I had some honey garlic chicken late last night, and now I am throwing up things I don't even remember eating. I won't name and shame the eating establishment that served me, but I will say that it looked a lot like my apartment, and the cook was very handsome.
Anyway, as a proactive measure I'm going to delay my stream until next Sunday, the 23rd. My driving is bad enough on a normal day, let alone when there is a rendition of the hit 2000 film A Perfect Storm being performed inside of my stomach.
Played a bit of Civ6 after a long, long hiatus, and man, that game makes me feel like an idiot. Despite having played triple digit hours, I still don't feel I have a solid grasp on the mechanics, *especially* when it comes to domination-focused Civs, especially-especially the Aztecs. How people "roll over" other civs with their unique unit before opponents have walls, or barbs ruin your day, is utterly beyond me
Normally when I play D&D games (especially in person) I use 27-point-buy for generating stats. Here I've opted instead to use the game's dice rolling and roll 3 sets for each character, keeping the best set. It yields considerably better scores but whatever. It's a video game and it cheats anyway. :razz:
We have Mina, our half-orc battle cleric of Einar. She likes to smash faces and is hoping to live long enough to learn to throw fireballs, too. I went with battle cleric because they get some great wizard spells and martial weapon proficiency, and the idea of a fireball-tossing, sword-swinging cleric is too good to miss.
Pic & Attributes:
Then there's Thawmus Spinestealer, an academically-inclined snow dwarf wizard. For now his best spells are magic missile and fog cloud, but he has great ambitions and will one day be tossing around cones of cold and disintegrating things.
Pic & Attributes:
Shooting things from dark corners and providing dinner in the wilderness is ... Koopah Troopah. Pretty sure that's an alias, but I'm not arguing with a stabby ranger. Koopah is also responsible for dealing with all traps and locks since we don't have a rogue. No pressure.
Pic & Attributes:
Finally, there's Iolo Jones. Half-elf, lawbringer. Paladin. Taker of no shit. Group heartthrob and obligatory ginger. Also, he makes up in charisma what he sorely lacks in intelligence... (edit: he's a follower of Pakri, a member of the Order of the Owls, and all about justice and law)
Chipmunks are like nature's nipple clamps, I guess?
+17
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
edited January 2022
I felt a strange disturbance in the air and couldn't work out what it was until I popped into this thread and the first thing I see is @Iolo talking about Mutons.
Played a bit of Civ6 after a long, long hiatus, and man, that game makes me feel like an idiot. Despite having played triple digit hours, I still don't feel I have a solid grasp on the mechanics, *especially* when it comes to domination-focused Civs, especially-especially the Aztecs. How people "roll over" other civs with their unique unit before opponents have walls, or barbs ruin your day, is utterly beyond me
I have nevet been able to get my arms around Civ games in a way that makes me comfortable. I want to enjoy the games, but something doesn't click.
It's like a reverse Total Warhammer, where I also don't really have a grasp on anything at all, but still enjoy those games to pieces.
I always have trouble with any kind of optimal play in civ or any sort of 4x game. Like I just do stuff and if it works great if not I'm not surprised.
Played a bit of Civ6 after a long, long hiatus, and man, that game makes me feel like an idiot. Despite having played triple digit hours, I still don't feel I have a solid grasp on the mechanics, *especially* when it comes to domination-focused Civs, especially-especially the Aztecs. How people "roll over" other civs with their unique unit before opponents have walls, or barbs ruin your day, is utterly beyond me
I have nevet been able to get my arms around Civ games in a way that makes me comfortable. I want to enjoy the games, but something doesn't click.
It's like a reverse Total Warhammer, where I also don't really have a grasp on anything at all, but still enjoy those games to pieces.
I was huge into 1-4, even played quite a bit of Rev, but I hated pretty much all of the changes in 5, and only tried to play 6 a couple times, but was completely overwhelmed by all the incomprehensible bullshit that it threw at you right from the start. The main thing that sticks in my head was that there were pseudo-achievements that you're supposed to remember for literally every single fucking tech... as well as every civic, so basically doubling the amount of dumb trivial stuff you were supposed to look up and remember right from the start. And I just... nope. Rage quit right out. Ease me in. Libraries increase science. Build libraries for more science. Oh, and they also do this other thing too. Pile on the intricacies and shit as you go, don't spew it all up front in one intimidating mess.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
edited January 2022
I always play Civ games on the easiest difficulty so I can just have fun mucking about, and learn how to play the game as I go and learn new things each time I play while still more or less steam-rolling the opposition.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I always play Civ games on the easiest difficulty so I can just have fun mucking about, and learn how to play the game as I go and learn new things each time I play while still more or less steam-rolling the opposition.
I did this back with Civ 2 but by Civ 4 or so, I discovered that you experience less of the game that way. The tech tree takes so much time to fully research that without cooperating with other civs for tech/research, you ended up discovering railroads 50 years after they were invented IRL and stuff like that unless you know how to min/max your research output which you probably don't if playing on easier difficulties.
1 or 2 down from the default on the other hand seemed to be a balance between getting to see later techs and still steamrolling the AI while still learning the game.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited January 2022
I got into civ 6 recently. I played Khmer and managed to win with a religious victory on a huge map.
Then I played a tiny map and won with domination using Rome.
Now I'm thinking of going for a science victory on a huge map again. Maybe with korea?
I never play these things on anything other than normal.
I really enjoy having a game I barely understand. Dive into wikis, always feel like I have more to learn, lots of cool stuff you can do, its fun. Super impressed the game has an actual wikipedia built in I can search terms with. That's sick.
