the systems, while interesting on paper just didn't do it for me in terms of engaging gameplay. The skill stuff is neat and interesting, and the way they play with time skips is neat. But one of the most important aspects of an ARPG, the items, just felt so damn flat and unsatisfying. This could've just been an early game syndrome and it gets more involved and interesting later on, but none of the stuff I picked up felt particularly impactful or neat in terms of stats or power gain. Most of that seemingly came from the cool skill tree while the items themselves boiled down to "Oh, this has a slightly higher x number, guess I'll take it" and then you don't feel at all different from before.
Again, only put in some 10 or so hours into it so it might get vastly better later on, but when the competition nails that shit from the very start it's kinda hard to justify sinking in more of my fairly limited time budget on the hopes that it gets better eventually.
Post by: Aoi on August 27, 2022, 03:39:31 pm
Yes, I've been hearing good things about it in the ex-PoE community, I'm just wary of jumping into it now because I'd seen Wolcen get propped up as the PoE killer before and that got nowhere really fast. Any thoughts on how early access is going for it and how competent the devs seem to be at managing and delivering expectations?And then there's Grim Dawn itself. I've been really itching for an ARPG to fill the Path of Exile-shaped hole in my heart lately, and while it's not a perfect match, I find it good enough to keep me entertained.
Have you looked at Last Epoch? It's a B2P ARPG (multiplayer is slated for later this year) that I turned a few PoE players onto. It's still in EA, but it's got the most potential of any competitor I've seen.
Well, the roadmap got really delayed in 2020, but I think everybody was pretty understanding about that one. They're pretty communicative, and have actually revamped the endgame multiple times in response to feedback; the current version is basically... a set of alternate-narrative questlines with their own set of randomized maps and stacking debuffs (and rewards), with global buffs available to pick from each time you finish the questline. It actually works out quite well, unless you actually like the finickiness of dealing with PoE atlas management.
Admittedly, the people who actually play it are going to be the ones who enjoy it, so it's a bit of a soundbox from the inside though.
This might be me, but the systems, while interesting on paper just didn't do it for me in terms of engaging gameplay. The skill stuff is neat and interesting, and the way they play with time skips is neat. But one of the most important aspects of an ARPG, the items, just felt so damn flat and unsatisfying. This could've just been an early game syndrome and it gets more involved and interesting later on, but none of the stuff I picked up felt particularly impactful or neat in terms of stats or power gain. Most of that seemingly came from the cool skill tree while the items themselves boiled down to "Oh, this has a slightly higher x number, guess I'll take it" and then you don't feel at all different from before.
That's pretty much how PoE loot works too though, outside of uniques though; there's a spread of funky uniques available and, much like PoE, some are super common (got a junk unique as literally my first drop in the intro zone once), and others are less so (though the 'rare' ones are more Inpulsa than HH, so not that bad). Most uniques have some kind of effect not available as a regular mod, though how useful that is can vary.
Item crafting is a bit easier than PoE too-- generally speaking, every item can have up to 4 mods, up to T5, and you can salvage it to get shards representing said mods.
Adding to the late game gear chase is that Uniques can drop with 1-4 Legendary Potential, which lets you cram 1-4 mods from a normal item into the Unique, which now means you can have an item with 8 mods. Good luck finding a 4LP item though; I've never even seen a 3LP, and all my 2LPs are junk uniques.
Edit: I keep forgetting they changed the crafting system; it's actually simpler than that now. Each item has a fixed amount of 'potential', and each mod you shove onto it decreases potential by a range. Once it hits hero, you're locked it. Chance of critical success, etc. are a thing too.
Post by: Robsoie on August 29, 2022, 05:32:00 pm
I felt nearly in a real time version of good old Infra Arcana (of course with graphics), the atmosphere is very well done and the pixel graphics and animations are actually very good.
Plenty of stuff to explore , new items to find and various unlocks in randomly generated environment, and fight various type of enemies. The controls are easy once you bind your keys to your liking and the default character (the Detective) shotgun isn't a pea shooter.
There is a story unfolding too despite the randomly generated stuff, you'll find many things in which you'll be able to make a choice with results that could be good, bad, nothing happens or even make you lose a bit of sanity.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
So far it's rather enjoyable , just be carefull when checking your inventory, it does not pause time so be sure you're not in place with enemies around or they'll kill you.
NOTE : apparently you can't go back to a previously completed level with your current character, so make sure to explore everything before going to a boss and then to the Strange Place, don't be like me and
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
edit : the Professor while having a fun theme (the "mad scientist" gimmick) is actually the most unfun character to play : the roll ability is replaced by him shooting some exploding blue fireball thing that will kill yourself in the explosion if you use it too close (good luck in cemetary with tons of monsters sprinting to gang on you and being close all the time), his weapon is a weak pea shooter that also has 4 shots before having to reload, he can deploy a kind of force field but i have yet to see how it helps in any ways, and he's slower + much more weak to insanity. Basically there's no quality to that character that will make it fun or interesting.
The Detective was just much more fun, the Professor will just make you want to stop playing because it's simply not fun in any ways and make every of the game design decision much worse as the gameplay of that character is just terribly bad.
Basically, just use the Professor until you manage to unlock the Witch in the ancient cemetary if you can keep your will to play intact (good luck with that) then move on to the next character as quickly as you can.
Post by: Robsoie on August 31, 2022, 04:44:43 am
Anyways, finally found the trick to not have the Professor being completely unfun and horribly weak : find the King in Yellow merchant and sell everything you can sell to reach 20000 money, because that's the price his upgraded gun is on that merchant list.
It's a -very- lot of money for only chapter 1, so make sure to find plenty of items (get rid of the lots of bones to make some place, they sell for peanuts and are only good for the witch as it's her version of grenades) in his introduction level (the hospital) before trying to survive in that chapter 1.
Too bad there's no book to be found in both the hospital and cemetery for the Professor campaign, it lower a lot the interest of the Lovecraft merchant (that buy books at a high price), the devs probably screwed up a bit on the loot distribution considering how important it is to make money for that weapon to have a chance.
This gun will make a huge difference, helped me to save and so unlock the witch and finally complete the Professor chapter 1 so i could save some nice items i found in storage.
The witch is nice to play with, she has a teleport to mouse pointer ability so she can escape like the Detective roll , something that was horribly lacking from the Professor that the escape ability replaced by that exploding blue thing that could hurt himself too .
Her attacks are very strong (a good change from playing with Professor) but her noticable weakness is that her attacks have a small range and for some reason the developers decided to add many ranged attackers (gunners and turrets + enemies that explode on death ... difficulty progression is definitively something the devs forgot after the 1st player character that actually had one) in her introduction level to make this weakness a real pain. But in short range she's a monster and she does not have much problem with sanity.
Though she's not very resilient, and if you find an elder gods altar in a secret room, there's the risk that one of the curse you get for the altar item may be that all damage on you are increased, and with the witch that's going to be hard to survive :D
Post by: Aoi on August 31, 2022, 07:30:41 pm
Edit: Okay, stability leaves something to be desired. Just hardcrashed (may not be related, been having undiagnosed overheating lately), but it blew out my metasave and can't start a new game now.
If you've played the first, it's really more of the same, with all the good and bad that entails: It's snappy, vibrant, quick, easy to read the battle, and battles generally feel fair. The downside is that, as far as the normal, non-challenge modes go, battles tend to be fairly simple, and the unit perk design strongly encourages tacking all of them onto a single person... and not all classes are created equal. (The starting archer, for instance-- on my second run, with the first being a failure in chapter 1, she was able to solo the first boss, and didn't get a chance to solo the next two because she killed the adds before they had a chance to whittle down the tank.) Long-term longevity is questionable, as it's built more like a mobile game (and, indeed, I'd absolutely jump on it if it were).
Post by: Laterigrade on August 31, 2022, 07:42:31 pm
There’s a premium currency that you can buy cards and cosmetics with, but it’s basically never worth it to buy cards; you earn about an entirely new and viable deck archetype in about a week of playing, more if you’re new. The cosmetics are good, although a little pricey, as is Riot’s standard, but completely unnecessary to enjoy the game’s art or the game for itself. I’ve been playing for a couple of months, probably on average half an hour a day, and haven’t bought anything or felt the need to.I haven’t seen a Legends of Runeterra thread yet, but god this game is good. A completely, actually free to play CCGSo no Premium or MTX at all?
Post by: Iduno on September 03, 2022, 07:24:49 pm
Some of it makes sense when you're making a game like bosses all have 1 annoying design element (one spawns in an area full of other monsters including several elites, one is in an arena that is too big so it keeps getting far enough away from the center that it restarts the fight with full hp, one is underground half the fight and comes up for massive damage, etc.), which I assume is testing to see what people hate the most. The best decisions though, are just absolute hilarious stupid stuff. There's a large tower you need to go to the top of at one point early in the story, and it's an annoying jumping puzzle, and it's painted like an angry teddy bear for no good reason. You're given a motorcycle early in the game, but can also unlock a mechanical unicorn, a regular car's front sitting on some sort of hover unicycle, a pole sticking out of a roomba, and an electronic cube made up of 5^3 smaller floating cubes. Also, the game has a pretty reasonable chat filter, but kill is censored in a game about fighting, so people keep trying to find someone to "help them **** this boss."
I don't know that it's a good game, but it is entertaining.
Post by: Folly on September 05, 2022, 05:31:48 am
Bugs and balance issues abound. I literally hit a game-stopper during the opening, when I was customizing my Boss and the interface got stuck, not allowing me to navigate through menus, forcing me to alt-F4 and start over. Since then I've only hit two other game-stoppers, both where quests failed to update; in both instances I was able to easily reset to the last checkpoint with minimal lost time. Beyond that, I found a couple of skills which simply do not work at all, a few vehicles which spawn too far back in the garage so they are impossible to pull out, and had several instances where my wardrobe would change without my input. All quite manageable, though some of these seem like they should have been easy to catch and fix before launch.
I was disappointed with the main story. Story spoilers ahead.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Gunplay feels good, though it is very much a built-for-consoles game where the auto-aim pulls a lot of weight; but that is effectively countered by large groups of aggressive enemies, so you need that auto-aim to keep apace.
The city is vast and full of art and lore to explore, as well as various minigames and combat opportunities that can be cleared to increase income which allows unlocking and upgrading more weapons and vehicles.
And of course the most important thing(to me) which sets this game apart, I can run around the city bashing heads and looting cash, completely topless the entire time. Priorities.
Overall, due to bugs and disappointing story, I still can't really recommend this game even to fans of the series, at full price. With the bad reviews you probably won't have to wait long for this one to go on sale.
An acquaintance recently convinced me to let him buy me a package for Star Citizen. I've only played a couple of days, but already regret the decision.
It's a space sandbox, where you take missions to deliver packages, assassinate criminals, harvest resources, and other various spacey busywork. The key thing they seem to be trying to set themselves apart with is the immersion. Everything is super detailed and realistic. Some people are really into that, and that's fine I guess; to each their own. But to me, all of this fluff just kills fps, creates needless delays, and adds tedious busywork. I have to navigate a labyrinthian city using only street signs, because maps would break the immersion. I have to wait for every elevator, airlock, and public transport system. I have to search for tiny consoles hidden in every shop, so that I can purchase a variety of food, clothing and medical syringes to counter whatever medley of environmental conditions I'll face on my next delivery quest.
It's honestly a really great example of a game developer who has an interesting idea, but no concept of how to integrate it into an enjoyable gameplay experience.
Post by: Aoi on September 05, 2022, 07:54:08 am
An acquaintance recently convinced me to let him buy me a package for Star Citizen. I've only played a couple of days, but already regret the decision.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That sounds like the kind of thing that'd be much more interesting or engaging in VR. Is that a thing with them?
Post by: n9103 on September 05, 2022, 09:10:25 am
It's not really my thing, for all the reasons Folly mentioned, but I definitely see the appeal, and would be much more interested if you only had to do the menial stuff once or twice to unlock an automated startup or quick travel.
Post by: Frumple on September 05, 2022, 09:40:07 am
Post by: Jopax on September 05, 2022, 04:33:57 pm
Second thing, that will probably warrant a thread eventually but I can't be arsed to make one right now is that ORX (linky (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071140/ORX/)) is out on EA on Steam. There was a demo for it a while back and it's what got me excited for the game in the first place. What is ORX you ask? Well it's this funky little mix of a tower defense, deck-building roguelite and Carcassone of all things. All packed in this very striking graphic style and with some nice music to boot.
It's fairly simple of a concept, you have your town center you gotta protect from several waves of ORX on each map. You do that by playing cards which build roads to give you money (your main resource), place down support buildings that buff or heal or do any number of weird effects, cast spells, put down troops and finally, assemble castles from many tiles of different shapes. It's super satisfying once you get the hang of it to be able to plan out and daisy-chain a massive fortress that envelops most of your other buildings and rains absolute shitloads of arrows on anything that comes near.
And this is just one of the factions, the other one being very different in that it doesn't really build castles but instead relies on amassing troops and using those for a mobile defense.
They're planning more factions/cards/enemies/everything else down the line, but the game is fairly feature complete even at this point and I've sunk more than enough hours into it to make the price of 12-ish euros well worth it.
Post by: Folly on September 05, 2022, 04:37:15 pm
... isn't star citizen that one that's drummed up like half a billion dollars and still hasn't produced a finished product despite over a decade of development? If that's the same thing it's pretty infamous for having a whole slew of problems, iirc.
Yeah. Again, I haven't played a ton, but in my short time with the game the major issues I've encountered are a lack of ownership system, which allows me to rob everyone blind and none of the NPC's even notice. Held items frequently bug out, preventing me from picking them up or putting them down, which can completely break quest progression. And AI is super derpy, to the point that it's more unusual to find an NPC who is not calmly walking straight into a wall in the middle of a firefight.
But bugs and unimplemented features can be fixed. My greater concern is that even if all of those things were addressed, you would still be left with an underlying game that is very basic. It's an MMO with absolutely nothing to incentivize player interaction; they could make it a single player game and nothing would be lost. And the missions have no dynamic range; you read the description and know exactly what you're going to be doing, exactly the same as the last time you took one of these missions.
Post by: Il Palazzo on September 06, 2022, 01:00:15 pm
ORX (linky (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071140/ORX/)) is out on EA on Steam.ORX is fun. Not terribly deep, but addictive. I especially like the 'corruption' mechanic that basically lets you adjust the difficulty as you play while tempting you with some bonuses. I invariably get greedy and get myself killed.
It can feel somewhat front-loaded with the difficulty, though. Most of the time the biggest (or only) challenge in a stage is surviving the first, maybe two waves, as you struggle to get the basic infrastructure going. The remainder tends to be a foregone conclusion.
But since you unlock more cards for the orx as well as yourself as you play, it gets harder overall with time.
Post by: askovdk on September 07, 2022, 03:27:37 am
Is back on PS4/5 and this time without monetization. It also means that it's not free-to-play (it's actually somewhat expensive), but it's great to be back being a benevolent worker for the greater good in a Soviet children TV style.
The shortest description I can give to newcomers is, that it's the altruistic helping unknown others from Death Stranding in a world of soviet wooden dolls.
https://www.q-games.com/en/ttc-pe-en/ (https://www.q-games.com/en/ttc-pe-en/)
Post by: Aoi on September 15, 2022, 08:14:51 am
It's kind of rough around the edges, very 'breakable', but surprisingly entertaining.
Spoiler: Spoilery tip if you want to avoid a surprise loss halfway through a run. (click to show/hide)
Post by: Aoi on September 16, 2022, 09:48:46 pm
Spoiler: For more details... (click to show/hide)
"Can I plunge my coconuts into your tar barrel?"
"Buy me a drink first."
Post by: Robsoie on September 17, 2022, 04:38:40 am
some spoiler-free wall of text :
Spoiler: yeah no real spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Kagus on September 17, 2022, 06:13:29 am
I can see the merit behind the concept there, as making the "evil" route actually be more powerful than the good one gives players a legit motivation to go down the route of selfishness... Something uncommon in a lot of moral choice games. But that said, the implementation seems a teensy bit sticky to me. Especially given that the gameplay itself between start and finish doesn't really change much between a good run or a naughty one. And also the slight dissonance where it's apparently perfectly fine to gorge yourself on the blood of nameless mooks, just so long as you never ever bite one of these people in particular.
Post by: Robsoie on September 17, 2022, 06:28:05 am
There's a case though regarding a named NPC that killing does not bother the "good guy no NPC killing" ending.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: dragdeler on September 17, 2022, 07:44:35 am
-
ptw
I can't understand where the rts have gone feels like they went from 15-20% marketshare to a noteworthy title or two per year... There is just so much stuff we could add to the formula using our computing power... real fire trajectories, ragdoll stuff, voxel terrain, track a ton more stats and bodyparts and dmg types, you name it... meanwhile modern rts releases tend towards the warcraft side of things, small armies, unique units playing a huge role etc. Looking at all this it still feels like cossacks1 was some sort technological marvel, just look at the measly specs it resquires to put thousands of units on the screen. Who cares about batttles right?! This is a rts pump out the top 5 percentile graphics on those 25 models it's what the people want, i judge my rts by their shaders..
Post by: Robsoie on September 17, 2022, 12:53:23 pm
And i'm still super impressed how incredibly good it looks even on low settings, and how smooth it is even on a potato computer, i don't know what magic coders they had but that's a jewel of optimisation.
Still very good even despite the storyline does not have anymore surprise on a 2nd run and the railroaded linearity, but the dialogues and vocal actors are so good that you still feel immersed in their adventure and want to help them overcoming those crazy odds.
Post by: Stench Guzman on September 17, 2022, 02:38:06 pm
As far as "conventional RTS" games go, I enjoted Meridian: New World. Single player only and something of a budget title but I recommend it.
Post by: nenjin on September 17, 2022, 03:43:49 pm
Post by: Great Order on September 17, 2022, 07:51:05 pm
Real time strategy games were popular from the mid 1990s to some time in the early 2000s. Then people fiddled around with Warcraft 3's custom map maker and that spawned Tower Defense games and MOBAs. Then there are Paradox's strategy games, which are a bit different but still fairly popular.Personally I prefer PDX's because the games are longer and they're pausable. I'm not a fan of RTSes being high-tension, having to jump from one place to another to make sure you're producing the right things, you're not being flanked, the army you sent off needs new orders, etc. all at the same time. That can happen in, say, EUIV but at least you can pause it to deal with them all.
As far as "conventional RTS" games go, I enjoted Meridian: New World. Single player only and something of a budget title but I recommend it.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on September 17, 2022, 08:40:11 pm
The main problem as I see it is the gulf in play styles and skill levels. Casual players and up playing a completely different game than those skilled in the multiplayer scene.
Post by: dragdeler on September 17, 2022, 09:07:05 pm
Oh and I guess if you can pause it one could technically nitpick at the "realtime" aspect. But like, total war is half rts, or is not?
You gave me an idea, how about you remove some of the stress by taking inspirations from moba: so like a game where your units autospawn and are in sort of a stalemate with the ennemy, to remove some of the micromanaging burdens, but then you'd have some sort of squad based combat, a bit like xcom very tactical with covers and some verticality, but mostly realtime, where it is decided what spawnpoints are lost and where new ones are created. Basically you'd have to lay out the maps in such a way that the squads who are trying to affect the gameboard, are constantly harassed by the streams of disposable units, maybe the aforementionned verticality is the key. Sounds more like a moba than an rts until you realize that it's not two teams with a bunch of players each, but rather each players manages his own faction. Idk maybe it isn't that great of an idea... But I really feel that it wouldn't take thaaat much to make a somewhat innovative rts title, that's also fun to play.
Or here is another take on the third dimension in rts: how about we mix the spor early game, with thandor and... lootboxes. So like top down view, except it's the sideview of a liquid, evrything is transluscent to a degree and you move trhough the liquid by scrolling the mouse. Your units are like simple organisms that you equip with traits you find on the map (in the soup) but the traits get randomised and slowly evolve over generations.
Post by: Frumple on September 17, 2022, 10:47:58 pm
Post by: Akura on September 18, 2022, 04:45:21 am
Post by: dragdeler on September 20, 2022, 09:14:27 am
I kinda want to like this game but I keep being bothered by stuff... It's idk, it's like they had decent writers, but not much else? Like the first 20 minutes I kept getting disturbed in my immersion by things like:
Why are there candles lit in an abondened house.
Why does the game tell me my choices matter but forces me to kill in the toturial before I can open the doors.
How is he controlling both speed a direction on that boat with a single "steering wheel".
I had to plug in a controller to be able to find how I swap weapons and parry, but Y axis inversion affects both mouse and controller, so I can't even hotswap between control schemes without having to open the options. And there is a lot of small corridors where the camera isn't fun at all to manage via controller. Also it feels kinda console'ish.
On the other hands it does have some real vibe, and visuals. The voice acting seems nice enough.
Post by: Robsoie on September 20, 2022, 03:37:09 pm
The most hilarious for me in Vampyr was when i had taken the blood of many NPC, leading the character eyes to change a lot (black eyeballs with red iris) with lots of apparent vascular oddities on his face and around the yes (making it even more vampire-looking than some of the older vampire you'll meet), and none talking to him seemed to notice there's really something wrong with him :D
Post by: Niveras on September 20, 2022, 04:49:27 pm
I can hardly speak about the gameplay because ToF's UI alone is filtering me. There are a dozen different menus that you cannot access from each other. Some information isn't even accessed from the default "menu" system but rather from buttons (that don't look like buttons) attached to your minimap. There are multiple "premium" currencies that are spent on their individual... things (I don't know the correct term, but I wouldn't call them banners). You not only upgrade your weapons and "matrixes" (slotted into weapons with set bonuses, acting like GI's simpler artifact system) but also a full set of gear for your own character (helmets, bracers, legguards, etc). You have mounts and relics. All these items require their own (multiple) individual garbage to upgrade. Relics are various tools, mostly puzzle solving or traversal related, but you can only equip 2 at a time and they are complete pain in the ass to switch, especially when you only need it to solve 1 puzzle and then switch back to what you normally have in the slot.
The UI is clearly designed for mobile and its an obnoxious, if not outright hostile, experience on PC. I don't know if I'm a boomer and all this is normal now or if they're doing some kind of psychological manipulation tactic that I'm too old to just accept. Given it is, after all, a gacha game, I'm inclined to believe the schizophrenic UI is intentional.
I really quite like the concept behind the games, in terms of the content and world and how you explore and hit things up mostly randomly/naturally as you explore, and get resources to upgrade your equipment from different content. I really think I prefer this kind of item system - where you can commonly find items that will fit the build you want to make, and then upgrade them to the point that they are viable for the content you want to do - versus having to constantly upgrade to completely new items and shuffle stats, as is typical in an ARPG. The downside is that they spend all this effort on the world but then focus the endgame on some "waves of damage sponges in a square room disconnected from the rest of the world" that are so bone-dead simple you can't even call it procedurally generated.
I haven't played Genshin Impact outside of maybe a week after its global PC release, and while I equally had problems with the game and its UI, they felt more like boneheaded inefficiencies that result from a touchscreen-first interface design rather than the "this is deliberate" vibe I get from ToF.
This is, of course, not even getting to the gacha aspects. I really wish there were private server alternatives or some western studio could develop a game mostly like this with a more conventional payment model (i.e. one-time purchase + big expansions). These games make billions per quarter, to say nothing of per year, and only invest a fraction back into development. It should be possible to create a game with very similar content and a much less predatory profit model, if only the studio were willing to make handfuls of cash instead of buckets.
Spoiler: irrelevant bug that annoyed me (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on September 25, 2022, 11:29:49 am
I remember +/- 5 years ago my nephew showed me that game on his console, starting in a "easy" zone in the south of the map he was +/- only a couple of days in his run.
But things went to hell very quickly, while he was cutting some tree a tall dino that looked like a big raptor (no idea of the name) showed up and ran after him, he explained to me that was very bad and ran away over a hill only to run into a pack of at least small dino that shoot some green stuff that made the view very blurry while they were gnawing at the character.
And before the character died there was a raptor that was coming too at some distance.
That seemed hilariously hard and very FUN! especially for an "easy" zone.
Flash forward to now, after toying with the current Ark from the epic weekly freebie, i'm now at +/- 13 days in and while i started in the same zone as i remember seeing my nephew playing, i don't see any of that happening.
So far the dinos i see are passive to me, the only threatening ones i found were 2 (not in a pack, each on different days) of those dinos that spit green goo , but everything else isn't really trying to bother me (out of that diplodocus that loves to walk all over my base since a few days...).
Only when swimming in the river i got attacked at some point by a manta that my 2 tamed armored turtles quickly killed, but even the many ancient dolphins (that dino name escapes me sorry) seems just happy with approaching me in the hope i feed them. I saw some big shark-like ones a few times but it was in deep water and a long distance.
So i guess through the years they probably changed the difficulty balance. But then how does the difficulty progression work now in ark ?
- are zone defined for specific dino type/difficulty that will never walk toward another zone and so unless i move to another zone the difficulty is just "capped"
- is it a matter of difficulty progressing with how many days spent in a zone and so threat will start to appear at some point ?
- are packs of dinos still a thing (i don't think i saw dino groups with more than 2 dino inside, out of some annoying birds that comes in 4 or 5) ?
Post by: Akura on September 25, 2022, 03:59:23 pm
Post by: Robsoie on September 25, 2022, 04:23:11 pm
After a few more days passed, and still not seeing anything new in my region, i decided it was time moving away to seek the challenge of the game because at that point it looked more and more than in current Ark region are difficulty "capped" (featuring then their own set of dinos that correspond to the region difficulty level with no higher difficulty dino ever having a chance to come or spawn in easy regions) and not time related
Meaning all the time i spend making my base being useless as no dangerous dino would come.
Took my boat and decided to explore relatively far in the south west of my region.
After some time following the river that is between the mainland and the big southwestern island, i saw some funny water battle between what looked like tall ducks (those guys that leave those nice and rare "Organic Polymer" as loot from skinning them, the material that is usefull in crafting the ghillie suit armor) and inflated pirhanas
And it looks like the ducks actually had the upper hands as i started to see several pirhana corpse floating.
I had to help those ugly fishes, not because i like them but because the "Organic Polymer" from the ducks is something good to fetch.
Resuming course, after more time i ran into what looked like a raptor but slightly smaller, so no idea what it was called, but it was running on the land without a care for me or the other animals around. Then more interesting i spotted a big (well slightly bigger than a raptor) threat, a carnotaurus that looked much meaner and bigger than i thought. And that guy really meant business because it killed several small river banks animals (no idea what they are, they exist around my base sometime , some gecko/lizard type thing that are a bit bigger than a dodo)
As i had a lot of tranq arrows, was on my boat , i decided maybe it could be a good idea to try to tame that ugly big bad for additional protection on future away explorations.
After more than 6 arrows, the thing simply didn't stop, it jumped into the water, swim to my boat, jumped on it, followed me after i jumped in the river trying to save my life while still shooting arrow.
In the end the carnotorus probably had a dozen of tranq arrow in his head and throat, but he never slowed down and destroyed my character, i managed to last for a while as i had upgraded my health a lot but still got eaten.
It was a fun adventure coming back to my corpse and boat, using my big turtle as a boat to avoid long walking time :D
Post by: Akura on September 25, 2022, 04:46:22 pm
Fun fact about Ark: the T-Rex has a special attack that specifically makes you shit yourself.
In a different game, the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, I came across this in the Sector 5 orphanage:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I distinctly remember there being some old and probably obscure Flash animation starring Cactaur and Tonberry. I can't think of any other reason they'd be drawn together like that. I haven't been able to find it again, but the only place I've looked was Flashpoint Infinity's animation list which almost certainly doesn't go back that far(not true; I've seen some oldies there).
Post by: Robsoie on September 26, 2022, 05:08:24 am
Checking youtube for "Cactuar and Tonberry" there are a lot of animations/videos featuring those, i had no idea that was some kind of popular meme at some point.
On Ark, finally reached the level i can make a saddle for Pteranodon, and to my surprise it only took 2 tranq arrow to bring one down for taming time, and the taming was rather fast.
I guess having "single player" checked in the hundred of options available really shorten a lot of the waiting time, leveled the dino a bit to increase his weight capacity so i didn't needed to ride it without anything in inventory to be able to take off.
My big turtle is locked in a fight to the death at sea, a couple of hundred meters of my base against some kind of shark, it's been several days they're duking it out, but from what i see underwater it's because they have a hard time to turn around, so they're locked in a battle circling around each other without being able to hit each other :D
Can't help as it's taking place too deep for my character, will have to forge a crossbow (as it can shoot underwater) to replace my nice bow.
I also completed my guillie suit, it is the most usefull suit for the temperature in the region, as the other type of armor either protect vs heat but are negatively weak to cold or protect vs cold but are negatively weak to heat, while the guillie suit protection vs temperature is mediocre against both cold and heat, so it allows to move around without having either "it's too cold" or "it's too hot" constantly everytime you enter an are with a slight heat or a slight cold air.
edit:
- are packs of dinos still a thing (i don't think i saw dino groups with more than 2 dino inside, out of some annoying birds that comes in 4 or 5) ?replying to myself :
Spoiler: oh yeah they still exist (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on September 27, 2022, 04:12:57 pm
Post by: Akura on September 27, 2022, 04:20:17 pm
Post by: Robsoie on September 28, 2022, 06:24:22 pm
After taking my boat and sailing from my south western base (buit on the rocky elements near the small waterfall) and following the western coast i arrived to rather chilly icy waters with lot of floating ice chunk around.
There was an island with a huge mean allosaurus duking it out against 2 ... i have no idea what it is but there were very small varan-like but with spike all over their backs, though the spikes may have been hairy stuff i don't know it was far and the models were probably using their distant level of detail for performance.
To my surprise, the 2 litte buggers murdered the allosaurus that was trying to eat them
But no way for me to get close to check what those dinos were, i valued my character health after such long trip.
Then at +/- 50 meters, i spotted an ice chunk floating , and on top of it 2 allosaurus that had apparently spawned on each other, meaning they were completely stuck, unable to move.
unable to move ? oh oh perfect time for me then to try a capture, my trusty crossbow and the lots of tranq arrows started to rain on the beasts, took the whole lot of them to bring one of those allosaurus unconscious, but the other didnt fell to sleep unfortunately, so i had to switch to my normal arrow to kill it (took a lot though) fortunately it was still stuck in place instead of trying to swim in chilly water to eat me.
After using the bunch of meat i had in stock the taming completed and i was the proud owner of a happy bloodthirsty allosaurus !
And i understood why the little buggers murdered the solo allosaurus, because the beast i tamed was only level 1 !
So i guess the game spawned some very underleveled allosaurus pack (they always come in pack of 3 from what i read in the wiki) in the middle of a bunch of high level weaklings, explaining i guess why the lonely allosaurus was destroyed like that.
Post by: Jopax on September 29, 2022, 08:12:23 am
As with most games of this type, it's fairly cheap and replayable so it's hard not to recommend it.
Post by: Aoi on September 30, 2022, 11:16:38 am
Boneraiser Minions (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1944570/Boneraiser_Minions/) is another in the slew of horde survival/auto-battler/vampire survivor clone type games that are coming out or have come out in the past several months.
On the other hand, BM fell pretty flat for me-- it's fairly quick to cap everything and didn't feel particularly compelling after, which was kind of a shame because I rather enjoyed the general theme and mechanics... other than the actual gameplay bits.
In the similar genre, I've been prodding Rogue : Genesia which mixes it up by having discrete stages and an StS-esque overmap. It's a very playable EA that sees a lot of updates-- it's not uncommon to see a balance/feature update multiple days in a row... with bug fix updates a few hours after each of them. It has a pretty good feel with a mix of direct levels, in-run currency upgrades, and meta-game upgrades.
Note for those who always try to 100% available content... there's pretty heavy RNG involved.
Post by: Robsoie on October 08, 2022, 06:05:02 pm
Reading a bit more it even seem that people overall enjoy the game more in Guildmaster mode too.
Then i decided to give a try, building a team of 3 this time (on the campaign i did a team of 2) and so far i have completed 3 scenarios and they were all much better on the actual pacing as i was not close to exhaustation and they all didn't have that "there should have been 1 less room in that dungeon" feeling, even having probably 1 or 2 more rounds left worth of play even with the scoundrel and her lower deck/hand size while in campaign mode she's nearly always on her last cards when you complete a scenario.
The scenarios for Guildmaster are different (there are apparently 160 of them !) from the one in Campaign mode (that may explain why they're better balanced so far as Campaign mode is the reproduction of the boardgame that the dev of the digital version didn't improved or balanced better as they wanted 100% to be the same)
So in case you run into the same Gloomhaven loop as i did in which after starting to figure out the mechanics of that disguised puzzle game you start to have some fun but then after more progression and leveling you don't have any of it anymore, ditch the Campaign mode and give a try to the Guildmaster one instead .
Post by: nenjin on October 09, 2022, 07:54:54 am
Just spent a good few hours with Spellcaster University, previously mentioned in this thread.
It bills itself as a casual rogue-lite management type game, a sort of build your own Hogwarts thing. It's not incredibly deep but it's got enough fun stuff to sustain a few playthroughs. One thing the game's been criticized for its a doom clock on gameplay. The plot is you're running a school for wizards and the ultimate evil is sweeping across the land. You can slow down its advance using a couple methods, but ultimately it's just a clock before your run is ended. What wizards you managed to graduate may give you some bonuses that apply in later runs, several runs together forming the game's campaign. The criticisms say that runs aren't log enough and I can see the position. But when you set the "round" length to marathon, a single run can take hours and hours. There's a lot of variety and things to specialize and optimize for so I think the finite run length helps enforce some variety instead of building everything in a single run.
The semi-random nature of what rooms you get in a run, in what order, also enforces some extra run to run variety.
For all that it's pretty charming, in a euro-jank kinda way. Decent graphics. Cute little details like magical accidents affecting students, or localized magical weirdness shutting down classrooms until the right teacher can get in there to restore order. Decent moment to moment gameplay where you're not waiting too long to get a new room or unlock a new thing or induct new students or graduate other students out. You get that vaguely Hogwart's experience of setting up different Houses for students to join and each one having its own specialties. You get some light management responsibilities and design and decoration opportunities. You get a lot of dood dads to put in rooms to optimize things. In addition to helping you improve the kind of wizards you're teaching, you get fun stuff like dragons and fairy and witches cats running through your school, and it's all very cute.
As a sim though I'd say it's a fairly casual game. Students and teachers have needs but rather than it being hard stop things like not enough food or not enough beds or not enough entertainment areas, the game kind of hand waves it by just making students and teachers leave campus if their needs aren't fulfilled. They go get what they need off screen and then come back which represents additional delays in the whole "teaching wizards" cycle. So really most of the game boils down to efficiencies rather than say, survival elements. If you don't have enough stuff, whatever it is, students just don't learn as much by the time they graduate and you get less prestige and bonuses to your current and future runs. And I can see why the game doesn't put a lot of hard failure states on you. What you get is random and gets more expensive the more building cards you draw from the various decks. So they can't really ding you too hard for not having enough dormitories or dining halls or recreation spots, it's hard to predict when you'd have them. And the game's finite end time means they don't want you necessarily spending your limited cards building redundant rooms over better performing rooms.
So you won't find the kind of logistical gridlock here you'd find in other management games, SU just kind of abstracts the shortcomings away to "students spent less time learning." There's even sanity mechanics but that mostly boils down to "students may leave campus and some of them might not come back." None of it is to terribly hard to manage unless you're trying to be ultra efficient, so the game definitely feels more on the casual end of gameplay.
The amusing thrust of the game is how it models a school environment. Teachers have D&D alignments as do the students, and teachers have teaching ability while students have overall intelligence, and how the different alignments, teaching and learning strengths interact, available magic study classes, etc and so forth....come out to wizards graduating into various fields (there's a lot, like 200) it's pretty satisfying actually. Not so much you can necessarily keep track of most students, you can have upwards of 100 running around, but you can for example look back at them if they graduate and sorta figure out how they got to where they are. And if you've been to college, the meta commentary on Universities / Private Schools as a business is fairly spot on as well.
Anyways, it might be slightly overpriced at $25 and is a couple years old at this point with a few content updates under its belt. But I was pleasantly surprised and fairly addicted.
Post by: Robsoie on October 09, 2022, 01:09:32 pm
My squad of level 2 Brute, Scoundrel and Cragheart went for a scenario that goal was "survive 10 rounds" .
I was expecting this to be hard, and indeed it was, especially as the additional condition was that the Brute had to survive.
The scenario was taking place in a single big room with several enemies, and 3 more spawning on each new round all around the room, after a few rounds it became a big fight, fortunately the Scoundrel and Cargheart special multi attack cards helped a lot while the Brute was dealing as much damage he could on the softened enemies or was doing the kill on the badly injured one.
All while positioning my troops to avoid the Brute getting hammered too badly.
But after lots of ranged enemies were on the field it became hell and after losing the Scoundrel to some nasty arrows from several rat-like archers (as the AI had the luck to get several X2 damage cards on a row), she was out of cards as she had to burn a bunch to survive so many killing shots, but at least she took the focus out of the Brute for a while. The Cragheart fell on the last turn after taking a lot of damage (and dealing some in return with some Retaliation ability from a card played a couple of turn before), he did a lot of good.
The Brute ran into a corner to escape the biggest damage dealers but still was assault by 2 guys and was left with 4 health when the 10th turn was over.
Super hard earned victory, my main problem is that i didn't had yet equipped armor to my troops and some didn't had a healing potion, i guess it may be easier with such thing, but money had been hard to get (always the same problem : use a card Loot ability to get more money or use its other more useful ability to reach your objective faster).
Guildmaster is really the most enjoyable way to play Guildhaven, not only the scenarios are much more balanced in term of opposition and less stupidly large (big scenarios means you waste more turns moving and so bringing you closer to card exhaustation), but there's a system of achievements that allow you to unlock items, new classes and scenarios in a more fun way than in Campaign mode.
By example in Campaign mode to unlock one of the hidden class you have to get a mercenary to retire by completing his own personal goals that can take forever to achieve. But in Guildmaster mode those hidden classes unlock are linked to achievement (and the unlocks really bring new achievements to try) and after completing 8 missions i have already unlocked 2 of those hidden mercenary classes
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
If Campaign mode frustrated you, really switch to Guildmaster mode it's way better and less infuriating.
Post by: Robsoie on October 13, 2022, 06:26:56 am
That sounded a bit too big, but after googling around apparently some people have their save at more than 20gb !
From reading a bit more it appears that to avoid save corruption on Ark servers, the game is keeping a lot of previous saves (that you can't access from the game menu) so servers admin can revert to earlier saves in case things break, and if you installed those dlc you may end indeed with absurd amount of space taken by all those backup. And in single player it still works the same, doing backups and keeping them
You should be able to delete those backed up saves if you don't need them to make some place, at least on single player they are to be found at
...\YourARKgameDirectory\ShooterGame\Saved\SavedArkLocal\
All those backup are in that format :
MapName_Day.Month.Year_Hour.Minute.Second.ark
Though you should keep a couple of them in case you run into some problem with your current save
Post by: Iduno on October 13, 2022, 08:48:10 am
But after lots of ranged enemies were on the field it became hell and after losing the Scoundrel to some nasty arrows from several rat-like archers (as the AI had the luck to get several X2 damage cards on a row), she was out of cards as she had to burn a bunch to survive so many killing shots, but at least she took the focus out of the Brute for a while.
Yeah, that's one thing I liked about the board game over the computer version: we shuffled the modifier deck at the end of the round if a 0x or 2x came up, so they couldn't chain (for players or NPCs). Or if we ran out of modifiers, obviously.
By example in Campaign mode to unlock one of the hidden class you have to get a mercenary to retire by completing his own personal goals that can take forever to achieve. But in Guildmaster mode those hidden classes unlock are linked to achievement (and the unlocks really bring new achievements to try) and after completing 8 missions i have already unlocked 2 of those hidden mercenary classesSpoiler (click to show/hide)
Can you imagine the elementalist being the first character you unlock in campaign? With enough min-maxing, the perfect team composition, and some late-game items, they're nearly as good as one of the starting characters. I think all of the other unlockable characters are an upgrade from your starters, if you figure out how to play them.
Post by: Robsoie on October 13, 2022, 09:30:37 am
But at another point of the campaign i had some good luck for once, my Scoundrel managed to kill a very high HP boss in a single shot (having the invisible status from a card + the X2 damage on isolated enemy for next 4 attacks ability from a card + the X2 coming just at that right time) .
Apparently with the right combination of cards, items, positioning, allies classes support and luck the Scoundrel can potentially unleash insane amount of damage on a single attack
https://old.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/comments/qhfd93/scoundrel_can_deal_680_points_of_damage_in_one/
Post by: ndkid on October 13, 2022, 09:39:28 am
Post by: Iduno on October 18, 2022, 03:38:38 pm
It's a simple game with a map similar to FTL (without anyone chasing you) where you choose your next location, decide how to deal with the issues there, and move on. The main mechanic is playing cards. You start with a horse, lasso, and a frosty mug of
Most locations ask which card you'd like to use to deal with whatever event happens, but sometimes you gain a card or heal instead. Lots of poker games as events (but I think it's random), and I've not figured out what solution is best, but I did get 1 damage (happens after most events) and a gold tooth once.
Edit: Cool, you don't need to go only one direction. You can move both left and right, which gives you a lot of options.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 04:26:01 pm
I'm gonna be that guy and suggest that it really seems like y'all have enough to say about it over a long enough period of time that maybe Gloomhaven *does* deserve its own thread. :-)
Boo this man! :P
Post by: Lidku on October 18, 2022, 07:48:07 pm
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 07:58:03 pm
Jason Schrier just reported that the real offer was for $4k a session, for a total of $15k-ish. Not the $4k for the whole thing she has claimed. And he says that she did ask for residuals and a six figure deal.
So not sure. Both parties are claiming the other are lying. Right now though, it looks like she hasn't been completely honest. And she's the one that brought this all up.
Also people are now digging into her personal politics. This could blow up in her face depending on what else comes out, and turn into a cautionary tale about appealing to the internet for justice.
Which shouldn't detract from the actual pay politics around VAs, IMO.
Post by: Rolan7 on October 18, 2022, 08:18:00 pm
Kinda surprised at the coverage I've seen on those wikia-ad things, seems a few days out of date (or biased). Dunno.
