We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

o_o if i had played that i would have cared o_o

I do love multiplayer minecraft, but I do find it's pretty reliant on good teammates and a good server. Which is why I'm reluctant to hop onto public servers simply because People Are Assholes. Making megaprojects on your own in SSP is kind of really sad, though. My Dw20 1.5 SSP gets more and more depressingly intricate with every passing day. (ice road across half a continent, sigh)

(In Noctis, according to the fiction, you spacecraft had enough firepower to destroy a sun... but there was no way to use it, and no enemies to use it on. That wasn't what the game was about.)

Ah, I wish more SF could at least give a nod to the idea behind Jon’s Law like that.

A guy made a procedurally generated universe a bit less thorough; although it is neat (if a little difficult to navigate), he came to the conclusion that it was kind of boring because procedural generation is no substitute for mechanics or novelty; if the content thus produced is meant for us to recognize, we quickly recognize the underlying patterns.

Yeah, Spore definitely promised more than it could deliver. I think sandbox games in general run that risk. That's why I'm a bit skeptical about No Man's Sky. (especially given the spate of overambitious space exploration games on Kickstarter these days) But my God, look at it. I want it to be real.

I'm a little surprised you're burnt on Minecraft though; you made some awesome stuff. I wish I would have bought the game while the MSPA server was still running.

diamond in the back

sunroof top

gangster white walls

dangit I was going to point this reference out than I realized you just linked to it

How about farming
wolves

But yes, I was in the middle of typing a solid paragraph or three about my fears regarding No Man's Sky right after it was posted here, but then didn't and now it's lost. While the idea of being an explorer, exploring new planets and documeting new life-forms, is a super neat idea, it usually ends up looking sorta like exquisite corpse roulette pick a gravity, plant color, and sky color from the list below, and despite there being umpteen different combinations they're all really kinda just the same. I'd be much more interested if you could somehow procedurally generate meaningfully different gameplay dynamics. Kinda like if Waking Mars were somehow one product of a massive xenoecosystem generator which is kind of a dream, but file it with self-driving cars and amazon drone delivery I guess.

I wanna say that Dwarf Fortress kinda does this in that it does provide a lot of different possible little shits that can happen, but it's mostly drawn out of a hat of existing mechanics that are all possible and varying applied. like being in a terrifying biome is a pretty different game than in a serene, at least on the surface. If you go full-hermit kingdom, then you only really have to worry about the resurrection mechanic. And if you're unlucky/lucky with your immigrants, you get to deal with the vampire mechanic. You might have oodles of coal, or you might have to smelt bars one at a time as you wait for trees to grow so you can make charcoal out of them. Full disclosure: I may have some tobias wards DF. Feel free to shut my sorry ass down.

Wait, hang on. What are you doing with those tobias wards, and what do they have to do with me?

Procedural generation can be really cool, but I am dead certain it is only good in games as a means to an end. Dwarf Fortress uses procedural generation to create a world ripe for emergent behavior. Procedural generation is often mistaken for having emergent behavior because some successful games have both, and they complement each other pretty well. The truth is, it’s hard to algorithmically guarantee that outputs are interesting game-wise without having those things predetermined somewhere. So procedural content generation will remain a mere tool in the game design shed, at least for now. Computers have no conception nor model of human boredom, and level/gameplay designers have no intention of making their field unemployable.

Just the other day on another forum, I wrote a hamfisted post that touched on how The Elder Scrolls has always had elements of getting the procedural/emergent stuff and gets so close, but never quite got it all down. I doubt it’s for a lack of trying, mind you. I will say that all the random anonymous people from the highway robbery / Radiant quest / pre-Morrowind giant cities always stick out as horrifyingly meaningless next to the named ones and the casual conversations between NPCs in Oblivion/Skyrim come off as contrived because almost nobody talks to each other....

I have a friend who raves to no end about the community-pak’d version of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl because it does this so well. It accurately simulates things like feral dogs dragging food to places of safety, guns jamming at the worst possible time, and your probable inability to survive a one-on-five shoot-off with highly competent Ukrainian Spetsnaz. Anything with hitpoints is pretty much looking out for itself.

Q: Okay, I’m pretty convinced, I gotta have emergent behavior! But Mr. Warren Spector, just how do I ensure plausible but unexpected things will happen?
Not-actually!Spector: Let me paraphrase a few points from a speech I gave recently but this Internet person posting this post was never actually there to hear and is probably maligning my character by misunderstanding something important. As much as possible, you need to have:
- Global rules, avoiding specific or instanced behavior for things besides easter eggs or quest-important stuff. You need to let the systems work this out. Speaking of systems, you also need
- Interacting systems that are consistent with expectations, but not predetermined. For instance, a torch has both fire and light; some objects are flammable, and some guards notice light. Speaking of properties things can have, you finally need
- A variety of object properties with simulated effects that a player can recognize and engage with. If there is water in your game, it should behave like water, and it should be behaved in like water. It should put out torches. It should not drown humans immediately on contact.

This should sound obvious, but for any “thing” in the game, you need to be able to break it down into its relevant attributes (what a Hume-an revolution AH HA HA HA HA), and those attributes need to play by the world’s rules for that attribute. If you have a spell in the game that turns red things blue, then by gum you had better not have a red thing that doesn’t turn blue when the spell gets a legit hit.