Post by: Robsoie on October 18, 2022, 08:21:43 pm
Doesn't things works this way everywhere in the world ? i mean if the candidate for a job doesn't accept the terms of a contract and/or if the employer does not want to give you a contract with the exact terms you want, and negociation goes nowhere the candidate will have to go somewhere else looking for a job and the employer will have to find another candidate ?
Not sure what is controversial there.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 08:30:13 pm
Quote
Not sure what is controversial there.
She originally claimed they excessively low-balled her at $4k for the entire game. The respected VA who has helped make the last two games a success. That was the initial controversy. Then it was reported what the actual offer offer was ($4k per session for about $15k), and her counter proposal (which was far above what is considered standard for VAs without serious pull.)
Post by: Rolan7 on October 18, 2022, 08:35:03 pm
I remain glad it didn't turn out to be an anti-union thing, and I *think* I heard her replacement is getting a more reasonable fee.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 09:48:16 pm
Then again, if they did low ball for her those reasons specifically to force her out...it's kind of unavoidable that it comes up.
Post by: Lidku on October 18, 2022, 10:15:22 pm
Though, on the other end, if Platinum made up false documentation and presented to Bloomberg / Jason Schrier to switch the PR opinion against Taylor, who could have been lowballed for a more "recognizable" actress, it'd be especially insidious. The "insiders" who conveniently leaked to Jason could have deceived him to save their PR bottom-line; which I think has worked. But even with that alone, Hellena calling for a boycott has galvanized the typical crowd to buy Bayonetta 3 out of spite of "not wanting to be told what to do".
I have a distinct feeling we'll know more about this AFTER the game releases. I don't think Platinum will risk anymore controversy that might impact sales before the game has a chance to release (but so far, controversy in this situation is proving to be their favor here).
But if they don't release anything officially and stay silent even after Bayonetta releases, I'll lean more toward believing Hellena Taylor on this. People might chalk it up to NDA, but when the game is out, I don't (and correct me if I'm wrong) NDA becomes tenuous-to-non-existent at that point, as the game has released.
Post by: nenjin on October 18, 2022, 11:47:06 pm
I'll be interested to see where this goes, because it only gets more damaging from here.
Post by: Cthulhu on October 20, 2022, 08:01:23 am
Scorn is pretty good. The combat sucks, and the rarity of healing stuff means you can get stuck in really shitty situations, but overall. It feels gnostic to me, or at least maltheist, that the world you're in was created by a diseased or malfunctioning God that's trying to make something good but has no idea what "good" should look like. A lot of games ape the giger/beksinski aesthetic because it's a meme, but there's a real sense of artistic vision and place that makes everything more interesting. Weird, inexplicable machinery that still feels like it's hinting at some internal logic you're not privy to, giant machines seemingly dedicated to torture and mutilation for unknown reasons, oil derricks that pump organic white fluid, giant vaguely-human-body looking apparatuses full of telescoping meat-pipes, and this grotesque fleshy user interface on everything, everything interacted with by putting things in holes.
Gameplay reminds me a lot of Myst in the way the puzzles are big and sprawl across the levels, it's not like the Witness or something where each puzzle is a self-contained thing and you progress through them one at a time, an entire section of the game will center around some huge complicated apparatus with lots of individual interaction points whose purpose makes no sense until you've seen the entire thing and can start to think about it holistically. It's fun, that plus how completely opaque and alien the logic of the world is gives a great feeling of exploration and figuring things out.
Post by: nenjin on October 20, 2022, 10:01:52 am
Post by: Folly on October 20, 2022, 03:14:19 pm
I'm still on the first map(after tutorial), but enjoying the changes so far. There seem to be a good mix of meta progression tasks with short-term and long-term goals, allowing me to immediately be unlocking things each night, but also see myself making progress towards bigger unlocks down the line. I'm also seeing less divide between super-OP heroes and useless heroes, with everyone having a role to play regardless of how blessed they are by RNG.
Post by: Frumple on October 20, 2022, 04:44:29 pm
Post by: Cthulhu on October 21, 2022, 07:39:54 am
The combat (which I know isn't really the point of the game) looked so slow and tedious to me that it almost felt like it didn't need to be there.
It really doesn't, though I guess the overall aesthetic of the world benefits from these bizarre creatures hanging out. The first enemies you find are these not-quite-humanoid things that mostly seem to gather in these huge agglomerations that crawl across the walls or form cables like army ant bridges, then die and rot together, so the whole map is strung through with this giant meat web. And the weapons and ammo and stuff add more fucked up machinery for you to interact with. The healing device is this meat lotus pod you plug into machines that engorge it with blood for you to transfuse, and the ammo storage is the same item, you plug it into a machine that puts these little glowing flesh greebles into its seed holes and you put those in your guns. That kind of stuff is where it really shines. The bizarre interfaces of the world and the way everything seems to serve some kind of purpose that's not always apparent.
But the game would've been just as good, maybe better, if it was pure exploration and puzzle solving with no combat.
Post by: Robsoie on October 23, 2022, 12:15:18 pm
After playing for a while, i see that it suffers from the same problems as "30mn to die" (that was this game previous name in an earlier alpha version) that in the end making it unfortunately a forgettable game (that you'll ditch after a few playthroughs) in comparison to its inspirations :
- very few different weapons as after a few playthrough you will have seen them all repeatedly
- weapons increase in levels are sometime really bad (like the molotov at high level will then land way too far from the crowd to be useful)
- ultimate update of a weapon is sometime not as useful than the version of previous level (the chainsaw of the Pio character by example, if you get its ultimate upgrade you'll be sorry)
- out of the ultimate upgrade of the machinegun (that is probably the only really good ultimate weapon) there is 0 weapon that automatically target a nearby enemy, even in the previous alpha of that game "30mn to die" there was at least one) meaning you'll always have to face the crowd that follows you to do any damage, super annoying considering the whole point is to dodge and run away.
- seems like you can have a limited amount of skill/weapon/upgrade to get when leveling up (up to around level 40 i think) as after that you will not recieve anymore during the level-up or elite enemy kill and will have either money or food only as a choice.
- the 2 first character unlocks are the same as the 1st character with a different sprite, they just start with a different weapon equipped (a weapon the other characters can find in level-up anyways.
Only the last 4th and 5th character unlocks are having a different gameplay with their unique weapon start (the other characters can't have access to those weapons) that at least make them work differently than the 3 first clones
The 4th unlocked character is also extremely slow (the "ghost enemies" are actually faster than him, so if you haven't bought some good regen upgrade in the main menu, the poor bugger is toast everytime :D ) and the 5th one has a nice chainsaw "rotating with you changing direction" based gameplay that is actually interesting.
Not sure there are any more character unlock as even after completing the game 2 times in a row with the 5th unlocked guy , there's nothing more, by the way surviving enough time with a character unlock the purchase of the next one in the list.
The boss system makes a positive change in comparison to the repetition of "30mn to die", there are 3 of them appearing every 5 minutes, defeating the 3rd one makes you win the game.
The money system finally works (unlike "30mn to die" ) and allows you to buy some upgrade in the main menu, making your character even stronger.
For the anecdote, i thought Vampire Survivor was the game that launched this genre (dodging hordes of monsters while your weapon do their work without the player active use of them, in opposition to games like old Crimsonland), but apparently it was not, people mention there was a mobile game "Magic Survival" that was first and was the inspiration of Vampire Survivor.
Post by: Frumple on October 23, 2022, 03:18:17 pm
Parts of the gameplay track further back, though -- the automated attack thing with dodging is WC3/flash game old at a minimum, and there were a few old arena survivor type dealios back in the old flash proliferation days that were pretty similar. Magic/Vampire survivor's big innovation is more the arena format and (especially) the wildly escalating upgrades (i.e. what gets them called Bullet Heaven) than most things. Autoattack with dodging and a variety of weapon choices is old WC3 custom map territory. Without the variety of weapon choices you're back in like space invaders or robotron days, heh. So on and so forth.
There were plenty of games in the yesteryears that can pretty close to the design, it was just nothing quite hit the exact permutations in question, and it's a good permutation indeed.
Post by: Jopax on October 23, 2022, 04:50:52 pm
Also, speaking of VS, it hit 1.0 the other day, making it a pretty damn good deal if you like the gameplay, plus it still blows most of the clones out of the water in terms of sheer amount of shit you unlock trough various challenges and secrets. Some of the games that came after it do mix up the formula a bit so it's more involved than just running around while shit dies around you.
One particularly promising example is Rogue Genesia which takes the basic formula and mashes with Slay the Spire overworld progression. So you get a number of way shorter encounters instead of one 30 minute slog all at once. Makes for much better pacing and the nature of the leveling system gives you chances to make broken shit much earlier too. The metaprogression is a bit grindy tho and is mostly stat boosts which isn't as exciting. Still, fairly early in development so it might get better.
Post by: Robsoie on October 23, 2022, 04:52:33 pm
Post by: Frumple on October 23, 2022, 09:52:05 pm
The specific combination of arena survival + huge hordes + multiple upgrading autofire weapons I think genuinely originated with magic survival. Everything except the multiple part of the weapons saw expression in flash games (there was a fairly famous one that had you swinging a sword around, iirc), the multiple upgrading autofire weapons came out in WC3 days... maybe even earlier, I think some of the very late stage Starcraft custom maps might have fiddled with it, too.
Anyway, general point is the pedigree and general design definitely predates MS or VS, they just managed to hit a particularly well liked combination of it. The whole "autofiring reverse bullet hell" thing was legitimately fairly new design, but earlier stuff had very much gotten very close to it. MS/VS just incremented design in a way that hit a really sweet spot and provided a lot of inspiration for other games.
Post by: Aoi on October 25, 2022, 03:38:50 pm
For the uninitiated, you're it's a shopkeeper management game where you have to balance your time against opening the shop, brewing potions, going to town for supplies and schmoozing, all against the backdrop of the clock ticking down on having your shop (and soul) foreclosed on, if you don't make enough money in time.
...Which was, of course, left to you by your uncle. I swear, the only reason why people end up in farming or shopkeeping is because some relative died and left them a ruinous property that they're obligated to take care of.
Note that it is very possible to let yourself fall behind, resulting in what'd probably be an unwinnable state.
Post by: Kagus on October 25, 2022, 04:39:55 pm
(navel) battleships
Now I'm just imagining a bunch of bellies floating around and launching lint at each other from their navel cannons.
But yeah, it's really rather impressive thinking about how much the gaming industry as a whole has been influenced and changed by random user content in SC and WC3...
...and how sad it is that the kinds of frameworks that allowed for those ideas to blossom and flourish no longer exist, and are unlikely to appear again in the future.
Post by: Folly on October 25, 2022, 05:31:40 pm
But yeah, it's really rather impressive thinking about how much the gaming industry as a whole has been influenced and changed by random user content in SC and WC3...
...and how sad it is that the kinds of frameworks that allowed for those ideas to blossom and flourish no longer exist, and are unlikely to appear again in the future.
On that note, I got a bit excited recently seeing Sackboy getting a Windows release. Then I watched the trailer, and realized something was wrong when 95% of it was bragging about how shiny their new graphics are, with zero mention of content creation which Little Big Planet was known for. Digging a bit deeper confirmed that indeed, Sackboy does not have any content creation mode; it's just a stale platforming game now.
smh
Post by: MCreeper on October 26, 2022, 08:53:35 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on October 26, 2022, 09:00:00 am
Post by: nenjin on October 26, 2022, 10:21:11 am
Persona 4 was the last Persona game I played, and it felt like the last one that had any restraint. Persona 5 and beyond went full into style (since the gameplay hasn't changed much.) So big soundtracks, high energy, overdesigned anime characters, very animoo storylines....
Persona 4 wasn't bad though.
And then there's Shin Megami Tensei, which has a decidedly less obnoxious take on the the whole thing. I much prefer the older Shin Megami Tensei games personally.
But Persona is basically a mashup up of "Highschooler daily life management" "Relationship building" and "Demon collecting and turn-based RPG fights." It's not that I don't get the appeal. I put plenty of hours into Persona 4. But the stylings of the later games made them a hard pass for me.
Post by: scriver on October 26, 2022, 04:08:20 pm
BTW, I don't get the appeal of those Persona games. Yahtzee keeps gushing over them every time he gets a chance. But to me it looks like extremely cringe animu cliche fest.
Isn't that basically how Yahtzee usually says that he used to feel about them, but then he tried.. number four, I think, and for some reason it really resonated with him?
Post by: Folly on October 26, 2022, 05:03:33 pm
So yeah, I basically feel like most of the people giving Persona glowing reviews only spent a few hours getting that initial impression, and never bothered to see what lies beyond.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on October 26, 2022, 05:28:28 pm
Post by: Robsoie on October 26, 2022, 06:16:09 pm
Tonight decided to give a try to the last part of that quest chain, only to notice i ... didn't saved at all ...
Spoiler: because one is not enough (click to show/hide)
:D
Post by: Robsoie on October 27, 2022, 07:29:11 am
https://www.thewitcher.com/en/news/46225/the-witcher-remake-is-in-development
I wonder if they will overhaul the gameplay completely, as the "click when the sword shine to continue automatic combo" combat system of Witcher 1 really was the game lowest point.
Post by: scriver on October 27, 2022, 09:59:47 am
Post by: nenjin on October 27, 2022, 11:21:07 am
Post by: Kagus on October 27, 2022, 11:35:48 am
Post by: scriver on October 27, 2022, 12:12:01 pm
Are Collectible Tiddy Cards "of a time" now? Just seems like the sex scenes are as cringy if not more cringy these days than the cards.
I don't remember any sex scenes?
Post by: Robsoie on October 27, 2022, 12:42:41 pm
Basically it was super tame in comparison to anything you see in even the most average movies nowadays, and at least made you feel much less like a creepy voyeur than the other Witcher games .
Post by: nenjin on October 27, 2022, 12:52:15 pm
Granted, it's pretty tame but it qualifies for the definition.
Post by: Robsoie on October 27, 2022, 12:53:31 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on October 27, 2022, 01:11:34 pm
Post by: Iduno on October 27, 2022, 01:44:30 pm
Post by: n9103 on October 27, 2022, 01:58:37 pm
Other than that, really not much out there about it, as far as text resources go. Several videos, including a modestly large series, on YouTube. No wiki that I could find either.
Post by: Robsoie on October 27, 2022, 03:57:23 pm
The few info/spoiler/helpful tips i got for Sil is usually from either dedicated threads (Sil had some people talking about it here in one of the Angband threads of old), but they're rare unfortunately..
Post by: Robsoie on October 27, 2022, 06:36:37 pm
I had never heard about it before that gog giveway, but after getting through the tutorial i'm having some fun, it's a very good surprise.
Oh at first after clearing the first system and hyperspacing to the next (it's where the tutorial left you fend for yourself) i felt it was repeating itself a bit and the gameplay loop (expand ship, manage ship, gather material from debris, land on planets to gather material and some more stuff , clear the ship from unwanted stuff that could get into it, once system is all done hyperspace somewhere else in the galaxy) was becoming a routine.
But after more time i got into some new deadly situation after escaping with 30% health left from one of my planetary harvesting in which some really though opposition killed one of my crew member i got the surprised to had some unexpected fungus thingy coming back with me that spread through most of my ship corridors, rooms and innards .
It was hell, but the very fun type of hell with a heavy alien infestation with me crawling through the whole ship underbelly looking for a lot of alien nests and crawling horrors, it seems the game have a lot more content and surprise than it seemed at first.
The only bad point of the game is that its controls are a bit janky, but despite that it's very entertaining, a great mix of FPS, exploring , base building and management game, all with some roguelite elements.
Here's some guides if the tutorial puzzle you :
https://genesisalphaone.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_Play_Guide_for_Genesis_Alpha_One
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2498310125
Post by: Frumple on October 27, 2022, 07:32:04 pm
It seems there's a curse to Angband and all its variants: there's no indepth wiki.Lot of that is because most of the *band varients have their source/data just kinda' sitting there, out in the open and mostly human readable.
The few info/spoiler/helpful tips i got for Sil is usually from either dedicated threads (Sil had some people talking about it here in one of the Angband threads of old), but they're rare unfortunately..
Sil's case with the prying it looks like there's just a chance to destroy your weapon when you try to pry out the shinies? Can't tell if you get a another chance/can try again with a different weapon or not if you fail an attempt, though. The exact mechanic's in the code but I am not nearly coherent enough to try to parse it in more detail than that.
Post by: Akura on October 27, 2022, 07:37:39 pm
At one point, an alien came out of the tractor beam loot, got immediately splatted by the turret I put right next to it, and yet it still had time to spawn a nest.
Still, the game is pretty decent overall.
Post by: Robsoie on October 28, 2022, 04:41:48 am
Apparently there's 50% of uninvited guest when the Harvester is back, regardless if you're inside of it or if you were waiting in your ship.
One time on a dangerous planet i faced some rather nasty opposition and after a couple of waves there were squads of enemies soldier attacking my mining crew forcing me to retreat as fast as i could as i didn't wanted to lose any of my guys as they had leveled up a bit.
When the Harvester landed on our ship , surprise an enemy squad had followed and a big fight erupted in the hangar, and the enemy commandos managed to kill me , forcing me to resurrect inside one of the crew member.
Fortunately we had enough biomass to clone some more crew.
Another time it was very unexpected because the uninvited guest was of a specie i never saw before (even on the planet i explored) , 2 big clumsy and bobbling creatures spawning what looked like leeches all around them, it took a lot of ammo to bring those 2 down.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on October 29, 2022, 04:45:04 am
Like if someone found a geode that looked like a perfectly ordinary rock on the outside. But instead of breaking it open or doing anything of the sort, the person proceeds to spend a large amount of time furiously polishing the outside of the geode. They then proudly present this polished rock. But there's something off about it. Like there's promise and effort there, but the promise and effort don't actually interact with each other.
I don't know. It's interesting and I'll probably have to spend more time with it, but boy is it confounding to try and describe.
Post by: Robsoie on October 29, 2022, 06:31:15 am
Spoiler: a simplified explanation of the gameplay loop[/spoiler (click to show/hide)
Once you ended your run with the "tutorial corporation" (either by winning or losing) you'll have unlocked several stuff depending on various factors along with several new corporations for your next run.
Encountered an abandonned ship and explored it, game performance went absolutely horrible in it, the responsible was whatever it's called that look like some blue "goo" emitting some blue particles (that teleport you if you walk on them) that was found nearly everywhere, after destroying them all performance went back to good.
Looks like the game lacks some optimisation for those cases, especially as those things don't even move.
Post by: Robsoie on October 30, 2022, 05:49:19 am
It was fun to see those damned mercs getting their sorry bottom handed to them like that :D
Post by: Kagus on October 30, 2022, 11:13:53 am
Yes, it feels there's a slight lack of polish somewhere in Genesis
I wasn't paying attention to which thread I was in when I read this.
Post by: Frumple on October 30, 2022, 12:00:07 pm
We'd be wrong, but hey, that'd be not!thread appropriate :P
E: ... anyway, to make something thread appropriate, in Gordian Quest I just now fully comprehended that my bear does less damage than my golem does throwing the bear at things.
Any game that has a damage optimization process include "Your highest DPS in this case is to literally throw the bear at them." has my at least tentative approval.
It's reasonable when you think about it, really. What hurts more, getting clawed by a bear or having a presumably 600+ pound magic grizzly chucked into you? One tears the skin, the other pulps whatever it hits!
Post by: Mephansteras on November 01, 2022, 04:28:39 pm
Post by: Frumple on November 01, 2022, 04:34:44 pm
Post by: Robsoie on November 02, 2022, 01:31:17 pm
Oh a "low danger level" abandonned ship, let's teleport into it for more loot and giggles...
... after dying in a few seconds after getting on that ship due insane amount of alien nests and crazy high damage aliens, it should have been "WTF danger level" :D
Post by: Jopax on November 02, 2022, 03:12:57 pm
Now, the game is silly pixel art stuff so it's fairly abstract when it happens. But the image of an evil necromancer being assaulted by scores of paladins and royal guard knights who casts a spell that causes them all to violently shit themselves with flaming diarrhea is too goddamn hilarious when imagined in a more realistic setting.
Post by: n9103 on November 02, 2022, 03:37:56 pm
Funny shit though 8)
Post by: Robsoie on November 05, 2022, 04:37:57 pm
Spoiler: Some thoughts, appreciation and rants, warning lots of spoilers (click to show/hide)
Post by: nenjin on November 05, 2022, 04:48:53 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Also Bioshock Infinite:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
By 3/4s of the way through Bioshock Infinite I started to feel jerked around. And the ending is something you're just subjected to. I really never bought that:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I enjoyed the game but man the ending, in attempting to be this massive send off of the series, just left me irritated with the writers.
Post by: Robsoie on November 05, 2022, 05:05:58 pm
My enjoyement of the game was only due to the magnificent design and the vertical gameplay fun, definitively not for the story (unlike in Bioshock 1&2 in which i enjoyed that part).
Post by: nenjin on November 05, 2022, 05:16:03 pm
The illusion of verticality is really impressive and the way it really does give you the feeling of all this open space. I just wish more energy had been given to designing around the idea in terms of the levels and how you get through them.
I also felt like the "Tears" were a little gamey versus how the trailers portrayed them. They seemed more dynamic and useful in the trailers. In the game it was more like "here's an arena, and here's some static tears you can use to get more ammo or maybe a turret." Just felt like with another year BS:I could have fleshed out their ideas a lot more.
At least the game was so polished you could see your reflection in the start menu though.
If I have to say in which order the game really enthralled me, it's still gotta be BS1, BS:I then BS2. BS1 being new and the first, it's harder to see the unfulfilled ideas. And it had the best crafted story of the right scope of the three, to me.
Post by: King Zultan on November 06, 2022, 04:36:20 am
Post by: Salmeuk on November 06, 2022, 09:11:30 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muJYTeQlvC4
aka it was made by overworked code slaves. it is very much a product of its time, that way
"interesting, subtle critique of unbridled capitalist paradise underneath the ocean" was traded for... a series of set-piece theme park rides linked by awkward segues?
so many articles giving Infinite 9.5 / 10 days after release. . video game ratings have truly meant nothing for like 20 years now lol
Post by: Robsoie on November 07, 2022, 06:07:25 am
Post by: Chiefwaffles on November 07, 2022, 06:22:31 am
It's just hype and pressure.
Post by: nenjin on November 07, 2022, 11:30:01 am
Post by: King Zultan on November 08, 2022, 01:59:39 am
Post by: Chiefwaffles on November 08, 2022, 03:34:59 am
It's all about nuance. Doesn't have to be some evil men in business suits in a dark back room cackling as they exchange briefcases filled with $100 bills.
Importantly, though, nowadays? It's literally always been like this. Always. Find sources you trust (ideally not sources *identical* to your tastes -- going out of your comfort zone is always a good idea) to give good recommendations, whether these sources are your friends or some people on a social media platform or some influencer or whatever. As long as you enjoy the games they recommend, you're golden.
Post by: JWNoctis on November 08, 2022, 04:18:04 am
Unless there's street cred at risk. Sometimes peer pressure does have a point (https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1170:_Bridge). Seems like there really is a xkcd for everything.
Post by: Folly on November 08, 2022, 04:43:21 am
Importantly, though, nowadays? It's literally always been like this. Always.
Showing my age here, but I still remember when internet product reviews were a novel concept. Big businesses did not take them seriously, and thus did not pay for positive reviews. So reviewers had no reason to be anything but honest.
At first it was just the big name publications who sold out. For a while, you could still trust personal reviews from regular people. But the corporations caught on, and started buying up their own products with dummy accounts just so that they could leave themselves good reviews, knowing that the increased profits would outweigh the costs of their endeavor.
So yeah, the good old days are long behind us now.
Post by: Kagus on November 08, 2022, 06:47:10 am
I tend to either play games years after their release, or... Before they release. And then ignore the finished version.
This is not a conscious decision, mind, I'm just scattered all to hell and forget things easily.
Post by: Robsoie on November 08, 2022, 08:17:03 am
Certainly there are more "fuck that" and "it's shit" type of wording to explain a specific feature or a gameplay mechanic :D but i found that in the majority of cases those reviews are honestly what the user thought of the game he/she played.
Of course there are always trolls that didn't even played a game and will troll/bomb review in many possible ways, but that's the internet and after some years you start to recognize those more easily :)
But in the past i wasn't looking for reviews but i usually played a demo of a game to judge if it was something i would like or not, it's a pity there's nearly no company that makes demo of their game anymore, or at least demos that are not locked to a specific store i don't use.
Post by: Aoi on November 08, 2022, 03:10:38 pm
Needless to say, the dev/publisher/advertiser was NOT happy, and threatened to cut them off from any further interaction unless they recanted. They refused, and pointed out that what made them a valuable outlet to advertise on was their audience believed they wouldn't be bought. Advertiser accepted the argument and continued to do business with them, at least for a few years after.
Post by: nenjin on November 09, 2022, 02:56:07 pm
It's been on my wishlist for what feels like a year+. It had a demo out that whole time that I didn't play.
It was supposed to release on Halloween. But they pushed the release back a week because of a feature they wanted to get right.
Well, it released. In Early Access.
And all the complaints I read about the demo, bad minion behavior, bugs, bad game design ideas....are all unchanged in the EA version.
And there's bugs in the input mappings. Like, not even correctly displaying what the thing you're binding for even is, it's just a broken reference.
I put about 4 minutes into it before friends wanted to play other things but.....tempted to just refund it now. Everything about this game says it's half baked, and it's kind of shameful how the EA product is essentially no different than the demo they've had up for months and months.
The thing that originally drew me to the game was the delightful pixel art, but as a game it's pretty shit. It's supposed to be about overwhelming the living with a horde of the undead, but your horde politely stands in line and waits for their turn to attack. So if you have 50 skeletons attacking 5 militia, only about 7 of your guys actually attack while the rest just pack in behind them and stand there, eating damage from archers and what not.
Pretty disappointed and I haven't even actually played it yet. Just debating if I eat the $16 and wait for it be good some day or refund it and wait.
Post by: AlStar on November 09, 2022, 03:06:27 pm
Pretty disappointed and I haven't even actually played it yet. Just debating if I eat the $16 and wait for it be good some day or refund it and wait.If you're still under 2 hours, I'd definitely refund and wait-and-see. If it's as bad as you've said, I'd even consider leaving a negative review while you're at it (just copy-paste what you've got here).
You shouldn't give developers money for releasing a broken game, even on Early Access.
Post by: nenjin on November 09, 2022, 04:23:05 pm
It's like, I don't want to kick a dev while they're down or just legitimately doing their best. I don't think it's a scam. I just wonder if, pixel art aside, their reach extends their grasp and it will never actually be what it ostensibly should be.
Post by: Iduno on November 09, 2022, 08:30:52 pm
Yeah those AAA/high budget games always get a minimum of 9/10 whatever they are, maybe a part of the high budget is sent to the review websites :D
Yeah, it's pretty well-known that any reviewer (or company) who gives a low score never gets to review anything again, because companies don't want low scores.
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 09, 2022, 08:33:28 pm
Yeah, it's pretty well-known that any reviewer (or company) who gives a low score never gets to review anything again, because companies don't want low scores.Oh. So that's why zero punctuation always gives such glowing reviews.
Post by: nenjin on November 09, 2022, 08:48:50 pm
If you're just going to review it after it came out, you don't have to play that game. Yahtzee succeeds because of his personality, not because of a lot of insider access.
Speaking of things seen from the inside, and since there's no DOOM Eternal thread the forum search can pull up.....
https://twitter.com/Mick_Gordon/status/1590343092598878210?s=20&t=yNMRLD2E9cgvvAjAq0TJAA
Massive bombshell dropped today by the composer. About 10 months ago or w/e the producer of Eternal did an open letter on Reddit that trashed the composer and blamed him for the shoddy quality of the OST. Composer got the sadly usual toxic fan treatment: DDoSing, doxxing, death threats.
Well the composer has finally responded after protracted negotiations with Id and Zennimax, and god DAMN it is ugly. It's super long but also a very compelling read. You hear about ruthless game executives and producers but to see how they treated this guy and how he kept working in good faith and got even more betrayed.....it's fucking unreal.
Post by: nenjin on November 10, 2022, 12:40:37 am
Pretty disappointed and I haven't even actually played it yet. Just debating if I eat the $16 and wait for it be good some day or refund it and wait.If you're still under 2 hours, I'd definitely refund and wait-and-see. If it's as bad as you've said, I'd even consider leaving a negative review while you're at it (just copy-paste what you've got here).
You shouldn't give developers money for releasing a broken game, even on Early Access.
NGL, I stuck it out and I don't have regrets.
It's easy to peg a game to what you want it to be instead of what it actually is.
It took me a few runs and _a lot_ of puzzling over the UI but after a bit it started to click.
The game is basically Hades meets Okhlos. Or perhaps Overlord but that's a little tenuous. I mostly say Okhlos (which I think was a browser game originally about running a mob of greeks around smashing shit up, that went on to a PC release) because that's how your undead feel. Just a big mass that slides around in a big slippery blob until they hit combat, at which point they kind of stop listening to you. It's also like Hades in that it's got the hub, and npcs, and the new things to say and upgrade every time you come back from a run, and the story unfolds through these one-off interactions every time you come back. It's doing the Hades gag of 4th wall-breaking about playing a roguelike and isn't taking an overly serious tone often times.
But it's also like Hades in that it's lookin to put the hurt on you during battle. And there's a lot to juggle. You gotta be paying attention to how your horde is doing, and maybe sacrificing a specific undead to do a useful thing. While also making the most of your spells. While also using your actual basic attack. While also paying attention to where you're standing, what's coming at you and what's coming up behind you. You think it's kind of a chillaxed game about standing back and letting your minions do all the work, but you have to put in real time and attention to put them where you need them, contribute and stay alive.
It took me a while to see what they were going for but I think I understand a lot of the decisions in the game a lot better now.
The other thing major thing that stuck out to me is that maybe it's a little obtuse about its upgrade and game mechanics. There's some styling things that make it hard to understand what a thing does, or applies to, or takes effect, and upgrades for various things about your Necromancer are scattered about in an overly large hub area, making things feel kind of disconnected. But eventually you realize that most of this is unlocking stuff that you can find during your run, and once you start putting all the pieces together.....
I kinda like it? I'm pretty sure? I got into the flow although maybe that's the just the compulsion of a roguelike. But I went from feeling lost and ineffective to getting it and starting to progress. Highlight was hitting what I think is the end of the first level and raising a colossal skeletal upper torso to smash through a fortress in my way. The game further surprised me when it turned into a "protect the colossal skeletal upper torso from masses of guys and traps and siege equipment while it claws its way through." The game goes from you can mostly set your own pace to now you need to really move and kill and keep up a pace or lose. You're also always kind of being flogged to move forward because your undead are all slowly decaying. Which means you need to get the forward momentum going. And once you've got it going, the game starts to feel legitimately fun.
There's definitely still jank. But a lot of things that I was ready to go "this shit is broke!" was actually me not understanding what it actually does. Once I cottoned on how several things worked I started to see the game in a different light, then got sucked into about 3 hours of it. And there's quite a bit of artistry to appreciate, even though a lot of the writing and character banter is hit or miss for me. It seesaws between starchy dialog and very casual sounding dialog. Would play more if I had the time. It's a tough game at first! And the horde is not super responsive the way I'd like, or feels like you get to utilize all of it when you really need it. And Werewolves are OP as fuck and need to be toned down. But I'm kinda digging it.
Won't be surprised though if a lot of people can't see past what they think it should be doing to what it's actually doing.
Post by: dragdeler on November 12, 2022, 08:20:47 am
That concludes today's ted talk.
Post by: Robsoie on November 12, 2022, 10:38:00 am
But online or in solo play, it unfortunately lose the "group of people having fun together" atmosphere.
Playing Worms on the same screen with a lot of people in the same room was an hilarious experience unlike anything i had with that game in other conditions.
Post by: Robsoie on November 13, 2022, 06:36:04 pm
It's been a while i haven't played so i checked the current version and noticed it was months ago so after googling around it seems preferable to instead get those daily new builds can be found there https://downloads.cardforge.org/dailysnapshots/
And in that snapshot i toyed with i noticed there was something completely new (a new executable along the normal Forge one) that didn't existed the last time i played a bit more than a year ago : Forge Adventure and after launching this one even despite the pixel graphics used i quickly noticed what it was all about: it's nearly a recreation of Magic:The Gathering from Microprose that was so incredibly good back in its day in 97 with a different presentation but you still explore a world conquer dungeons and various stuff, discover items , cards (so you can adjust or build different decks) and etc... on your way to battle the boss.
So if by any chances you know how great this microprose game was in its time, go give a try to a recent snapshot of Forge, even if this Forge Adventure is currently WIP , so much potential.
check user guide to install :
https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge/wiki/User-Guide
the Forge forum (they have a discord too, there are invite on their boards) :
https://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=26
Post by: Nirur Torir on November 14, 2022, 08:10:04 pm
Forge AdventureThank you for this, this is perfect. I've wanted a game about grinding NPCs in TCG fights for their booster packs since the Game Boy Color Pokemon TCG game so long ago, never got that MTG game to work, and haven't found anything else in the genre.
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 14, 2022, 08:15:12 pm
It's been a while i haven't played so i checked the current version and noticed it was months ago so after googling around it seems preferable to instead get those daily new builds can be found there https://downloads.cardforge.org/dailysnapshots/Uh, the folder is empty?
Post by: Robsoie on November 14, 2022, 08:34:49 pm
As it's still direct linked in their FAQ (and i continue to see commits in their github daily), maybe they just deleted the files to replace them with new snapshots in case it's not automated or whatever bot they're using just broke ?
Post by: Robsoie on November 15, 2022, 06:19:22 am
For those not knowing : the window version is inside of a ".tar.bz2" archive, if you use 7zip (but it should work with any program like that, winzip, winrar , etc... ) you simply extract the file.
It will extract a ".tar" file, then you will have to extract this .tar file to obtain the Forge game folder (that you can place anywhere you want, still recommended to place it into your C:\ to avoid possible problems).
You need at least java8 (or the openjdk8) installed to use the java8 version of the executable, the normal executable requires at least java11 (or corresponding openjdk) if i remember well .
check for the links :
https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge/wiki/User-Guide
personnally i have java17 installed ( https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/#java17 ) and Forge works great.
Post by: Iceblaster on November 19, 2022, 02:07:25 pm
-snippy snip snap-
Oh my god I think I remember playing that or some other free MTG engine, I forget. My dad had it on an old computer tower computer and that plus Star Trek Armada 1 are just core memories of PC gaming for me
Makes me wish star trek armada would actually work, but I think my disk is borked bc I tried to install it on an old e-pc we got for free from someone that ran unreal tournament and other old games -like Star Trek Fleet Command- p well but it never got past 0% on the install.
Post by: Robsoie on November 19, 2022, 02:53:45 pm
After completing the tutorial mini campaign that decieve you into thinking this one gameplay may be different than Sudden Strike and Blitzkrieg, i started one of the main campaigns included with the game, the US/UK one as i'm more familiar with their tanks and etc.. naming conventions so i thought it would help getting the hang of the whole things quicker.
And after completing 2 very long grueling battles against enemy groups encounted on the campaign map, the 2nd one had me taking more than 1 hour to attack the last objective , due to insane amount of save/reload because success and failure was linked to "pixel war".
"pixel war" , yeah it's that biggest part of the Sudden Strike/Blitzkrieg gameplay that the tutorial made me forget as it wasn't as heavy on it :
Those pixels i talke about are the distance you need to move your spotting units then stop then activate their spotting ability, the move again a pixel or two, stop, activate their spotting abilities, repeat ... (that's a lot of clicking in the end) until you either spot the units that have been murdering your whole army in your previous attempt, or walk a pixel too much and get in the LOS of said troops that will proceed to murder your spotter and you troops now that you can't see them anymore.
And if you spot said unit , let's hope you can kill them quick (armor penetration being -very- random) before some of the other camping AI tanks rush to the location and with how uncertain battles can be it's extremely easy to lose a lot of very previous units in seconds because they're taking their time to retreat to safety (that damned random armor penetration too, explain also lots of my reloading :D )
So far in my campaign i got 2 encounter battles that are played on "random maps", 1st one i initiated as i attacked, but the 2nd one was an enemy group attacking one of mine on the map
But even despite i was the one attacked, the random map was again the same as previously (though with snow instead of grass) about "take the objective protected by all the enemies camping there, oh and don't think about setting ambushes, despite you're the one attacked the AI will NEVER move out of their camping zones to attack you...".
And there's some puzzle aspect to solve too, because in missions the way the enemies are positionned it means you must find from which direction to attack, as other directions may just lead to utter failure, make sure to surround enemies location with spotters to get an idea on how exactly each troops are camping , that should usually help you to figure out which direction is a NO and which one is the must use.
I wonder if out of the manually crafted missions (i hope there are some), those random maps are not in fact all of the same crap like those 2 i just completed, i remember Blitzkrieg and Sudden Strike had a bit more variation, but in the same time there wasn't a campaign map with you and the AI moving troops around, it was missions after missions.
And no idea if it's because i accidentally started to play on Normal difficulty, but tanks burn their fuel super fast, my fuel supply truck had to go back 2 times to the camp at the entrance of the map to get more fuel and come back to help some out of fuel tanks that couldn't move to attack anymore.
Make sure to increase a bit the amount of fuel you'll carry in a mission.
Oh and still no access to air support and bombers, not sure why as the tutorial mini campaign gave me some.
Post by: Robsoie on November 25, 2022, 12:16:16 pm
It's a nice little winery tycoon game in the same genre as "Hundred Days".
From my first play Terroir feels less complex in term of options but has its slightly simpler gameplay flowing better and it is faster to learn.
Anyways, on my first game it was a disaster (i had setup 0 competitor in the game setup in the hope it would get easier to learn), as unlike what i thought when i enabled the tutorial , said tutorial is horribly bad as it's basically telling you "go read the manual" , Hundred Days tutorial was much better as it showed you how to play while you were playing.
So the first year, i made my first wine, and bottled it.
Then i waited, hmm how come i am not making money, the year ended and clicking on the Cellar again i noticed in the bottle window there was a button i didn't noticed when i bottled the wine called "tasting" that allow you to call professional (lowly professionals at first) to taste it and give their judgement on the quality.
Only then you can get your bottles to wine sales company .
No wonder i was losing money every months as i was selling nothing .
Money started then to finally come in, time for my 2nd year wine, but this time as one of the judge mentionned it could use a bit more acidity, i moved the pressing slider down , as a result my 2nd year wine was judged as basically a bottle of ... acid :D
Sold nearly nothing of that of course and got near bankrupt from that horrible mistake. Though it was funny to think there were people probably buying my new wine instead of acid bottles for their needs :D
Third year i got the slider better and ended with a nice one, comparable to the first year, but 3 or the 4 wine selling companies weren't interested as they were left with so many bottles they prefered to first sell their stock.
So even the 4th company sales weren't enough and i went bankrupt
Lesson to learn : make sure to go check your bottles in the cellar after having bottled your wine and get the tasting expert doing their job so you can actually make money
And probably i should have read the ingame manual instead of skipping the vocal tutorial :D
2nd game, managed to get my 2nd year wine a 5 stars !
Spoiler: i guess balanced is best (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: seriously (click to show/hide)
Post by: dragdeler on November 25, 2022, 12:33:37 pm
Post by: Robsoie on November 25, 2022, 12:44:11 pm
Post by: Kagus on November 26, 2022, 10:33:49 am
The only way of knowing this is to already know how to make perfect wine.
Post by: scriver on November 26, 2022, 10:39:43 am
Post by: Robsoie on November 26, 2022, 11:18:18 am
The circumstance card seems to always give a mini mission :
1st one got me to invite the mayor and give him my best wine
2nd one is me supporting the army with 3000 bottles of wine before a few years (hard because it means 3000 bottles that you throw away instead of making money from)
3rd one was a mission in which ihad to produce 3 wines with less than 2 stars (horrible as it hurts your standing with distributors) and failing means a malus to your price for 10 years
Yeah, unless i had some bad luck it looks like it's mostly negative to pick a card
Oh and a tip : do not sell all your bottles of your best wine,you need 20 bottles of a specific wine to get it into the wine award contest every 4 years, also one of the awardr equire 8 years old bottles so if you get a really good 5 stars that also has some bonus flavor with it make sure to keep some.
Also some mission (circumstance card) may require having some bottles left in stock too.
Post by: Kagus on November 27, 2022, 06:54:43 pm
Sure, it may have been a dumpster fire of sketchy programming and questionable design choices... But that game had heart. Also a couple horribly catchy quotes that still pop into my consciousness decades later.
Post by: nenjin on November 27, 2022, 08:26:54 pm
It's not bad. In form it plays like Cultist Simulator, all card-based. In practice it plays a bit like Cult of the Lamb; it's mostly about keeping your village going.
I'd say it's fairly casual since it seems hard to lose (on like Day 40 or something on my first real playthrough.) You can sell off all your cards instantly to make a ton of cash, to buy unlocks for more stuff to build. The only real metric that matters is feeding your villagers every day and it's pretty trivial to overstock your food. And you can just create new villagers after a short period of time when you want, so the monsters that show up are completely outnumbered.
Still, it's got an addictive, easy to play style. I feel like after 10 hours I've tapped out most of the content that matters but if you're looking for a chillaxing card-based villager game, it's not too shabby for the price.
Post by: Aoi on November 29, 2022, 01:43:19 pm
Someone bought me Stacklands for like $4.
There is actually a 'final' objective--
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on November 30, 2022, 04:02:14 pm
https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher/releases/latest
Post by: Robsoie on December 01, 2022, 12:09:25 pm
Checking the game files, oh it's an Unity game...
Anyways after playing for some time on the campaign, for the overworld part it's nowhere as good as Heroes of Might&Magic 3 was and for the battles despite some funny quirks (making pillars/trees fall on the head of enemies or kicking them into a rock) it's also unfortunately nowhere as good as an xcom battle.
Post by: Robsoie on December 02, 2022, 10:19:14 pm
https://www.moddb.com/groups/2022-mod-of-the-year-awards
And apparently voting can get you a chance to win a game
https://www.moddb.com/groups/2022-mod-of-the-year-awards/news/2022-voter-prizes
Post by: Folly on December 04, 2022, 09:41:51 pm
Post by: Rolan7 on December 05, 2022, 01:30:25 pm
Apparently there's a DLC for Master of Magic. A glorified mod, but still.Yeah, it rules!! I've got- oh wow, that is TOO many hours for how little I've mastered it. It hits a sweet spot of casual and mechanically crunchy for me.
Caster of Magic was originally a pretty incredible mod which worked within the original's severe limitations. Kinda like classic Pokemon romhacks that way. The main manual from that period is really interesting as the dev justifies replacing various spells because the *slots* are a limited resource, for example. Lots of balance talk. That manual is somewhat outdated, but I still recommend (maybe even more than buying the game) because it really goes into the balancing concerns and development process: https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/CasterofMagic/caster%20of%20magic%20manual.pdf
Nowadays that guide is somewhat out-of-date because the game has been ported to native Windows, allowing it to get a bit crazy with scale. In a good way, IMO. There can be like 15 wizards IIRC, TONs of worldgen options including a lot of choice in how large the game is, and generally a lot of good balance stuff.
I think my favorite example might be the "omniscient" retort. The manual makes no bones about being balanced for high-magic games, and that supports specialization in one field of magic so you can get access at least one Very Rare spell to conclude the endgame. Dabbling in other fields allows some really interesting synergies, but sacrifices endgame power. Omniscient makes a non-specialist viable. Boiled down, it gives you a significant bonus for your first book in each field (tailored to that field). So taking ANY death books gets you a flat 16% production bonus, nature gets you +2 population limit, etc. So obviously I took 1-2 books in every field. This gave me a run where I had incredible flexibility, but my power had to come from my mundane units- even more so than a life-magic run because even *that* gets angels (and some combat summons now). I had functionally unlimited power to channel into early-game tricks like phantom warriors or hordes of sprites, which are GREAT but I really felt the lack of midgame gamechangers like Invisibility. I ended up massing dark elven warlocks with their guaranteed-damage spell, but they died in droves whenever they were on offense (allowing the enemy a turn).
Yeah I like it. I did a challenge where I ran each color (mono, 10-books) with Specialist and then one final retort (usually Astrologer: nodes give +2 mana per game year, and no longer counter my spells. One of many ways to ramp up power production in lategame). I love how different each run was.
Guardian is also a cool pick for how it changes the game. For 2 picks you get a whopping +6 to max population, which is incredible, plus garrison troops get accuracy boosts which scale into lategame. The downside- it only works on cities of your race. It's the genocide retort, essentially. Really makes me think.
Anyway I've posted a couple of summaries in the How Did You Last Own thread. Here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=83528.msg8158354;topicseen#msg8158354) is the Omniscient run as Lolth, here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=83528.msg8369038;topicseen#msg8369038) is a mon-Life run. Life gets so much potentially-creepy stuff... particularly since there's no longer a barrier to having both Life and Death books.
Post by: TheLastVegan on December 05, 2022, 01:45:53 pm
Hooded Horse signed a deal to publish Against The Storm. I didn't see an ATS thread so I figured it might fit here.Deserves a thread now imo. I am waiting with anticipation for Steam's Christmas sales to pick up my copy! Met some new streamers while waiting and there seems to be a ton of minmaxing in the endgame.
Post by: Il Palazzo on December 05, 2022, 02:20:47 pm
The most annoying thing has always been the squishiness of heroes - you're tempted to get invested in getting them levelled up. But then in every single battle every unit targets them until they inevitably die (slightly less of a death sentence if they're ranged-immune).
Post by: Akura on December 05, 2022, 02:51:36 pm
Pokemon-With-Guns (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcQB5ev2rWI) is really shaping up nicely. Nintendo better watch out!
I would say that Pocketpair ought to be the ones watching out, some of those mons look very close to actual model rips. Kinda surprised they haven't yet been sent a C&D. Nintendo tends to be trigger-happy about that if I remember correctly.
That said, holy fuck I want to play this when it comes out. Even though Craftopia(their other game) was weird janky crap last I played, I'd enjoy this even if it was the same quality of janky crap.
Post by: Mech#4 on December 06, 2022, 12:21:19 am
Apparently there's a DLC for Master of Magic. A glorified mod, but still.Anyway I've posted a couple of summaries in the How Did You Last Own thread. Here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=83528.msg8158354;topicseen#msg8158354) is the Omniscient run as Lolth, here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=83528.msg8369038;topicseen#msg8369038) is a mon-Life run. Life gets so much potentially-creepy stuff... particularly since there's no longer a barrier to having both Life and Death books.
It would have been the earlier version but I remember watching a bunch of let's plays done by one Hadriex (https://www.youtube.com/@Hadriex/videos) of Casters of Magic. It did seem to smooth out a lot of the biggest imbalances in Master of Magic. Though the imbalances are part of why I've enjoyed Master of Magic in the past as it makes some magic spells and buffs feel like they have a real impact.
Post by: Robsoie on December 06, 2022, 07:39:09 am
I mean if you have a spell that destroy the clothing of an enemy wizard on Arcanus and automatically teleport him/her naked to be publicly laughed at on Myrror by a bunch of drunken dwarves, a rebalanced version of the spell that simply slightly damage the clothing and that's all is certainly losing a bunch of what made it special :D
Post by: Akura on December 08, 2022, 08:24:46 pm
Post by: nenjin on December 09, 2022, 01:24:10 am
Meanwhile, New Armored Core anyone? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKO1s-CUZvY)
I never played any of them, although I've heard plenty about it. I feel like I should make a thread because more people should know, but not being deeply invested in it, I feel like I'm the wrong one to start it.
Post by: Egan_BW on December 09, 2022, 04:39:23 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 09, 2022, 10:48:57 am
Saints Row IV just got a... change. Epic Online Services is now required, even for singleplayer. For the Steam version, you can revert using the beta branch feature, but I've seen reports that EOS installs even for that. Opinions on the matter are... inflamed.
It's a strange case, i have read so many people on the steam version mentionning that since the "re-elected" update their game crash non stop , even when creating a new character it crashes, or how it performs very badly.
Yet on the epic version i played 2 hours so far and not only it run very smoothly on my now low end system but i had no crash anywhere (yet ?), but in the same time i have no epic launcher installed as i use the open source heroic launcher instead.
I wonder if the epic store version is running on a different code somehow, unless those steam users having problems have some of the steam workshop mods that are probably now incompatible due to the new code base (many people report all their mods will crash the game), or if some higher quality video settings are simply bugged (as i play on everything low and even disabled the post processing as i couldn't stand the motion blur)
Also it seems saves made on the previous version of Saints Row 4 may crash after updated to Re-Elected.
between games that require an always online launcher , games that multiplayer is locked to a specific store, games that modding are locked only to a specific store, games that despite you spending money are not considered yours anymore ... i wish people would support gog more as a store.
Post by: Jopax on December 09, 2022, 01:21:04 pm
Post by: Egan_BW on December 09, 2022, 01:24:12 pm
Post by: Persus13 on December 09, 2022, 01:25:02 pm
Post by: nenjin on December 09, 2022, 01:32:41 pm
Post by: Egan_BW on December 09, 2022, 01:36:52 pm
I mean, we already knew that because it's fromsoft, and we vaguely knew that fromsoft were working on AC, so this trailer tells us nothing! Pretty tho.
Post by: Robsoie on December 10, 2022, 12:57:15 pm
The same as if you set the game to be played Offline.
And then if you unblock the game executable from your firewall (and disable Offline mode), your options and keybinding come back as you modified them before.
That sounds like some options and keybinding (but not video options or the saved games that are not reset to default) things are "cloud saved" , but it should not be because the cloud saving feature is always disabled for all the games i got from the epic store.
Looks like that game does not like to not being able to communicate with the internet despite being played exclusively offline and will annoy you with resetting your keybinding every time if you don't let it go online.
Ah the joy of those drm shit...
Post by: Robsoie on December 12, 2022, 01:23:18 pm
Basically you're playing in some medieval era as a little mouse (that belong to a menestrel guild) that has been thrown in jail and is guarded by rats, looking for your wife you need to escape from the place.
You'll meet various character you can talk to, get some quests and help in your hide and seek game with those nasty rats.
Spoiler: notGarrett avoiding a guard (click to show/hide)
The animations are very well done giving you a sense of your cutesy mouse should really do its best to avoid the nasty threatening rats.
So far on my way to a great escape i felt the environment was very cramped, i hope it was just because it's the beginning, though i just emerged outside of that starting underground jail system and i am now in some kind of prison/castle courtyard that is noticably bigger, currently hunting for armor parts to disguise as a prison guard.
The stealth part isn't too hard but be very cautious when you walk (even in stealth mode) as guards can hear you (fortunately the guards icon is clear so you can see when the icon fill up too much and its time to stay immobile or run to break sight and hide).
You can outrun a guard that spotted you and hide into a chest/barrel until he gets back to its patrol after a few seconds of them being suspicious (so far unlike in Alien Isolation they haven't tried to open the lockers i was hiding into) , you can also temporarly knock out a guard by throwing a bottle to his head if it has not yet seen you (despite bottles are nearly as big as the mouse, note that you can carry several of them) that's needed at some point if you notice said guard carry a key as you can't do a Garrett swift stealing with the little mouse.
With everything on low it's nicely very playable on my old system. But it's on the Unity engine so you may never know... oh and it seems if you alt/tab during a loading time that loading time will wait until you come back to continue loading ...
Oh and it's harder than it looks, so if the nice visuals make you hope this could be a good game for your kids , play it with them as the game has the old school "no hint on where to go or where to find the required item" , so don't expect arrows to point the player to the correct direction.
Post by: Astral on December 13, 2022, 11:53:40 pm
What's the pitch on Armored Core as a franchise? Just mechs shooting each other or is there more to it?I've always found it to be the ideal middle ground in mech games between allowing a large degree of customization without being extremely simulation-heavy, and also not feeling too arcade-y, if that makes sense.
The PS2 era games are still great to go back and play from time to time.
Post by: Persus13 on December 14, 2022, 08:20:28 am
Post by: Iduno on December 15, 2022, 09:33:11 pm
Anyone know how to run DosBox on my phone?
Post by: n9103 on December 16, 2022, 09:45:10 am
Strongly recommend getting a PC QWERTY on-screen keyboard layout before trying any.
The biggest difference between all the different apps is what kind of UI they offer, so free/demo versions are definitely recommended to find your style.
Post by: Robsoie on December 16, 2022, 09:48:28 am
Jikan (that's the player character name)
I need your help, well your computer, to read that odd usb key, as my PDA can't read it for some reason.
Skidan (the rookie village head honcho)
I'll do this thing you need but before i do you will have to kill this Controller that is hiding in the vehicle station for me.
But be warned it's going to be slightyl harder than you think because at that point of the game you have a ridiculous pea shooter that deal nearly no damage and that you need to reload every shot, so i give you a nice knife and as currently there's no other way for you to have a decent weapon you'll have no choice.
Here choose the one you want .
Jikan
Wait, you expect me to go kill a controller with a knife ? Man that sounds crazy as a requirement for just for reading an USB key on your computer. You may be even worse than old Sidorovich that you're replacing there.
Skidan
Yeah, i see how you can find this difficult, but don't worry : go ask Malandrinus for help, he owes us both one anyways.
Malandrinus
Ok i'll help you my friend, let's go
Jikan
That's really cool, we may have a chance if we're at least 2 , even if very small one
....Later at a safe distance from the vehicle station....
Manlandrinus
Here's the situation : the controller is on the 2nd floor of that building, here take my spare binoculars i have a better one anyways.
I'll bravely stay there and see if the controller get excited so i'll tell you when it happens so you can run away.
Now go and stab this bastard to death.
Oh wait, i forgot, that controller has a zombie army in the vehicle station that he use as eyes so if a zombie spot you it will alert the controller and he will come to kill you, so you must do a stealth approach, i suggest you that point before there's a lot of vegetation to hide your presence.
Jikan
Wow, that sounds even harder than it was before, but i need that USB key read, and even despite you're a damned coward not helping, i'll still need to stab this controller.
Manlandrinus
Oh but wait again, before i forget more : the game is scripted to allow you to stab to death the controller only if he's calm and not alerted to your presence, as if he knows you're there the knife will do pitiful damage as usual and he'll kill you way before you'll be able to do any serious damage.
Jikan
That's crazy and silly but it was not unexpected considering how stupid this whole "stab the controller" mission pitch is and the refusal of anyone to give me a gun that can actuall do damage instead of that stupid homemade pistol, i had plenty of money from all those artifacts i sold but still none even want to sell me anything other than this pea shooter.
Spoiler: ... easily 25 reloading later ... (click to show/hide)
even got the Butcher achievement for that (that supposedly increase my stabbing damage, it came in handy in a mission later)
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 16, 2022, 02:03:23 pm
What's the pitch on Armored Core as a franchise? Just mechs shooting each other or is there more to it?
One thing to note that wasn't mentioned in the other replies is that they're very movement-heavy. Manual aiming generally isn't a thing; weapon & mech stats determine lock-on timing & sensitivity, while your attention is mainly focused on movement.
Also, while it's not simulation-heavy the mech customization gets extremely granular if you want to optimize e.g. your mech's weight balancing.
For a pretty extreme example of the gameplay, see this twitter clip (https://twitter.com/mira_hozaki/status/1601232717638533120). It's a pretty unique gameplay experience, if not always the most fun. Also prior entries were hurt by long load times combined with short mission lengths - hypothetically a modern entry would alleviate at least the former. (This would also make remaster/rereleases of the prior games pretty appealing...)
Post by: Egan_BW on December 16, 2022, 05:27:14 pm
Post by: Iduno on December 16, 2022, 05:45:09 pm
adosbox is a common one, as are a half dozen others.
Strongly recommend getting a PC QWERTY on-screen keyboard layout before trying any.
The biggest difference between all the different apps is what kind of UI they offer, so free/demo versions are definitely recommended to find your style.
Ooh, good point on the control scheme.
Post by: Robsoie on December 16, 2022, 05:45:36 pm
After ending my test play, i went back to the menu, noticed there was a "load game" entry and checked and confirmed there was indeed a save game, hinting at it using automatic saves.
Then i just launched the game again and tada ! no more load game, the game basically deleted the save.
I was wondering if i did some mistake somewhere, but googling a bit showed that it's a problem with the gog version since at least 2021 and it has never been fixed.
Googling a bit more i ran into this from today :
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/winter_sale_special_king_of_seas_giveaway_exclusive_gog_2pack_and_gog_showdown_6044c/post13
I had to restart the game from scratch as the save i had was deleted but after ending the tutorial again and starting the actual game after sailing to a port (it's where it automatically save), i could quit the game and once i relaunched it this time the saved game was still present.
So if you use the offline installers, after installing King of Seas, go to
Code: [Select]
C:\GOG Games\King of Seas\KOS\Plugins\OnlineSubsystemGOG\Source\ThirdParty\GalaxySDK\Librariesand delete Galaxy64.dlli assume the ones that made the offline installer fucked up and by including this file it forces the game to use the galaxy launcher save manager. Something stupid with offline installers considering they're for people that do not want such launcher.
Post by: Robsoie on December 19, 2022, 03:19:01 pm
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations
While the part about "Privacy Violation" isn't really anything you don't see nearly all companies doing to make money out of our data, the "Illegal Dark Patterns" part is really the work of assholes if true.
Spoiler: quoting (click to show/hide)
Post by: Mephansteras on December 19, 2022, 03:42:39 pm
Post by: King Zultan on December 20, 2022, 03:30:33 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 20, 2022, 07:44:30 am
I remember a friend of my nephew got trouble with his parents for spending more money than he was allowed to in that Fortnite game on whatever console the kids are using nowadays, but now after reading that article i wonder if it was then really the kid's fault or if he fell into one of the money trick of those assholes from epic.
Post by: Il Palazzo on December 20, 2022, 10:04:56 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 20, 2022, 10:10:49 am
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/epic-ftc-settlement-and-moving-beyond-long-standing-industry-practices
Post by: Chiefwaffles on December 20, 2022, 01:22:17 pm
Especially the chargeback stuff. It’s extremely common practice for companies to nuke your account from orbit if you issue any chargeback.
Post by: nenjin on December 20, 2022, 01:35:55 pm
Post by: Robsoie on December 24, 2022, 09:14:31 am
Recently completed the Mothership Zeta mission (it's one of the Fallout 3 DLC that are included in the goty version)
And it was absolutely horrible from start to end.
Oh not the mission itself , the concept and the events happening within this rather long mission are really fun and good, but it was absolutely horrible because of level scaling.
Not being aware in advance of what level scaling was doing to that specific mission, i had delayed going after all the DLC mission for after i had completed the game main campaign and its side missions.
By the time i started Zeta, i was level 26
I had noticed already some of the DLC mission were much less fun they could have been due to level scaling that made combat longer than they should be with enemies being too resistant for everything that wasn't the endgame weapons, but still it was nothing in comparison to what the level scaling did for Mothership Zeta.
without spoiler, in Zeta you'll fight an insane amount of enemies , i think more than in any other Fallout 3 mission as it felt more like a FPS than RPG at some point.
But half of those enemies are coming with some kind of energy shield that surround them.
This shield does not have any weakness against any type of damage and provide a direct % of damage reduction to the enemy, meaning said enemies become bullet sponges (high level scaling health + high damage reduction to everything), additionally it seems localised damage does not do much against them so forget headshots killing things faster.
In any other places and dlc, in Fallout 3 due to level scaling the enemies with more health take more hits befory dying even with the best weapons available.
But in Zeta the level scaling affect not only the enemies, but it will affect those special shield damage reduction percentage, and if you're high level those makes fights against those particular type of enemies taking a ridiculous amount of time (and there are a very lot of them).
So before going Zeta make sure you're not high level when you'll start that mission, if you're at level 20 their shield lower 50% of the coming damage, at level 25 it's 80% of incoming damage resist , and that shield can level scale even further !
If you're high level, make sure to take a lot of healing items before starting Zeta (because the ones you'll find in zeta never heal you fully) but still it's just not fun at all.
There exist a mod that can tone down that ridiculous shield level scaling , i just wish i had knew that before :D
Post by: Iduno on December 24, 2022, 12:07:05 pm
Ah level scaling ...
Recently completed the Mothership Zeta mission (it's one of the Fallout 3 DLC that are included in the goty version)
And it was absolutely horrible from start to end.
Oh not the mission itself , the concept and the events happening within this rather long mission are really fun and good, but it was absolutely horrible because of level scaling.
Not being aware in advance of what level scaling was doing to that specific mission, i had delayed going after all the DLC mission for after i had completed the game main campaign and its side missions.
By the time i started Zeta, i was level 26
I had noticed already some of the DLC mission were much less fun they could have been due to level scaling that made combat longer than they should be with enemies being too resistant for everything that wasn't the endgame weapons, but still it was nothing in comparison to what the level scaling did for Mothership Zeta.
without spoiler, in Zeta you'll fight an insane amount of enemies , i think more than in any other Fallout 3 mission as it felt more like a FPS than RPG at some point.
But half of those enemies are coming with some kind of energy shield that surround them.
This shield does not have any weakness against any type of damage and provide a direct % of damage reduction to the enemy, meaning said enemies become bullet sponges (high level scaling health + high damage reduction to everything), additionally it seems localised damage does not do much against them so forget headshots killing things faster.
In any other places and dlc, in Fallout 3 due to level scaling the enemies with more health take more hits befory dying even with the best weapons available.
But in Zeta the level scaling affect not only the enemies, but it will affect those special shield damage reduction percentage, and if you're high level those makes fights against those particular type of enemies taking a ridiculous amount of time (and there are a very lot of them).
So before going Zeta make sure you're not high level when you'll start that mission, if you're at level 20 their shield lower 50% of the coming damage, at level 25 it's 80% of incoming damage resist , and that shield can level scale even further !
If you're high level, make sure to take a lot of healing items before starting Zeta (because the ones you'll find in zeta never heal you fully) but still it's just not fun at all.
There exist a mod that can tone down that ridiculous shield level scaling , i just wish i had knew that before :D
Yeah, I think it's intended as a post-game mission, like a lot of the DLC.
Post by: Robsoie on December 24, 2022, 05:22:58 pm
It's just that you must not level up too much before taking that Zeta mission or you'll really regret it as fighting tons of bullet sponges isn't fun at all , better fight them while you're +/- level 20 so they are resistant but not to insane level like they are when you reach higher levels due to that stupid shield that "level scale" along their user.
Post by: Rolan7 on December 24, 2022, 05:32:04 pm
Post by: Robsoie on December 24, 2022, 05:38:49 pm
Apparently it can go up to 110% of damage reduction if you're really high level ?
The wiki mention that this 110% does not make them impervious to damage though, so there's certainly some minor unblockable damage still going through any kind of shielding, but i don't want to think of how much time it takes to kill just one enemy with 110% damage reduction shield on them.
Already when i fought them their shield had 80% damage reduction (because i was leveled up too much due to having put zeta in the end list of the dlc mission order i wanted to take) and it was taking silly amount of shots with the best weapons to take those down.
Post by: Iduno on December 25, 2022, 06:04:49 pm
Anyway, I'm trying stuff out and my new character is a 'former' criminal. As such, I started with electronic handcuffs. I walked into the mission briefing with a pile of salvaged electronics instead.
Post by: Robsoie on December 25, 2022, 07:56:52 pm
Currently in Magellan with my Black Wing character and a lot happened, if all the locations are as worked on as this one the game is really big.
I like the Fallout-like travel on the world map with your party stopping to random event or random encounter between defined locations, give some old school RPG feel . And the mix between the Stalker universe and post apocalyptic setting is also very well done and deliver a good atmosphere.
Post by: Iduno on December 26, 2022, 08:30:54 pm
The rest of it is awesome.
Post by: delphonso on December 27, 2022, 12:08:37 am
It's a very good XCOM-like with less basebuilding and much snappier missions. Pretty easy to play for a few hours and still have more to find. Only complaints is enemy variety, at a certain point, you're fighting androids 100% of the time, and it gets tiresome. Unit progression is fun and equipment is impactful. Difficulty scaling is very good in the current state.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/636320
Post by: Aoi on December 27, 2022, 02:58:54 am
Depth of Extinction is pretty cheap on Steam right now.
...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/636320
This was also in the giant Itch.io (https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality) Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality (and maybe some of the other ones), so if you're interested, check if you picked that up first.
Post by: delphonso on December 27, 2022, 05:58:29 am
Post by: Iduno on December 31, 2022, 07:30:33 pm
https://squiiids.tumblr.com/post/648282552391614465/you-folks-were-asking-for-it-here-it-is (https://squiiids.tumblr.com/post/648282552391614465/you-folks-were-asking-for-it-here-it-is)
Post by: n9103 on December 31, 2022, 09:15:49 pm
Post by: delphonso on January 01, 2023, 03:38:50 am
Post by: King Zultan on January 01, 2023, 04:08:53 am
Post by: scriver on January 01, 2023, 09:24:39 am
Post by: Frumple on January 01, 2023, 05:09:20 pm
Skyrim seems like it'd be to big to put in RPG maker without braking it.Skyrim's not really that large, iirc... bit smaller than oblivion, much smaller than daggerfall or arena. Considering how RPG Maker/a tile based 2d game compresses space, it probably wouldn't actually have that much trouble with something the size of Skyrim so far as the raw space goes. Later generation RPG maker engines seem to be fairly robust, too, for what that's worth (so long as the developer(s) behind it are sufficiently competent).
It'd be more effort than it's probably worth and likely subject to an eventual copyright claim, but mechanically it's probably feasible.
Post by: Robsoie on January 01, 2023, 07:09:02 pm
https://jamesdomusgames.itch.io/the-elder-scrolls-betony
Betony was also the location of one of the 3 early Daggerfall demos.
There was another one , also with RPG Maker called "Arena VX"
https://gamejolt.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-i-arena-vx/28403
Post by: Stench Guzman on January 02, 2023, 12:00:32 pm
Post by: Akura on January 02, 2023, 07:20:24 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 02, 2023, 07:29:58 pm
That looks like a massive update from checking the article, will have to give it a try again.
Post by: Persus13 on January 02, 2023, 07:50:02 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 07, 2023, 12:50:27 pm
My first Kerbal plane that can actually take off (took me so many tries before finally getting the correct positioning of mass+thrust+aeordynamic vertors, so finally the thing can take off and not just drive itself all the way through and out of the airfield without managing to fly)
You may also wonder what the hell is that thing on the nose of the plane and can it actually land without killing its pilots or requiring insane amount of luck to not roll on itself and explode at the touchdown ?
But don't worry the Batwinger is definitively designed to avoid having to pilot the plane back to the airfield, because that thing on the nose is ...
The Batwinger, when madness meet the insanely costly budget it will be to repair/replace the whole plane after each "flight" !
The Batwinger is totally Jeb approved !
Post by: Iduno on January 07, 2023, 06:08:48 pm
Meet the Batwinger !
My first Kerbal plane that can actually take off (took me so many tries before finally getting the correct positioning of mass+thrust+aeordynamic vertors, so finally the thing can take off and not just drive itself all the way through and out of the airfield without managing to fly)
You may also wonder what the hell is that thing on the nose of the plane and can it actually land without killing its pilots or requiring insane amount of luck to not roll on itself and explode at the touchdown ?
But don't worry the Batwinger is definitively designed to avoid having to pilot the plane back to the airfield, because that thing on the nose is ...
The Batwinger, when madness meet the insanely costly budget it will be to repair/replace the whole plane after each "flight" !
The Batwinger is totally Jeb approved !
I was quite proud of my night landing in the correct space. No explosions. That was years ago, but it's one of the few non-bug memories I have of the game.
Post by: King Zultan on January 08, 2023, 02:30:28 am
Post by: n9103 on January 08, 2023, 01:16:13 pm
It being given away for free is more than enough reason to necro it, if that's what happened.
Post by: Robsoie on January 08, 2023, 01:22:09 pm
Post by: delphonso on January 08, 2023, 08:16:46 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 08, 2023, 09:09:31 pm
Spoiler: meanwhile on absurd space mission (click to show/hide)
Everything was fine.
Post by: Iduno on January 08, 2023, 10:14:07 pm
All of the advice I got on making it work or what problems I had were met with hostility because I was playing wrong and you need to balance things (which should be unnecessary for something symmetrical). That was shortly before I gave up.
Post by: lemon10 on January 14, 2023, 09:56:10 pm
At any real price point I could never suggest it, but it may be worth the $2 it costs.
Post by: AlStar on January 14, 2023, 10:45:02 pm
Gonna be that guy and mention that KSP is definitely a game that deserves it's own thread.
It being given away for free is more than enough reason to necro it, if that's what happened.
I agree that KSP is well deserving of getting it's old threads revived due to new interest brought on by the Epic free giveaway.
That said, to reply to Iduno - I've totally done the "space bus" approach to tourism missions. It can be tough - and, to be fair, I don't know if I've ever tried a flight with four of the large passenger units, I've definitely managed both a long ship made of two in a row and a shorter ship made of three, all attached to a central core.
One of these days, I'm going to be brave enough to try an ironman playthrough of KSP... but I haven't gotten there yet.
Post by: lemon10 on January 16, 2023, 03:40:54 am
The fact that every single game is wildly different due to well done randomness and that it puts constant pressure on you makes it a great rougelike.
The fact that each game is short and snappy and the metaprogression is all fun makes it a great rouge-lite.
And its just a great city builder, building up each city as you slowly progress through the tech trees with what limited natural resources you have available feels neat.
Honestly? Its just a great game. I'm currently gotten to prestige 6 and and will slowly keep pushing higher.
It totally *does* deserve its own thread, but it currently doesn't have one.
Post by: Great Order on January 24, 2023, 01:04:42 am
Post by: Stench Guzman on January 24, 2023, 01:01:43 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 24, 2023, 06:18:11 pm
Against the Storm feels like a masterclass in mixing genres between rougelike, rouge-lite, and city builders.I see rave reviews, then I look at the game, and I don't get. Can you, maybe, try and hone in on how - what looks like to me - a city builder that doesn't allow you to enjoy your intricate works due to its short-bouts roguelite nature (right?) makes for such a great game? Is it the metaprogression that's so well done? Is it maybe some puzzle-like nature of each run? Like, what would you peg onto it as >the< thing it's so outstanding in?
The fact that every single game is wildly different due to well done randomness and that it puts constant pressure on you makes it a great rougelike.
The fact that each game is short and snappy and the metaprogression is all fun makes it a great rouge-lite.
And its just a great city builder, building up each city as you slowly progress through the tech trees with what limited natural resources you have available feels neat.
Honestly? Its just a great game. I'm currently gotten to prestige 6 and and will slowly keep pushing higher.
It totally *does* deserve its own thread, but it currently doesn't have one.
Post by: Jopax on January 25, 2023, 09:40:16 am
I haven't played the game myself, but i have been following it somewhat loosely and it does look like a neat idea, executed fairly well to boot with a surprising amount of polish (unlike a lot of the games in the genre which tend to be fairly rough in this stage of development).
Post by: lemon10 on January 26, 2023, 03:44:14 am
Like, what would you peg onto it as >the< thing it's so outstanding in?Its impossible to pick any individual thing as making it a great game, it has a ton of interesting systems that are all outstanding and work together very well.
But I would have to say that the short puzzle like games that are all unique combined with good pacing as well as the constant escalating pressure both in game and as you progress down the prestige difficulties (which are mostly quite chill actually thanks to the meta progression) is what makes it so good.
that doesn't allow you to enjoy your intricate worksWhen you win it typically means you finally got all your shit in order and your city has been working properly for at least a good couple of minutes, so you do enjoy everything working and humming along nicely, at which point things come to a end.
When it ends it doesn't feel like a "aw man, it was just getting good" it typically feels more like your city succeeded and you don't need to keep playing any longer. Of course it also often feels more like "Oh god that was so close, everyone was dying and leaving and that event that was going to kill like 15 people was just about to go off and lose me the game".
In addition the short games mean that you don't feel that much pressure or hesitation over any choice since none of them truly matter in the long term. Sure, it might lose you the game, but it won't screw you over for hours and hours and hours like screwing stuff up in some longer term games, which is honestly a problem I've been facing more as I've been getting older and have more trouble starting new complex games and learning all their mechanisms.
If you like roguelites you probably won't have an issue with the short games, but of course not everyone does.
Similarly if you really like making giant cities it might not be the game for you, you don't make thousands of buildings filled with thousands of people working there like you do in more traditional city builders.
Is it the metaprogression that's so well done? Is it maybe some puzzle-like nature of each run?The meta progression feels very nice, especially as its typically paired with you slowly descending down the prestige difficulties as you play which in effect means that (combined with your slowly increasing knowledge) the game doesn't actually get that much harder.
Each game is also a big puzzle, you get different buildings/perks/events/game modifiers/resources every single run, and you have to figure out which buildings and perks to pick for the resources you have and how many events locations you go to open, and how to avoid everyone dying or leaving your settlement due to bad events or horrid modifiers.
I imagine there are optimal strategies that I would need to use if I want to actually get to prestige 20 (the hardest one), but so far there are a wide variety of good strategies.
One thing that's really cool that I personally love is that basically every single recipe has multiple different ways to make it.
Some are fairly boring and simple. You wanna make jerky? Use meat or insects as well as some fuel.
Some have tons more options to pick from. You wanna make skewers? Use meat/insects/mushrooms/jerky and also throw in some vegetables/eggs/berries/roots.
That means that there are a bunch of different paths you can take for most items.
Post by: Folly on January 26, 2023, 07:34:38 pm
that doesn't allow you to enjoy your intricate worksWhen you win it typically means you finally got all your shit in order and your city has been working properly for at least a good couple of minutes, so you do enjoy everything working and humming along nicely, at which point things come to a end.
When it ends it doesn't feel like a "aw man, it was just getting good" it typically feels more like your city succeeded and you don't need to keep playing any longer. Of course it also often feels more like "Oh god that was so close, everyone was dying and leaving and that event that was going to kill like 15 people was just about to go off and lose me the game".
As you play, Hostility of the Forest and Queen's Ire are constantly increasing, bringing your colony ever closer to failure.
Near the end I often find myself cutting corners and sacrificing my precious stockpiled resources in a frantic effort to meet the victory conditions before everything falls apart. It's always satisfying when I manage to avoid disaster and gain some resources to invest in the meta progression.
Post by: Salmeuk on January 26, 2023, 11:25:22 pm
the World of Assassination update adds fairly intricate roguelike elements to the base game, with randomized contracts and a meta-campaign. Most interesting-ly, the mode punishes you for dying by stripping you of current inventory items. However, this "freelancer" mode returns you to a safehouse after every mission, allowing you to collect useful items.
so far, it is fairly difficult to pull off some of the missions since you start with so very little. but this difficulty is welcome - compared to the original formula of 'intricate puzzle of timing and memorization', freelancer is much more of a reactive experience. you need a certain agility to arrive at the right set of actions and you cannot simply memorize the correct path (though previous experience with the maps is always helpful)
Post by: Kagus on January 27, 2023, 05:08:41 am
I arrived on the front, patched up a soldier and was immediately promoted to corporal which seems a wee bit optimistic, but otherwise it seems pretty solid.
"Old corporal's dead. You're it until you're dead or till I find somebody better."
Post by: Iduno on January 27, 2023, 06:34:47 pm
the new update to hitman 3, while regrettably a hypercapitalist always-online service, is great fun.
the World of Assassination update adds fairly intricate roguelike elements to the base game, with randomized contracts and a meta-campaign. Most interesting-ly, the mode punishes you for dying by stripping you of current inventory items. However, this "freelancer" mode returns you to a safehouse after every mission, allowing you to collect useful items.
so far, it is fairly difficult to pull off some of the missions since you start with so very little. but this difficulty is welcome - compared to the original formula of 'intricate puzzle of timing and memorization', freelancer is much more of a reactive experience. you need a certain agility to arrive at the right set of actions and you cannot simply memorize the correct path (though previous experience with the maps is always helpful)
The need to memorize is my main issue with the previous 2 games. I much prefer just barely managing to escape detection while trying to find a new disguise, then getting caught hiding the body and needing to deal with getting to the next area and finding another new disguise before the civilians tell someone what I did. Barely-contained chaos feels great when you succeed.
Post by: Akura on January 29, 2023, 08:57:46 pm
Unfortunately, I found the controls very awkward. Default controls, left stick(which emulates the N64 stick) controls both movement and turning, while the right stick(emulates C-Buttons) handle strafing and vertical look. It would be much more comfortable if left stick handled movement and strafing and right stick handled looking. I don't think there's a way to customize the controls to that degree. PRE-EDIT: There actually is, but it requires tampering with system-wide settings, and requires swapping them every time you change to a different game and back.
Post by: Robsoie on January 30, 2023, 06:56:13 am
https://github.com/Graslu/1964GEPD/releases
( roms are obviously not included )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mL0I__VMec
and in case you have some screen tearing and enabling vsync would lower performance too much :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpu_VC6cC8o
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 02, 2023, 08:11:15 pm
Against the Storm feels like a masterclass in mixing genres between rougelike, rouge-lite, and city builders.Alright, I took the bait and bought it. And boy, is this an insanely well designed game or what - just as you said.
The fact that every single game is wildly different due to well done randomness and that it puts constant pressure on you makes it a great rougelike.
The fact that each game is short and snappy and the metaprogression is all fun makes it a great rouge-lite.
And its just a great city builder, building up each city as you slowly progress through the tech trees with what limited natural resources you have available feels neat.
Honestly? Its just a great game. I'm currently gotten to prestige 6 and and will slowly keep pushing higher.
It totally *does* deserve its own thread, but it currently doesn't have one.
Post by: Dostoevsky on February 07, 2023, 03:12:22 pm
Combat layer is a moderately more complex FFT, as there's a cover system (along with more ranged attacks in general), AP system, aggro mechanics, and several other quirks. Some of the classes make for a suitably different take on FFT mechanics, such as one that's centered around creating large fields of minor floor hazards then detonating them violently. The animations are a tad too slow for my tastes, but the HP to damage to healing ratio is in a pretty good spot so battles don't drag. Your deployed number tends to range between 4 and 8 depending on the mission. Difficulty is a bit on the easy side, but you can tweak the difficulty of each individual battle before starting it if you're finding a portion of the game too easy.
Under the AP system you usually have 6 total. Moving costs 1 (but you can usually only move once per turn), defending costs 2 but only protects against the next attack and ends your turn, and other moves can cost anywhere from 0 to 4 AP, with basic actions generally costing 3. Any leftover AP at the end of a unit's turn will slightly speed their next turn. This works out to having a fair bit of variability in how a given class can spend their turn, which helps differentiate the classes further.
You have roughly 10 story characters, and have another 6 slots to create generic troopers. Story characters don't have unique classes generally, but do sometimes get unique limit breaks.
Campaign layer is... I guess I'd describe as a mix between the more recent Personas and FFT? You're on a set time limit broken up into 5 day weeks: on the first day you dispatch your troops to different missions very similar to the FFT ones, albeit in a more transparent fashion. You see what characteristics are needed and see what overall odds are based on which troops you pick. On days 2-4 of the week you can socialize with story characters for a very basic social link thing and maybe some platonic romance, you can do sidequest battles (mostly set sidequests instead of random, but there are more than enough of them), do basic stat training, or 'explore' for possibly some side scenes, loot, etc. Day 5 of the week has you get your resources & funding (used mainly for upgrading gear you get as battle loot) and automatically doing an explore scene.
Campaign layer is fine? It's not terribly deep, but it fills in the space between battles well enough. There's also a simple card game akin to FF8 or FF9's, though there aren't that many cards or too many different opponents.
The story is conceptually pretty neat, but in my nearly-completed playthrough thus far it's a bit thin - every week or two (over the roughly 140 days total) you have a story narration beat or a story battle. You end up spending more time in the sidequest battles than the main story, which may or may not be satisfying.
Briefly, the story setup is: You have a planet with peoples, and there's magic and stuff. A few centuries back there was a great social split between those who want to explore space and those who want to say home, and thus you end up with the Spacefarers and Dwellers. Culturally they drop ties, and drift apart - magic doesn't work off the planet, and tech no longer appeals to folks on the planet. At the game start the spacers discover some sort of incoming anomalous wave that, if readings are correct, will annihilate all life in the solar system in just a few months. They start up a project to reinitiate contact with the planet dwellers and devise a means of trying to get both spacers and dwellers to survive.
It's also a multiple storyline situation - At the beginning you pick which of two sides you want to be on (i.e. a spacer or a dweller), and then there's a major choice about halfway through. Along with some fifth path I'm not sure about yet, for a total of 5 endings. Not sure if the game is replayable enough for 5 runs, but at the very least you're able to pick which initial perspective you have on the events and which direction you want to go as things shake out. Which is nice.
Post by: Folly on February 07, 2023, 05:23:29 pm
Against the Storm feels like a masterclass in mixing genres between rougelike, rouge-lite, and city builders.Alright, I took the bait and bought it. And boy, is this an insanely well designed game or what - just as you said.
After putting some more hours into Against the Storm, I'm finding myself increasingly turned off by the RNG of the game.
Too often I set up for trading, but cannot find anyone to buy what I'm producing; or I manage to sell my goods and make a lot of currency, but then I can't find traders selling what I want to buy so I'm stuck with a bunch of useless currency. Or I get set up to produce a lot of grain and convert it to flour, but then I can't get the blueprint for a bakery to cook my flour, so I'm left holding a lot of useless flour. Or I set up to produce a lot of contentment items, then I can't get the building that consumes those contentment items.
This seems to be the pattern in most colonies actually. My best laid plans fail to come to fruition, and I'm forced to scrape together whatever inefficient reputation points I can find just to bring and end to this failure of a colony and hope that the next one turns out better; but it rarely does.
And thus far the meta-progression has done nothing to improve the situation. I've gotten a handful of starting resources that help the early phases of the colony go faster, but nothing that can really help me complete a resource chain when RNG doesn't want to cooperate.
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 07, 2023, 05:38:40 pm
Unless it doesn't. Sometimes you just lose. But I've never felt it was a foregone conclusion when it happened.
And how do you ever have too much money? Buy all the cornerstones. All of them. Call merchants earlier and do it again. Heck, even purchasing complex food/coats/services inputs can sometimes replace actually producing them.
Post by: Folly on February 07, 2023, 07:13:26 pm
And how do you ever have too much money? Buy all the cornerstones. All of them.
I always get cornerstones along the line of "+x production of resource that doesn't spawn anywhere on this map" or "+bonus when fulfilling service that I can't get the service building for".
And the RNG is only made worse by unlocking additional buildings as I level up, further increasing the likelihood that I will get a full set of redundant blueprints instead of what I actually need.
Post by: lemon10 on February 07, 2023, 09:12:51 pm
Or you slowly kind of realize what you need to deal with glades and what the threats in them could be.
Or you realize that the hunter lodge is the best (meat 4 life) gathering camp in the game.
---
But I feel its calibrated pretty well, a lot of the time you almost feel like you will lose and that your colony will collapse or that failed event will end your run, and then it just kind of all comes together just before the end.
Those last five or ten minutes can be rough though.
The RNG feels fair to me, its just you need to learn the production lines and get a few of the extra perks (eg. you can buy rerolls with money, you start with all the advanced house recipes).
---
You can't actually have too much money, buying all the stuff from the merchant is a hell of a advantage (eg. hundreds of food per year, six sets of the complex goods), if you are making that amber you can spend them for a lot of complexity equivalents.
Post by: Kagus on February 11, 2023, 01:46:15 pm
And it... It makes me sad, honestly. The dark and grimy aesthetic, the brutal dungeon crawling "smash, grab, get out" concept really appeals to me, and even the concept of potentially losing equipment when you cock up and join the legions of the dead seemed compelling, as I figured it would encourage a more patient, cautious style of play.
But no... The creeping battle royale ring and the omnipresent threat of level 20 ultra-kitted murderhobo squads running around mean you have to run and try to get your grubby hands on whatever you can before someone sees you and you get squished, losing everything. As if it wasn't already easy enough to get bonked by the incredibly beefy hitboxes of two skeletons blocking you off and nuking half your healthbar per hit, assisted by occasional server lag hitches and the character sometimes deciding to not actually swing their weapon.
I'd really, really like a co-op first-person dungeon crawler, particularly with that kind of dark (and hell, yeah, even charmingly janky) theme and some punishing mechanics... Just without the BR gimmicks and inescapable PvP. Some actual map variation would be nice too, but I'm kinda a sucker for procedural generation in general so...