Naturally, all this categorizing takes a lot of effort. Not only do you have to make all this stuff, you have to fine tune the holy crap out of it to make a world that’s just the right kind of complex. But when you’ve got enough things in place, what comes out of it is likely to surprise you.

the thing I took away from STALKER is that the predetermined npcs are often under equipped to deal with a harsh, unrelenting world where the enemy AI never stops hounding them until they're dead, like those butterflies that just happened to be the wrong color to blend in with the plants in the area

(the same thing happens in farcry 3, but it's much funnier because tigers are involved, and you forget about the completely backwards game logic written by a psychopath for a while as you revel in the chaos caused by wild animals intentionally buffed to be largely resistant to gunfire)

looking-up-edit: borderlands 2 has been ten bucks around everywhere already, it just depends on whose sales cycle you're looking at, and how much their threshold for profit depends on lying about the value

i'm still holding out for the superultimatepatourselvesontheback edition with the actual complete package of things for a pittance, but feel free to goad me into buying it at the time you find yourself willing to do so

If you guys are picking up Borderlands 2 and want to get into some multiplayer shenanigans, I'd love to join in. Maybe reroll my Psycho, maybe make a Gunzerker, I dunno.

Amazon actually appears to have a GOTY edition for 7.50 right now. I'm currently kicking myself for picking it up at 30 during last week's "sale"

Hey, I've spent ~70 bucks on this game; I bought it when it came out and then got some DLC. Don't feel too bad about it.

Oops

Stupid similar box art

Gone Home: strongly recommended by me.

I might get in on these border lands, but i probably wouldn't be too serious about it so don't worry about like trying to guarantee I be there or whatever.

Yeah sure I'd be up for some BLand2. Shoulda held out for GotY, I guess; shit has all the DLC in. Kinda want that Psycho...

Figure I'd roll an Engineer or a Spy, they tend to be my preferred classes. (wait which game are we playing again) Siren seems neat too, though; if we get to high levels I do like the idea of a mobile death vortex... Hmm.

You could always hold out for the Winter Steam Sale? It's sorta an oldish game by now, I think, but what with the new Telltale game they have coming I imagine BL2 et al will be discounted. Drum up interest or some such marketing strategy. That's how that works, right?

Yeah, they added the Psycho after all the Season Pass DLC was finished. Pretty fun class; his action skill restricts him to just using his buzz-axe, whether that's driving it directly into skulls or hurling it at enemies, and gives him full health on kill. He can also get a skill that lets him run around throwing dynamite while downed.

Krieg's skill sounds like all-melee Brick. I'm in.

he basically is, except with the penalty of 90% of his skills involve him taking damage to activate them

he has an entire skill tree revolving around being lit on fire

KRIEG IS THE BEST CLASS
and you get to throw the Buzz Axe too :D

He is essentially the raid-boss fucker
final mania (middle) skill turns you into a giant psycho if you're beneath 33% hp, giving you massive damage and filling your hp
it also gives your action skill no cooldown

the only downside to mania is one of the penultimate skills gives you massive melee damage with a "small" chance to smack yourself in the face (actual experience it's like 90% when you really need it)
Unless you throw the buzz axe (which is about half the dps of normal melee)
Theres also a mid-level skill in the left tree which adds dynamite to thrown buzz axes

to go along with the "throw dynamite while downed(while running at full speed and also do a suicide bomb when you actually die that could also revive you)" skill krieg also has an "instantly revive a friend, but makes you go down instead, with a longer duration"


So, you basically revive downed friend->explode a mook with bomb(thus reviving with 33% hp if you don't have any hp relics)-> action skill -> wreck faces

Downsides to Krieg:
Commando turrets Killstealing revives
Commando turret deploy nuke when you have the "take friendly fire" skill
(just don't play with a commando.just...don't)
(that goes for anyone)

Upsides:
Really fun
One of the Heads is a crown
Really Fun
HAIL TO THE KRIENG
"suave" inner-krieg voice
He has the Best Trailer
Did I mention he was fun?

I'd be up for BL2, time zones permitting

Looking at some screens of Superstar Saga. Fuck I want to replay this game now.

Yeah, I think this sounds like a good arrangement.

hey so gaymerx has kickstarted an adventure game and they've named SNATCHER as their biggest inspiration and it's coming out for ouya first and i don't know how to feel about this

e: the title is read-only memories because they were working on the game since before march and it was too late to change it then

hey so gaymerx has kickstarted an adventure game and they've named SNATCHER as their biggest inspiration and it's coming out for ouya first and i don't know how to feel about this

coming out for ouya first

I'd say "vexed," but if they plan to make a PC port of it I couldn't object. Might be fun.

we all would have forgotten about it too if it hadn't been for la mulana

Dust: An Elysian Tail is on sale for $3.75 in the Humble Store. The Mac and Linux ports now available DRM-free there will be coming to Steam on Thursday. I haven’t played it, but having known the guy who made it a little bit, I’m sure it’s pretty sweet.

(I giggle at the part where it’s published by Microsoft Studios, even though I know this is far from the first time Microsoft has made something not for Windows or DRM-free).

Dust: An Elysian Tail is on sale for $3.75 in the Humble Store. The Mac and Linux ports now available DRM-free there will be coming to Steam on Thursday. I haven’t played it, but having known the guy who made it a little bit, I’m sure it’s pretty sweet.

I enjoyed Dust: AET a lot. If you have the opportunity to pick up the soundtrack, get that, too.

SRPG fans in JRPG fandom are like Bayesians at a statistics convention: they’re allowed to attend, but they have to stay in the back corner.

that is completely made up i actually have no idea.