It honestly kinda reminds me of Counter Spell in a way, which--while not having the aforementioned issues of enforced PvP or danger rings--also came so close to being something I'd really really like, but just kinda got in its own way with unfeasible amounts of jank and non-content
Post by: Iduno on February 11, 2023, 04:30:42 pm
So, I tried out Dark and Darker earlier today.
And it... It makes me sad, honestly. The dark and grimy aesthetic, the brutal dungeon crawling "smash, grab, get out" concept really appeals to me, and even the concept of potentially losing equipment when you cock up and join the legions of the dead seemed compelling, as I figured it would encourage a more patient, cautious style of play.
But no... The creeping battle royale ring and the omnipresent threat of level 20 ultra-kitted murderhobo squads running around mean you have to run and try to get your grubby hands on whatever you can before someone sees you and you get squished, losing everything. As if it wasn't already easy enough to get bonked by the incredibly beefy hitboxes of two skeletons blocking you off and nuking half your healthbar per hit, assisted by occasional server lag hitches and the character sometimes deciding to not actually swing their weapon.
I'd really, really like a co-op first-person dungeon crawler, particularly with that kind of dark (and hell, yeah, even charmingly janky) theme and some punishing mechanics... Just without the BR gimmicks and inescapable PvP. Some actual map variation would be nice too, but I'm kinda a sucker for procedural generation in general so...
It honestly kinda reminds me of Counter Spell in a way, which--while not having the aforementioned issues of enforced PvP or danger rings--also came so close to being something I'd really really like, but just kinda got in its own way with unfeasible amounts of jank and non-content
Yeah, I also had hopes for the game until I saw they words pvp.
Warhammer Darktide kind of scratched a similar itch (co-op adventure), but there was a real small amount of content for it.
Post by: Akura on February 11, 2023, 04:41:02 pm
Not to many launch titles for either, but there are some good ones.
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 14, 2023, 08:20:18 am
Starting today, you can buy Zero Wing on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2011900/Zero_Wing/
Also it looks like that publisher is selling a few other shmups from Toaplan too.
Post by: Rolan7 on February 14, 2023, 10:34:29 am
https://xkcd.com/286/
And heh, I like the talk page of the explainXKCD (https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/286:_All_Your_Base). They haven't actually started discussing the release, just the (attempted) forced-retirement of Flash.
Post by: Kagus on February 14, 2023, 11:57:05 am
So, I tried out Dark and Darker earlier today.
And it... It makes me sad, honestly. The dark and grimy aesthetic, the brutal dungeon crawling "smash, grab, get out" concept really appeals to me, and even the concept of potentially losing equipment when you cock up and join the legions of the dead seemed compelling, as I figured it would encourage a more patient, cautious style of play.
But no... The creeping battle royale ring and the omnipresent threat of level 20 ultra-kitted murderhobo squads running around mean you have to run and try to get your grubby hands on whatever you can before someone sees you and you get squished, losing everything. As if it wasn't already easy enough to get bonked by the incredibly beefy hitboxes of two skeletons blocking you off and nuking half your healthbar per hit, assisted by occasional server lag hitches and the character sometimes deciding to not actually swing their weapon.
I'd really, really like a co-op first-person dungeon crawler, particularly with that kind of dark (and hell, yeah, even charmingly janky) theme and some punishing mechanics... Just without the BR gimmicks and inescapable PvP. Some actual map variation would be nice too, but I'm kinda a sucker for procedural generation in general so...
It honestly kinda reminds me of Counter Spell in a way, which--while not having the aforementioned issues of enforced PvP or danger rings--also came so close to being something I'd really really like, but just kinda got in its own way with unfeasible amounts of jank and non-content
Yeah, I also had hopes for the game until I saw they words pvp.
Warhammer Darktide kind of scratched a similar itch (co-op adventure), but there was a real small amount of content for it.
Yup... I've been playing a bit more of Dark and Darker since, out of some weird fascination/obsession with the thing, but... I always stop after a little while of playing, when I realize I'm just not having fun. Love me some dungeon crawls, don't love me some getting ganked by "ironically racist" murderhobos. Been watching a bit of tips/guide videos for the game as well, and a somewhat disturbing number of them lean towards showing you how to best ruin someone else's day. Not even necessarily profiting off it, just crashing someone else's run. I guess that's the clientele being advertised to.
Oh yeah, I did figure out what the "character suddenly decides they don't want to swing their weapon" thing was. It wasn't (usually) server lag, it's just that the game defaults to borderless windowed fullscreen instead of proper fullscreen, and it doesn't capture the mouse properly. So if you moved your mouse too far over you'd click outside the game and your character just stands there like a lemon.
There are still lag hiccups, but at least that wasn't one of them. Yay.
Post by: nenjin on February 14, 2023, 12:51:29 pm
Post by: Kagus on February 14, 2023, 12:54:20 pm
I wanted to try Dark and Darker. But it looks like the equivalent of playing Dark Souls in a shoebox with guaranteed regular invasions. The PVP aspect was an immediately turn off for me.
Not exactly!
In Dark Souls you get to keep your equipment when someone kills you.
Post by: AlStar on February 14, 2023, 03:00:39 pm
Honestly, you don't even need other players to be in danger - once my group managed to get all the way though the first round pretty much unscathed, so we decided to take the red portal down. We got absolutely stomped by the first monster we ran into, barely 15 seconds into the run.
Alternatively, having you lose most of your stuff, rather than all of your stuff each time you die would go a long way to making it less of a slog.
Post by: Robsoie on February 15, 2023, 11:39:43 am
It was good until i interacted with a computer console and managed to get the game to crash
Relaunched, went to change some options and the game crashed.
Hmm, further testing showed that if you use the arrow keys to navigate the menu (either main game menu or ingame consoles) , you'll get a crash.
So only use your mouse to navigate the menus or at least never use the arrow keys in menu (as it does not seem to happen for other keys). Found from google that it happened to other people.
No idea if that idiotic bug is also present on the 2nd and 3rd games .
Can't believe none at Team 17 that developed that game tried to press the arrow keys in menu or in the consoles menu in the ship ... it's just ridiculous that has never been fixed.
Post by: Iduno on February 15, 2023, 03:24:10 pm
I'd put in the author's name, but screenshots are blocked. Dmitry something.
Post by: Frumple on February 15, 2023, 03:45:16 pm
Just started Metro Last Light Redux while having a bit of a fever. Apparently it's based on an intentionally bestselling novel.Uh, do you mean internationally, there? The metro games are based off the metro books (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_2033_(novel)) by Dmitry Glukhovsky. The Stalker games (which some of the folks that worked on went on to work on Metro) were similarly based on a novel, if more loosely and without the direct author involvement.
I'd put in the author's name, but screenshots are blocked. Dmitry something.
Post by: Robsoie on February 15, 2023, 08:03:42 pm
For the games, interesting to point that the book author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, was involved as co-writer on the games stories.
Metro 2033 the game relatively follow the events of Metro 2033 the book.
Metro Last Light is basically happening on a parallel universe that "may" (as some events of the game could have happened in the book story while some simply never did) happen just before Metro 2034 the book.
Metro Exodus , out of some events, has also nothing in common with Metro 2035 and is also on the same parallel universe as Metro Last Light, and "may" happen after Metro 2035 the book.
Post by: King Zultan on February 16, 2023, 04:09:44 am
Post by: Iduno on February 16, 2023, 02:27:24 pm
Just started Metro Last Light Redux while having a bit of a fever. Apparently it's based on an intentionally bestselling novel.Uh, do you mean internationally, there? The metro games are based off the metro books (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_2033_(novel)) by Dmitry Glukhovsky. The Stalker games (which some of the folks that worked on went on to work on Metro) were similarly based on a novel, if more loosely and without the direct author involvement.
I'd put in the author's name, but screenshots are blocked. Dmitry something.
I'm sure *they* meant internationally. I was just too sick to read well, in a moderately entertaining way.
Post by: Robsoie on February 16, 2023, 02:47:20 pm
I also recommend reading the Metro books even if I haven't gotten around to reading 2035.
Metro 2035 may be one you'll like or dislike regardless if you liked the 2 previous books, because without going with spoilers there's something rather big that's going to happen and will change a lot how you view the Metro universe.
I liked it because i really was not expecting that at all .
Better not read any spoiler before reading 2035, i would have got mad if i knew things in advance for this one.
A bit like reading the Witcher books -after- playing the games or after watching the atrocious netflix "adaptation" when both will spoil you by making an early reveal that happens to be -the- big reveal that happened at the 7th book, the impact is definitively not the same (i'm so happy i got to read that before the games spoiled it to me, that feeling when you think "damn but of course ! everything is suddenly ticking together" )
Post by: Jopax on February 17, 2023, 08:45:54 am
Still a fun game of having a few broken units smashing up hordes of mooks. Haven't gotten past Lakeburg atm so I'm not familiar with the lategame maps but I'm in no rush to get there as just farming Gildenberg has been fun enough on the higher difficulty modes.
So if you like turn based tactics where you're the overpowered bastard that's mowing down hordes of baddies than this is a pretty good game to pick up.
Post by: dragdeler on February 17, 2023, 09:12:54 am
-Buggy
-Stutters
-GUI worst I've ever seen, probably so they couldn't be sued for being this derivative I swear 20% of location names are ripped straight from diablo2
-Not even half decent slotmachine with absent gameplay.
-Keep getting slowed by obstacles, that's the magic ingredient that missed in hacknslash games, good job.
leave it to me IRL friends to only pick the shittiest games
Post by: Stench Guzman on February 17, 2023, 01:31:03 pm
Post by: Folly on February 18, 2023, 04:04:35 am
Been binging The Last Spell over the last two days as it had the big almost final release update come out.
I got excited when I looked at the Steam feed and saw "1.0 is coming soon!" followed by "Major Update is FINALLY here!".
After much head-scratching, I eventually figured out what happened. A dev did a minor edit to an old update message from last October, which prompted Steam to bump it to the top of the feed and date it February 14th.
No recent updates, but the big 1.0 is still expected Soon™.
Post by: Iduno on February 18, 2023, 03:58:04 pm
leave it to me IRL friends to only pick the shittiest games
Yeah, I end up trying a lot of big games, and only enjoying 10% of them. It's almost always little games that are made well that I end up enjoying for long stretches.
Relatedly, I've been playing Bad North Jotunn Edition again. You start with 2 armies of 9 people, and have to defeat all of the enemies trying to invade your tiny island. You can lose some of those 9 during the invasion (they heal to 9 between battles), but if they all die, that army gone for good. You *can* heal inside buildings, but it takes a long time. Then, when you win (or flee), you go to the next island. It's got a bit of the FTL map with an enemy army following you, forcing you to do as much as you can with the resources you have. But you can reasonably win every battle, spend the resources to upgrade your armies, and keep up with the enemies. Although higher difficulties require more strategy and speed.
But your upgraded armies are always sword and shield (good against archers), archers (good against everyone without a shield), or spears (good against shields). Against different mixes of enemies arriving at different parts of the island as you try to keep up. And they have like 6 types of enemies, although you know what you'll be facing, mostly.
Post by: Jopax on February 19, 2023, 12:19:37 pm
Been binging The Last Spell over the last two days as it had the big almost final release update come out.
I got excited when I looked at the Steam feed and saw "1.0 is coming soon!" followed by "Major Update is FINALLY here!".
After much head-scratching, I eventually figured out what happened. A dev did a minor edit to an old update message from last October, which prompted Steam to bump it to the top of the feed and date it February 14th.
No recent updates, but the big 1.0 is still expected Soon™.
Huh, that's a bit of a bummer, then again I haven't played in like a year so a ton of the changes were new and fresh to me hahah
Post by: LoSboccacc on February 23, 2023, 04:04:49 pm
travel in a upgradeable walking outpost. design mechs. defeat hordes of critters.
it's early access, and from the look of it may be somewhat repetitive. they have a free demo.
Post by: Akura on February 23, 2023, 05:39:18 pm
Apparently they're also going to be releasing something to allow community-run servers, to keep the game alive when the devs can no longer keep their servers running.
Post by: lemon10 on February 23, 2023, 09:34:03 pm
Tis pretty good, and very solid.
Very little bugs (nothing aside from 2 crashes that didn't matter cause the autosave is pretty aggressive) and very good graphics.
Not flawless or anything, but if your computer can run it (which requires a modern graphics card) it's a good game.
Post by: Robsoie on February 24, 2023, 01:02:11 pm
Looks like the good old Alien solving problem works there too : with the door opening/closing, lead an enemy into a room that features an airlock (one your ship hasn't docked into of course) and after closing room when the alien is inside, open the airlock and say goodbye to the nasty pests.
(just make sure you have gathered everything inside that room before, as any item left will be propelled into the void along the aliens
Allowed me to clear a small military derelict that had no gun turret anywhere inside it.
Once the derelict was fully cleaned up, i decided to take it over and leave my old previous ship behind, as that military ship had a permanently attached Cannon (that i then couldn't tow into my own ship) that could prove to be useful ( https://duskers.fandom.com/wiki/Cannon ).
It has less cargo for scraps (30 instead of 50) , but at that point i'm lucky if i find more than 5 scrap in a derelict so it will not be a problem for a long time.
Hopefully it was a good ship swap, but this small military ship has only one slot (occupied by the cannon), hopefully i'll find a better one later so i can re-equip my remote powering upgrade too.
Post by: Mkok on February 24, 2023, 06:06:32 pm
Duskers,
Looks like the good old Alien solving problem works there too : with the door opening/closing, lead an enemy into a room that features an airlock (one your ship hasn't docked into of course) and after closing room when the alien is inside, open the airlock and say goodbye to the nasty pests.
(just make sure you have gathered everything inside that room before, as any item left will be propelled into the void along the aliens
Allowed me to clear a small military derelict that had no gun turret anywhere inside it.
Once the derelict was fully cleaned up, i decided to take it over and leave my old previous ship behind, as that military ship had a permanently attached Cannon (that i then couldn't tow into my own ship) that could prove to be useful ( https://duskers.fandom.com/wiki/Cannon ).
It has less cargo for scraps (30 instead of 50) , but at that point i'm lucky if i find more than 5 scrap in a derelict so it will not be a problem for a long time.
Hopefully it was a good ship swap, but this small military ship has only one slot (occupied by the cannon), hopefully i'll find a better one later so i can re-equip my remote powering upgrade too.
ships degrade too, so you will be swaping those around a lot as well. Duskers is great for few hours, really nice atmosphere, and you constancly cycle your equipment, so it takes a while to get repetitive. The only downside I had with it is that there is pretty much absolutely no progress, and the "text bits" you get come way too slow. But if they implemented actual story it might have taken out of the atmosphere, and the one they got adds to it nicely (albeit way too slowly)
Post by: Robsoie on February 24, 2023, 06:58:32 pm
Fortunately those were rooms already explored and pillaged, and that by luck were on the other side of the station that i was currently clearing, so i simply resumed drone work.
As expected (as one of them had a high chance of collision) one of the 2 asteroids destroyed one of the targetted room, making the ones on its sides not functional anymore.
So far no problem as my exit weren't on that side and that part of the station had nothing of value anymore... so i resumed exploration, then i noticed radiation warning popped up on those damaged side rooms that then near immediately progressed into every nearby locations, that then continued to spread as fast into the next ones, until in less than a dozen of seconds the whole station turned radioactive and those radiation destroyed all of my drones before they could reach my ship.
Ok, at least this unexpected total disaster that was somehow FUN! but that was the end for my playthrough as unfortunately it had been getting too repetitive for me.
But for a puzzle game it was fun for a while thanks to that command line originality and the motion Alien-like tracking/radar presentation.
Post by: dragdeler on February 25, 2023, 07:43:07 am
Post by: Frumple on February 25, 2023, 08:44:00 am
Post by: Robsoie on February 25, 2023, 11:58:51 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2frhH5nwr0
:D
Post by: AlStar on February 27, 2023, 02:20:04 pm
It's a tile-placing game, not unlike Carcassonne, except that you're working with hexes rather than squares. Each quadrant of the hex can contain one of the following: meadow, forest, city, fields, water, or train track. Your goal is to place the tiles such that each biome forms continuous groups, which is both worth points and aesthetically pleasing. The tiles are weighted so that you don't usually end up with a chaotic mess on every tile; normally there'll be a "theme" to the tile - such as woodlands, which will generally have three or four of the corners filled with trees, maybe with some meadows or houses/city on the other sides. Water and train tracks are annoyances, since you can't mismatch tile borders like you can with anything else - if you want to cap off a train track, the tile you're placing must have a track ending on it; which makes it harder to complete perfect tiles around them.
You start off with 50ish tiles, and there's only two ways to earn more - completing missions, which requires you to expand one biome to either a minimum size, to an exact size, or to close out a zone so that it's fully enclosed by other biomes, each of which earns 5 tiles; or to place 'perfect' tiles - a tile that is surrounded on all sides by biomes that match that tile - which earns 1 new tile per perfect tile.
Anyway, the game is very relaxing with pleasant music and the graphics are beautiful. It's easy to pick up, but tough to reach ever higher high scores. There's a bunch of achievements, which unlock unique tiles or new map themes.
It's fun. I'm glad I picked it up.
Post by: Iduno on February 27, 2023, 09:51:08 pm
Post by: Robsoie on February 28, 2023, 05:23:28 pm
https://www.openra.net/news/release-20230225/
last one was in 2021 so there's some big changelog
https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki/Changelog/
note : the supported games (Command&Conquer, Red Alert and Dune 2000) will be downloaded by default into
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\OpenRA\
If you prefer them to be downloaded (so it is fully portable) in the same directory as OpenRA, simply create a new folder and name it exactly
Code: [Select]
Support
in your OpenRA directoryPost by: Robsoie on March 02, 2023, 02:26:20 pm
https://howbigisthemap.com/
That features video of people walking or running (and more) across game worlds map.
A few to compare :
Running through Elden Ring : 1h 27mn https://howbigisthemap.com/elden-ring-run-across-the-map/
Running through Skyrim : 49mn https://howbigisthemap.com/skyrim-special-edition-run-across-the-map/
Running through Oblivion : 24mn https://howbigisthemap.com/how-big-is-the-map-of-the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-run-across-the-map/
Running through Morrowind : 30mn https://howbigisthemap.com/how-big-is-the-map-of-the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-run-across-the-map/
Running through Ark Survival Evolved (The Island) : 45mn https://howbigisthemap.com/ark-survival-evolved-run-across-the-map/
Running through GTA5 : 51mn https://howbigisthemap.com/gta-v-run-across-the-map/
Running through Red Dead Redemption 2 : 43mn https://howbigisthemap.com/red-dead-redemption-2-run-across-the-map/
Post by: Robsoie on March 02, 2023, 05:40:58 pm
https://www.openttd.org/news/2023/02/05/openttd-13-0
Quote
We think the wait has been worth it. This is one of the largest releases we’ve done in several years, with numerous features and improvements covering the user interface, gameplay features, and modding extensions for NewGRF and Game Script creators.
Hmm, i guess i know what i'll play this week.
Post by: Robsoie on March 03, 2023, 12:54:32 pm
Remember the nice Escape Velocity-like "Endless Sky"
it's been a few years since i last played it.
But it looks like since october it got some massive update and last updated a couple of week ago
https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases/latest
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: delphonso on March 03, 2023, 03:03:45 pm
Post by: Robsoie on March 03, 2023, 05:16:07 pm
Some other freebies that were recently updated in the last couple of months , both standalones and using the Tiberian Sun client engine ( https://www.moddb.com/mods/tiberian-sun-client )
Spoiler: features (click to show/hide)
If you want to play Tiberian Sun and its Firestorm expansion with the Tiberian Sun Client (no need of installing the free tiberian sun, it's all standalone and self contained ) that last updated in January :
https://www.moddb.com/mods/tiberian-sun-client/downloads/tiberian-sun-client-600-with-videos
If you want to play Dawn of the Tiberian Age (a mix of Command&Conquer 1 and Red Alert 1 with some more units and running on the Tiberian Sun engine) , that standalone game (based on the Tiberian Sun client) is there, updated in February (it gets updated regularly)
https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dawn-of-the-tiberium-age/downloads/dta99m
note : some of the mission movies cutscenes can be downloaded in thz Options -> Component
There's also Twisted Insurrection that is very good and is also a standalone game based on the Tiberian Sun Client , but it has been updated since a year. Still worth playing
https://www.moddb.com/mods/twisted-insurrection
Only low point is the lack of real "attack move" function (as it was implemented in Westwood games i think starting with Red Alert 2 only) , workaround was either pressing G (guard) that make selected unit attack everything around them, or press CTRL+ALT to have unit move and automatically attack everything around the destination point (but still not during travel).
Post by: Folly on March 08, 2023, 07:39:07 pm
Patch Notes (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/3645136992405056227)
Deep Dive (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1105670/view/3645136992401516193)
Post by: Akura on March 12, 2023, 05:46:25 pm
Interesting for people interested in the roleplay aspect is that there are different races to play as: human, elf, demon, angel, elemental, naga, and
Post by: Great Order on March 16, 2023, 05:45:30 pm
Has anyone got Avorion, and if so what's it like? I'm looking for a new space-y game.
Post by: Folly on March 16, 2023, 06:07:43 pm
Sun Haven (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432860/Sun_Haven/) released from Early Access today. I haven't played it, might get it later, but it looks like - and the overall reviews point towards - Stardew Valley but at least slightly better.
I just finished the first month. Really enjoying Sun Haven so far.
Charming music, diverse cast of characters, variety of crops and animals to play with, tons of quests and events.
Compared to Stardew Valley, there is slightly less polish; I notice occasional minor graphical glitches, and the UI just isn't as sharp. Also the loading time between screens is just a second or two longer than I'd like. But there is marginally more content, with lots of places to explore and recipes to craft.
Probably the biggest thing differentiating Sun Haven from Stardew is how heavily Sun Haven leans into the fantasy aspect. There are lots of dragons and elementals and sorcerers, and even a cute catgirl you can romance. Or a wolfboy, if that's more your style. This is likely the biggest divergence which will sway Stardew fans to come over, or not.
Post by: Frumple on March 17, 2023, 06:53:42 pm
Game starts out and, well. You start out a member of the german military in the tail end of WWII, with the intro character talking about ways to help the motherland and whatnot, so the initial bit was making me increasingly skeptical right up until it hit the punch line:
Spoiler: spoiler for a pretty great twist in the initial 2-3 minutes of the game (click to show/hide)
And I'm just, like, *chef kiss*
This is how you do a starting mission. I'm not sure how the rest of it's going to play out, but the gameplay's solid in the first few minutes and this is a narrative I can get behind.
Post by: Robsoie on March 18, 2023, 08:27:57 pm
In Alien Isolation, there's a known bug on PC that can happen after you reach the huge atmospheric reactor area (the one with the many reactor-like devices that have regular discharge of energy) full of hazmat bastards , that you must cross to reach **spoiler zone** .
Once you have done what you needed to do in **spoiler zone** you go back to the huge reactor area to do something about **spoiler zone**
Problem is that nearly all the time the loading screen will never complete at that specific point of the game (this problem never happen elsewhere).
So far the solution that worked for everyone was to lower the game resolution to at least 800x600 just before triggering the loading, and once the level would have loaded, you can go back to your desired resolution.
Remembering that Alien Isolation is from 2014 i was wondering if by any chances it was like some older games that were basically limited to 2gb usage and would ignore the remnant of your ram, and considering how really impressive Alien Isolation look (even on low res) and how big the reactor level and **spoiler zone** are, maybe it flirt too closely to its 2gb limit .
So i tested the good old 4gb patch ( https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371 ) that always worked good on those games and it worked, the reactor level loaded once i got back from **spoiler zone** without any problem and without a need to lower the game resolution.
Oh and the hazmat bastards are still bastards.
Post by: Sirus on March 19, 2023, 09:48:08 pm
I have a question for people here, because afaik there's no "Ask about random games thread":So, Avorion.
Has anyone got Avorion, and if so what's it like? I'm looking for a new space-y game.
When you start the game you are in a tiny cube with a couple of mining lasers. You mine some ore, and use it to build yourself a proper ship. Now when I say "build" I don't mean you just pick a hull out of a menu; you build it, block by block, making sure to include various systems like solar panels, batteries, engines, crew quarters, etc. You can make it look however you like. You get various turrets and place them where you wish. If you're struggling to make ships that are functional and/or look good, there are a variety of player-made ships you can download and add to the game.
Your goal is to make it to the center of the galaxy, and you're way out on the fringes. The galaxy is in a big grid of star systems, a good couple hundred systems per side (possibly more). As you near the center you will face more powerful foes, but you will also be able to mine more advanced ores which unlock new ship systems in addition to generally being better than the old ores. You will need bigger and more powerful ships to face these challenges, but fortunately you don't have to go it alone.
Very shortly into the game you unlock the ability to build extra ships which are controlled by the AI. They can follow basic commands like "follow me" on their own, but if you find and hire officers to run these extra ships you can give them advanced orders.
Want a section of unknown space scouted, with points of interest and approximate ore yields reported to you? An officer can do that.
Want a mining vessel or two to gather and refine ores before returning the product to you? Officers.
Want trade ships to run cargo between inhabited systems for profit? Officers.
Want combat-oriented ships to escort the above so they don't get picked off by pirates? Yes, you can do that too.
After a while you have your own little faction flying around. You can put them to work for a period of real-life time, gather them up when they're done, order them to other sections of space or have them follow you to uncharted territory. And during all of this you still have your own ship to fly around, upgrade, and get into trouble with.
It's not without flaws; the game starts struggling if you have too many officers flying around in too many areas, and even with AI assistance mining makes up a lot of time if you want bigger and more capable vessels. Also, when entering new sections of the galaxy closer to the core you can get slapped hard by upgraded foes. Fortunately it's nearly impossible to lose too much progress; your bank of refined ores is always safe, and if your ship is destroyed you just go back to your tiny metal cube until you get back to a shipyard. You can even pay credits to have your destroyed ships recovered and repaired.
Basically, there's a lot to do but very little plot or structure to make you do anything. If you're fine with games like Elite: Dangerous where you can just buzz around space for a few hours, making money and doing odd jobs, you're probably going to like Avorion. And, unlike Elite, you can do it in a space battleship rather than in a dinky fightercraft.
Post by: Frumple on March 19, 2023, 10:31:56 pm
This is how you do a starting mission. I'm not sure how the rest of it's going to play out, but the gameplay's solid in the first few minutes and this is a narrative I can get behind.The way it seems to be playing out is that it will bloody destroy you. There's metaprogression, and while it seems like you can win the missions without it, it is extremely not easy without the boosts involved, and from what I'm seeing even with them. The tutorial mission is pretty comfortable, but the breaks immediately come off even in the very first mission after it. This game is trying to kill you, and it is entirely willing to throw a fifty strong mixed brigade of artillery, wunderwaffen wheel ram things, tanks, rocket barrages, plasma cannons, other mechs, turrets, all at you at the same time while you have to stay in a limited area and just be like, "Figure this out yourself, fresh meat".
It's actually kinda' refreshing because after getting my shit pushed in about five times and with effectively no bonuses (I had unlocked a weapon and that's about it), I almost did figure it out and get nearly to the end of the first proper level. Almost.
...
Anyway, advice for anyone interested in trying it, the translation's a little scuffed so I can't tell for sure, but it seems a lot like there's something of a time pressure in, at least, the first level. If you lollygag too much, game will flash a red message at you and drop the angry fist of god down in the form of dozens (and that is not "a dozen", that is dozens, as in several of them) of enemy reinforcements -- when you're probably taking a good little bit just to kill one or two. So don't stop to smell the roses, the faster you get through the less likely you're going to be jumped on by like literally an entire nazi armored division. The whole damn thing.
Well, at least on normal. It may be different on easy, I'unno. Haven't tried it yet. I'm deffo having fun, if nothing else, this is pretty solid mecha twinstick. Visuals are pretty good, there's buildings to blow up and stomp on, handling and aiming and whatnot is workhorse functional, there's a lot of pretty good design going on here, outside of maybe the difficulty cliff.
E: Also, when you murder enemy mechs, you get an upgrade choice: If you see minions, get minions, especially if it offers you a tank. Despite being a big stompy mech with big stompy mech guns, what you really need is the power of friendship to soak up bullets and shoot things for you. Both of those, real bad.
Post by: Great Order on March 20, 2023, 09:03:13 pm
Appreciate this, but I decided to bite the bullet and give it a go anyway.I have a question for people here, because afaik there's no "Ask about random games thread":So, Avorion.
Has anyone got Avorion, and if so what's it like? I'm looking for a new space-y game.
When you start the game you are in a tiny cube with a couple of mining lasers. You mine some ore, and use it to build yourself a proper ship. Now when I say "build" I don't mean you just pick a hull out of a menu; you build it, block by block, making sure to include various systems like solar panels, batteries, engines, crew quarters, etc. You can make it look however you like. You get various turrets and place them where you wish. If you're struggling to make ships that are functional and/or look good, there are a variety of player-made ships you can download and add to the game.
Your goal is to make it to the center of the galaxy, and you're way out on the fringes. The galaxy is in a big grid of star systems, a good couple hundred systems per side (possibly more). As you near the center you will face more powerful foes, but you will also be able to mine more advanced ores which unlock new ship systems in addition to generally being better than the old ores. You will need bigger and more powerful ships to face these challenges, but fortunately you don't have to go it alone.
Very shortly into the game you unlock the ability to build extra ships which are controlled by the AI. They can follow basic commands like "follow me" on their own, but if you find and hire officers to run these extra ships you can give them advanced orders.
Want a section of unknown space scouted, with points of interest and approximate ore yields reported to you? An officer can do that.
Want a mining vessel or two to gather and refine ores before returning the product to you? Officers.
Want trade ships to run cargo between inhabited systems for profit? Officers.
Want combat-oriented ships to escort the above so they don't get picked off by pirates? Yes, you can do that too.
After a while you have your own little faction flying around. You can put them to work for a period of real-life time, gather them up when they're done, order them to other sections of space or have them follow you to uncharted territory. And during all of this you still have your own ship to fly around, upgrade, and get into trouble with.
It's not without flaws; the game starts struggling if you have too many officers flying around in too many areas, and even with AI assistance mining makes up a lot of time if you want bigger and more capable vessels. Also, when entering new sections of the galaxy closer to the core you can get slapped hard by upgraded foes. Fortunately it's nearly impossible to lose too much progress; your bank of refined ores is always safe, and if your ship is destroyed you just go back to your tiny metal cube until you get back to a shipyard. You can even pay credits to have your destroyed ships recovered and repaired.
Basically, there's a lot to do but very little plot or structure to make you do anything. If you're fine with games like Elite: Dangerous where you can just buzz around space for a few hours, making money and doing odd jobs, you're probably going to like Avorion. And, unlike Elite, you can do it in a space battleship rather than in a dinky fightercraft.
After about 45 minutes I was just... Intensely bored. Decided to get a refund given that.
Post by: Robsoie on March 20, 2023, 10:25:45 pm
I increased the game pace setting (that decide how much turns it takes to build things) when i created this skirmish and it has changed the dynamics as the many fights over the map have involved a lot more troops and it somehow feels more action and there's a sense of urgency in deploying your squads better.
After playing on low difficulty level to learn since i got the game, i also upped it on this one and it seems it made a very noticable difference as i found the AI competent enough as it fields good armies and does not send isolated unit to a stupid death anymore like before (oh and it now fields more hero troops too instead of extremely rarely getting one).
After making an early breakthrough in the center of the map and nearly destroying early the necrons (destroyed one of their tomb base and was close to get the 2nd one annihilated), i was forced to retreat as i had moved a bit too much toward the south and as the center was starting to become a contested zone by the 2 other factions, each coming from a side was making the situation as me getting hammered everywhere. Basically it felt i had the big target on my back.
Retreating a bit away allowed to push those factions into fighting each other, giving me time to redeploy elsewhere to strike specifically the ork faction really hard on its side. I really wanted to hit them because it was mostly the crazy amount of them that forced me to retreat as they weren't kidding.
But fighting them back and counter attacking from another side once they became busy with necrons (that made a surprising comeback) was the most fun i had with that game.
Really excellent wargame, even without getting any DLC i don't feel i am missing anything or feeling "some feature that should be there" aren't in order to sell more DLC.
EDIT : took 183 turns but i won this one !
Very happy as it was a very fun battle with lots of back & forth until i finally got rid of the Orks then could destroy the Necrons and Imperial Guards that were fighting each other.
Spoiler: victory (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on March 22, 2023, 12:53:32 pm
One of the achievements I was trying to get was to do a certain number of maps using only the restricted teams (which show up randomly, so not all maps have them at all times). You can use 3 towers only, and need to defeat the normal challenges, which usually a single type of tower can't handle.
I kept getting the set of towers: ninja (fast, can see camo), monkey buccaneers (can only build on water, semi-expensive, has a lot of options), and mortar (slow, large footprint, can do a lot of damage to whichever enemy it actually hits).
Monkey buccaneers can hit both camo and lead, which means they can also hit camo-lead bloons, which are some of the more annoying ones. Trying to clear this achievement means I've also gotten the "build military monkeys only" challenge mode (and also alternate rounds challenge mode) by building a 0-2-2 (maybe 0-3-2 for the round 40 MOAB) ship to handle that, and a 5-0-2 (fires fast, small planes that cover the screen, and can still hit camo). Upgrading the fast-shooter buccanneer to aircraft carrier increases the attack speed of all flying and water-based towers, which is the 2 I built. And because it's only 2 towers, I can afford to get to level 5 for that upgrade around round 55, more than in time for the round 60 MOAB and the round 58 camo-leads.
Post by: Kagus on March 22, 2023, 06:36:52 pm
I kinda miss those days, y'know.
Post by: Folly on March 22, 2023, 07:00:11 pm
Ever since Dungeon Defenders and Orcs Must Die went bad, I've been waiting for a new Tower Defense game to replace them, but there just doesn't seem to be enough interest in the genre to justify anything more adventurous than rehashed Flash classics.
Post by: Robsoie on March 22, 2023, 07:33:00 pm
The mix of the tower defense with some bullet hell type of top down shooter gameplay was working surprisingly well. And it was well helped by the spectacular destruction of the buildings of the cities that were used as maps that gave a distaster movie feeling.
Post by: Egan_BW on March 22, 2023, 07:36:23 pm
Post by: Cthulhu on March 22, 2023, 09:34:06 pm
Nioh style pseudo-historical fantasy kind of thing, starts with the yellow turban rebellion and continues there, except Dark Forces are manipulating the chaos for their own Mysterious Agenda, and all that.
Post by: Robsoie on March 23, 2023, 06:44:32 am
https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-horse-lords-a-total-modification-for-bfme/downloads/age-of-the-ring-version-80
Post by: Iduno on March 23, 2023, 02:01:59 pm
Man, Bloons... I dunno, I still think it's kinda wild seeing the legacy of a Flash classic staying strong after all this time.
I kinda miss those days, y'know.
Yeah, it's better than the old tower defense games, but you can still see where it came from.
Post by: nenjin on March 23, 2023, 02:09:29 pm
Post by: Iduno on March 23, 2023, 09:38:02 pm
I blame SssethTzeentch. He did a video on it a while ago and I was like "WTF is this game that looks like a throwaway from the early 2000s?"
Being free on Epic a bit over a month ago didn't hurt, either. I'm willing to pay $0 for a game most of the time.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on March 25, 2023, 03:40:29 pm
Post by: Stench Guzman on March 29, 2023, 11:57:33 am
On to Clive Barker's Undying.
Post by: nenjin on March 29, 2023, 01:22:15 pm
I finished playing through Doom 64. It has a different feel to it than Doom 1 and 2. A lot of it is the music; it's mostly ambient noises, like Quake.
On to Clive Barker's Undying.
Enjoy, it's a trip. Just be prepared to walk all over the first part of the game multiple times.
Post by: Robsoie on April 03, 2023, 07:33:30 am
Got to some point after completing the data fetching of several space hulks (reached level 7 for my scavengers) in which the game finally starts to feel too repetitive and out of some random new traps, things feel the same, encounters can be very hard or very easy depending on luck more than strategy (as it depends on which order your cards will come to your hand from your decks) but up to then it was fun.
But that's another game with technical problems : the first time i launch it after starting my PC, the game will not load.
Then the 2nd time it will load without problems.
Googling around that bizarre bug, it seems it happens to a several other people and the devs never fixed that, so in case you can't launch the game, try a 2nd time.
If i play fullscreen all the pictures of your attacks are pre-loaded and there's no interruption.
If i play windowed (as it prevents the "crash on 1st load" bug) on your first character attack there will be a long pause/freeze before the attack picture comes up (i guess it was just not preloaded correctly). Fortunately for the rest of the game there will be no more of those freeze.
Odd to see loading time of so many seconds when getting back to your home station, it's only a few 2D pictures and there are only very few procedural items generated at the trader. But that's an Unity game after all :D
Post by: delphonso on April 03, 2023, 07:57:41 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on April 03, 2023, 08:05:03 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 03, 2023, 10:12:25 am
While in Deep Sky Derelicts, you have an artist that drew a bunch of rooms, but you'll never really see them (because there's no point as you would need to click on each square you're in to see them but without being able to do anything out of going back to the map to actually move) unless you're on an encounter or special square (that force you to see that room just to press a "Talk", "Search" or "Interact" button or just have the fight happening).
I'm sure the exploration would have been more engaging with a EO-like visual system, both the view and the map available at the same time.
Post by: nenjin on April 03, 2023, 10:18:41 am
It's basically Sunless Sea-lite, with a greater emphasis on fishing.
Unlike Sunless Sea, there's no crippling economic component you need to strategize around. You just motor around fishing, making money, upgrading your ship and following the main and side stories. Also unlike Sunless Sea, you can really push the boundaries of safe travel, steaming along at night.
It's not balanced to be difficult, but rather a fairly chillaxing fishing experience with a side of Mythos. I think I'm about 20 hours in and probably 3/4 through the game already.
It's a good game but I sort of regret not waiting for a sale; I don't think it has much replayability. If you really love fishing games managed by QTEs, and hunting down each species of fish to complete your catalog, the game has your back. There's not much else to it though. A nice single playthrough game.
Post by: Kagus on April 03, 2023, 05:57:11 pm
Also, the first portion of the game is definitely the strongest. The first bits of tooling around Marrow and being afraid of the dark are very well done and really pull you into the world and feel... Which is probably why it was such a great demo when that's all there was available. The later stages seem a teensy bit rushed.
I'd still recommend it all in all; it gets a very particular vibe very right in the early game, and it's worth it for that experience alone I feel. Also, fish tetris.
Note: There are a couple timed quests in the game which can permanently lock you out of their rewards (for that playthrough) if you don't handle them on time, and there's no warning given of this being the case. They're kinda out of the way side quests though, and there are only four of them in the entire game. If a hooded figure asks you for fish, understand that they're not gonna sit and wait weeks for you to get around to it.
Post by: Frumple on April 03, 2023, 06:02:54 pm
Post by: nenjin on April 03, 2023, 06:27:11 pm
Learned the hard way about the Hooded Figure. I don't know if it's based on days or how much time has elapsed since you first talked to them.
I agree the beginning is the best part because the economics / balance sorta matter. But as soon as you get:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Maybe Sunless Sea just dictated the amount of thinking I expect to do in these games, or maybe it's just a game they really want you to never struggle in. But it really did kind of detract from the setting for me. And combined with the visuals, almost leans the game into cute territory for me. To each their own, I just would have preferred a slightly more demanding challenge because I think it would have left the game feeling a bit edgier and more dangerous.
Also one part that kind of miffed me was:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Little things like that and a better eye for balance would have elevated the game another notch for me. As it is, it's just "relaxing and somewhat cute." It's an experience. A $25 experience? For the vibe they crafted and the game on its artistic merits? Grudgingly I'll say yes. As a game? Mmmmmmmm.....maybe not. But I admit, I'm biased, I don't place a super high premium just on a vibe and/or experience.
Post by: Caz on April 04, 2023, 05:00:47 am
Post by: Kagus on April 04, 2023, 09:19:39 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: nenjin on April 04, 2023, 01:27:15 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Kagus on April 04, 2023, 03:13:52 pm
I suspect I know which things I didn't do:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iduno on April 04, 2023, 04:02:51 pm
The advanced map is annoying because you are limited to one tower, but then it's just knowing which towers you have to choose from can beat the challenge, and trying them out until you do enough damage to solo the level. So it's annoying, but playable.
First time I've seen more winners in advanced. Just nobody is willing to put up with having to wait until they can do *anything at all*. There's actually about twice as many attempts as people who have lost (about 50% more have attempted than have won and lost combined), so it's not just me unwilling to put up with that.
Post by: Criptfeind on April 05, 2023, 05:32:58 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 07, 2023, 05:37:32 am
Deep Sky DerelictsFun random fact, despite having much more assets and etc... when there's a loading Dying Light load noticably faster than Deep Sky Derelicts .
[...]
Odd to see loading time of so many seconds when getting back to your home station, it's only a few 2D pictures and there are only very few procedural items generated at the trader. But that's an Unity game after all :D
Some tip : keep a lot of your firecrackers (and craft some) , it can save your sorry bottom at night by distracting the enemies. Those damn Volatiles...
weapon break fast and can only be repaired a finite amount of time, but don't ditch your then mostly useless (as damage are then very low) weapons, as there's a skill you can get early that allow you to throw your weapon and damage/stun enemies, perfect use of mostly useless weaponry.
You can pick them up again after being thrown..
another tip : during your scavenging you will find a lot of
The most common of them are cigarettes, coffee, cosmetics and pouch.
But some games do not tell in advance, but while telling you to sell those items will give you at some point a quest in which you need a bunch of said items.
Such is the unfortunate design decision of Dying Light devs : at some point a quest will ask you for a dozen of coffee. So to avoid having to search everywhere to find them because you sold a tons of them before, always keep a dozen of coffee in your inventory.
Post by: Robsoie on April 08, 2023, 09:46:59 am
Learned of the existence of 2 more Cataclysm forks
edit : spotted an information thread on reddit for CEoD
Cataclysm End of Decay
https://github.com/AtomicFox556/Cataclysm-EOD
informations : https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmbn/comments/12g7j0l/announcing_cataclysm_era_of_decay/
Cataclysm There is still Hope
https://github.com/Cataclysm-TISH-team/Cataclysm-TISH
informations : https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/129mdxn/cataclysm_there_is_still_hope/
Post by: King Zultan on April 09, 2023, 02:31:01 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 09, 2023, 11:53:21 am
Because i didn't knew before but i quickly learned that dropkicking zombies around is definitively one of the best thing ever :D
Oh and some more tricks : some side mission may require you to do something at night.
Problem is that nights can become really hard in the Dying Light world with various kind of mutant murder superzombies roaming, jumping and climbing everywhere, so a good way to get more chances to survive such missions : go at location at day, wait there until night, do the required action and try to survive running away to a safe zone (that already should increase vastly your chances).
Additionally : do not rush the story mission, they decide the zombies progression in difficulty. So rushing through the story missions may put you into harder situation with you having equipment and skill not yet up to the task.
Get around the side-missions instead to build up your character by leveling up your skills tree and getting good skills, and provide better equipment.
Oh and Molotov are good, especially with human enemies that can dodge and block your melee attacks sometime.
Post by: Folly on April 09, 2023, 06:07:25 pm
I was hesitant on this one, doubting that the simple concept and limited game assets could justify the $30 price tag. I'm still not completely certain on that price, but I am having a lot of fun.
I can spend hours carefully devising nefarious killboxes, then watch replays of raiders expertly evading my traps, then I go back and rebuild everything to be even more devious. It's ever so very satisfying when I come back from my own raids and see a report that someone died multiple times in my dungeon, and then watching the replay to see exactly which traps got them and how. And if I have build points left over then I can waste some more time making everything look pretty; appearances count!
Post by: McTraveller on April 10, 2023, 03:58:34 pm
1. Wow it's a game from 2022, but the character's lip synching makes them look like puppets. I'd rather them have had no mouth movement at all. The female protagonists voice actor voice also doesn't seem to fit my mental model... but it is about as wooden as the animation ;)
2. The music in the opening area is way too dramatic for the situation.
Not sure I can get back into the franchise with this entry.
Post by: Robsoie on April 10, 2023, 09:33:15 pm
Oh and some more tricks : some side mission may require you to do something at night.
Problem is that nights can become really hard in the Dying Light world with various kind of mutant murder superzombies roaming, jumping and climbing everywhere, so a good way to get more chances to survive such missions : go at location at day, wait there until night, do the required action and try to survive running away to a safe zone (that already should increase vastly your chances).
Note : don't try this for the Witch Queen side quest, going during the day is hell :D
Post by: Robsoie on April 11, 2023, 09:26:32 am
So far no problem, it's always a nice change of pace in comparison to regular missions and side quests.
But there's a problem : if your system can't run the game at its full speed, you will never manage to complete any of those racing challenges (fortunately they're all optional and failing them do not have any bad consequences as you can just re-run them at will), because the racing timers are not linked to your fps while your character speed is totally depend on your fps.
So in case you notice you're failing a runner optional challenge despite doing your best on the best possible path, try to lower you video settings more (or use some fps mod that disable lots of effects) to get more fps, it makes a noticable difference.
Post by: Kagus on April 11, 2023, 09:36:15 am
In Dying Light there are several optional running challenges in which you need to go from A to B (and move through checkpoints) in less than a specific time.
So far no problem, it's always a nice change of pace in comparison to regular missions and side quests.
But there's a problem : if your system can't run the game at its full speed, you will never manage to complete any of those racing challenges (fortunately they're all optional and failing them do not have any bad consequences as you can just re-run them at will), because the racing timers are not linked to your fps while your character speed is totally depend on your fps.
So in case you notice you're failing a runner optional challenge despite doing your best on the best possible path, try to lower you video settings more to get more fps, it makes a noticable difference.
Makes me think of how the speed of cars in GTA:Online was also tied in to your FPS
I could do a race against someone else, using the same car, and end up trailing most of the course because my exact same car is running slower due to my computer being made of cheese and lint.
Post by: Robsoie on April 11, 2023, 09:57:51 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he02vJvKaRs
Post by: Robsoie on April 13, 2023, 03:58:03 pm
Wow, that game playfield is even bigger than i thought and they haven't slept on their open world as there are truckload of things to do and missions/side quests/challenges/etc... throwing you all other the locations so it's never boring "more of the same".
And that without mentionning the huge countryside map that comes with the DLC (that is free with the enhanced edition) The Following and that is said to be as big as both Slums and Old Town combined.
Still having a lot of fun parkouring and dealing with zombies with new ways (and new unlocked skills), so far some parts have been really difficult for me, i really don't want to imagine how it is playing those on higher difficulties :D
And so many new weapons when you level up, so many ways to upgrade them into even more fun stuff...
Post by: E. Albright on April 13, 2023, 04:26:48 pm
Overall, it's, uh... fine? It's a pretty faithful remake (hexes notwithstanding), which is both good and bad. The UI is a bit smoother & friendlier, but it's also indistinct and bland. I feel like it would benefit from higher contrast; the elements are almost all mid-range earthtones and greens. By and large, gameplay remains what it was in the original... which now feels very dated, especially since the UI makes things look modern. There's definitely an art style, which really stands out and feels a bit odd... but that's mostly b/c the pixelated art in the original was so vague. It's quite playable, but it's not compelling.
Content-wise, it's... fine. There are some minor new features that don't really disrupt gameplay or dramatically change things: new events, events where you have choices, dungeons where you can choose to push deeper or give up, different types of Towers... but nothing that feels new or game-changing. There are built-in event modding tools, and plans apparently include adding full-spectrum modding with Steam Workshop support.
It is a Unity game, which both contributes to the genericness of it and means it's a bit of a resource hog. It more time to load up on booting than I'd expect, but once it's up and running it seems to run well with quick responsiveness, to include reloading saved games.
So, yeah. I mostly just don't have strong feelings about it. To be fair, I didn't ever achieve my old levels of fascination & enthusiasm when I played the re-release of classic MoM a few years back, so that may just be an artifact of the underlying dated gameplay. I had a similar "you can't go back" moment when I picked up the modern-OS-compatible re-release of EFS. Alas, I am not the same gamer I was 25y ago...
Post by: Robsoie on April 13, 2023, 05:59:52 pm
Spotted this video making the comparison, looks like the new one feels more like a mix between Age of Wonders and MuHa's previous games UI design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bue9KLkFX98
Not saying the remake is bad, but all the video up there made me is wanting to launch the old MoM again :D
Post by: nenjin on April 13, 2023, 10:57:00 pm
Post by: Frumple on April 14, 2023, 07:20:30 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on April 14, 2023, 08:45:30 am
Post by: Rolan7 on April 14, 2023, 08:51:14 am
Post by: n9103 on April 14, 2023, 08:52:15 am
Is the Anime-ification of a game's graphics something the studio is known for? Very unfortunate if so.
Post by: E. Albright on April 14, 2023, 11:44:42 am
MuHa has had issues with inconsistent art quality in the past. They did an update to Thea 1 at one point that added a bunch of character portraits that they ended up rolling back in a later update after they received complaints about quality. I've always gotten the impression that they're a small developer on a tight budget, and they try to cut corners on art and writing from time to time - not consistently, but periodically. If they could have managed the same level of art for all the units that they did for the wizards, I'd have been very happy with it, but that's probably outside their budget.
Post by: EuchreJack on April 15, 2023, 04:34:27 pm
https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181 (https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181)
Post by: Sirus on April 15, 2023, 04:47:58 pm
Now that it is over I am more sad than scared, and I dearly hope Mobius releases another DLC (or even better, a whole new game!) some day.
Post by: King Zultan on April 16, 2023, 01:38:57 am
A new addition to my Illegal Games list:What makes it illegal and what all is on the list?
https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181 (https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181)
Post by: Aoi on April 16, 2023, 04:39:18 am
A new addition to my Illegal Games list:What makes it illegal and what all is on the list?
https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181 (https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181)
Basically, the founders of the company making DAD used to work for Nexon, and Nexon is claiming that assets (art, concepts, designs) were stolen, and employees were poached (not sure if they had any non-compete clauses, but they are legal in Korea).
Adding to the fun, because legal distribution of the game is temporarily halted in Korea, the game doesn't meet local regulations, so, despite their Korean headquarters and being one of their major target markets, they can't actually test there.
Update: Quiet reply; fair enough. I see a few holes in the argument of legal vs illegal, but, like most things relating to law, they're based on pedantry and precise phrasing.
Post by: EuchreJack on April 16, 2023, 02:18:04 pm
A new addition to my Illegal Games list:What makes it illegal and what all is on the list?
https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181 (https://kotaku.com/steam-pc-rpg-dark-and-darker-ironmace-torrent-playtest-1850338181)
Basically, the founders of the company making DAD used to work for Nexon, and Nexon is claiming that assets (art, concepts, designs) were stolen, and employees were poached (not sure if they had any non-compete clauses, but they are legal in Korea).
Adding to the fun, because legal distribution of the game is temporarily halted in Korea, the game doesn't meet local regulations, so, despite their Korean headquarters and being one of their major target markets, they can't actually test there.
Sooo.... not really illegal, but it's certainly a tenuous enough position that they got themselves delisted from Steam.
While I don't agree with it, Nexon has an active Copyright Infringement case against DAD, which means torrenting DAD is in violation of the Millennium Copyright Act, thus making DAD an illegal game.
Post by: King Zultan on April 17, 2023, 02:17:08 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 17, 2023, 10:07:36 am
Post by: n9103 on April 17, 2023, 10:20:15 am
IMO being DMCA'd is no different than being SLAPP'd. Sans injunction, I don't think anyone *should* have any power to stop someone else from doing something based on unproven accusations.
<insert off-track rant about accusations and assumptions and abridged freedoms over the words of others without proving them>
Post by: Aoi on April 18, 2023, 12:20:50 am
Post by: Jopax on April 18, 2023, 03:29:27 am
Post by: Frumple on April 18, 2023, 04:04:50 pm
Post by: nenjin on April 19, 2023, 12:59:14 pm
Thoroughly enjoyed the first game. Metroidvania Soulslikes may be a little played out at this point, but the themes really elevated it to something special.
Post by: n9103 on April 19, 2023, 02:49:59 pm
Post by: Iduno on April 19, 2023, 07:33:03 pm
I love this type of game, but I'm not sure I can handle playing for long.
Post by: Robsoie on April 19, 2023, 08:06:27 pm
On the freeware version i never managed to beat the Crypt with Assassin to unlock the last race (that is a requirement to unlock the lothlorien and boss hive challenges). Just retried after so many years, and still no go, also stopped playing because the game was becoming less fun the more you won the normal challenge as each further normal play was increasingly harder :D
Post by: MorleyDev on April 20, 2023, 11:45:57 am
Post by: askovdk on April 21, 2023, 06:54:41 am
It became quite addictive once I realized you could find upgrades for your ship.
https://xkcd.com/2765 (https://xkcd.com/2765)
Post by: Rince Wind on April 22, 2023, 04:12:34 am
Your merry band of 4 survivors plus an automaton try to reach the end of the level while looting and being attacked by skaven ... I mean vermin. You accumulate stress, which can lead to disadvantages when maxed out. Once save you manage the camp phase, upgrading weapons and abilities, trying to heal, reduce stress, maybe craft and prepare for the next mission. Then it is out again on a FTL or Slay the Spire style map where you choose your next battle.
You can unlock new abilities and characters. It has nice pixel graphics, though I think it could have used some more colour.
The price is a imo fair 11,79€ and there's a demo.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1183800/Shardpunk_Verminfall/
Post by: Iduno on April 23, 2023, 11:36:44 am
https://antidepressantsortolkien.vercel.app/ (https://antidepressantsortolkien.vercel.app/)
Post by: MrRoboto75 on April 23, 2023, 08:22:09 pm
In this one they actually do need to scout, and even get trapped just like the player when a unit moves into an unseen enemy.
Post by: nenjin on April 24, 2023, 01:32:56 pm
It's a retro-pixel game set in a post-apocalypse. Basically Fallout, plus Cthulhu monsters and a lot of vomit. Vomit is actually a central game mechanic.
It's pretty good. Real time action. Has a dodge roll and some pretty tight enemy timing. Can be played Coop with a friend using Steam Remote Play. My friend and I had a good time playing it.
Unfortunately, it's not finished even a year into Early Access. We got about 20 hours of it and that was with a lot of backtracking, running around, repeatedly failing some combat encounters.
It's good, but if you're looking to get it, wait. There's so much to the game in terms of content that isn't finished.
Post by: Salmeuk on April 24, 2023, 09:05:48 pm
Tolkien character or Antidepressant? There are a few gimmies, but mostly they can easily go either way.
https://antidepressantsortolkien.vercel.app/ (https://antidepressantsortolkien.vercel.app/)
I failed five times in a row then laughed a bit . nice
Post by: Egan_BW on April 26, 2023, 09:13:18 pm
Post by: delphonso on April 27, 2023, 12:23:10 am
It would have to be quite well done, they need to be able to verbally underatand what they are doing ingame, but since chatgpt can write code, I think it should be abe to interprete the own code it's running on, as long as it knows it's actually acting and what that entails, it doesn't need truely need to be aware what the AI is concretly doing just to intreprete it's behaviour, kinda like that one thought experiment, how's it it called again... ah yes the chinese room.
A bit of clarification - ChatGPT is effectively a very complex autocomplete. It does not do any contemplation or mulling things over, it just guesses the next word in the sentence by probability, without any knowledge of what those words mean. Our brains attribute agency to anything that looks like it could be moving/acting on its own, so it's hard not to read to much into the machine (refer to Blake Lemoine). That sort of self-reflection is unfortunately outside the scope of ChatGPT (and GPT in general, I'd guess.)
That said, there's been interesting experiments with Agent AIs (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/04/surprising-things-happen-when-you-put-25-ai-agents-together-in-an-rpg-town/)1, and with the leaps in processing demands (i.e., making them much lighter on processing power), we'll be seeing this stuff in games very soon indeed.
1 - This one is actually run with ChatGPT, still - but seems no more complex than Rimworld pawns. A tailored AI for this sort of thing could blow Dorfs out of the water, easy.
Post by: King Zultan on April 27, 2023, 01:15:56 am
Post by: Aoi on April 27, 2023, 01:18:46 am
They've been talking about adding the AI survivors to that game forever, and I don't think their much closer to adding them then they were a few years ago.
Well... AI animals are supposedly being tested right now, which I suppose is technically closer... at least, the addition of non-zombie entities.
Post by: Toady One on April 28, 2023, 12:17:12 pm
Post by: dragdeler on April 28, 2023, 02:57:27 pm
Idk what to tell you, you didn't do worse at least (from my perspective), I hope so. I'm just an asshole chugging through his self-neglect, I did nothing to deserve leniency, but thanks I guess.
Post by: nenjin on May 01, 2023, 12:08:14 am
Find a nice legendary Orc to "enlist".
I fight them, and am interrupted mid fight by another new, epic orc. Who looks pretty cool. I decide I want to "offer them a position" too. So I dominate the Legendary Orc, we gang up on the Epic Orc, and Shame him into the required level range. Cool.
I then take my newly "recruited" legendary orc to help me "hire" the epic orc. We kick off the "interview."
First we're interrupted by a 3rd, new orc I haven't met who jumps into the fight. The fight commences, things getting a little out of hand as my legendary orc is somewhat under leveled after their uh, "first day orientation" and is getting their ass kicked. But I'm managing, trying to whittle down the Epic orc that I want while dodging another opponent at the same time.
That's when things go from difficult to "eat shit." I have a
Needless to say it turns into a blood bath as one of the orcs that betrayed me was a berzerker with a crossbow and starts mowing captains down with it. First, the legendary orc I brought along on this misadventure gets outright slain, no chance to rez them. Then one of my rebel orcs I wanted to keep gets slain, which happened so fast I didn't have a chance to try to dominate them. Then the Epic orc I originally came to uh, "recruit" gets slain. I manage to rez the orc who got their throat slit, slay the rando orc that interrupted the fight in the beginning and went on to re-bind one of the orcs that rebelled.
Just another day in MF Mordor son.
Post by: scriver on May 01, 2023, 01:36:22 am
Post by: AlStar on May 02, 2023, 12:24:24 pm
Short summary: ever wanted to play in a Mad Max-esque world... as one of the barbaric gangs that Max fights against? Here's your chance! You take control of a group of raiders operating out of a pitiful hole of a hideout. Work your way up from preying on trader caravans, to taking over industries, to dominating entire towns. Kidnap people with useful skills to run buildings in your hideout, kidnap people with useless skills to ransom back for cash. Eventually, use weapons of mass destruction and siege weaponry to take on even the fortified strongholds of slavers, other raiders, and lawmen.
Opinion: The game does a pretty good job of capturing the ambiance of living in a post-apocalyptic world. Once you start gearing up your raiders, the mish-mash of crazy equipment (riot helmet over tire armor, wielding a katana? Sure, why not!) really feels like you're playing a group of scavengers, using anything they can find.
The main downside of the game is that it's just too easy. I took some advice from a review I read and started on 'hard' difficulty. While the start of the game was a little rough, recently my raiders have successfully fought off forces 5x their number, taking no or minimal casualties. The problem is that there's just too many stacking systems: Each level (up to the max of 25) gives you points that you can use to increase your stats, including, importantly, to-hit% and raw damage. Each level also gives you skill points, which can be used to give active and passive abilities that improve your power and staying ability. Getting kills also improves your weapons - a maxed-out weapon (30 kills) has notably higher damage, to-hit%, and crit%.
Once you've got a full party (at least 8 guys - four melee users and four ranged users, since that's the maximum that can be on-screen at once) all up at level 25 and decked out in upgraded armor (which gives both straight HP as well as damage-reduction), you're basically invulnerable, bar a bunch of their shooters all targeting the same raider and getting lucky crits.
I'm not quite done yet, as there's an end-game challenge - an actual army (as opposed to the rabble your force is made up of / fights against) invades your home area. Unless they're a huge difficulty spike, I'm not terribly worried.
Overall, I picked it up for $4, and for that price I've been having a good time. I don't know if it's a $20 game.
Post by: Mephansteras on May 03, 2023, 11:00:24 am
It starts off pretty rough, mostly because you'd think your mechs armed with guns would be able to shoot more than 10 feet away, but they can't. You're basically at melee the entire game, which is very balanced for the small map sizes and enemy abilities, but feels dumb. Your mechs also don't heal by default, so unless you unlock some healing capacity you're basically just going to be replacing them fairly regularly.
Fortunately, it's all about parts available and energy to spawn new mechs, not the actual mechs themselves. So the loss of one just costs you a bit of resources to make a new one.
Once you get into how the game plays, it's quite fun. You earn research points you can use to unlock new parts or upgrade old ones, and the mechs are pretty modular so you can swap stuff around and upgrade your older mechs as the game goes on. You can even do that in-battle if you want, though it ends the mech's turn. You start with 5 mech slots and can unlock more, so the map can get a bit crowded, but not in a frustrating way most of the time.
It also has a slay-the-spire kind of movement system in between battles where you take branching paths to get to the mini-boss at the end of each level. No surprises, really, it tells you what you'll get at each point for the most part (a fight, an item upgrade, or energy/research/meta-energy) and you can usually just plan out your entire route for the level at the start.
Meta progression is fairly standard rogue-like stuff. You earn meta energy that you spend in between runs to give yourself bonuses and you can unlock new starting parts for your mechs.
It's a $20 game on steam, although I bought it on sale, and I'd say it's worth about $20. Not super deep, but I've been enjoying it and it has pretty solid replay since you'll get a different combination of part unlocks each run which drastically changes your playstyle.
Post by: Robsoie on May 06, 2023, 06:47:18 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6sVWEu9HWU
Post by: dragdeler on May 06, 2023, 09:51:52 am
All that being said it's still very exciting, I hope to see more mods like that.
Post by: Stench Guzman on May 06, 2023, 11:29:14 am
Post by: Egan_BW on May 06, 2023, 01:49:22 pm
Post by: n9103 on May 06, 2023, 02:13:13 pm
Post by: Robsoie on May 06, 2023, 04:05:47 pm
Post by: vjek on May 09, 2023, 09:26:00 am
The premise or setting of the game is you're running the town that adventurers go to, to obtain Quests, then buy what they need (gear, armor, weapons, potions, food) before and after the Quests. You create the supply and demand for the whole adventure loop.
Layouts of the towns are limited to 4 settings/biomes at the moment. Some are objectively better than others, just due to distance & pathing, but they all get the job done in terms of being able to create the 7 different shops.
You can have an Inn, Blacksmith, Woodworker, Tanner, Tailor, Apothecary, and Training Grounds. Each has their own workshop for Adventurers, and then a separate 'civilian' feature, for visitors who aren't specifically Questing Adventurers.
The clever bit is you have to collect all the raw materials to make the stuff that you need to create & provide the goods the visitors and adventurers will consume or want.
You create the Quests, food, and every category of gear, all from the raw materials. Raw materials categories are metal, wood, cloth, leather, herbs, food, Each one has four tiers, and you need the higher tier raw material before making the higher tier goods within each shop. You can only have one shop per plot of land within the town, and how it's laid out doesn't really matter, as long as the objects are placed within each.
You can use Tier 2 items to advance to Tier 3, or even Tier 1 items to advance to Tier 3, in terms of XP granted to advance, within each shop.
You should only make gear your specific classes need. You create each adventuring class, and recruit only those classes you want/create. Each class has different bonuses in terms of what they bring to the town (when they're in town).
This means if you make classes that use two handed swords, don't make daggers. :D Tanners have the most demand and appear to make the most (legitimate) money.
The tutorial is good, didn't run into any bugs. All the hackable values are just 4 byte integers, so that's extremely handy if you don't want to grind through hours of gameplay to see how the story/plot advances. This includes the storage of all raw materials and gold, as well as upgrade gems.
In terms of story, the outline is that you keep sending adventurers on quests to specific areas, and those areas open up until you have a complete knowledge of all locations, then you can create high CR (Challenge Rating) Quests that lead to the Boss fight. Once the boss has been removed, you now control that territory, but that just advances to the next territory. Goblins, Kobolds, Animals, Bandits, Orcs & Trolls, Elementals, Undead, Giants, Demons, Dragons are the territories.
From time to time the King will send you requests for materials, which if you satisfy, you get rewarded.
There are 'Imminent Threats' which are things like, if you don't kill x of y Goblins or Kobolds, they attack your town, and your Constitution-class based heroes will try to fight them off. If not, they steal money and resources.
Fair warning, if you get ahead of the CR curve, you can't go back unless you ditch your high level adventurers (remove their classes) and start again with a new class type. that's just to get Adventurers who are low enough level/CR that they can do all that low-level exploration. Ultimately it doesn't seem to matter too much, the Imminent threats aren't game-ending and you can create high CR 'slay' quests to keep your adventurers happy. Some adventurers die.. especially those just starting out without a lot of good gear, money, or potions to help them along. Some end up with Epic or Legendary gear that you happened to make and/or upgrade.
That's the part that's pretty fun, in my opinion, you outfitting then sending them off and seeing the results. Some of them come back under 5% health and 100% morale, because they just LOVED that quest so much that they almost died. It's pretty funny that way. When they get particularly good items, they say things like "That Backpack of Slaying is going to make me a Legend!"
GPU load & performance of the game, with appropriate settings, is efficient from what I saw. It won't turn your GPU into a space heater unless you max out everything.
Anyway, that's my opinion of Hero's Rest, worth trying if you've never played anything similar. I've also tried Travellers Rest (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1139980/Travellers_Rest/), and that one focuses more on being an Innkeeper, rather than all the different aspects of adventuring, at least so far.
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 10, 2023, 09:00:08 am
Post by: Robsoie on May 10, 2023, 09:46:36 am
Its only problem was on the technical/optimisation aspect (that Wrath of the Righteous improved from what i read) but gameplay and amount of content were top notch
Post by: Criptfeind on May 10, 2023, 10:23:46 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 10, 2023, 01:35:28 pm
As I'm playing a bit more in the strategic layer, I'm starting to think it's the least polished part of the game. By far. Having no feel for the mechanics, I picked a commander for the starting army randomly. Now I see that if it weren't a wizard, I'd be struggling AF. The basic fire bolt spell is winning all the battles - almost one-shotting most stacks that would otherwise murder my troops. I tried using a melee dude for the second army, and everyone in it is just dying, impotently. The balancing here is a bit wonky.
Still, it's a nice break from adventuring that fits with the story, however uninspired mechanically.
Post by: Robsoie on May 10, 2023, 03:05:37 pm
But the story and atmosphere are very different, so maybe it could be worth it if you still want more pathfinder after completing WotR as it does not feel like a repeat.
Kingmaker is about basic adventurers/mercenaries getting an opportunity of seizing a territory for themselves, then developping it into an actual player in the political games of the neighbouring kingdoms, while learning the hard way why none managed to rule that territory for long, and fighting to overcome that fate leading the game from throwing a lot of "classic" adventures (most are unrelated to each other and unrelated to the main story) and enemies to then progressively saga of epic proportions against extremely powerful foes from a forgotten world as the story progress.
Post by: Persus13 on May 10, 2023, 04:09:43 pm
However, personally I'm doing a new Kingmaker run because I picked up the PF2 version of the book and it made me want to finish the video game before reading the book. If you're enjoying Wrath and are okay with less QoL things and timed main quests I think you'll enjoy it.
I think it took me 150 hours to beat Wrath of the Righteous, but I did turn based mode for 90% of it, which increases the length of fights like Criptfiend said. I also put it down for a bit around Act IV because my computer had trouble with the particle effects that show up then.
Post by: Akura on May 11, 2023, 04:13:14 am
Post by: Robsoie on May 11, 2023, 06:22:32 am
It had an acclaimed mod that vastly improved and expanded it with new features, new ships, new storylines, new quests, etc ... that was called New Horizons
That mod never ceased development, and recently the devs managed to make it fully standalone with a new engine and renamed it Beyond New Horizons, you can download it and its current development patch from this thread :
https://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/beyond-new-horizons-alpha-release.34218/
It's very janky (like the original game was) in term of character controls, but if you can get through the jank, it's a really good piracy game with lots of things to do.
Post by: dragdeler on May 11, 2023, 06:47:18 am
Post by: Robsoie on May 11, 2023, 06:53:18 am
New Horizon as a mod for it was totally worth trying (and this Beyond New Horizon standalone is too), so much better than the base game in every ways and add a lot more things to do than only getting your ass handed to you :D
Post by: Frumple on May 11, 2023, 04:17:33 pm
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Not gonna resurrect the dedicated thread just for this - just wanted to say that I picked it up on sale on a whim, having previously dismissed it as just another generic DnD RPG. And it's the most fun I've had with this genre since the original Planescape. It's great. Presentation, writing, characters, the munchkin-y min-maxing, the HoM&M-lite strategy bits, it's all excellent. I've already sunk some 50h into it, and it feels like I'm maybe half-way through the story.I'd been half eying that for a while, and the sale was... good enough. After most of a couple days to download, I've started it up and fiddled a bit, and...
... I couldn't find an answer from google but maybe one of you folks know. Are velociraptor actually programmed to be first pick of your party to open doors, or has this just been a very unusual string of coincidences? I started a run with one, and so far the plucky blighter has been the one to open every door that I've opened. I can't tell if this is coincidence, deliberate design for velociraptor animal companions, or if I stumbled over some kind of easter egg by naming the thing Clever Girl.
E: Though, I will say, one of my earliest impressions was "Whoever thought having item highlighting not be a toggle in a game this new was a goddamn idiot". Google has informed me some mod or another fixes this staggering oversight in UI design, so now I get to figure out how mods work on this thing :V
Post by: Persus13 on May 11, 2023, 05:34:08 pm
Post by: Frumple on May 11, 2023, 05:58:17 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 11, 2023, 06:20:16 pm
Post by: Iduno on May 11, 2023, 06:36:21 pm
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Not gonna resurrect the dedicated thread just for this - just wanted to say that I picked it up on sale on a whim, having previously dismissed it as just another generic DnD RPG. And it's the most fun I've had with this genre since the original Planescape. It's great. Presentation, writing, characters, the munchkin-y min-maxing, the HoM&M-lite strategy bits, it's all excellent. I've already sunk some 50h into it, and it feels like I'm maybe half-way through the story.I'd been half eying that for a while, and the sale was... good enough. After most of a couple days to download, I've started it up and fiddled a bit, and...
... I couldn't find an answer from google but maybe one of you folks know. Are velociraptor actually programmed to be first pick of your party to open doors, or has this just been a very unusual string of coincidences? I started a run with one, and so far the plucky blighter has been the one to open every door that I've opened. I can't tell if this is coincidence, deliberate design for velociraptor animal companions, or if I stumbled over some kind of easter egg by naming the thing Clever Girl.
E: Though, I will say, one of my earliest impressions was "Whoever thought having item highlighting not be a toggle in a game this new was a goddamn idiot". Google has informed me some mod or another fixes this staggering oversight in UI design, so now I get to figure out how mods work on this thing :V
I mean, if you're ripping off Baldur's Gate, at least make the game as good as Baldur's Gate. It's a quarter of a century old, how are people not able to keep up with old technology?
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 11, 2023, 07:01:47 pm
The lack of toggle is forgivable - seeing how the game lets you automatically collect all encountered loot when you're leaving the area.
Post by: Frumple on May 11, 2023, 07:18:43 pm
... it does lessen the nuisance somewhat, but taking advantage of it means you weren't being an obsessive loot goblin, and that's a deeply unsatisfying ask when there's so much loot to loot goblin at. It's not a deal breaker, but it was a "install a handful of mods before you even get through the first area of the game so you can unfuck a poor UI decision" breaker :V
Post by: n9103 on May 11, 2023, 07:35:41 pm
You could set that in the party order screen... wherever that is? I forget, but played around with it at the beginning, as well as when I got my first mount.
If modding is in your future, consider Bubble Buff or something, which allows you to set up an out of combat buff button for one click casting.
Post by: Frumple on May 11, 2023, 07:48:52 pm
... haven't done it yet, but other than QoL/UI stuff I've got now, I'm also kinda' considering the toybox option that more or less turns off the vancian crap. It's a system I can work with, but I've never liked it, and if you give me an option to not there's pretty strong odds sooner or later I'mma go, "Yeah, sod this mess, just let me throw spells you jerks." There's a restore uses after battle option that's pretty tempting.
E: Though after seeing the cinematic for the nth time, I just realized why that bug dude looks so damn doofy to me. They gave that guy the head a muppet. Blighter is friggin' edgy elmo the bugman, and it has completely destroyed my ability to take their threat seriously.
Post by: Robsoie on May 13, 2023, 03:39:04 pm
- was quickly reminded how bad the default AI was unfortunately, basically the AI can't maintain a basic economy and stall a lot due to it, leading the AI to be unable to build an actual threatening army, so even if it had been a while and i am very likely rusty i simply played on the Metal Heck map and walked all over the hardest AI without any trouble. There's an article that points several of the default AI problems here : https://www.tauniverse.com/articles/tutorials/ai.html
- went to download a custom non-cheating AI as i remembered there was some very good stuff for skirmish there
https://aicentral.tauniverse.com/
I had a lot of positive memories of MostlyHarmless and Queller, went to use MostlyHarmless as it was the AI i used the most last time i played.
Started a skirmish on same map and same conditions and wow, it was a true battle and quickly on both my side and the AI side it was a slaughter, managed to win by the skin of my teeth thanks to lots of guardians turrets to support my troops, but still if i would have been slower on the start things could have easily gone the AI way.
- decided to give a try to Escalation, it's been a very long time since i last played it, but from what i read since that time they re-added the T4 tier (last time i played they had retired that tier of units because they were rebalancing the whole mod and T4 required more attention) with their huge units and even better they made an improved AI (though it is a cheating one from what i read) as in the old Escalation it was nearly as easy to beat as the default AI.
Started a skirmish in same conditions again.
... and double-wow the AI destroyed me, i was happy to manage to put some good fight in the early game thanks to tons of light artillery vehicles (they're rather amazing), but the AI started to outnumber my troops and artillery fielding better units at some point and by midgame it managed to break my last defensive lines and properly razed my many production buildings to end the game.
And that without even reaching those T4 tier units i wanted to see.
Will have to lower the difficulty settings or give me some AI ally, the AI definitively is way too strong at max difficulty for me in Escalation but that was such a fantastic battle that challenged me from start to end so it didn't matter it was plenty of fun :D
Note : after installing Total Annihilation, make sure to install this unofficial patch :
https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46765
It fixes bugs, add some very good QoL features (like the Supreme Commander-like satellite view map) and more importantly makes TA perfectly compatible with modern OS without any more tweaking, just had to drop that in my TA directory and played without any bug or crashes.
Note 2 : said unofficial patch also contains updated compatibility with modern OS and fixes for the Total Annihilation big mods (like Escalation) in case you crash with them if you install those mods on a TA with the unofficial patch installed.
Post by: Frumple on May 15, 2023, 09:21:36 pm
Post by: Robsoie on May 16, 2023, 05:13:08 am
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
https://zero-k.info/
Still i find the original TA (with mods like Escalation) truly great
Post by: Frumple on May 17, 2023, 07:34:54 am
... only problem is the published build apparently occasionally gets infected with malware, so, uh. Well, I uninstalled it and haven't looked back, heh.
Post by: Jopax on May 17, 2023, 09:09:22 am
Post by: Robsoie on May 17, 2023, 02:13:23 pm
https://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/MBT/MBT_page.html
https://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/WW2/WW2_page.html
Camo Workshop has been regularly delivering updates for those games since 25 years!
Now that's some amazing dedication
Post by: Robsoie on May 18, 2023, 04:47:34 pm
https://www.speed-dreams.net/en/
It sure seem to have improved a lot since i last played it around 2018 from what i see in the video.
Post by: nenjin on May 18, 2023, 10:06:24 pm
It's purty good! A bit rough and with a limited amount of content. But it captures the batshit crazy intensity of the movies. Lots of screen shake, explosions, aliens screeching, gun fire, people shouting stuff. It has the same vibe Earth Defense Force but somewhat less janky. Base and defense building is part of the gameplay which is kind of interesting with 16 people. You typically go from point to point doing a few objectives before building a small base at the final point,defending it, then making it to an evac drop ship. The evac to the dropship is always chaotic and a lot of fun.
It's got a limited amount of classes, progression, maps and gameplay modes. And it needs a serious amount of optimization. But I played over an hour and had a pretty good time all around.
Post by: Aoi on May 19, 2023, 12:57:46 am
What's most interesting is the skill, and rune grid-- you socket skills onto the skill grid, and a finite amount modifiers to the skill in the same row or column. For example, half of my skill grid is occupied with making three summoning skills triggering each other on-hit, and eliminating their cooldown, so I'm constantly running around with a full army. The downside is, due to the placement required, the other half of the skill grid has something like -70%damage effects, so anything that deals direct damage is useless.
The rune grid is your stat bread and butter, and mostly consists of praying you get decent pentaminos to shove in the grid, and fill in with various runes to activate its effect. (Alternatively phrased: You have a grid you need to fill with Tetris pieces, and you have mods that you need to shove into those Tetris pieces. All of which have their own layers of RNG.)
Unfortunately: Despite some interesting ideas, it, as a whole, just doesn't feel very interesting. Basically just pick a few core skills, build around them, and you're off! Even post-story content is of faceroll difficulty*... and it only takes a few hours to get there. A pity, because I rather like the art.
Spoiler: *A few notes. (click to show/hide)
Post by: LoSboccacc on May 23, 2023, 06:19:40 pm
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2005010/Warhammer_40000_Boltgun/
I've got mixed feelings. for one, the game has been a load of fun. they call it doom like, but I definitely feel a quake (original) wibe, with non hitscan weapons and the rainbow enemies, albeit there are some gameplay element from doom ethernal that complete it for a more modern feeling (i.e. enemy health drop)
the enemies are manageable, I've played the first three levels with the hardest difficulty and it was well balanced, it was challenging but not impossible, and the difficulty ramp up the enemy number and not the enemy tankiness, which is a welcome change so that you don't feel super weak
the level design include some amount of complex geometry, which is fun to navigate in combat and boring to find the exit afterward. there have been some cheap shot, but enemy have reasonable reaction time so even if they may spawn behind you, which is something that I generally hate with passion, here dodging in time is not particularly hard.
the setting tho is a little trite. it's smurf vs chaos, there is some enemy variety thanks to the abundance of damonic beasts, but their presence is not particularly organic with the level. there are a bunch per area and that's it. the only one placed with care are terminator in control points.
Post by: Funk on May 23, 2023, 06:22:31 pm
There's 20 odd guns but really its more like 6.
Post by: Robsoie on May 24, 2023, 06:24:34 am
https://github.com/R-T-B/UnityAnalyticsKiller
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/a-tool-to-kill-unity-telemetry-unityanalyticskiller.260370/
made for Kerbal, but should work for every unity games.
Post by: nenjin on May 24, 2023, 03:52:05 pm
Bought V Rising on sale. People have dubbed it "Valheim but Vampires." I expected a sort of half-baked game due to Early Access and it being a survival game....
But I was pleasantly surprised. It looks great. It plays well (unless you try to turn v-sync on.) It's mostly intuitive. You don't feel like you're fighting the control scheme or some inherent jankiness of the design. Quality voice acting, for what there is. Lots of vampiric options that feel on brand and flavorful. The world is huge, but in the vein of "survival crafting sim" huge. The boss fights are fun too. Twitchy, have to dodge a lot of telegraphed attacks, they keep the pressure on, adds can join in to make things even crazier.
My favorite bit so far:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
If I have one gripe with the game it's that the map is not procedurally generated. So I'm not sure how good it is for multiple playthroughs. But there is a substantial amount of meat on its bones for an EA game. Would recommend!
Post by: Il Palazzo on May 24, 2023, 04:05:16 pm
Post by: nenjin on May 24, 2023, 04:34:46 pm
That point originally turned me off too but it's not relevant.
Post by: Kagus on May 24, 2023, 04:53:32 pm
It's... Ehh. There are some really awesome elements to it, like the manor building is amazing (once you actually get the obscene amount of resources to DO any of it) and there are some really quite lovely environments... But ultimately it just bogs itself down.
Like, there were a number of things that kinda built up to an overall frustration that lead to me finally putting the game down before knocking out the penultimate boss... Things like finding out that blood prisoners can accrue over 100% misery, meaning that even in the best conditions with the room and floor buffs, you will eventually be forced to go out and sit around fishing just to keep them alive.
I dunno. It's probably a lot more fun actually playing co-op, as with most things, but... Eh. They get huge points for style, absolutely. But it eventually just wore me down.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on May 25, 2023, 06:02:32 am
I’d describe it as something like Conan Exiles (or really any kind of open world multiplayer survival game — Ark, Valheim, etc. — but closest to Conan Exiles in vibes) but with a bit of ARPG (e.g. Diablo) mixed in. Worth playing, but do not be afraid to change the settings to keep the grind at whatever’s fun for you.
Post by: scriver on May 25, 2023, 07:42:35 am
Post by: nenjin on May 25, 2023, 01:06:46 pm
I genuinely enjoyed playing V Rising but it very much feels like you’re not supposed to be playing it single player. Fun, but you have the sense at every turn like they did not design it for this as their main focus.
I’d describe it as something like Conan Exiles (or really any kind of open world multiplayer survival game — Ark, Valheim, etc. — but closest to Conan Exiles in vibes) but with a bit of ARPG (e.g. Diablo) mixed in. Worth playing, but do not be afraid to change the settings to keep the grind at whatever’s fun for you.
I'd say the same thing about Conan Exiles. Both of these games pitch PvP as a part of the package. So if you nope out of the PvP, you will immediately find the world rather too large for a single person. Unlike Conan Exiles, I don't feel like V has as many "special" things to go out there, find and do. Just the bosses so far.
Playing it coop is somewhat better at default PvE settings because the farming goes easier and the boss fights are more manageable. One could also just tweak settings though to make the game less grindy for a single person.
Post by: Folly on May 25, 2023, 03:00:10 pm
I genuinely enjoyed playing V Rising but it very much feels like you’re not supposed to be playing it single player. Fun, but you have the sense at every turn like they did not design it for this as their main focus.
I felt somewhat the opposite...like V Rising was designed around being a single player experience, then had the PvP mechanics tacked on at the last minute to give it a more broad appeal.
Post by: nenjin on May 25, 2023, 03:29:59 pm
To put it in perspective, I can play almost the entire first half of Conan Exiles without leaving my immediate surroundings because there's an abundance of everything I could want. 90% of the world can be safely ignored because it's just the same thing but further away. Were it not for the boss fights in V, I think the same thing would be true. I could farm the same couple plateaus around my castle for all the wood, stone, ore and herbs I need because there's just no call to go further than that.
Post by: pikachu17 on May 27, 2023, 03:20:58 pm
YOMI Hustle is a fighting game like Street Fighter, but its turn based. Instead of having to press a complicated series of buttons very quickly, you get up to 30 seconds to choose which move you want to execute from a large list. Once you and you opponent lock in your moves or the 30 seconds are up, your selected moves are executed, and then you get to select moves again, repeat until victory. Then your battle gets replayed in realtime like in Superhot.
Post by: Kagus on May 27, 2023, 04:13:33 pm
YOMI Hustle
I was wondering why it wasn't showing up on Steam, until I disabled search filtering. It had apparently been filtered out of my results because it's tagged as... Anime?
Okay Steam. Sure.
Post by: Frumple on May 27, 2023, 08:22:58 pm
E: But yeah, it's pretty great. Haven't got the commercial version and I don't know if I'll ever actually play it vs anyone, but it's a treat to watch occasionally.
Post by: scriver on May 28, 2023, 07:21:43 am
Post by: Robsoie on May 28, 2023, 04:18:26 pm
https://sites.google.com/site/infraarcana/downloads
changelog : https://gitlab.com/martin-tornqvist/ia/raw/master/installed_files/release_history.txt
Post by: Folly on May 28, 2023, 04:26:36 pm
The Early Access of Starship Troops Extermination just dropped.
...
I've been enjoying Starship Troopers: Extermination, I think mostly just because it's been way too long since I found a PvE game with more than 4 players and actual need for communication.
I don't want to oversell it. The selection of classes and weapons is pretty limited right now. And I think there's only one map, albeit with multiple deployment areas and day/night variables which mix things up. Only 2 game modes, which are exactly the same except one of them starts you with full resources so that you can skip the gathering phase. And video settings/loadouts don't save between game restarts, which feels very amatuer-hour. But it's a just-launched Early Access title, which promises to improve on all of these areas.
Still, running around a devastated city trying to complete objectives with bugs popping up constantly and needing to be put back down, and calling out priority targets to teammates whenever I get overwhelmed, and figuring out the optimal patterns for building bases that can be easily defended and maintained, it's all very fun right now.
Post by: nenjin on May 28, 2023, 04:46:37 pm
Post by: Robsoie on May 28, 2023, 10:03:58 pm
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/19941/
Its main purpose is adding a new NPC (that will also be a companion) : your sister.
The NPC integrate really well in the game, from the start of the game when you're a baby walking around the room she's around as a kid, then when you're a kid you can see her as your big sister in the Vault.
And once you're in the Wasteland, she's with you on your exploration and in the game missions, talking about subjects that are relevant to the situation
The character is fully voiced, and lots of things happen around or related to her at various part of the game progression.
All in all it's a very interesting take on the companion system, and feels naturally part of the story instead of just being a meat shield.
It reminds me a bit of the very excellent Vilja companion (https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/28977) for Oblivion that was very developped and also fully voiced.
Post by: Sirus on May 29, 2023, 12:16:45 am
Post by: Iduno on May 29, 2023, 12:01:16 pm
Ronald Reagan stole your refrigerator full of food, so you need to fight through cities full of demons to take it back. Avoid getting hurt and kill as much as you can.
It's tough to say if it's good or bad, but the earlier description should let you know if you'll like it or not.
Post by: Niveras on May 29, 2023, 07:31:18 pm
There was a splash screen indicating it is intended as a parody. I'm not sure what else that screen said as the font used made it a bit difficult to parse quickly and it wasn't up for long.
Post by: Robsoie on June 02, 2023, 08:31:46 am
I got a good run with my 2nd character, after a difficult start i had some good loot and progressively started to feel unstoppable after a while (even got a prestige class from the killing with fire) , but in the level just before the last, i ran into incredibly high damaging units suddenly, that additionally came in pack of a lot of them and were outdamaging my healing (from active or passive ability or equipment), probably helped by applying lots of nasty effects to my character.
And because the game really wanted to kill my character, it made me spawn in a very open field without any kind of wall, so i couldn't reach anywhere in time to lower the amount of direction from where the rain of missiles were coming and their number :D
Spoiler: he was a good fellow (click to show/hide)
Damn them whatever they are thingies : (https://i.imgur.com/HZyOUT0.jpg)
Post by: Frumple on June 02, 2023, 03:17:19 pm
Biggest thing probably was that irga critters are generally fire resistant, iirc, so you were likely not doing terribly much damage to them. Damage variety can be pretty important if you're doing something only moderately busted!
... anyway, my PoA note of today was finally getting the current last steam cheevo, landing a 1+ million damage hit. Did it the lazy way (master repulsion and some healing + green wyrm + autohotkey holding down space for a few hours), but it worked :D
E: There's a much less lazy way involving a specific item (crystal rod) and high willpower, too. Less sure about other ways of managing it, it's pretty hard to deal that much damage in one instance in the game.
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 02, 2023, 03:35:09 pm
In any case, I'm at cycle 9, and it's getting hard to even leave the first room without picking one of the safest combinations.
Post by: Frumple on June 02, 2023, 03:50:32 pm
Late cycle starts do sometimes take some luck, though, if you're not doing something that gives a specific sort of edge... I wouldn't call it safer combinations, exactly, but you need something that actually lets you kill stuff, which can be difficult in the beginning with a lot of builds.
There's times where I just keep rolling starts until I get something actually survivable -- 1st floor hobgoblins in 12th cycle is likely to kill just about anything, to the point I usually just hold down 5 until they kill me when I start with them, but ratmen or wyrms (if you have some range) are more generally survivable. Might take five or six tries just to survive long enough to get a foothold, heh. Fortunately it's real easy to restart, you just hit enter a few times and it'll start you back with the exact same generation combo.
... and some builds are just not viable in high cycle early game. You're pretty unlikely to make it doing any sort of melee range defensive build from the start in 12th cycle. Transitioning into it is viable-ish, but starting... stuff just hits too hard, and you have too little HP no matter what defensive powers you've picked up.
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 02, 2023, 04:36:59 pm
It is a bit silly at this point. But it's been a good twenty hours or so of surprisingly well-crafted fun.
Post by: Robsoie on June 02, 2023, 04:44:09 pm
Worked nicely and reached the last level of the cycle.
But that horror golem in the last level was just too much for my guy, crippling my character with 3 or 4 nasty effects every turns, allowing it to deal massive damage each turn despite my good armor and damage reduction.
Spoiler: close but no sugar (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on June 02, 2023, 05:35:33 pm
Yeah, I'm starting to feel all that. Been doing a run or two with a psiblade pugilist build again, and I'm killing everything easy peasy. No competition. And then some rando monster comes 'round a corner and manages to score a single lucky hit, suddenly one-shotting me for 1.5k HP. Never mind hundreds of armour from repulsion or anything else for that matter.Yeah, high cycle you have to be a lot more deliberate in how you move, basically, even if you're mulching everything you touch. Corners are the devil, heh (any of the stand-still-do-damage hats are really helpful for this, incidentally, as it gives you an easy way to see if there's something back there), and any personal HP count below like 2.5-3k is functionally irrelevant, might as well be 1 hp 'cause you're still in 1-shot range. It's one of the places in the game you can really notice the traditional roguelike influence in it, because it's definitely willing to blow you up if you move wrong.
It is a bit silly at this point. But it's been a good twenty hours or so of surprisingly well-crafted fun.
The defensive stats are interesting things that are way, way better tuned for low-cycle runs (which, in fairness, is explicitly what the game's balanced around -- the dev is building this thing for 1st cycle, everything after that is just for fun, not reasonable design), because they've all got an unmitigable 10% chance to fail. Low cycle, not much is going to be both reasonably able to get close to you and able to blow you up with a 2k+ hit, so that 10% failure chance isn't much of a "your run ends" 10% chance.
High cycle, though. High cycle it is. High cycle, defensive stats are a roulette that might get you through the game but you're pulling the trigger every time something with a hit stat higher than your HP takes a swing at you, and there's going to be lots of things with a hit stat higher than your HP. You can usually play around it, barring a remarkably terrible spawn, but building around it is somewhere between difficult and impossible. Not relying on just one of them reduces the chance something rolls a 90 and invalidates it, but it never entirely removes it.
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 02, 2023, 06:10:37 pm
But then, ofc, one of them just might. And as you say - at high cycle in melee it might just as well end your run.
Post by: Robsoie on June 08, 2023, 10:02:42 pm
Spoiler: my ending (click to show/hide)
Important note : playing the last mission of the story will automatically ends the game, i mean unlike Fallout 3 (thanks to the Broken Steel DLC though as without it the game ended at the last mission too) you have no post-game content and can't roam around anymore, either you load an old save or you start New Vegas again from scratch.
So in case you have a lot of side mission or DLC mission waiting to be played, make sure to keep saved game from before the Hoover Dam mission.
Because if you have no such save, you will be unable to do any of those missions in post-endgame (because there's none) as you will have to start New Vegas from scratch.
Good i had a bunch of pre-Hoover Dam save , would have been going mad ;D considering i didn't do a bunch of side mission and there's all those DLC content still unexplored.
Spoiler: thoughts on my New Vegas experience (click to show/hide)
Post by: King Zultan on June 09, 2023, 02:23:29 am
Post by: scriver on June 09, 2023, 07:22:06 am
Quote
But i liked the Fallout 3 atmosphere a lot more as it felt more grim and desesperate than in New Vegas : more post-apocalyptic as you felt human settlements were mostly all in precarious situations and their survival was always at stake in the mission.
I liked the NV atmosphere better for this exact reason. F2 and NV, even F1 to some degree but not as much, aren't really post-apocalyptic any more, they're post-post-apocalyptic. Setting-wise, they are about the world moving on and how the new world will be established. F3 was the odd one out in that regard, even F4 had a more in tune vibe on that in my opinion.
Which makes sense. F3 was originally planned to be set, chronologically, at a more "twenty minutes after the bombs" stage of the world, iirc at the same time as or even before F1 but on the east coast, when people was just coming out of their holes in the ground and repopulating the world. In that light, a lot of the design choices make a lot more sense, settlements like Little Lamplight not being as unreasonable and stuff like nearly every place in the world being completely unlooted yet making more sense too. But during development they (I blame Todd Howard of course :P) changed to be ser chronologically after F2 seemingly for no reason beyond assuming their players would be too dumb to understand the context of a prequel. Or maybe it was related to them forcing the BoS and Enclave into the story for brand recognition. Either way, I think the game ended up being worse for it.
Edit: Anyway, so, Jagged Alliance 3 just opened for pre-orders, with a 20% off bonus. I'm not the only one getting a feeling of them being insecure about how the game will be received, am I? 20% feels like an unusually large pre-order sale.
Post by: Robsoie on June 09, 2023, 08:03:47 am
Spoiler: how do women supermutant look like ? (click to show/hide)
Post by: n9103 on June 09, 2023, 09:47:17 am
RE: JA3- You're not. Considering how hard JA:Rage and the BiA set failed, in comparison to JA2, it's reasonable to be wary. Pricing probably reflects lukewarm tester reception + lingering feelings about Rage, et al.
Post by: delphonso on June 10, 2023, 11:19:54 pm
I'm thoroughly impressed so far - not much into the game (some say it's 100 hours) but the voice work is solid and it looks great, the customization at the start was the perfect balance of far too much to decide and solid guidance. The plot setup is good and I've got a clear understanding of what to do and where to expect twists, something the old ones didn't always do well.
Post by: Robsoie on June 11, 2023, 08:15:26 am
It's sad that a game that is that good is having such annoyance.
On other news, i read that Paradox is going to publish (not develop) a Star Trek grand strategy game "Star Trek: Infinite", and from what i read it seems it is in fact the Star Trek 'New Horizon' mod for Stellaris that is going commercial.
Post by: Robsoie on June 16, 2023, 07:33:35 pm
It's a boardgame, so there's no action or stealth to be seen there despite the spying theme, all is about selecting an action (that often take 2 turns or more) for each agent and move of your agent on a board with only few locations (as there are only 12 countries in the board ), with some possibility to negociate with a country leader (after identifying its own positive and negative traits with your agent)
And it is filled with invisible roll dices.
Each agents you deploy in a specific country can do a few actions, and each is decided by some roll dice you can't see (influenced by the level of strength or intellect stat of said agent + influenced by an invisible bonus given by a possible agent special skill).
I don't know if i have been particularly unlucky, but i got some high intellect ( stat 8 ) agent failing "lower alert level" hacking very constantly, with only the agent that had the "hacker" skill despite its lower intellect ( stat 7 ) having some success sometime, hinting that probably special skill are much more important than the base stat, unless it's just being lucky or unlucky.
Also the big part of the game is finding hidden scientists to abduct them to get them to work for you or convince/seduce/bribe them into double agents. First you need to have an agent detecting the hidden scientist facility , then locate scientists, and spy on them to identify them closely. From there you can abduct/seduce/bribe/convince them to work for you directly (or double agent work for you) of course depending on your agent stat+skill that help the best in the case.
But with my poor luck i ran into a situation in a country in which none of my agents have been able to approach the scientists facility "it's too well protected" regardless of high intellect or strength (the stat for facility locating is intellect), even after having done a recon action on the country (that supposedly allow to "improve" the chance of successfull dice roll) and constantly lowering the alert level with my hacker.
So all in all if you like boardgames it has potential, but it seems a bit too reliant to luck with the invisible dice rolling at every actions done.
From time to time a successful action will unlock a new agent for your next game. Unlocked a bunch of them before miserably losing the game because the doomsday clock reached midnight.
And the game suddenly froze (though not really as background and animation were still playing) when it was supposed to deliver me the final score i reached.
At least before bugging out at least it let me complete that game, but a quick look in the steam board of the game seems to hint people may encounter "infinite loading" at various stage of the game randomly.
Post by: Robsoie on June 17, 2023, 01:53:19 pm
It helped greatly.
Liberty did her abduction then extraction job of 2 scientists without failing too !
Something i never managed previous game, it seems dice rolls really are on my side this time. The first one in Turkey was a complete success, but on the 2nd extraction (it was in France) she killed accidentally 4 civilians when setting up a fire in a building as a diversion, negociation will be funny with the french , will have to find some dirty secret on their leader to get things peacefully with a pressure point for my arguments.
But my elite agent (Maestro) got abducted somewhere in Turkey by a terrorist group "Anti-Capitalist Brigade" that i turned off when they contacted me to help after i released the research "Stability" that ended capitalism worldwide just for fun :D while he was investigating Turkey's leader , as i had good enough relationship with my employer (playing for the USA on this game) i got access to a replacement codenamed Saint (a 90 years old Brahim with some great skill, also a black belt master).
All was right in time as 2 enemy agents were spotted and plotting something in my country (probably abduct some scientists i had or had previously abducted, or ruin some research effort). Fortunately my 2 hackers extraordinaires managed to locate them.
Both Liberty and Saint managed to thwart the enemy agents effort, Liberty also managed to capture one of them, codenamed Morrigh4n.
After deciding to release the "Panacea" research to the public instead of a big pharma company just to annoy them, i got a big help on the Doomsday clock that got pushed back a lot as the Panacea can cure all form of cancer, hopefully those big pharma folks will not do something in retaliation.
Anyways, so far that game is going good, my country is still ahead on the course to the Sigma Theory.
What a difference it made to be a bit more lucky :D
Though poor Maestro, i hope he'll manage to escape or that the game allow to find him.
Post by: Iduno on June 17, 2023, 09:31:00 pm
It looks like making a scientist a double-agent gets you either +2% or +4% science per turn. I think your 2 starting scientists each give 200%. It's not 0, but it's not worth the effort.
Extractions are also really difficult, so you probably can't steal scientists most of the time. Although a drone and high stats helps. Failing means you lose 1 of your 4 agents, and only get a chance at a new agent ever 4-ish turns, if your country likes you, and they might have terrible stats, and you have to pick the right response to successfully recruit the new agent. It's very high risk, but high reward if you succeed.
Diplomacy works like a 4x game: you figure out what they want, offer it, and they say no. I did have 1 country with a leader I could easily negotiate with and also liked me, and also I had blackmail material. A one-time 23% increase to one type of science. Maybe worth it, if you happen to have blackmail material and something to offer of equal or greater value (which means it has a cost), and also you *really* need the small increase.
My second game was my best. I got up to 13/15 science score, including a hypnosis technology that got my agents a large bonus converting scientists (for that sweet 2-4% increase), and one that made them 100% loyal, which didn't seem to affect anything. Successfully exfiltrated the head of a terrorist organization, after they'd lowered my rep to single-digit percentages in half of the world. I failed a mission because I couldn't convert a scientist, which cost me an agent, and later had another agent arrested when I was getting desperate. Then I lost both of my scientists to an enemy who had an actual useful technology.
Edit: playing more, it's clear that there isn't that much game there. The only real replayability to "we don't tell you how anything actually works, so you have to replay the game to do trial and error." Any time a game has to hide information from you, wonder if it's because it's a badly-made game. Good idea, but they just couldn't make it work.
Post by: Robsoie on June 18, 2023, 10:26:10 am
After that with the "custom" mode you may switch a few things (no idea i only played on "classic" mode and ignored the "story" mode that from what i read is limited), but overall your further games will play exactly the same.
With the difference being your luck in rolling dice.
Something that does not really help is that there's no balance with the agents, especially the ones you'll unlock for future replay are clearly superior to other, meaning there's no reason to choose the weaker ones unless for some reason you're challenging yourself with weak agents
But with how much luck is involved i don't think there's a need to challenge yourself, randomness of results will do that sometime.
Also, it seems the event i ran into (the "anti-capitalist brigade" abducting one of my agent) does not have any resolution, meaning you can't rescue the guy or event locate the enemy group, it's just a random event to remove one of your agent and force you to get another one, but also then what's the point of an agent being "elite" , out of the game preventing you to have more than one elite in a team, if that stupid random event will just remove an elite agent like any garbage one.
So i agree, the game had a lot of potential to be great, some mechanics are good (once you start to figure them out, as the tutorial is really bad at that), but unfortunately it never reaches that potential as everything feels shallow. And will never do as the devs have moved to other games and left this one behind.
Post by: MCreeper on June 18, 2023, 04:53:36 pm
New character sprites are horsefaces, though more detailed. Fortunately, you can switch back to old ones.
What little story they added, they put into NG+. >:(
I legit don't understand what the point of buying soundtrack is, and more so when it is present in it's entirety in game's files either way.
They removed pixel-hunting aspect and some other annoyances. Unfortunately, game didn't provoke any emotions at second go, except mild annoyance at gotchas. :( You know what is a great way to do a bad chase scene? Insert a few traps that player can't possibly react to while going through them for first time. >:(
But the new intro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=589GEHlCoXs) is marvellous, true, even though it has little to do with actual game. :P
Post by: delphonso on June 18, 2023, 11:37:50 pm
I hope you're playing the game on a SSD , as sadly in Pathfinder Kingmaker the crazy amount of loading screen between each small maps, and their silly durations (unity asset manager?) on HDD can be -very- aggravating on the long term (and Pathfinder is a very long game as there's truckload of quests and adventures on the campaign even without the dlc) .
It's sad that a game that is that good is having such annoyance.
Absolutely believable - I've got an SSD but...
finally hit a wall in the game: just too many side-quests and too much time to travel across the map. I'm enjoying the story and gameplay, but would also like to...just get to the next map without travelling for a minute, camp, get in a fight and continue travelling - same reason I skip this in table top games. That said, it's not a deal breaker, still, and I honestly might be able to flick it off with all the options that are available to the player. I picked up Wrath of the Righteous on the recent sale as I intend to finish this one and will happily jump into the next one, after a bit of a break.
Post by: Robsoie on June 19, 2023, 06:41:40 am
Back on Sigma Theory, i got a surprise after what i wrote in a previous post :
Quote
But my elite agent (Maestro) got abducted somewhere in Turkey by a terrorist group "Anti-Capitalist Brigade" that i turned off when they contacted me to help after i released the research "Stability" that ended capitalism worldwide just for fun :D while he was investigating Turkey's leader , as i had good enough relationship with my employer (playing for the USA on this game) i got access to a replacement codenamed Saint (a 90 years old Brahim with some great skill, also a black belt master).
Gamera managed to detect an enemy agent in my country preparing for some more nasty stuff.
Spoiler: traitorous bastard (click to show/hide)
Liberty did her job again and captured him.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
As i was starting to have a bunch of captured agent in my country, i accidentally noticed that you can interrogate them (the game never told me that), and again many options to do so without explanation on what exactly each will do,
And experimenting with those options lead to obvious conclusions
Spoiler: sorry Morrigh4n (click to show/hide)
At some point Japan developped a teleportation technology through some gates, and captured immediately one of my agent (Saint, the elder guy that replaced Maestro) , ignoring that said agent was equipped with a CHAMELON implant (a tech i discovered and kept for my country use) so what the hell is the point of having a tech that allow him to switch his appearance at will if he can get captured so easily ...
Anyways, Liberty again proved her worth by rescuing Saint, and unlike her previous mission in which she killed 5 civilians and 11 soldiers on her path to extract a captured scientist and did an international outrage that shocked my best hacker (Aiekillu) that decided to run away from our agency, that bastard ...
Spoiler: she just went super james bond ninja (click to show/hide)
All in all , things were really going well
Spoiler: leading on the Sigma research by a lot (click to show/hide)
And from there i guess luck disappeared from my dice roll :
One of my scientist (one that wasn't a prisonner) contacted me in order to get back her brain enhancement drug that security confiscated recently, i told her yes but instead of the double dose she wanted i told her to give some to the other scientist (as i hoped then to get the Sigma research faster).
Result : my 2 regular (i mean the one that were working for us and not forced) scientist and 1 of the prisonner scientist died immediately ...
Then another country did a research that forced me to lose one of the prisonner scientist.
Spoiler: the last prisonner scientist (click to show/hide)
And all those scientist losses in only a few turns, so while i'm ahead , i have no more scientist.
I guess Liberty will get busy abducting people again, hopefully she'll be as lucky as she has been so far.
Hopefully i'll be able to slow down my competitors when taking their scientists.
Edit :
Japan discovered another technology that cause Gameran to switch to their side, that bastard
Meaning i had no more hacker at all
So after looking at my country offer of new agent, on the 3 proposition, i went with Kepi Blanc, another expert at getting things done with his knife when it comes to abduct and exfiltrate scientists
Along with Liberty they managed to abduct then extract 2 scientists from Russia ! good timing as Russia was growing its Sigma research very fast (it reached 20% in a few turns ) .
This was great as it allowed me to grow my own Sigma research again as those scientists were fitting in branch i hadn't yet completed.
...Helped by Saint that managed to convince another scientist in Russia to work for us.
Russia was now stagnating at 20% , no more Sigma research growing (i guess i stole the scientists that were in a not yet completed Sigma branch of theirs)
While i reached 63% , i was going to win i was seeing it !
But, it was time Japan and Russia both ended researching 2 techs that both skyrocketted the Doomsday clock to its end to everyone.
And that was the end, i was way ahead of the competition , close to win, but sadly that stupid Doomsday clock ended the game by a global war so none can win.
Spoiler: score (click to show/hide)
Sad to see the score not getting higher, i guess the doomsday end really is a bad malus. But so close to an actual win...
Not sure what the spouse thing is supposed to be, she sometime was popping up to ask me something, growing "love" % or not (while sometime impacting on various stuff) , and at some point the Germany sigma research leader contacted me and asked to give him all our research in exchange of my spouse alive or her corpse, i said no and that was it, never heard about spouse or related event after that.
Post by: Frumple on June 19, 2023, 01:33:52 pm
finally hit a wall in the game: just too many side-quests and too much time to travel across the map. I'm enjoying the story and gameplay, but would also like to...just get to the next map without travelling for a minute, camp, get in a fight and continue travelling - same reason I skip this in table top games. That said, it's not a deal breaker, still, and I honestly might be able to flick it off with all the options that are available to the player. I picked up Wrath of the Righteous on the recent sale as I intend to finish this one and will happily jump into the next one, after a bit of a break.For what it's worth, while I don't know if Kingmaker has it, WotR very much does -- there's a major utility/cheat mod (Toybox) that lets you do things like auto-rest or restore abilities after combat, and things of that nature. If you want to not deal with some of the crud involved in traveling, the option is there to just cut it out.
It's also what enables toggle highlighting instead of having to hold a button down to see stuff you can interact with, heh, among a pile of other things. Would very much recommend, even on a first playthrough.
Post by: Persus13 on June 19, 2023, 01:42:42 pm
finally hit a wall in the game: just too many side-quests and too much time to travel across the map. I'm enjoying the story and gameplay, but would also like to...just get to the next map without travelling for a minute, camp, get in a fight and continue travelling - same reason I skip this in table top games. That said, it's not a deal breaker, still, and I honestly might be able to flick it off with all the options that are available to the player. I picked up Wrath of the Righteous on the recent sale as I intend to finish this one and will happily jump into the next one, after a bit of a break.Another tip for reducing travel is to build mage towers in every town you can and using teleportation circles to cut down on travel time. This works in both games iirc.
Post by: Robsoie on June 20, 2023, 12:54:40 pm
One of the side quests i got in the town of Aridell has me pointed toward the "Salted Coast" but without telling me in which direction that "Salted Coast" is (the other quests still give me some vague "north west, east, north" etc... that makes it rather hard to find something as pathq are a bit maze-like, but this one puzzled me.
Until i noticed on a tavern in Aridell the owner can sell you amongst other items a world map that showed me that Salted Coast being at a long distance in the south.
.. ingame world map that is the same as the one you'll find in the manual (lost 10 gold before noticing that map is in the manual.pdf :D )
I went with focusing my character on a classic warrior build, strength+ and as skill sword and bludgeonning (and some dodge skill too)
After clearing a cellar for a very early game that was infested with a bunch of salamander and getting close to death, i was wondering how anything other than a warrior build can survive that.
Post by: Robsoie on June 24, 2023, 01:31:27 pm
What i learned :
- early game, and probably up to level 5 or 6 , don't try to fighting anything at more than 1 vs 1 , you'll have very high chance to die. roll dice for your hit chance can make a fight easy or absurdly hard depending on your luck, so try to never go for enemies that can attack you with 1 or 2 allies, especially as you're always alone in that game.
- npc in early game at least, are strong, some are -very- strong , you can use this to your advantage with some monsters that will follow you in groups of 2 or more , npc may have a high chance to trash them all.
But beware : npc aren't unbeatable : i lost the guy that could train me more in bows due to that (in Bordertown) , when after successive groups of monster i lead to him, he had then moved a bit far away from town, at some point he fought vs 5 bandits at the same time and after putting a good fight he died .
- nearly each quests i did always felt i was underleveled, meaning going near death after a few enemies, having to retreat to town to heal-sleep in tavern (health potion are oddly weak and rare, and expensive) very often, then walking back all the way to dungeon/location and continue until i finally get the quest objective done. Resting sure can help, but resting also has several dice rolling and if unlucky you get a bunch of monsters spawning around you.
So best rest near npc locations so you can lead newly spawn monsters to them or be lucky.
Maybe it's by design but that constant retreat to town then walk back again can be annoying (and make the game progression artifically slower as a lot of time is wasted in the walking back and forth to heal within a quest)
- some maps/regions have no friendly npc, so don't even think to aggro more enemies, you'll have to save scum like crazy :
save before getting in view of an enemy, wait for him to come near (bless yourself for that +hit bonus) and if the fight didn't turned bad, save again, as said the dice rolling can lead to very different outcomes (you defeating a bandit but being near death after that, or you beating 2 or 3 bandits in a row without losing more than half your health)
- once you get high enough level and have a good +hit , the game become more interesting as you retreat to heal a lot less and do not feel you need to run away everytime you see 2 enemies at the same time and resting spawning a bunch of monsters isn't always requiring you to run to a npc for help, as at some point you're going to be stronger than the npc.
- always keep a bludgeoning weapon, it will help you to open all those closed doors, barrels and chests by striking them until they break (you can punch them, but each punch to a chest/door also cost 1 health from you). But save before as a weapon have a small chance to break during the process, said chance seems to be low but again it's all a matter of luck. And new weapons aren't cheap to buy.
You can get more lockpicking skills (though i would aim for more weapon skill) but hammering a door does not require skill points
Post by: Robsoie on June 30, 2023, 05:26:41 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
But what a super annoying place that dungeon was, basically each time i killed 2 hive drones, i had to retreat back to a town to sleep heal fully and come back, and there was a ton of hive drones. Resting in the dungeon itself was not an option of course as if unlucky you can spawn a bunch of enemies around you, and counting on luck when you're in need of healing in that game isn't a good idea, that + healing potions are rare and very expansive...
Anyways, i gave a quick try to Dungeons of Naheulbeuk , the current epic store freebie and enjoyed what i played of that dungeon crawler so far
The combat is very XCOM-like (the modern version i mean), characters skills and the new skills you'll get when leveling add a lot of depth to those battles.
From the tutorial part you'll get some fun seeing early combo you can get (like that "charge an enemy" with your Ogre and throw it through the zone of control of a couple of your other characters that will strike automatically said enemy while it move into their zone) .
Some abilities can be funny, like the Elf ricochet bow shot that can randomly hit a bunch of people, including her allies (that will complain vocally) , it gets more usefull after some leveling to prevent so much friendly fire when you're unlucky :D
For the banters/puns/4th wall breaking/jokes , your party members are constantly throwing some, sometime it's fun, rarely it will get a laugh out of you, sometime it's rather flat or just unfunny, but be prepared to hear -a lot- of those so hopefully it will be the kind of humour you like.
Fortunately it seems the devs understood that the humour may not be up to everyone cup of tea so they added an option to tone down the banters or just silence them (there's even option to silence the elf or the dwarf, hinting that even the devs knew they're annoying on the long term).
There's also the d&d usual tropes, the one you'll notice quickly is the Elf and the Dwarf that hate each other guts
So far it seems to be a very good game if you like tactical battles. The constant humour makes it more original than the average dungeon crawler type of game and well worth a try.
From what i read, unfortunately it seems the game will have very little replay value : the dungeon is linear and the fight locations, loots and etc are all pre-determined, there's no randomisation of the dungeon/enemies/loot.
Would have been great to have such randomisation or roguelike-like gameplay for a 2nd run after you complete the story :/
Post by: dragdeler on June 30, 2023, 05:32:50 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 30, 2023, 07:50:12 am
But that's very "hit and miss" for my taste, definitively not a fan.
They added some high pitch effect to the Elf voice actress that makes her sound like some annoying cartoon, the other voices are easier on the ears.
I can easily see why they included the "Mute the Elf" option, it's extremely irritating to hear the kind of effect they gave to her voice for a long time.
After that on the technical side, it's the unity engine, so longer loading times and some odd performance issues are to be expected.
At least the tactical combat is very good. I wish they would have added some "roguelike" mode with dungeon/loot/enemies randomisation for actual replay value.
Post by: The_Explorer on June 30, 2023, 02:24:51 pm
Stranded alien dawn
A slow paced (at least to me) colony builder. I really enjoy my brief experience with it. My 2nd (but close to 1st) favorite of the games I got. I can tell gonna play this a lot
Lakeside
A neat pixel sidescroller(?) city builder, probably my last favorite thing I got but I got it for a light-weight relaxing game that doesn't take much to it. Probably won't play it much but it will be nice if I need to relax
Satisfactory
My 3rd favorite game I got. I really enjoyed my brief time with it as well, can tell like factorio gets really involved later cause it was already ramping up. I like how customizable of bases you can make with it
Icarus
Probably the...controversial one. To me its vastly better than it was at release (which I did refund back then, my PC at time couldnt even play it to begin with), and its a lot more persistent (hence the mixed reviews, a bunch of people bombed it or hated the change to it being more like other survival games). But I really enjoyed my short time with it (about an hour, longer than other 3). Exactly right up my alley. I've been wanting a hunting simulator, survival game, nature game, on an alien-like world all in one that is also pretty realistic. I thought hunting call of the wild would be my thing, and its close but no don't like it. I then tried SCUM that I had for ages, turned off all the zombies, only to find out it was still not my thing...not close what so ever...and would have maybe been it if they didn't remove all the animals on the map and they made animals a mini-game of hunting.
Icarus is exactly what I've been looking for in a nature/survival/hunting/alien world game. So its my favorite lol. Probably play it the most. But I like the other games I got too.
There is ark survival, but thats not my thing and no point when ark survival 2 is just gonna be better (well hopefully).
Nvm on lakeside. 3 out of 4 isn't too bad. Lakeside is 100% made for mobile. I can't click anything, UI is huge, and also if I make UI smaller then I can't read anything. If I make UI bigger its so pixeleted can't read anything either...
well hey, 3 out of 4 is good for me lol. But actually disappointing, wanted a laid back city builder game like that. But wow, thats terrible on my screen
Post by: Niveras on July 01, 2023, 07:29:20 am
But it also necessitates losing all your progress (constructions but especially tools) when you're done with the area. Like you found iron and made your own pickaxe but you can't take it back with you when you go up and that means you can't take it back down with you the next time you go down. Sure, you can't bring an advanced laser drill or scanning equipment, but you can't bring the things you make from materials on the planet itself?
Also I didn't quite like how things were balanced. Not sure if that was just how "open world survival crafting" games do or if it was bad balance specific to the game. Killing a wolf or a bear or a mountain lion required several minutes for me to cheese them even though one stab with a sharpened wooden spear should be enough for them to leave you alone under most circumstances. I remember there was an early mission that artificially limited what tools you can even make, but then sends you to clear out a den of wolves (1 wolf boss and like 5 adds) and all you have is a basic bow and arrow at best. At night.
Maybe the balance was also intended for cooperative play.
Post by: Iduno on July 08, 2023, 03:48:40 pm
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/01c83a7ac52a6c1243d87b5a54c18157/dfae9973c5333c46-68/s1280x1920/42054bc3b3a510ea975b47f706c939bb66668c89.jpg)
Post by: King Zultan on July 10, 2023, 03:13:26 am
But do they answer the most important question do you fuck the bear or does the bear fuck you?
Post by: scriver on July 10, 2023, 04:26:35 am
That's certainly a tabloid/click-bait title if I've ever seen one.
That pretty much Larian's approach to content design though. First question on all content reviews: "Will this make a meme"
Post by: Kagus on July 14, 2023, 08:54:25 am
Like, it's good... The visuals are great most of the time, you've got some really chunky soundwork and they've done a great job of giving the main character "weight" with his heavy stomping around (but still great mobility). It's also super satisfying hitting a human enemy with your bolter and having them get appropriately disintegrated by the round.
That said... Wew doggy does it have some bizarre design decisions...
There's no map. At all. That, combined with how several of the levels are more "organically" designed rather than purely linear hallways means that getting lost is frequent and irritating. You have a servo-skull following around to help out, but he is uncontrollable and utterly useless due to the very few occasions he says something meaningful getting drowned out underneath the ocean of "MEDICAL ITEM DETECTED" squawks where it hovers over one of the +2 health dribbles that popped out of an enemy in the middle of the arena.
He's also the primary source of all lore/story progression, which is unfortunate given that his text tends to be on the smaller, faster side to work for the constant situational updates, and the fact that you've probably learned to just ignore him by that point.
The difficulty scaling is completely off its meds. The first couple levels are very easy-going, and then suddenly it launches a "purge" event (locking you in that arena until you've killed all/most of the enemies that will spawn in) that will completely curbstomp you unless you're absolutely prepared. Similar events much later in the game will either be deadly charnel blenders or total jokes that spawn 6 mooks that die to a stiff breeze. These are not randomly-generated events, they're scripted... They just have no consistency.
As for the enemies, there tend to be a lot of them, spawning in magically all around you, and they hit pretty dang hard (at least on higher difficulties)... This wouldn't be an issue at all though, were it not for one particular little quirk in how they're coded... Namely, every single ranged enemy in the game has perfect tracking.
Regardless of how fast you're moving, or in which direction, they will fire their projectiles so that it will hit where you're going to be rather than where you are. I totally get this in the case of the chaos space marines and whatnot focusing you down with their bolters or assault cannons, but... The nurglings? Every last one of those little green bastards can lob a wad of phlegm at you with pinpoint accuracy at speed, and the damage racks up.
This isn't even getting into the topics of the enemies with homing projectiles or the boss/miniboss which automatically hits you for 20-30% of your max health every second if it has line of sight.
All these things together add up into promoting a rousing, heart-pounding, exciting and fun gameplay style of... Keeping your distance, and cautiously peeping your head out of cover to pop off a couple shots before hiding again.
And then it just... Overstays its welcome. It just kept going, and going, and going, feeling like it was dragging on for the sake of it, and then I finally reached the real big boss fight after the showdown that I'd assumed was the big boss fight a couple levels prior... ...and then I learned that the game had two more entire chapters, as I'd only just completed the first one. Apparently I'm not the only one who had similar feelings... 31% of players have the achievement for beating Chapter 1. ...Chapter 3 has only 9%.
I dunno, it's just... It's so close to being a rock-solid classic. But then it just steps on its own stompy toes. Stomp-stomp.
Post by: Iduno on July 27, 2023, 08:12:49 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on July 27, 2023, 09:01:23 am
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1184370/view/3684558162501614258
Quote
Important notice on update 2.1.5mLooks like they decided to revert in the next update, but personnally i think that for a company to decide to add a spyware in a game to gather more data from you and make money from it, my trust toward that company is dead regardless of how good their game can be.
After reading through your comments and taking into consideration your concerns, we would like to apologize for the whole AppsFlyer and EULA update situation. What we considered a technical thing turned out to be a huge privacy concern for a lot of our players. We value our players the most, so we will do the following:
We will completely remove AppsFlyer from the game with a hotfix coming by tomorrow evening.
For those who have already accepted the new EULA, all collected data will be deleted after the hotfix.
The EULA itself will be restored to the previous version. Any reverse is also a change, so we will kindly ask you to accept the “old” EULA one more time.
Our community means a lot to us, and we are not ready to sacrifice our relationship for some marketing budget optimization. Thank you for taking the time to explain your concerns to us. And once again, we are sorry for the inconvenience this update has caused you.
Post by: Frumple on July 27, 2023, 09:20:05 am
... now I kinda' regret picking up WotR earlier this year.
Post by: Persus13 on July 28, 2023, 07:15:55 am
They literally called an emergency meeting the day the patch rolled out and quickly posted a patch to revert it, which is a level of quick response I appreciate.
Post by: delphonso on July 28, 2023, 08:42:05 am
Post by: Stench Guzman on July 28, 2023, 12:08:16 pm
Post by: Niveras on July 28, 2023, 02:25:40 pm
Anyone else see anything about Pathfinder games adding spyware in a new update? All I have is a single source, so it's tough to know how true it is.Wasn't there another company that did this recently? I can't seem to remember well.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Akura on July 28, 2023, 03:55:29 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on August 05, 2023, 09:10:53 am
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmbn/comments/15iab24/stable_version_v03_released/
Post by: Egan_BW on August 06, 2023, 01:51:28 am
Post by: King Zultan on August 06, 2023, 02:01:39 am
Post by: Egan_BW on August 06, 2023, 02:10:34 am
Post by: Frumple on August 06, 2023, 07:31:13 am
E: Commercial/non-open source development often occurring in much, much worse conditions and having the whole money and formal hierarchies and whatnot involved can easily make the environment way, waaaay worse than you're likely to see develop and persist in open source work. It's well known a large amount of the software development industry, and especially gamedev, commonly has a toxic mess of a work environment. You can pretty much guarantee that kind of stress is causing massive drama issues somewhere along the line, heh. Folks working in both fields are wildly passionate with all the conflict that involves, but only one side is likely to be dealing with corporate :P
Post by: Egan_BW on August 06, 2023, 03:59:47 pm
AAA and midsized commercial projects are hell, yeah, but I dunno if that's relevant. Open source has no hierarchy so basically anyone involved could have an unchecked ego which is usually reserved for management and producers.
Post by: quinnr on August 06, 2023, 09:15:05 pm
Cata "probably doesn't deserve its own thread" for a different reason than most games posted about here, but I can't say it's untrue.
I posted the original thread in 2011 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=87501.0) and have peeked in from time-to-time. I was bored and asking for recommendations in a roguelike IRC channel, and the (individual) developer happened to be online. The thread got over 11,000 posts by the end of 2012. Even in 2012 I think it was pretty rare for a polished text-based game to be released, let alone rocket in interest so quickly. I always wonder where the creator ended up and whether he released any other projects. I don't mind the version updates!
Post by: Robsoie on August 06, 2023, 09:35:58 pm
Post by: King Zultan on August 07, 2023, 03:44:46 am
Post by: Jopax on August 07, 2023, 05:18:19 am
All in all a fun little game that's fairly simple at first glance but tons of fun once you get into it.
Post by: Iduno on August 08, 2023, 09:37:30 pm
Any one of my rogues would have loved the 3 best pieces of equipment they could find having a bonus +attack speed, but the magic-user is the one who can attack fast. Just all flailing around ineffectively while the skeletons do actual work because they each out-level the enemies (1 level higher than the loop, and +48% quality).
Post by: EuchreJack on August 08, 2023, 11:23:40 pm
Noticed that Cataclysm Bright Nights released its stable version 0.3Thanks, I updated my thread elsewhere (https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/cataclysm-game.1493807/)
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmbn/comments/15iab24/stable_version_v03_released/
Post by: Great Order on August 11, 2023, 03:51:57 pm
Post by: King Zultan on August 12, 2023, 04:09:49 am
Honestly my favourite bit of the whole Cataclysm saga was that nutty guy that kept coming in to threads for like... a year and trying to get everyone to play his fork while simultaneously saying that it had malware and tantruming when people told him to fuck off.I remember that whole thing and it was pretty funny, if I remember right that whole thing spread from the CDDA forums to here.
I think his name was crazycat and then later he ether changed it or came back as diver man.
Post by: Robsoie on August 15, 2023, 05:54:18 am
https://baraklava.itch.io/manic-miners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mQacGNeNVA
Post by: quinnr on August 15, 2023, 09:34:06 pm
Manic Miner, the free remake (on the unreal engine) of the Lego Rock Raider from 1999 has reached version 1.0 , considered now a full game.
https://baraklava.itch.io/manic-miners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mQacGNeNVA
That's pretty rad, but I didn't play this one originally. Is there a Lego Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Island) remake yet???
EDIT: The wiki page I linked mentions a fan-made sequel. Hmm.
Post by: dragdeler on August 16, 2023, 03:50:46 am
Post by: Robsoie on August 18, 2023, 07:24:12 pm
Currently reaching the end of Chapter 1 and was reminded how there's no real right choice there , as at that point the story is trying a replay on the theme used in "The Lesser Evil " chapter from "The Last Wish" Witcher book.
Though with much less competent writing as unfortunately the game cartoonishly pile up the evil deeds on one side (the villagers) very noticably more than the other (Abigail) in many ways.
Since i switched to the camera to F2 (the low isometric view) i found that i appreciated the game more than before (my first completed playthrough was with the default 3rd person camera view but it often felt wrong to me), i guess it shows that the 3rd person was somehow more of a hack rather than the game built around that view.
After all the game was built on the engine from Neverwinter Night that played better from an isometric view anyways.
I wonder how the currently in development remake of Witcher 1 will play, are they going to keep those annoying controls or move toward the TW2/TW3 more natural 3rd person controls..
Post by: Folly on August 19, 2023, 04:26:23 pm
Wayfinder got bumped by Warframe during a few of their livestreams. I suspect they may have underestimated the value of this publicity, because Wayfinder launched into Early Access 3 days ago and was immediately overwhelmed, with the devs saying they are getting more login attempts every minute than what they were expecting in a day. As a result we have 5-hour queue times, with players then getting disconnected within minutes from the poor overloaded servers and subsequently being returned to the back of the queue.
I've been watching the official Discord, where they had to institute a 1 minute slow-mode, which quickly got increased to 5 minutes, and then 10 minutes. Even with each person only able to post 1 message every 10 minutes, the chat is still scrolling faster than anyone could possibly read, and has been going at this rate day and night for the last 3 days. Of course much of this is doomsayers, asserting that such a miserable launch will inevitably kill any prospect of success Wayfinder may have had. But even if only a small fraction of these overwhelming numbers actually stick around to play the game once it's fixed, that will still be wildly more success than most games could ever dream of achieving.
Edit:
Queue times are still high, but they've implemented hotfixes to greatly improve stability for players who do make it into the game, allowing them to stay in and actually play.
I was able to get in 3~ hours last night and actually had a lot of fun. I found a couple of overworld pop-up events where I could spontaneously join with other nearby players to fight waves of enemies and bosses for shiny loot drops. I also ran about a dozen dungeons, which are procedurally generated from a limited number of set pieces, so not a ton of variety but just enough to keep things a bit interesting. There are a lot of options for customizing my hero, including various combat abilities, weapon types, and equipment sets. Various types of enemies which require different strategies to fight, and bosses with more complex routines to learn.
I don't yet know exactly how the late-game will play out, but I am now at least confident that this game will end up being well worth the purchase price.
Post by: Iduno on August 25, 2023, 06:08:07 pm
I've just started, won a single match, and unlocked the house. The house is a bunch of games you can play to earn money, and also a sink for money.
So far I've managed to buy 8 soil and 8 seeds for 2400 coins, and can sell for over 800 coins.
The fishing minigame is easier. It's a rhythm game where you need to hit the button when the arrow is...somewhere? Also, there's a dot instead of an arrow sometimes, which may correspond to a key or be an auto-lose? I can't find instructions in-game or online. The best I can find (After 5 website claiming to explain how to play the minigame) is that a higher combo is good, which anyone who has ever played any game ever before knows. What's the target? What key do I hit? 'Hey, do good, it's better than not doing good.'
Edit: After 2-3 hours of trying, I learned that you're supposed to hit the Z key for circle, somewhere near the end of the line. There's a circle, but hitting inside it isn't always correct. So now I'm up to "hit the arrow keys or the Z key, when the symbol is in or near the circle somewhere, but I'm not sure where." Would it have been easier for the people who know what the goal is to write instructions at all instead of every player doing a trial-and-error thing for hours? OFC. Does that affect the way they do things. Hahahahaha. No.
Post by: Robsoie on August 30, 2023, 10:32:16 am
most Doom mods always had some performance problems when played with a "slaughtermap (https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Slaughter_map)" due to the huge amount of entities and effects and unfortunately Brutal Doom was no exception.
But looking on a dev diary video a comparison between current Brutal Doom (v21) and the next one showcase how big the optimisation is getting
https://youtu.be/VnM56bo82Q8?t=13
Post by: Folly on August 30, 2023, 07:40:15 pm
AIKODE trailer recently released. An upcoming game about an android girl in a skimpy dress with atypical eye issues and a floating robot companion, fighting machines in an endless cycle of epic tragedy, all set within the ruins of overgrown cityscapes depicted through a heavy saturation/contrast filter.
Seriously, how is this not getting sued by Drakengard/Nier?
Post by: EuchreJack on August 31, 2023, 01:24:40 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu8PZUkQM7E (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu8PZUkQM7E)
AIKODE trailer recently released. An upcoming game about an android girl in a skimpy dress with atypical eye issues and a floating robot companion, fighting machines in an endless cycle of epic tragedy, all set within the ruins of overgrown cityscapes depicted through a heavy saturation/contrast filter.
Seriously, how is this not getting sued by Drakengard/Nier?
The Japanese company (Square/Enix) that owns Drakengard/Nier makes a large amount of their money off merchandising along with their games, so maybe a knockoff would actually bring them more fans. They can steal the best elements for their own games, and make sure it gets trashed in the reviews so it doesn't overtake the original.
The American/British model of "Only I Can Own" isn't how everyone works.
Post by: Folly on September 02, 2023, 03:55:31 am
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1696440/extras/KF2.gif)
Combat is essentially a turn-based game of Paper-Rock-Scissors, with enough elaborate layers piled on so that it requires some tactical thought behind each move. After you choose your actions you get to watch them play out in a very stylish series of kungfu exchanges.
Beyond the combat however, TMK is a very open-ended sandbox with lots of options for interacting with every NPC and object of the game. Build a base, make friends and enemies, train martial arts skills, and explore a world that you help build.
The machine translation is a bit rough, but serviceable; better translation is in the pipeline. A few of the features are still incomplete, but all of the essential stuff is there. Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase so far.
Post by: Frumple on September 02, 2023, 08:31:01 am
That's pretty amazing, yup.
Post by: Robsoie on September 02, 2023, 01:09:41 pm
https://wwflegends64.wixsite.com/wwflegends/downloads
Post by: delphonso on September 02, 2023, 09:14:08 pm
I'm going to go back and play the SNES ones if they don't have remakes (or fan remakes) when I'm done here. The core mechanics are fine but they hit a perfect balance for me on the GBA.
Post by: Aoi on September 03, 2023, 10:51:14 pm
Checking some gameplay vids of that, basically first actual combat whoever was playing it kicked a monkey in the balls and then beat it to death jojo style.
That's pretty amazing, yup.
Hey now-- you can't just give a description like that and not enough information to find the video! :D
Post by: Frumple on September 03, 2023, 10:58:31 pm
... that said, I've never once managed to keep playing one of them without eventually turning off the weapon durability. Gods fuck that is the single most irritating part of the entire series's design, and they're significantly more enjoyable to play with it nixed as a concern. Worst part is they're generally not even much easier with weapon durability disabled -- in practice, it's just about never really any major issue outside of being bloody annoying and forcing you into doing extra (unnecessary!) inventory management.
One of these days, they're going to pull their head out their bum and consign that nonsense to an optional "i hate myself" mode, blech. It's not like you can't design around not having it, more than a few games harping on FE's style does away with it, and they're all the better for it.
It was here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meyzPpFZUSQ&list=PLn4knYndij7utVSu787RiaAZOprmd5jYO&index=1); the monkey fights start around the 19th minute, the moment being referenced at about 20:50.Checking some gameplay vids of that, basically first actual combat whoever was playing it kicked a monkey in the balls and then beat it to death jojo style.
That's pretty amazing, yup.
Hey now-- you can't just give a description like that and not enough information to find the video! :D
Though do note I give absolutely no endorsement of whoever made the vid; I had the sound off watching and have no idea what sort of channel they're running. It was just the first one I ran across checking for vids, so if they're saying something horrible I couldn't tell :P
Post by: Jopax on September 04, 2023, 11:43:40 am
I haven't had the chance to play any of the previous ones but I always was interested in fast paced mecha action. Turns out it was for a good reason, because this shit is fun. It's super punishing because everything is a glass cannon and shits out damage, and with the stagger mechanics, getting caught in a bad spot can mean a quick and painful death. The flipside of this is that the same applies to bosses, and having a good weapon loadout can mean you just shit on a boss before it gets to do much. And that stuff is super satisfying. Customization is insane and varied as well, plus the way the whole thing is implemented with being able to switch things up whenever you die really encourages having a ton of options and trying them out whenever something isn't working.
That said there is some balancing issues with weapons that abuse the stagger like shotguns or the big shoulder cannons that can easily one-shot stuff if you catch them out while stunned. Still, as someone who doesn't care much for the PvP sides of things, I don't mind the singleplayer stuff being all over the place because it's in line with their previous stuff where you can make your own difficulty. Want an easier time? get a broken build, want to challenge yourself, get anything else that looks fun.
Story is also classic Fromsoft in that you need to look for it and pay attention if you want to figure out just what the hell is going on. I also like that the game is fairly short but there's more stuff going on in the NG+ zone where you get new missions or alternative versions of regular missions which is really cool.
It's also well optimized and not particularly buggy, and without any of the million cash milking schemes most big titles are filled with these days.
Post by: nenjin on September 04, 2023, 02:43:45 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 05, 2023, 10:40:14 am
One of these days, they're going to pull their head out their bum and consign that nonsense to an optional "i hate myself" mode, blech. It's not like you can't design around not having it, more than a few games harping on FE's style does away with it, and they're all the better for it.
They sorta have. Fire Emblem Fates removed durability, then it was added back in for Three Houses, and then Engage got rid of it again. Who knows if the designers will change their minds again for the next game in the series though.
Post by: delphonso on September 06, 2023, 07:06:28 am
One of these days, they're going to pull their head out their bum and consign that nonsense to an optional "i hate myself" mode, blech. It's not like you can't design around not having it, more than a few games harping on FE's style does away with it, and they're all the better for it.
They sorta have. Fire Emblem Fates removed durability, then it was added back in for Three Houses, and then Engage got rid of it again. Who knows if the designers will change their minds again for the next game in the series though.
It's still in for the staff weapons/healers in Fates, which seems reasonable considering the grinding you can do. A bit pointless when they keep adding grinding to these games. (Conquest has less, but the whole kids mechanic is also grinding with more steps)
Post by: Egan_BW on September 06, 2023, 10:01:17 am
This is annoying.
Post by: n9103 on September 06, 2023, 10:15:56 am
That should fix steam not realizing you killed the game at that time.
Post by: Nighthawk on September 06, 2023, 05:17:34 pm
Basically, you solve crimes and play defense attorney in a world with D&D-esque magic, where the spells a person can cast serve as evidence. There's political machinations and stuff going on in the background of each case, and a bit of internal drama with the main cast, too, so it's not just an episodic affair.
I really enjoyed D&D rules-lawyering a man as an actual lawyer in-universe, and so I heartily extend a recommendation to anyone who likes Ace Attorney or the idea of playing a heroic lawyer in a fantasy world full of corrupt nobles.
Post by: Robsoie on September 16, 2023, 07:57:05 am
Remember the 20 years old game that originally was called Sea Dogs 2 but was rebranded Pirates of the Caribbean when they got a license to the movie ?new patches are regularly available (currently patch 14)
It had an acclaimed mod that vastly improved and expanded it with new features, new ships, new storylines, new quests, etc ... that was called New Horizons
That mod never ceased development, and recently the devs managed to make it fully standalone with a new engine and renamed it Beyond New Horizons, you can download it and its current development patch from this thread :
https://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/beyond-new-horizons-alpha-release.34218/
It's very janky (like the original game was) in term of character controls, but if you can get through the jank, it's a really good piracy game with lots of things to do.
And the game is now available (latest version) on itch
https://cmdrhammie.itch.io/beyond-new-horizons
Post by: Iduno on September 16, 2023, 03:16:45 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on September 16, 2023, 05:24:29 pm
Post by: Folly on September 16, 2023, 05:39:29 pm
What I find most alarming is the idea that a bad-actor could create a script to just reinstall a game on their computer over and over. Because the new Unity terms charge the developer for every install, one person could single-handedly bankrupt an entire company!
It sounds like Unity needs to roll-back these changes and go back to the drawing board, else they risk losing all of their business.
Post by: Il Palazzo on September 16, 2023, 05:59:35 pm
Post by: IronyOwl on September 16, 2023, 07:48:35 pm
The legality and enforceability of it (for existing games, at least) are also dubious, which adds to the uncertainty for all involved.
Two game communities I follow(Amazing Cultivation Simulator 2, Elin) are each very nervous about the Unity thing, with some suggesting that these changes could outrightly kill the entire project.Damn. Not familiar with Elin, but I really hope ACS2 recovers gracefully and on an engine that isn't inclined to commit suicide at random.
Post by: lemon10 on September 16, 2023, 10:07:32 pm
That said the whole "lol, we are going to retroactively change the pricing structure AND multiply the annual cost for an account by 4" is still going to be a massive problem for said game studios, especially combined with the lack of trust in them not simply screwing them over even more in the future.
It sounds like Unity needs to roll-back these changes and go back to the drawing board, else they risk losing all of their business.Its too late for that, everyone has now lost trust in Unity and nobody will develop new stuff in it ever again, plus its entirely possible that the retroactive changes are judged illegal and they don't even get the money of stuff that was already released.
Post by: Iduno on September 16, 2023, 10:28:45 pm
Unity clarified that a single computer will only generate a single charge no matter how many times its installed.
Changed their minds when people got mad, but yeah.
It sounds like Unity needs to roll-back these changes and go back to the drawing board, else they risk losing all of their business.Its too late for that, everyone has now lost trust in Unity and nobody will develop new stuff in it ever again, plus its entirely possible that the retroactive changes are judged illegal and they don't even get the money of stuff that was already released.
[/quote]
Hopefully, eys.
Post by: Folly on September 17, 2023, 12:27:56 am
Unity clarified that a single computer will only generate a single charge no matter how many times its installed.
The counterargument I've been hearing to this, is that Unity is not supposed to be legally able to collect unique identifiers from people's PC's which they would need to ensure they are not charging multiple times.
Unity says they won't do it, but they can't give a good explanation as to how.
Post by: King Zultan on September 17, 2023, 01:40:32 am
Post by: Kagus on September 17, 2023, 03:31:14 am
Post by: scriver on September 17, 2023, 05:45:37 am
It'd probably not the only one I'm interested in that I'd on unity but it is the only one I'm aware of because they made it a point
Post by: Robsoie on September 17, 2023, 06:03:23 am
I guess all godot needs is a godot-powered game that gain big popularity to advertise it more to indie development.
Post by: Chiefwaffles on September 17, 2023, 11:18:49 am
Unity's business decisions are awful and have been awful for a while now (remember when they bought and merged with the malware installer company a year ago?), but it's hard to transfer experience in engines. Exponentially harder, if not effectively impossible, to transfer work done in projects between engines. For any game in a non-negligible level of development, you basically have to rewrite the game from scratch.
I believe that Unity will eventually partially backtrack further to something that's still utterly awful but... somewhat less-so. They'll have further destroyed what little trust they have left and will see less and less projects being started in it. Indie and high-budget studios will all look at it and say "what the fuck? why would we want this?" and heavily consider other engines. But plenty of studios with heavy experience and sunk-cost in Unity will continue using it. And those with existing projects won't deem it worth it to spend the massive amounts of time to port the projects to another engine.
Still. Sucks though, for everyone.
Post by: Robsoie on September 17, 2023, 12:30:18 pm
https://old.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/16krpb0/the_godot_development_fund_is_skyrocketing/
It nearly doubled in a week :D
Post by: Frumple on September 17, 2023, 04:56:06 pm
Godot has a lot of potential and is great, but its potential is still best measured by decades. It's still a very immature engine.For what it's worth, from everything I'm hearing it's actually pretty easy to transition from unity to godot, in particular. Not trivial -- folks have noted transitioning a sizeable developed game would likely take a few weeks to a month -- but they're apparently very similar architecture in a lot of ways. It's not rewriting the game from scratch, just adjusting the assets from unity so they function correctly in godot... stuff pointing at the right place, junk like that.
Unity's business decisions are awful and have been awful for a while now (remember when they bought and merged with the malware installer company a year ago?), but it's hard to transfer experience in engines. Exponentially harder, if not effectively impossible, to transfer work done in projects between engines. For any game in a non-negligible level of development, you basically have to rewrite the game from scratch.
Also seen more than one dev note transitioning from unity to godot experience wise is, well, relatively painless. Both engines function in pretty similar ways, basically, enough someone familiar with the former can shift into using the latter pretty quickly.
Post by: nenjin on September 18, 2023, 10:30:54 am
I think....it's got the sequel problem. In that what made the first game so good is that it was so unique and never-before-seen.
So going in to Blasphemous 2 knowing the lay of the land, you kind of skip right past that stuff.
Mechanically it's a better game. The boss fights have been more challenging. The addition of two different types of weapons keeps the gameplay feeling fresh. There's like a second Rosary now so there's two angles to customize your build. There's lots of QoL from the outset, lots of collectibles with gameplay impact. It's a larger game, it fees like, with more areas. All in all it's very solid on that front.
The story however feels rushed. Or I suppose that's my perception compared to the first game. I think some of it has to do with all the animations they've created in the time between the first and second game, where they're telling a lot of the story there. So jumping into Blasphemous 2 having not seen any of that, I feel like I'm missing a chunk of the world setting and context and am just getting the broad strokes in the game.
That and I feel like it's more plainly spoken. The dialog from the first game was esoteric and hard to follow but that was part of its charm. Here I feel like they're being more deliberate in how characters speak, and adding a ton of flavor on top of that. So when you find a guy puking honey he's like "I had a dream where the void in my soul was filled with nectar, so the Miracle filled me up with beeeeeeessssssss."
Enjoying myself. It's just the game feels less like a religious fever dream than the first one, and that was honestly its strongest selling point. I'm maybe 16 hours in and just over the 60% mark. So it actually is feeling kind of like a short game unless there's some whacky inverted castle shit yet to be had.
Post by: Robsoie on September 20, 2023, 11:27:29 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(source : https://twitter.com/Terraria_Logic/status/1704227519027651016 )
Post by: Iduno on September 22, 2023, 02:11:43 pm
https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_s1784qa0k51uv5582.mp4 (https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_s1784qa0k51uv5582.mp4)
Post by: nenjin on September 24, 2023, 03:40:50 am
TLDR: It's good. It's a more polished and feature-rich game than the first. It has tighter handling, somewhat more mechanical gameplay depth, better quality of life, more exciting boss fights, some cool designs and the soundtrack slaps (which I'm listening to while I write this.) In terms of the setting and story though it lacks the unearthly quality, the same fervor and zeal of the first game. As though having proven its devotion once already its grace was assured.
Spoiler: The Rest (click to show/hide)
The soundtrack IS absolutely sick though.
Post by: Iduno on September 24, 2023, 09:44:27 am
Finished Blasphemous 2.
TLDR: It's good. It's a more polished and feature-rich game than the first. It has tighter handling, somewhat more mechanical gameplay depth, better quality of life, more exciting boss fights, some cool designs and the soundtrack slaps (which I'm listening to while I write this.) In terms of the setting and story though it lacks the unearthly quality, the same fervor and zeal of the first game. As though having proven its devotion once already its grace was assured.Spoiler: The Rest (click to show/hide)
The soundtrack IS absolutely sick though.
Awesome breakdown. Thank you.
Post by: Iduno on September 30, 2023, 12:52:36 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on September 30, 2023, 02:21:54 pm
That's about all I can parse from a quick check and some googling, though.
Post by: Iduno on September 30, 2023, 05:07:55 pm
The InvalidARG thing seems to be something that pops up when the program's either having trouble accessing storage, or you don't have enough space for the whatever.
That's about all I can parse from a quick check and some googling, though.
Could be difficulty with access then, because I currently have space on my drives.
Everything I could find was for programmers, so this is at least a step in the right direction.
Post by: Robsoie on October 01, 2023, 05:24:39 am
Quote
Someone from the Modus support team actually responded to the email I sent regarding this issue. They suggested removing the game's save file and launching it without cloud saving enabled, which did resolve the crashing problem. However, this led to the unfortunate outcome of losing all my progress in the game.
Now, when I try to launch the game with cloud saving turned on, it asks me if I want to use the save file stored from yesterday. But whenever I choose to use it, the game crashes again. I suspect my save file might have gotten corrupt somehow, but I'm not entirely sure.
I'm really hoping there's a way to recover my progress somehow. I did create a local backup of the save file, but I'm unsure if it'll be of any help in this situation.
So try to disable the cloud save in case your crash is related to it.
Post by: Iduno on October 01, 2023, 10:32:04 am
googling a bit it seems that lots of people have varied type of crashes with that game without seeing some solution out of this one on discord about a fatal error :QuoteSomeone from the Modus support team actually responded to the email I sent regarding this issue. They suggested removing the game's save file and launching it without cloud saving enabled, which did resolve the crashing problem. However, this led to the unfortunate outcome of losing all my progress in the game.
Now, when I try to launch the game with cloud saving turned on, it asks me if I want to use the save file stored from yesterday. But whenever I choose to use it, the game crashes again. I suspect my save file might have gotten corrupt somehow, but I'm not entirely sure.
I'm really hoping there's a way to recover my progress somehow. I did create a local backup of the save file, but I'm unsure if it'll be of any help in this situation.
So try to disable the cloud save in case your crash is related to it.
Can't. Still haven't successfully loaded the game. It freezes before the splash screen comes up.
Post by: quinnr on October 02, 2023, 07:51:46 pm
The gameplay loop is such that there are 13 levels of "main quest" which can be replayed (with a huge amount of end-game content by this point, with new content still added via monthly donation items to this day.) I was quite glad to see that I could still get my time down to my record of 4 days for the main questline. There's been a few changes to the quests over time but I still have most of them scarred into my memory.
And I spotted one of my old clanmates online and caught up in the chat which was special (especially since it's probably 2019 since I last played in earnest and 2020 since I last logged in).
The only bummer is that I used to look forward to getting an anniversary item on my account birthday each year. But once your account is 11 years old they run out of gifts!
I feel like a lot of the old browser-games have dwindled down to an unsustainable player-base (or shut down entirely) and it's definitely left a hole in my gaming habits. Felt nice to pop in to a community with a shared history and language and just catch up.
Post by: Robsoie on October 04, 2023, 10:35:18 am
Was only expecting YetAnotherRoguelike with just an old Ultima-styled tileset , but it's much more than that as it feels more like a big adventure than just a classic dungeon crawl like in most RL.
Give it a try
If you're not on steam, you can get the latest build on the developer discord :
https://discord.com/invite/tYfHgXc
Quote
Go to the 'builds' area above this one and download the latest .love file from there.To launch the game either drag the "moonring.love" file into the love.exe or just launch the game with a shortcut to love.exe with in its Target line added moonring.love
Then you download the latest copy of love2d for whatever machine you have from here: https://love2d.org/
example :
Quote
C:\YourLove2DDirectory\love.exe moonring.love
Player and NPC have no diagonal move, felt weird for a while until i finally got used to it. The UI is very well done so you can play only with your mouse instead of keyboard key shortcuts (but you can use keyboard shortcut at any time too)
There's a prompt for dialogues, fortunately the usable words are highlighted in the NPC text so you don't have to get a headache finding which words the game can understand.
You can (fortunately) disable the CRT shader in the options
Post by: Il Palazzo on October 04, 2023, 10:59:54 am
Still, it sort of lacks sufficient challenge progression given the amount of content. It doesn't take long into the story before you're able to take on every enemy/dungeon with similar success rate (you can still die to a string of bad rolls), and unlock every skill or item you'll ever use. The experience of having to go through samey dungeons filled with samey enemies to progress the story becomes tedious soon after.
also, yeah, the CRT monitor the dev had as a kid must have been really busted
Post by: Iduno on October 04, 2023, 05:16:24 pm
I've been revisiting the Kingdom of Loathing (https://www.kingdomofloathing.com/login.php?loginid=661e78fedc534470a6301b56dd44cec8), one of my old internet browser game mainstays. At one point in time there was an active thread here but it's a pretty quiet game now—but the developers release a steady stream of Steam/console games that bring a trickle of players to see the history of the worldbuilding and humor that's very alive in those games.
The gameplay loop is such that there are 13 levels of "main quest" which can be replayed (with a huge amount of end-game content by this point, with new content still added via monthly donation items to this day.) I was quite glad to see that I could still get my time down to my record of 4 days for the main questline. There's been a few changes to the quests over time but I still have most of them scarred into my memory.
And I spotted one of my old clanmates online and caught up in the chat which was special (especially since it's probably 2019 since I last played in earnest and 2020 since I last logged in).
The only bummer is that I used to look forward to getting an anniversary item on my account birthday each year. But once your account is 11 years old they run out of gifts!
I feel like a lot of the old browser-games have dwindled down to an unsustainable player-base (or shut down entirely) and it's definitely left a hole in my gaming habits. Felt nice to pop in to a community with a shared history and language and just catch up.
Really? I thought that died after it came out one of the creators was a sex pest.
Post by: quinnr on October 04, 2023, 07:43:06 pm
Nope, still kicking with about 200 players online at any given time. There were certainly allegations about the remaining member of the game's original development team which I'm sure are archived online. I don't know that individual's level of involvement now as I took my leave from the game around that time as many did, but he's likely still the main owner. Read up before you send money their way. I found a community on their free-to-play browser game for a decade and still appreciated seeing familiar faces.I've been revisiting the Kingdom of Loathing (https://www.kingdomofloathing.com/login.php?loginid=661e78fedc534470a6301b56dd44cec8), one of my old internet browser game mainstays. At one point in time there was an active thread here but it's a pretty quiet game now—but the developers release a steady stream of Steam/console games that bring a trickle of players to see the history of the worldbuilding and humor that's very alive in those games.
The gameplay loop is such that there are 13 levels of "main quest" which can be replayed (with a huge amount of end-game content by this point, with new content still added via monthly donation items to this day.) I was quite glad to see that I could still get my time down to my record of 4 days for the main questline. There's been a few changes to the quests over time but I still have most of them scarred into my memory.
And I spotted one of my old clanmates online and caught up in the chat which was special (especially since it's probably 2019 since I last played in earnest and 2020 since I last logged in).
The only bummer is that I used to look forward to getting an anniversary item on my account birthday each year. But once your account is 11 years old they run out of gifts!
I feel like a lot of the old browser-games have dwindled down to an unsustainable player-base (or shut down entirely) and it's definitely left a hole in my gaming habits. Felt nice to pop in to a community with a shared history and language and just catch up.
Really? I thought that died after it came out one of the creators was a sex pest.
Post by: Ulfarr on October 10, 2023, 07:39:47 am
Character skills matter. Choices matter. Crafting maybe matter? I 'm not sure, I've tinkered with it but it wasn't a big part of my playthrough. The most important thing, player skills matter! Yeah it can be cheesed through reloading, but it's been a while since I last played a game where running from battles and taking notes are legit ways to progress.
Speaking of battles they are clunky as hell, mostly because of the UI, but once you get used to it they can become fun, even "fluid" depending on your charcter/companions. They do have some difficulty spikes but as the game suggests "it's about enduring and survivng, not winning every fight".
Finally, I'm not well versed in the whole lovecraftian mythos so I won't comment on how faithful the game is. However, since spooky season is upon us, I'd say I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for a horror/scary game. There are some horror elements but the game's presentation doesn't lend itself for that.
Post by: Kagus on October 19, 2023, 05:19:07 pm
It's not particularly difficult, save for some of the later levels which lean a bit on the opaque (or in the case of the DLCs, ridiculously wordy) and for the mostpart you spend the lion's share of your time just putting names to faces. But there are some legitimately clever clues and hints in some of the puzzles that you really need to be paying attention in order to put together, and the art style is unique in a way which you'll find either deeply endearing or quite repulsive (I'm firmly in the first camp, at least for the main game... The DLCs go a little bit wibbly).
You might consider the price a bit steep for something that's over and done with in under 9 hours (and that's WITH both DLCs, which both take a while), but it's quite a special little thing and I highly recommend checking out the free demo if nothing else. The demo also just so happens to contain one of my favorite scenes from the whole game, so there's that.
A word about the DLCs, however... While they definitely do have their own merits and I don't regret purchasing and playing them, there are some notable shifts in narrative, theme, and even puzzle structure. The finale of the second DLC is actually somewhat notorious, and while I still managed to get through without using the game's help/hint system, I did just brute-force my way through some of the composition thanks to the game's "two or fewer fields are incorrect on this page" notice.
I'm also just generally not as big a fan of the story in the DLCs as I was for the main campaign, and while the end of the second DLC ties neatly into the beginning of the campaign, I'm... Not entirely sure I appreciate that canon :P
Post by: Folly on October 27, 2023, 11:51:06 am
I've now lost all faith in Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.
Being developed by some of the original creators of Everquest and promising to bring back what made the early MMO's great, this has in recent years been my last hope for a new MMO I could get invested in. But about a month ago they announced a massive change in art direction, with a bold new 'hand-painted' style that would be completely unique. Except it's not unique, at all; I've seen this exact same art style used in every low-budget MMO that flopped miserably over the last decade. It looks like something designed for a phone app aimed at preteens, and not a good one.
And now they've announced an alternative 'Evacuation' style game mode, reminiscent of Tarkov. This simply could not be further from the vision that was promised.
Feedback in the official channels is pretty much unanimously grim, and I'm right there with them. Pantheon might as well be dead, and with it all hope for MMO's making a comeback, at least anytime soon.
Post by: quinnr on November 18, 2023, 02:07:36 pm
Quote
The 2.0 version does sport a few "modern" flourishes: improved AI and UI elements, various bug fixes and some quality-of-life enhancements such as improved key commands, together with new overlays for fleet command and probe operations. It also lets you access ship performance data not available in the older versions, and allows you to beam prisoners into stars to raise crew morale. These krellan ship captains only get more sadistic with age, it seems.
I love the aesthetic and I'm all for old game developers bringing stuff a little more accessible.
Post by: Egan_BW on November 18, 2023, 06:09:06 pm
Post by: Rolan7 on November 18, 2023, 07:33:28 pm
We do have a thread for that one, actually.So we do! (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=182197.0) Nice, I'm curious and it's relevant to me.
Post by: Robsoie on November 21, 2023, 02:02:55 pm
https://keeperfx.net/news/11/2023-11-10/keeperfx-100-has-been-released
Post by: Robsoie on November 23, 2023, 05:13:46 pm
first contact with the game after setting the graphics so it play smoothly on my old system, then went to rebind the keys to fit my needs and convenience.
result : for whatever bizarre reason the character suddenly can't move to the right anymore, as if the key i bound to the right direction was just ignored.
changed that right direction to many other keys, still same problem.
Found the solution as it was in fact a known bug but looking at the date of those posts, looks like the devs never cared to fix it since 2021 :
https://steamcommunity.com/app/355790/discussions/1/133259855833560566
Quote
I had this problem, so I checked through the various .ini files in %localappdata%\Styx2\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor.
In the Input.ini file, I found a list of button mappings. Cursory examination revealed a line of code that seemed to be missing, specifically:
AxisMappings=(AxisName="MoveRight",Key=F,Scale=1.000000)
You can change the Keys to whatever you want in the .ini instead of in-game if you prefer not to be told that various keys are already in use (you can also change the scale, although I can't find a practical use for that).
After checking the input.ini at the designed location, indeed this line was missing, there were 2 "MoveRight" lines while there should have been 3
So just copy paste the line from the quote in the input.ini right after the 2 already present AxisMappings=(AxisName="MoveRight"....
lines, then change the Key=F to whatever you wanted
Other than that, as a stealth game it's really very good so if you like the genre claim it while it's still free on gog ( 14 hours left )
Post by: Criptfeind on November 28, 2023, 12:27:46 pm
Post by: Rift on November 28, 2023, 10:37:23 pm
Anyway it's got some style to it, looks fairly nice (minimalist low-poly 3d anime style) with a general kinda cute esthetic. You also get various seasonal festival stuff as well as researching a whole bunch of new stuff both functional and decorative (decorative IS useful for making people happy to a degree, as well as helps count towards improving room efficiency a tiny bit, theres even statues with buffs and stuff). So there's no real shortage of 'stuff' to throw in any given room/hallway/outside, although it is a bit lacking until you start unlocking stuff, fortunately you'll be working on that same location/save file for many many hours. Also, i'm playing on normal(easy/hard also exist) and while i can't go completely ham with spending money, its fairly easy to stay in the black financially.
There are events like fires, earthquakes and the like, as well as delinquents to deal with, but nothing feels super scary or hard to deal with, more like minor problems, so its a very low stress game. Oh, and you can send classes on field trips to unlock parts of the greater world and get a few extra mini-events for the class/school.
Overall, lots to do, i feel like i got another 10hrs or playtime till i'll 'complete' the content, and could see myself replaying it at a later date, so yeah. Recommended by me atm, certainly one of the better tycoon/-business sim games.
Post by: Kagus on December 01, 2023, 06:26:08 am
I just played though The Case of the Golden idol (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677770/The_Case_of_the_Golden_Idol/). A mystery investigation game that's got some inspiration from the return of the obra dinn, in that you're looking at scenes and trying to figure out what happened, although instead of a first person walking around perspective you have point and click adventure game style screens that you have to search though. You look at the environment and people, going around though everyones pockets and listening to what they are saying to piece together what happened via putting together a mystery madlibs essentially with the words you find. Most levels consist of having to figure out everyones names, fit together a few smaller puzzles, and then use those to figure out the big who did what that's going on in the scene. I think it's pretty fun, it's got a fun little story to watch play out as you go though the levels, and although it's not too hard and maybe a bit short, it's a nice game and pretty cheap too.
Yeh, played this one myself not that long ago. Very charming, and I was definitely left wanting more (even if some of the later levels are a bit tedious, the Lemurian Vampire DLC has a particularly egregious example as its capstone). One thing was the gameplay itself and piecing together a narrative of what had happened, but the overall style and storytelling was quite endearing.
Post by: Criptfeind on December 02, 2023, 02:27:42 pm
I was pretty excited for this game, I'm a fan of management city builders, I'm a fan of the steamworld series, and I like dungeon keeper. The game is competently made and enjoyable to play. But it does simplify the game, both the city builder and dungeon keeper parts to a large part. It's heavily polished but in a sense feels lacking. Maybe too polished, all the annoying bits of the genres have been polished away but so too has a lot of interesting little bits. There's really not much complexity or difficulty too the game and about halfway though you'll have seen all the game has and the rest is more of the same for a bit. I played for like 6-7 hours (at a guess) to beat the game once. I don't really have interest in playing other levels (which seem like they are just going to be the same thing with a different layout) and I can't imagine increasing the difficulty will do anything except make it so you need to wait longer before progressing at various points.
The story is serviceable. Sparse but you don't except much from a city builder. It's helped by the art of the cutscenes, which I quite like.
My ultimate conclusion is that it's okay. Much like quest was. I enjoyed the time I spent on the game, but much like quest I'm sorta glad it's over and I'm left feeling somewhat disappointed that it doesn't really live up to dig 2 or heist, both excellent games.
Post by: nenjin on December 02, 2023, 06:28:28 pm
Dragon's Dogma 2 finally gonna come out. First one was good. Kind of quirky in terms of the story and how it was all presented, but weirdly compelling with the over the top Monster Hunter World-esqe monster fights and the AI party members that could be sourced from the community. Will probably pick this up.
Post by: AlStar on December 11, 2023, 12:26:13 pm
Spoiler: "General Overview of the Game, Some Thoughts" (click to show/hide)
Overall, I'm enjoying it, but I'm glad I picked it up as part of a Bundle, as I don't know if it has the staying power of StS.
Post by: Robsoie on December 16, 2023, 07:15:05 pm
This time instead of exploring the huge world and doing side quests, i decided to follow the main story only as i didn't moved through those quests last time.
And so far it has been good, playing fully stealthly as much as i could, escaping when detected and coming back once alerts were off, using the (very usable) environment to "parkour" everywhere in every directions horizontally and vertically.
Was happy to see that stealth and sneaking around was always a possibility (great because i have difficulty to "get" the combat gameplay with this game)
After +/- 8 hours of doing main story quests and progressing in the world, i'm at the part in which you infiltrate a massive building called the Repositorium in which the technomagis that decided to betray the emperor have imprisonned Savaash, an emperor agent like you (you mostly against your will), and bound him into a machine to decrypt his memories in order to locate a vault.
Then you get into that machine yourself to explore Savaash memories.
After some dreamwalking around his memories, you're then thrown into an unescapable arena to fight the spirit of Savaash that is apparently not happy from your intrusion (hey buddy i'm supposed to be on your side you know) in melee, as terrible as i am with melee fight in Seven it seemed do-able from the fight first few exchanges.
Until Savaash spirit just clone himself and you face 2 of them at the same time, then another one comes after a few more hits and something invisible comes to join the fray after some more hits.
So basically you're stuck in a fight with several enemies that hit like a truck without any possibility to go stealth anywhere or escape to come back later.
Maybe it would have been do-able if the game had not made me think stealth was always a possible way instead of fighting, and so i didn't left truckload of health healing item (because weight is an issue a lot in the game) into a stash and only carried a few.
Lesson to learn : always keep a save from before going into the Repositorium so you can go away and explore the world in the hope to find better equipment, and always carry all the healing items you can before getting into this.
Fortunately i had one old save, but the less i can say is that difficulty spike was totally unexpected after so many hours of stealth gameplay.
Post by: Criptfeind on December 26, 2023, 10:27:14 pm
I've been playing the darkest dungeon board game, and it's a real strange beast. A decent proportion of the game, resting between missions, heroes and what they do with attacks and stats and stuff, and exploration, have been basically lifted from the game with some light to moderate adaptation to a boardgame format with a much shorter campaign than in the video game and they generally work well and are enjoyable (although exploration is more punishing in general).
Combat though, arguably the main meat of the game, has bizarrely been changed into a tactical battle thing where enemies and heroes move around room maps, the classic darkest dungeon style everyone standing in a line thing still exists outside of the tactical battle map, but now your position in the line determines turn order and what enemies do and what abilities heroes can use, who you can hit depends on movement in the tactical battle map. The quality of the translation of darkest dungeon stats and abilities to the tactical map range from questionable to broken. A lot of abilities require fairly specific and fiddly positioning, pushing and pulling both moves people on the map and in the line, and generally speaking a lot of the rules are pretty poorly/ambiguously worded.
Over all the feeling one gets is the more distant any mechanic is from the video game, the worse it will be. This culminates in the occupancy rules, rules which limit how many people (both heroes and monsters) can stand in any particular space on the tactical battle map. Which as far as I recall DD doesn't really have anything like and are basically just completely broken in the board game. About 30% of the way though a campaign I asked my playing group if we can just remove these rules, they agreed and in removing them the game genuinely immediately went from a 3/10 game like a 6/10 game. Keeping in mind that these are the only rules wholly unique to the board game, the only thing in it that the board game designers came up with on their own, it doesn't seem like a good look for whoever made this board game.
Overall, quite weird. I'm enjoying it after our home ruling, but yeah I dunno. It's quite strange how sorta poorly done it is.
Post by: Aoi on December 27, 2023, 12:45:18 am
Combat though, arguably the main meat of the game, has bizarrely been changed into a tactical battle thing where enemies and heroes move around room maps, the classic darkest dungeon style everyone standing in a line thing still exists outside of the tactical battle map, but now your position in the line determines turn order and what enemies do and what abilities heroes can use, who you can hit depends on movement in the tactical battle map. The quality of the translation of darkest dungeon stats and abilities to the tactical map range from questionable to broken. A lot of abilities require fairly specific and fiddly positioning, pushing and pulling both moves people on the map and in the line, and generally speaking a lot of the rules are pretty poorly/ambiguously worded.
I was intrigued by DD:BG too and sounds like I was glad I skipped it...
On the other hand, the description of the combat sounds sort of like they riffed off of Into the Breach, where positioning and battlefield control is paramount, since enemy actions are locked in at the start of your turn, and your abilities in shoving them around can force them to land attacks on empty spaces (or better yet, their own allies) and block new hostiles from spawning. I'm guessing that it doesn't work nearly as well though?
Post by: scriver on December 27, 2023, 03:55:55 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 27, 2023, 09:14:20 am
[...]
Lesson to learn : always keep a save from before going into the Repositorium so you can go away and explore the world in the hope to find better equipment, and always carry all the healing items you can before getting into this.
And that was indeed the solution: more healing items for those unavoidable fights in which stealth is not allowed. It made a huge difference as i could then move through that specific battle without troubles despite those clones attacking in ranged or melee.
It also helped when i ran into a few more unavoidable fights while getting more quests and missions, but they were much more managable than Savaash.
Anyways, i am still impressed how massive the game world is in Seven Enhanced Edition, and unlike so many of those open world type of game, it's packed with content (so many missions/quests with most being interesting) and things to discover with lots of very unique biomes and landscape that aren't just "repeats" and offer huge amount of parkour possibilities , and the stealth is very nice with even more things to do when you get more powers and abilities.
I have still several side missions and quests to do, but on the main questline i'm right before the last mission that complete the game. And so far it's been really great.
Post by: Criptfeind on December 27, 2023, 01:02:17 pm
On the other hand, the description of the combat sounds sort of like they riffed off of Into the Breach, where positioning and battlefield control is paramount, since enemy actions are locked in at the start of your turn, and your abilities in shoving them around can force them to land attacks on empty spaces (or better yet, their own allies) and block new hostiles from spawning. I'm guessing that it doesn't work nearly as well though?
You would guess correctly. There's not much of a sense of manipulating positions of enemies like that both because turn order is semi random, there's an initiative deck with 4 hero cards and however many monster cards as monsters you're facing (normally 4) which you pull a card, if it's a monster card a monster goes first, if it's a hero card then a hero goes first, and because movement, especially for monsters, is fairly free. Monsters will move every turn in order to get in range of their target. Soooooometimes you can push them or move in a way that screws them if they are particularly slow or their targeting priority is particularly far away, but most of the time it means a monster is just going to walk up and smack at the closest hero. They aren't locked into attacking specific areas in specific ways (and most of the time at the start of their turn there's a random dice roll to determine what type of attack they are going to do.)
It's just fiddly because the translation of DD ranges to the board games ranges can be awkward and movement isn't free for heroes (they get 2 actions, so they can attack twice or attack and move, obviously attacking twice is generally preferred if possible.) Like the plague doctor in the video game has a heal that can target any ally, in the board game he can only target allies exactly 1 space away. And his aoe poison is exactly 2 spaces but his single target poison is exactly 1 space. Since monsters only ever attack once there's not much consideration for them but for players it's a constant fiddling with exact spacing to avoid screwing each other over.
Honestly the most impactful the tactical battlemap has been has been situations where an enemy will spawn in some opposite corner from the heroes and use an ability that makes it so heroes can only target that monster... So we'll be fighting a bunch of monsters and suddenly a snake two turns away down a corridor and around the corner will rattle and now there's nothing we can do but move over towards it. Quite annoying :P
The little grey dots on the spaces in the image above are the occupancy system by the way, which is how many people can stand on a tile. There's a little bit about pushing if a monster is big they can push out heroes and if a monster is small heroes can push them out, but in general it just serves as a way for the game to break in certain situations where monsters or heroes get stuck and unable to do anything.
Wouldn't Darkest Dungeon make for a pretty good game if if was more or less directly translated? I guess the developers thought they had to make it their own somehow. Or maybe just had a mechanic darling they couldn't make themselves kill.
Honestly I think a more direct translation of DDs combat system would probably have made the game better, yes. And would honestly make more sense for a few of the mechanics that are in and not really properly translated.
Post by: Bralbaard on January 02, 2024, 04:27:19 pm
It's one of those old games I keep coming back too, and this time for good reason.
The game is a quarter century old, but has an active community and the HoTA modding team just released a new town and faction, the factory.
Quality of this and their previous town expansion is equal if not better than the original factions and it blends in seamlessly.
There is a youtube release trailer here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9_ueEG7JA)
If you are thinking of installing the game (you need the base game to install the mod) to play this, make sure you buy the game from GOG.com. The version steam is selling is an incomplete and incompatible version that you do not want.
Post by: None on January 10, 2024, 05:52:35 pm
The controls are a little obtuse:
the arrows and space input entries into the action sequence, delete/backspace moves them back. You can navigate within the action sequence by clicking within it or ctrl+ arrows.
P pauses and resumes the game, which gets confusing with:
W changes whether or not you wait when all actions are done, wait when any of your clones have run out of actions, loop when all actions are done, or loop when you've run out of mana. Look between this and P if the game isn't moving.
G turns on and off whether or not the game will use your best route time to automatically plot a course to mana springs you've already visited if you have enough time to gain more mana from it. This may screw around with your action sequence if you turn it on when you don't want it.
S turns on and off a 'grind for stats' route where it looks for your best routes to determine how to gain the most incremental progress in a given stat. I haven't had to use it yet.
Definitely a learning curve to understand the buttons and the UI, but it's a really nifty puzzler if you like optimizing things.
Post by: Folly on January 11, 2024, 03:45:13 am
Post by: AlStar on January 11, 2024, 11:44:48 pm
I've since managed to fix that and proceed a little into zone 2, but, even so, can't seem to find the mana to both mine the iron and build the bridges to find out what's past the double pits in the left corner of zone 1.
Post by: None on January 12, 2024, 09:16:24 am
Any mana rocks you siphon from in Zone 2 (and subsequent zones) also gives that mana bonus to previous zones, so you may just need to make your way further into zone 2 before you can reach that chasm.
If you're really confounded about it, you can copy the following script and then paste it into the 'import path' button to load the one I used:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Folly on January 12, 2024, 05:38:34 pm
I had the most head-desk experience with the game for, like, my first 15 minutes. I never uncovered the second mana stone to the north, and I was going mad trying to figure out how to get enough time/mana to mine even a single tile of gold and use the machine to turn the gold into mana.
I've since managed to fix that and proceed a little into zone 2, but, even so, can't seem to find the mana to both mine the iron and build the bridges to find out what's past the double pits in the left corner of zone 1.
Past the double-pits on the left side of zone 1 are trees, which take more time to cross the later you are in the cycle. So if you're still struggling to get the double bridges, then you're a long way from making progress there.
Post by: Iduno on January 22, 2024, 09:16:35 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Iceblaster on January 23, 2024, 07:30:12 pm
Yeah, Factorio's mod community is wild. Watched a guy's video on Space Exploration and I am amazed people find that level of management fun, I find base game hard enough as is :P
Post by: n9103 on January 24, 2024, 07:57:07 am
It brings a lot of new content, particularly to the post-rocket gameplay, and is made by the same guy that made SE.
Post by: Robsoie on January 25, 2024, 06:16:14 pm
Played the 3 first tutorial missions and found it nice with some potential, but there was a very heavy dependance on dices/RNG as shown in one of my tries in which a character with a 40% dodge ability missed a lot of dodges roll in a row and died stupidly or an AI unit that somehow decided that every of its attacks on one of my characters would result in a "miss" .
Being extremely RNG based is typical boardgames from games workshop anyways so it's not a surprise but it sure will easily lead into frustration at some points.
Then i went to start a warband, basically the SP campaign, and selected a human mercenary warband to start with the basics.
First mission i separated my guys in order to scavenge around and gather those wyrd things, i quickly noticed it was a bad idea as it felt that the AI ignore every scavenging spots and instead will beeline its troops to one of your guys, put him out of action (so you lose all the loot) and move to another. Until my last guy lost a routing dice roll and the mission is over.
Most of my "out of action" guys recovered, one died (the "hero" convenientely so wasted the XP gained and wasted the expensive money it cost) , still managed to have 2 "wyrd" as my leader that gathered them never went "out of action".
Replaced the hero by another one and moved to second day, and so 2nd campaign mission, this time i decided to play like the AI did : ignore most scavenging and wyrd spot and moved all my guys in group, managed to gather a few wyrd on the way.
The AI beelined again toward my position but because it didn't moved as a group, i easily destroyed each of them one by one (out of the case in which 2 arrived at the same time but i was outnumbering them anyways) , wow looks like the winning strategy is not actually a strategy at all, it's just "keep everyone together and kill the AI enemy by vastly outnumbering it or kill it in a chokepoint".
Looks like the AI isn't coded as an actual boardgame opponent, because it's obvious it has not only 0 care about looting the items and wyrd around the map, it additionally has 0 care about their warband member survivability , unlike you as your surviving troops may get some crippling malus from wounds and etc... that are ported to the next mission.
Anyways, happy to see my warband managed to destroy that warband of Sisters of
Ok, 3rd day and 3rd mission, this time there's a vampire and a couple more guys that i can see, one is looking like some ghoul/zombie
the additional mission is to gather 50% of the wyrd from the map, that's probably impossible considering the AI does not do that on its side and will attack your troops
And ending the AI troops would end the mission immediately so you can't even loot what's around you.
Mission start and to my surprise i was wrong : the AI gather 2 wyrds, so i send my troops doing the same. But then the AI decide to go back at its brainless "don't care about objective" code and rush into my troops, fortunately i manage to rally everyone and a "normal" dressed guy get "out of action" but the vampire in turn KO one of my henchmen (that have all been mostly useless so far).
But my hero character hit very hard (a wolf priest) and thanks to his strikes manage to get the vampire KO, while my leader character surprisingly parry successfully a couple of strikes.
The enemy lose the routing roll before i can gather a couple more wyrd and the usual "victory and no you don't get to gather any loot not already in your pocket" .
At least my troops have now reached rank 1 from this mission, unlocking the ability to field more henchmen so it's all good.
And apparently i was given a task in the base camp : gathering 75 weight of wyrd before 10 days. Result of those 3 missions (and so 3 days) : 31 weight so it looks like this task is doable, but i wish the AI wasn't beelining your troop like that so i could gather or scavenge around a bit.
So in the end it looks like there is a good potential with Mordheim for some fun, but it seems to me it is filled with some bad idea and frankly questionable design decisions regarding the AI ignoring the objectives.
Post by: nenjin on January 25, 2024, 07:04:02 pm
TLDR: great attempt but seriously flawed. The fun is there, but you have to play it a certain way that many people will find unfun. Yeah, the AI isn't coded to be anything like the board game. They know where you are at all times, they don't care about objectives and they will swarm any isolated unit which means you shouldn't divide your warband and consolidate your position ASAP.
Really it just comes down to a slug fest. Out number your opponent in 3:1 encounters and wipe the floor with them. The AI are generally a notch above your own guys in terms of HP and a few other stats to give the AI a helping hand, so 1:1 is risky, 2:1 usually goes your way but not always. 3:1 is a guaranteed win against most opponents.
It's got the RPG goodness and grindiness and you can make some beast warband members, even thought I think the overall implementation of stats, gear, traits, all that jazz is a little lackluster. It's a game I want to love and I enjoy......but I could never seriously recommend it unless you absolutely love Mordheim as a setting and are willing to accept all the boils and pus along with it. Which I do.
The saddest part is...these guys went on to make Necromunda, the 40k version of Mordheim and it has similar massive flaws which meant it was never going to be a mid-range success. I haven't even tried it and I love Necromunda too.
Truly, I wish that dev team the best. But man there is just so much jank in both games.
Post by: Robsoie on January 26, 2024, 06:16:02 am
I noticed that missions can have the AI warbands either at the same level as yours, or give some unfair advantage to it (i suppose that's what the rating is "normal" or "deadly", "brutal" etc...)
Apparently the AI warband additionally match yours in number : take less people and the AI will have less people , take more and the AI will have more.
On my latest mission in which i didn't took my hero unit (he was unavailable due to training to learn a new skill), the enemy warband leader AI stupidly decided to stay at a short distance of their wagon for the whole mission duration.
there were plenty of "climb down" spot around him but he never bothered, completely stupid considering it meant i was always outnumbering the AI troops he had sent and then had a very easy time KO-ing them all.
Spoiler: AI wasting its time on top of a city wall (click to show/hide)
At least it finally gave me time to gather wyrds before my archer started to slowly wound him (arrow damage are rather small), then i sent my henchmen (while my leader was busy gathering, scavenging and moving things back to my wagon chest) to climb up and knockout the guy.
Mordheim is still fun so far with the rpg stats/items/levels grinding to improve your poor guys into decent warriors and the fact losing a mission still contribute in improving your troops that survive, but i wish there were alternative to the "everyone stay grouped and fight together focusing on one enemy at a time for easy victory" tactic
Post by: nenjin on January 26, 2024, 11:28:30 am
That said, the story missions are quite good and some of the set pieces are mind blowing.
Mordheim is the kind of game that's fun despite how broken it is, but that feeling can pass at any point.
Post by: Robsoie on January 26, 2024, 01:07:27 pm
From googling around it's a known bug since at least 2016 .
2 ways around : the sure one is to abandon the mission but abandonning the mission gives wounds and sometime crippling injuries to every of your characters, this method at least work all the time but the RNG with the wounds/injuries can be crippling for some character.
the "most of the time it will work" , when you see the AI not completing a character turn press Escape and select "Save and Quit"
Exit the game, the relaunch it, click on Continue and that AI turn should hopefully be immediately resolved once the save is loaded, allowing you to continue.
The cons of that method is that it seems the save will not load anymore for some people (for me luckily it worked) :
https://steamcommunity.com/app/276810/discussions/1/351660338721197701/
Post by: Ulfarr on January 26, 2024, 01:30:34 pm
Post by: nenjin on January 26, 2024, 02:04:08 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 26, 2024, 02:23:33 pm
C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents\My Games\Mordheim
Something that i find annoying are the various spots in the maps (scavenge/loot/jump/climb/etc...) , you need your character to be positionned with near to pixel precision for some of them to access the interaction, i had a mission in which one of my henchman was trying to steal the idol of an enemy wagon, it was maddening to find the exact pile of pixel on the ground that allowed my character to have the "steal the idol" action available.
Post by: nenjin on January 26, 2024, 05:58:50 pm
Post by: Robsoie on January 27, 2024, 05:08:57 pm
The 1st disaster was the result of 2 things against undead things led by some vampire : my troops were individually spawned very far from each other, and the AI warband was moving in relative group, picking easily my guys nearly 1 by 1.
While in normal situation i would have tried to disengage the unfortunate mercenary and try to run away toward some of my other guys , for some reason each time the guy was failing a terror effect roll and could mostly only have access to the "end turn", meaning not even a dodge or parry, leading into fast death as the AI wasn't missing his hits roll
The 2nd disaster was against a skaven warband, for reason i don't know, my 3 archers missed easily 90% of their shots (and that is a lot of potential damage lost there) while easily half of the skaven attacks resulted in my mercenary falling stunned on his knee, first time in all the missions i played that i saw so many stunned characters. So as expected my warband lost that mission as luck was definitively not on my side with the dice rolls this time.
Fortunately none of the characters that went out of action died from their wounds and recovered.
The 2 last missions against sisters of sigmar and another against mercenaries (similar to my warband) and went surprisingly well : parry worked most of the time with my heavy hitters that i had recently equipped with halberds (the 2 hander allowing to parry) and the leader with his spear and shield was only hit once in those 2 missions.
The archers landed the majority of their shots, bringing some good damage too.
dice rolls can really help or destroy your warband :D
So far from what i went through choosing a Hard or Brutal or Deadly is incredibly unfair until your warband is very strong and very well equipped because the AI is better leveled and equipped than yours in those difficulty : they hit much stronger and tank a lot more.
Only Normal missions seem to be balanced for a more "equal" (the AI has still an advantage but in comparison to the other difficult missoins it's being only minor).
So don't hesitate to pay the scouts to try to find a "Normal" mission when the map is only filled with hard, brutal or deadly, at least until your warband is high level, you'll win more (and winning a mission additionally give you 30 or 35% of the wryd that you didn't picked on the map). A good idea is to take the veteran skill (when your warband have ranked enough) "Explorer" that allow you to play the scouts less (as there's no guarantee they will find a "Normal" mission on their 1st try, and each try cost money)
I noticed in the game directory, your last mission is logged in a combat.log file
I replaced the
Code: [Select]
<color=#f04545ff>byCode: [Select]
[color=red]Code: [Select]
<color=#79a8e4ff>byCode: [Select]
[color=blue]and
Code: [Select]
</color>byCode: [Select]
[/colorSo it's readable on the Bay12 board, not much interesting though but you can see how lucky i have been with dice rolls in this mission (in red the AI warband members, in blue my warband members) :
Spoiler: combat.log (click to show/hide)
Post by: Ulfarr on January 28, 2024, 05:07:33 am
The 2 last missions against sisters of sigmar and another against mercenaries (similar to my warband) and went surprisingly well : parry worked most of the time with my heavy hitters that i had recently equipped with halberds (the 2 hander allowing to parry) and the leader with his spear and shield was only hit once in those 2 missions.
The archers landed the majority of their shots, bringing some good damage too.
I'm not sure if you've read my post on the free games thread, but I'll suggest you to not invest on parries too much. Demons, rat ogres, chaos spawns, possessed ones and some mutants can all bypass any and all parry rolls. Overall the best form of defense, are melee/ranged resistances because they can't be hard countered and act on all incoming attacks (not just the first 1-2 per round) by lowering the enemy's "to hit" chance.
Also you might find this character planner (http://www.pyrospace.co.uk/mordheim/) useful
Post by: Robsoie on January 28, 2024, 06:54:08 am
But for now with normal enemies, parry works better than dodge because even without investing on parry (excepted from my leader because i didn't knew better when i had him learn +parry skill at the time) all my characters have for some reason a higher parry % than a dodge one.
So as long as there are only "normal" enemies in missions i'll keep those very nice halberds (until i find better of course) for the heavy hitters.
Thanks for the planner, will be very useful for later.
I wish the game didn't had some very questionable design decisions sometime, it's very good and fun most of the time (adapting the Valkyria Chronicles gameplay POV to a boardgame was a nice touch) but some of the low points the devs insisted on having are really annoying.
Post by: Persus13 on January 28, 2024, 01:14:53 pm
Parry isn't a terrible thing to have some investment in, as long as its not at dodge's expense. The main issue is anything with bracers ignores parry, and that's basically any big enemy. The easy way to avoid that in most missions though is just not bring an ogre if you're the human merc band.
Mordheim was my go to game when listening to Critical Role and other podcasts a few years back, so its a guilty pleasure game for me.
Post by: Robsoie on January 28, 2024, 02:08:29 pm
Got an example of -very- bad luck and -very- good luck on the same mission.
For fun decided to field a full team (but no Expensive because i don't want to see those things in the AI team yet with my bad luck with dices :D ) and go into a mission.
Appeared that the AI warband was a skaven one, i remember last time how the dices decided to have my character stunned half the time the enemy stroke and wondered if my warband would again be affected by legendary bad luck.
From the start, i choose for once the "deploy" option to place my troops myself on the possible starting spots.
They really made this as clunkly as they could but after finally moving everyone where i wanted them to be , massive problem :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I wasn't aware at all of the actual status of the archer (he's my highest level archer) i placed in front of that door, he just got back from reserve after healing.
Post-game i noticed the guy had a bigger list of permanent injury that i thought (i even needed to scroll down them to see all), one being a "skull fracture"
This specific injury make your character needing to pass a stupidity roll to do anything in a whole turn when outside of melee.
And guess what : the guy missed 5 of those rolls.
And guess what's even better : the game is designed so despite there's visually enough space between him and the door or on his side to move through, actually none can actually move to the door because he is blocking that path.
And to add insult to the injury, that building has only -this- exit, meaning that those 3 characters were out of the battle for 5 turns.
But very good luck decided to strike for me :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
After that i only needed to kill 2 of the skaven henchmen to bring their morale even lower thanks to my melee guys and we got the victory as the skaven morale was so low they missed the lout roll.
------------------------------------------
EDIT : decided to test the Impressive class for my mercenary warband, it's was good old and mean Ogre
Meet Egalt Brainbasher, an Ogre that really don't like the enemies of my warband and have no trouble using his massive axe on their heads
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The trouble when bringing an Impressive character class is that the AI warband will then automatically always include an Impressive too, here's the "What the hell is that chaos thing" that came with the enemies this time :
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
No idea what that big ugly thing was, but Egalt Brainbasher wasnt impressed and axe-killed it anyways.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Lesson to learn : don't mess with Egalt Brainbasher
Post by: Kagus on January 29, 2024, 04:28:45 am
Double the brain to bash.
Post by: Robsoie on January 31, 2024, 07:35:14 am
Transforming the presentation from a "normal boardgame and move your pieces" view into a Valkyrie Chronicles-like was a good idea in the end as it manage to deliver some interesting atmosphere and tension.
Had to fire a level 4 Champion and a level 5 Marksman , the first having lost a leg was way too slow to move around in time to help his teammates and the other had lost an arm lowering his accuracy noticably with bows.
So far i have 2 teams, my high level guys (level 10 Leader, level 8 Wolf Priest, the level 4 Ogre and some good marskmen) with the best equipment i have so far , team that managed to get a victory on a mission at difficulty "Deadly" to my surprise (though it's were i got my marskman losing his arm and the 1st mission my Ogre got "Out of Action" but was 100% the reason i managed to survive that mission) for the 1st time
The other team are all new characters i recruited at rank 0 and being very well equipped (the best items my 1st team does not use) are tearing apart the similar (the AI match your team composition and its rating) AI teams on the missions they went through.
About each mission difficulties :
Spoiler: from wiki (click to show/hide)
Some people mention that the quality of wyrdstones in mission improve with your warband ranks, not sure if it's true and if a party of level 0 rookies drafted in a high warband rank will find more clusters and shards than at rank 0 on normal missions.
Post by: Ulfarr on January 31, 2024, 08:51:57 am
Post by: Robsoie on January 31, 2024, 09:17:10 am
Especially as the goal is rather simple for the Mordheim AI :
- as long as the AI does not see any of your troop the goal is the nearest wyrdstone
- when the AI see any of your troop the goal become your troop (usually the 1st guy they see) and it will ignore every other goal (the wyrdstones).
And from what i have read those problems are even worse in the dev next game Necromunda.
Interestingly i have sometime battled with AI warband that some members had an important injury (missing an arm or missing a leg, or missing an eye) , that's nice and give the illusion they don't only have the ridiculous advantages the devs game them over your own warband.
Post by: Ulfarr on January 31, 2024, 10:41:02 am
Interestingly i have sometime battled with AI warband that some members had an important injury (missing an arm or missing a leg, or missing an eye) , that's nice and give the illusion they don't only have the ridiculous advantages the devs game them over your own warband.
Yeah no unfair advantages...until that one armed fiend starts dodging like a slippery god because of it's newfound balance :P
I'm not sure if the ai is just that simplistic or simply bugged. I remember a game, rather fondly despite the loss, where the last skaven unit (globadier or whatever it's called) had holed up on the top of some building and it managed to wipe my party (3 or 4 units) due to a combination of poison attacks and a lot of failed climbing rolls.
Post by: Robsoie on February 03, 2024, 02:47:05 pm
Mostly making lots of money and increasing my 2nd team levels while my top team is still waiting in the back row.
It's been a looong while i haven't lost a mission too, blame the much better equipment and the characters having several new skills that make the AI advantages not making a difference anymore
Spoiler: What i learned with Mordheim (click to show/hide)
Post by: delphonso on February 05, 2024, 09:06:39 pm
Post by: None on February 06, 2024, 05:49:51 pm
It's... Peculiar.
A tip - go ahead and die by pissing too much, or whatever. You're going to need to, in any case.
A warning - Some creatures produce objects (geese produce eggs) which produce creatures (eggs produce geese). Let that go on too long, and you're going to end up in an unmanageable situation. It's also a funny twist on the old 'which came first, the chicken or the egg' conundrum.
There is an ending, and it's kind of what I want to prod into:
Spoiler: Actually spoilers, don't click unless you mean it (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: And to that effect, what the win condition does (click to show/hide)
I thought it was nifty and thought-provoking.
Post by: askovdk on February 07, 2024, 09:34:38 am
Kicked up a different incremental browser game today: The Barnacle Goose Experiment (https://everest-pipkin.com/barnacle-goose/).
...
Nice one. I have had it running for some hours, and will definitely see where it leads. :-)
Post by: DeKaFu on February 07, 2024, 05:45:13 pm
Very interesting if flawed little game. I enjoyed the overall loop and strange dreamlike logic of it, though I was a little disappointed by how abstract it all was. I originally saw it pitched as "horror" and I think you'd really have to stretch to meet that definition.
Spoiler: I did like how (click to show/hide)
I strongly disliked how easy it is to literally break the game. I ended up with production feedback loops on several types of items, and given that:
a) items producing items rapidly causes the game to slow down and become partially unresponsive to clicks while it's happening
b) destroying items requires picking them up and clicking once per individual item you're trying to destroy (assuming you even have the tools to destroy them)
c) destroying items also breaks them down into other items rather than simply removing them, and those items might still produce items
d) you have limited inventory space for picking things up and
e) there's no item caps in place to prevent item quantities spiraling out of control
...it becomes very easy to end up in a situation where you, for example, have 10,000 geese each producing eggs and 5000 eggs each producing geese and the game slows to an unresponsive crawl, and the only potential way to get things back under control are picking up said geese and eggs 30 at a time and clicking (fairly unresponsive) buttons 30 times and waiting another 30 seconds for the game logic to catch up and then repeating that process 500 times.
I ended up having to do similar things (though not quite that bad) a few times during my playthrough and it sucked. It didn't suck enough that I regret playing it, since it was interesting and stylish in its own way. But, I do wish a bit more thought had gone into design and preventing the game loop from imploding in this way.
Apparently the creator announced they'd be creating an improved/better optimized version for Steam last year but as far as I know nothing has come of it yet.
Post by: Rolan7 on February 07, 2024, 10:05:36 pm
I like how imbalanced the recipes are. Like the same item can have an expensive recipe and then waaaaay cheaper ones- though I guess that depends on what you have a lot of.
I went ahead and finished the game because I sympathized with the protagonist, after reading. Particularly once I stumbled across the end. (I was moving items to the original floor to consolidate, and... well, if you know you know)
39 days. Hopefully not too long :)
Also I didn't die. why the heck would I die, that sounds awful. That made resources a bit scarce at first until I realized I could drink something stupid.
I don't think I'll go for completion... but I totally agree about the out-of-control items. The interface was getting really unresponsive and I'm not sure the ending went exactly how it was supposed to.
Post by: Kagus on February 08, 2024, 08:32:29 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I ended up finding the completion solution intentionally, through a very helpful tip I kinda wished I'd thought of earlier.
Once you get a journal, you can see a record both of what items you've discovered and of what recipes you've discovered. It also has entries for the undiscovered ones, but these are starred out.
The stars aren't random, however... They correspond to the number of letters in whatever item it is. The recipes are shown in full form with every ingredient, just with the letters swapped out with asterisks. So if you want to find a particular recipe, look for ingredients that have the indicated lengths. Spaces are counted.
I actually never died either... Managed to get down to 0 life by a fluke, but was still counted as living. Then it just went upwards from there
EDIT: Ah yeah, speaking of... Some sort of sound controls would be nice. Like, a mute button. Especially seeing as you can get a piano, start playing it, then annihilate the piano in some way while still playing it... And since the "stop playing piano" command is only available from a piano, you're just stuck with phantom piano doodling until you figure something else out.
EDIT2: It's now been close to four hours since I "completed" the game. It's still processing that development. 87,440 objects and counting...
Post by: DeKaFu on February 08, 2024, 01:12:20 pm
EDIT2: It's now been close to four hours since I "completed" the game. It's still processing that development. 87,440 objects and counting...
Interesting... For me:
Spoiler: Ending Spoilers (click to show/hide)
Post by: AlStar on February 08, 2024, 02:11:48 pm
One thing that was weird - even by the game's standards - was that I ended up with an extra river, so I disassembled it. Doing so somehow ended up getting me a couple fish, frogs, a crystal, and, of all things, a bike (that produces blood) - all things far beyond my character's current understanding. Just... what?
Post by: Kagus on February 08, 2024, 02:47:40 pm
Post by: Rolan7 on February 08, 2024, 05:11:44 pm
Post by: Kagus on February 08, 2024, 05:22:31 pm
Spoiler: More Barnacle Goose stuff (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on February 08, 2024, 05:44:51 pm
https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dawn-of-the-tiberium-age
trailer showing that new AI : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMWXxVVWnCs
though the lack of "attack move" is still annoying in DTA, i have been too used to this quality of life in RTS with the years.
Post by: Robsoie on February 15, 2024, 01:51:34 pm
Was expecting more fun due to the Destruction Derby-like gameplay but it seems there's some odd choices that seems to counter the actual fun (to increase the turbo gauge you need to hit things , but hitting things will slow you down more or less considerably in the same time).
There's a rubber band AI (so while you're behind the cars in front will be noticable slower but when you're right next to them they're back at being speedy etc... and when you're ahead they're turbo machines).
Each tracks has some shortcut, probably because the devs know how annoying the AI rubberbanding can be.
The demolition derby-like arena is in the "bonus" cup (same as long jump and high jump that are all about ragdolling the driver higher or longer distance out of your moving car) but does not seem as fun as i thought (especially as you must destroy the other cars to win it, but hitting them increase your own damage, sometime a lot)
The handling is a bit strange it's arcade of course but you lose massive amount of speed when turning in comparison to other racing games , contributing at making the actual racing feel slower than other racing games. But in the same time i've only tried the bronze cars, i imagine that slow feeling goes away with the upper classes car you can buy from the silver or gold cups .
Anyways, i found Flatout nowhere as fun as a Burnout (probably the speed and the more furious crashes between cars), but at least it looks nice and load insanely fast (a lost art for modern games on hard drives :D ).
Post by: Robsoie on February 17, 2024, 10:59:26 am
https://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors
Post by: Rolan7 on February 17, 2024, 12:29:39 pm
I'd seen The Protectors mentioned a lot on the wiki recently while checking base-game mechanics. I'm most interested in how they seemed to add some DND5-esque bonuses to the classes. From what I saw, going even further with possibility of making heroes who do well leading factions other than "their own" by covering weaknesses in their forces.
Don't get WB3 on Steam, it's on GOG for "the same" price. But actually half the price for the next 7 days! $5.
Post by: Robsoie on February 17, 2024, 01:45:20 pm
For Protectors no idea what it is worth in comparison to WB3 , the installer just fail on my system for some reason (maybe related to the false positive reports) and i'm already busy enough at losing my imperial guardsmen from friendly fire or massive chaos spells and various enemies sneezing at them in OXCE 40K Rosigma :D so i am not going to look further into it.
Post by: quinnr on March 19, 2024, 07:19:53 pm
I stumbled across AresMUSH (https://www.aresmush.com/), a "next-gen server platform that brings modern features to MUSH games: a fully-featured web portal and wiki, automated scene logging, [and] web-based character creation" and looks like fun for those who are into free-form text roleplay in an online group setting. The interface is super smooth. You can poke through (https://sixth-estate.aresmush.com/scene/81) people's game (https://keys.aresmush.com/scene/3441) logs (https://excelsior.troll20.com/scene/1579), which satisfies my urge to internet lurk. I like the heavy theming. All the scheduled roleplay scenes are collected into a game-wide calendar.
I really like the traditional MUD/MUSH room/object structure more than the freeform text roleplay aspect. (I'm not complaining, their FAQ warned me (https://aresmush.com/features/server-roundup.html#why-not-ares).) But this looks like a neat tool for those who enjoy typing.
Post by: Frumple on March 19, 2024, 10:58:15 pm
Never actually poked at it, though, always had a lot of trouble getting into the more freeform MUSH games. Had a fair bit of fun with more structured MUDs, but MUSHes I sometimes couldn't even figure out how to get the bloody command system to work, ha. Was somewhat amusing when my preferred client back in the day was MUSHclient, heh.
... also not really huge on RP in general, I liked MUDs mostly for the hack and slash stuff, especially when they used to the low-graphics environment to get kinda' wild with the actual mechanics. Been a long damn time since I've played one, though. Almost got around to firing some up again a few years back, but the one I was thinking of having a go with to break back into it (some variety of Angband MUD, i.e. a roguelike functioning as a particularly involved *band variant... there were actually more than one, back in the day) had shut down at some point and I stalled out.
Decent amount of nostalgia, though. Some of my earliest interactions with scripting involved making travel macros for MUDs, ha.
Post by: None on March 21, 2024, 09:46:45 pm
I've been playing Morrowind through the OpenMW adaptation; there's a mod that configurably randomizes the destinations that doors or door-like transitions to, and it's fucking me up man
I've got a reusable teleporter to a house mod that is entirely inner cells and each of its several dozen doors takes you to some entirely different interior cell and you end up with this massive hypothetical snarl of a path through eight radically different (and maybe dangerous) rooms to get back to that other cell that had something useful behind it, like a merchant with a fat wallet or a supply of throwing knives
but otherwise i was making a little home base in the interior of some tower, which served as the connection point for two entirely different cities, and with each city having dozens of doors on their own, you'd pivot through town trying to figure out if the fletcher door takes you to some ash cave or the mage's guild or, or some entirely different guy's house
i'm also playing primarily with the intent to fully decorate/occupy the big house mod from above with all the goodies I find in the world. The collecting and the displaying of random junk and treasure is actually kind of the only reason I'm playing Morrowind, now that I think of it, but i frigging love it
Post by: Frumple on March 22, 2024, 06:53:43 am
Oh, if you've got recommendations for the hack and slash stuff, I'm all ears. I've got a small list going.I wish I did, but I just checked on the only I remembered that I hadn't already noticed it had shut down (Ivalice MUD) and, well, it closed doors about a decade ago :V
There were a handful of others (beyond the mentioned Angband ones) I fiddled with, but I can't recall names and I'd be pretty surprised if they were still running... playerbase was already small when I stopped doing mud stuff much. Only thing I can super easily recall is I gravitated pretty heavily towards ones with, well, auto/mini-maps, mostly with color support. It took a while before I wrapped my head meaningfully around travel macros, back in the day, and prior to that the ones without some sort of navigation assistance were... daunting.
Do wish I could remember whatever that RTS one I tried for a while was, though. There was a hecka' neat one that was, well, an RTS instead of normal RPG stuff; base building, minions, research, etc. Heavy ASCII integration, especially in regards to the map. It's probably less innovative these days, but like 15-20 years ago it was pretty damn amazing, ha.
Post by: n9103 on March 22, 2024, 07:44:43 am
Post by: Robsoie on March 24, 2024, 07:31:47 am
So i tried the first Evil Within game. And so far it's rather awesome and nicely atmospheric if you like horror games with some stealth elements.
But what amazed me was the performance. On my potato after the usual "drop everything to low and see from there if i can increase things here and there" , i found the game on low is running very smoothly and despite being on low is still looking very impressive visually.
Then the other surprise is how fast it actually load, seriously with that level of visual quality and sound i was expecting long loading time on my good old HDD but no it's fast, even more puzzling when some other games with much less assets and much less visually/soundly quality can takes minutes.
I guess really not all engines (Evil Within is using the id Tech 5 engine) are equal at all without mentionning that the devs of that Evil Within had some rather high coding optimisation skillset.
Anyways, that first Evil Within a lot of fun if you're not repelled by horror themes in a videogame (the horror atmosphere feels like a mix between Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill) and the stealth elements are not bad at all so far.
I'm only at chapter 3 (there are 15 of them) , clearing that little village trying to help the doctor while collecting the green goo things to upgrade my skils and fetch more items (recently got a shotgun and crossbow from one of the houses).
Definitively recommended if you like the genre
Post by: Frumple on March 24, 2024, 11:41:39 am
EmpireMUD (https://github.com/EmpireMUD/EmpireMUD-2.0-Beta)?Mm... no, I do recall checking that one at some point, but the one I was remembering was more sci-fi, and much less cooperative and whatnot. More RTS than city builder. From a poke around some of the old sites I think it might have been some variety of Assault: High Tech Wars (https://www.topmudsites.com/forums/muddisplay.php?mudid=Assault). Doesn't seem to still be running, though.
Post by: Robsoie on March 25, 2024, 07:13:30 am
Post by: Robsoie on April 01, 2024, 01:46:59 pm
For a change of game, i"ve been trying to use the Historical Immersion Project, HIP (https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Historical_Immersion_Project) + the VIET Events Reborn (https://github.com/cybrxkhan/VIET-Events-Reborn) to add a lot more events and flavor to my dlc-less base CK2 (by the way the base CK2 game is permantly free on both gog and steam if you didn't knew)
The Latest HIP download location is defunct unfortunately :
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/historical-immersion-project-download-faq.748775/
but fortunately it can be found there on one of the last page of the related thread : https://www.mediafire.com/file/7oq5r2vakkh53de/HIP_2020-07-10_Frosty3.7z/file
there's a bugfix/balancing patch for HIP
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/frozen4-hip-bugfix-and-balance-patch-for-frosty3.1456679/
Not installed the new map of the component (SWMH ) of HIP as i want to keep my performance good (SWMH is great but adding a lot more areas, regions etc.. and related characters increase the load obviously)
Hmm, let's check with a minor zone, this corner of Sardinia named Arborea that seems perfect to start and has that nice fantasy realm name to it.
The Guidice ambition is to improve his martial abilities, Abisatu is not young anymore but is still willing to get better at commanding his army.
Spoiler: so how about giving it a try (click to show/hide)
Looks like his wife Joanna decided to make fun of her husband Abisatu improving his strategy skills..
Spoiler: she should have known better (click to show/hide)
Post by: Kagus on April 01, 2024, 04:05:04 pm
Wound up snagging the DLCs, and had my first victories as Priest and Ghoul. Priest was kinda weird, and I feel like it should probably be called "Jester" given how much juggling you end up doing to get things going... But it's still an "open" legacy and has some cool mechanics and such baked in, so I rather dig it and will be poking it a bit more later.
Ghoul... Man, the early/mid-game was way simpler and more pleasant than I'd expected, to the extent that I'm kinda sad I sorta "pre-loaded" my run instead of doing it "authentically"... But I am really struggling to understand how on earth you were supposed to know where to get what you needed to get beyond just doing a hysterically completionist run. If it weren't for the grind of getting the one singular victory that legacy allows, it would definitely be my favorite.
Also had a win as Dancer. Dancer is also weird, but in a different way. I'm glad the endings can be accessed by other legacies, because that is waaaay too much content to go through for that flimsy-ish beginning to support replaying with.
After passing 150 hours playtime, I can comfortably say that I'm entering the stage of player life where I'm quite comfortable with the mechanics, but still have no fuckin' idea about the lore :P
Post by: Robsoie on April 05, 2024, 03:02:38 am
I'm sure Thief 4 would have been renamed anything else or the devs would not have been using the Thief franchise just because they had bought it (and so making Thief 4 into its own unrelated to Thief game) it wouldn't have run into so much (often deserved) critics, because the game itself is not bad at all.
Though from what i played so far it feels a bit more linear in how to go through a mission (i guess to have all those forced cinematic cutscenes playing right) than old Thief games were (or at least the Fan Missions that often had a lot of different way to tackle the objectives as i think i played those even more than the default campaigns).
Interesting video very informative about what happened to this game as it looks like it went through some development hell with lead, vision and direction switching too often :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqN-C5pWyYQ
Anyways, after setting things to low to fit my old system, i'm surprised how smoothly it run while still looking very nice.
But it made me reinstall the 1st Thief game (Dark Project), because i just learned of the existence of a phenomenal fan mission (well a 10 mission campaign) for it that i need to try : The Black Parade
https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/26275/thief-the-black-parade
Post by: nenjin on April 06, 2024, 03:12:47 am
I think what broke me though was that stealth often felt "arena-based" in its design. The levels did feel a lot more linear. Initially it didn't bother me so much, but as I hit yet another outdoor section, be it a square or a garden or something, with 4 blokes patrolling around it just started feeling like work. Compared to my rose-tinted view of the older games where the stealth and the action felt better integrated into the environment.
It's one of those games I never even think about going back to try again. It just wasn't all that memorable to me and ultimately failed to draw me in. But I suppose if I was like, retired and had time to play all the things I've never finished, it definitely would get its due. I had the slight impulse to fire it up based on your post, and it was immediately quashed by "no way I'd put off other games for it." When the remake or the leaves you feeling nostalgic for the originals just a few hours in, that's a pretty telling sign.
I'm on the fence about how it would have performed without the Thief name. It was so much like its peers coming out at the time, and with the development hell delaying it even further, I think it just didn't do enough things really well to stand out.
Post by: Robsoie on April 06, 2024, 04:18:30 am
While everything felt occuring toward the end of medieval era in the other Thief games.
After progressing more, the linearity become more of an annoyance as you start to feel very "blocked in" , the mention of "arena" is accurate too so they can integrate those cinematic cutscenes regularly, as there's mostly only 1 path toward an objective the player can't accidentally miss triggering those cutscenes.
From my playthroughs Styx Shard of Darkness and Dishonored felt a lot more Thief-like than Thief 4 is.
Again, it's a good game but it's not really a Thief game or at least it does not "feel" like one.
Post by: Kagus on April 06, 2024, 04:11:48 pm
Post by: Robsoie on April 06, 2024, 06:49:35 pm
That was the mission of the 1st Thief demo, i think i played it so much time i knew the layout by heart once i got the actual game, mission was slightly edited for the retail version.
Anyways, on Thief 4 i ran into a frankly ridiculous thing on chapter 4, i don't know if it's a bug or some broken design decision though
Spoiler: spoiler if you haven't reached that chapter end (click to show/hide)
Post by: Akura on April 10, 2024, 04:06:34 pm
Post by: delphonso on April 26, 2024, 01:42:23 am
Nioh is absolutely great and far more my style of game than Dark Souls is. It's just fast Dark Souls, which more customization. It honestly buckles under all the mechanics it introduces, but whatever - it plays amazing.
Battletech is also very good. Gameplay, customization, and story, all are satisfying. I've had a lot of fun just taking jobs to blow away caravans or stomp all over some pirates.
Balatro is hyped beyond belief and yes, it is very good.
I've been playing We Love Katamari, the remaster, with my daughter - it's great, love reliving my childhood games with my kid.
Post by: Funk on April 26, 2024, 09:40:56 pm
Not great at battles or people management, but a good city builder.
Post by: Radsoc on April 28, 2024, 02:04:59 pm
Post by: nenjin on April 29, 2024, 09:58:20 am
No disrespect to the Manor Lord devs but....the game looks wildly over-hyped. I'm a little shocked how much coverage it has gotten, front page of Steam, a lot of other things. It reminds me of Tropico with fewer options. The production chains aren't super lengthy, there's no sim management of any kind, warfare is very barebones....
It gets the aesthetic just right, and the early game of course looks enticing as you build up. But once you've formed a stable village there just doesn't seem to be that much else interesting going on.
Compared to that OTHER 4x game that came out where your civilization goes from tribal to space age, Manor Lords looks like it needs another year of development.
I mean, last I saw a couple weeks ago, you couldn't even conqueror the other factions on the map.
So my take is "good game that they're launching too early into EA for it to be a complete experience."
Post by: Jopax on April 29, 2024, 12:58:51 pm
Still very early and lacking a ton of features, but whats there is fairly polished and enjoyable if you're looking for a somewhat relaxing city-builder. The atmosphere is pretty much spot on tho, I'd love to see them add more to it in terms of building variety and options to have some properly creative looking villages and towns down the line.
I'd say if you want a similar but far more involved and complete experience, go for Foundation as that one has been in development by a bit more people for a good while now and while it's nowhere near as graphically impressive it still looks and plays pretty good for the price.
Post by: nenjin on April 29, 2024, 02:45:46 pm
Post by: Chiefwaffles on April 30, 2024, 07:01:46 pm
I think it's getting a bit of a Banished treatment, a decent game that for some reason is way too talked up by a ton of people. From playing it a couple of hours, so far, it pretty much is Banished+
I was thinking the exact same thing. Banished's hype was and remains completely inexplicable to me. A solid game by all means, but I never understood why people seemed to go insane for it. I haven't played this (yet) or seen *too* much of it, but it strikes me the same way. Solid game with a weird hype around.
Post by: Iceblaster on May 01, 2024, 07:31:41 am
I think it's getting a bit of a Banished treatment, a decent game that for some reason is way too talked up by a ton of people. From playing it a couple of hours, so far, it pretty much is Banished+
I was thinking the exact same thing. Banished's hype was and remains completely inexplicable to me. A solid game by all means, but I never understood why people seemed to go insane for it. I haven't played this (yet) or seen *too* much of it, but it strikes me the same way. Solid game with a weird hype around.
Personally, I think it could just be because I don't think there was a big mainstream game of that sort before? That being a 'hardcore' settlement manager of the sort, Rimworld had only been out for a year and Dwarf Fortress was still at least afaik niche, City: Skylines was a year out so we were still in between major city building franchises, too.
I forget exactly the gaming landscape in 2014, though, so this is entirely speculative.
Post by: nenjin on May 01, 2024, 09:14:59 am
Post by: Mephansteras on May 01, 2024, 11:36:05 am
Manor Lord seems to have a lot more competition, so I'm not sure why it's getting quite so much hype.
Post by: Djohaal on May 01, 2024, 06:35:25 pm
Post by: n9103 on May 01, 2024, 06:53:31 pm
Post by: Persus13 on May 01, 2024, 08:08:11 pm
Being high up on Steam's most wishlisted games, and then people liking the narrative of a small indie city builder getting to that point seems to be most of the reason for the hype from what I've seen.
Post by: nenjin on May 01, 2024, 09:23:57 pm
Post by: TurboDwarf on May 02, 2024, 03:08:58 am
Which is funny because i tend to like games like that.
Post by: Persus13 on May 02, 2024, 08:25:05 am
I think it's just good ol' fashioned marketing. IIRC Legend of Total War got his copy for free from the devs. So they probably hit up a lot of people in the scene with free copies, and probably have a competent marketing department that knew how to talk to Steam. Steam does clearly pick winners in the top banner ads. And it may not even be total wishlists but by how fast it gets wishlisted. And there could also just be plain paid placement. All that, combined with it actually looking like a decent game, can go a long ways toward shaping perception.Good marketing is certainly a factor, and Hooded Horse is a publisher that's got a good track record of interesting strategy games (Against the Storm, Terra Invicta, etc.) but not at these numbers. Skill is certainly a factor but luck is as well.
All sorts of games have positive press coverage, good demos, and give free copies to YouTubers. But that doesn't always translate to 3 million wishlist and 1 million sales in the first week.
Also from what I can tell, it's a solo dev project, although he's certainly being helped by a good marketing department as you said.