The tech and civ bonuses to research are good for going for a specific build but seriously just do not think about them your first time through. You do not need to know what they are or consciously use them to win on normal, at all. That's for advanced players on high difficulties, who have learnt what to do. It's not expected that a new player will use them. You can just figure them out as you play multiple games and get more experience.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Just finished Shadow Tactics. That was by far the best $4 I ever spent on a game. Thanks to whomever it was here that alerted me to it. Now to wait for the DLC to go on sale, because I'm ready to eat that up too.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
+24
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I was thinking doing the FMV-A-Thon this month. You can still organize them after the holidays, right? I was thinking of setting it up for proceeds to go to Child's Play, though I'm not too sure about how to arrange the logistics.
Just finished Shadow Tactics. That was by far the best $4 I ever spent on a game. Thanks to whomever it was here that alerted me to it. Now to wait for the DLC to go on sale, because I'm ready to eat that up too.
My shining Shadow Tactics moment was when I
snuck through the emperor's camp at night without killing any guards. The emperor wasn't a bad dude and his people were just doing their jobs so fists and distractions only, zero casualties. My Quick Save and Quick Load buttons were starting to smoke by the end of that stage.
That's not just a MOBA thing, you'll find it in many other types of game... it's just an asshole thing.
It's just that MOBA's take a long time to lose, even when you are losing badly, so there's more time for the assholes to blame everyone but themselves.
Especially DOTA2, where people intentionally don't win so they can farm kills while you can't do anything, and there's no surrender option. Smurfs especially enjoy allchat taunting.
After watching the crowbcat video on the differences between Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood (spoiler alert - it's depressing) I decided to fire up Left 4 Dead since I had only played a tiny bit of it back when it released. I just played through the No Mercy levels and it was a total blast.
It's a trip going back and seeing the blocky environments with their razor sharp corners and very specific fire effects that are the hallmark of early Source Engine games. The only issues I had were some occasional AI problems (a character somehow teleporting to an area that neither I or the other AI players could get to, then getting knocked down and killed by a Hunter since we couldn't rescue him... during the climactic massive battle where having a 4th survivor would have really come in handy, another character getting stuck on the environment and refusing to get into an elevator until I got out and pistol whipped him a couple of times, that sort of thing).
The video explores how the team behind the original Left 4 Dead put a lot of time and effort into the animations and reactions for the zombie horde, and it definitely shows in the game. It's wild how enemy reactions in a game from 2008 can be so much more advanced than a game released just a couple of months ago.
edit:
It took a zombie apocalypse, but we finally got rid of Portland. 100% worth it.
SmokeStacks on
+11
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I actually have enjoyed what I played of Back 4 blood
After watching the crowbcat video on the differences between Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood (spoiler alert - it's depressing) I decided to fire up Left 4 Dead since I had only played a tiny bit of it back when it released. I just played through the No Mercy levels and it was a total blast.
It's a trip going back and seeing the blocky environments with their razor sharp corners and very specific fire effects that are the hallmark of early Source Engine games. The only issues I had were some occasional AI problems (a character somehow teleporting to an area that neither I or the other AI players could get to, then getting knocked down and killed by a Hunter since we couldn't rescue him... during the climactic massive battle where having a 4th survivor would have really come in handy, another character getting stuck on the environment and refusing to get into an elevator until I got out and pistol whipped him a couple of times, that sort of thing).
The video explores how the team behind the original Left 4 Dead put a lot of time and effort into the animations and reactions for the zombie horde, and it definitely shows in the game. It's wild how enemy reactions in a game from 2008 can be so much more advanced than a game released just a couple of months ago.
edit:
It took a zombie apocalypse, but we finally got rid of Portland. 100% worth it.
I know this is news to no one, but Hyper Light Drifter is a good video game.
+4
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ArmsForPeace84Your Partner In FreedomRegistered Userregular
The same dude, crowbcat, made an eye-opening video about how much more detailed the environments and enemy behavior are in Far Cry 2 than more recent entries in that franchise.
Fire spreading more realistically, vegetation reacting to explosions, enemies crawling for safety and getting rescued by their buddies. Again, from a game in 2008, a pretty amazing year for new releases.
There were moments in Farcry 2, the way the sun hit, that really, REALLY, felt like the last time I was in Africa.
Its like....those scenes in movies of driving through northwest or northeast forests, or American farmland really fucking hit different if you have experienced that space.
It just feels weird that we're at a point where you can see the entire world reflected in a procedurally generated drop of sweat on an NPCs forehead or whatever, but in a lot of ways we're moving backwards when it comes to videogames. When is the last time you played a videogame with a working mirror?
It just feels weird that we're at a point where you can see the entire world reflected in a procedurally generated drop of sweat on an NPCs forehead or whatever, but in a lot of ways we're moving backwards when it comes to videogames. When is the last time you played a videogame with a working mirror?
Well, the issue is more that the way mirrors used to be generated you essentially had to double up on processing and so on, which could really put a load on the processor/GPU. My impression is that RTX makes that easier, but I have no idea.
The other issue is that the way your character is animated in when you are in first person looks utterly ridiculous when in third person, and matching those animations does not help with verisimilitude.
It just feels weird that we're at a point where you can see the entire world reflected in a procedurally generated drop of sweat on an NPCs forehead or whatever, but in a lot of ways we're moving backwards when it comes to videogames. When is the last time you played a videogame with a working mirror?
Hitman has mirrors I think (they might have been patched in with Hitman 2? Working mirrors that NPCs can spot you in or sth?), they do some trickery to reduce load.
Another reason why Deus Ex is GOTY forever. Best mirrors, full reflections
It just feels weird that we're at a point where you can see the entire world reflected in a procedurally generated drop of sweat on an NPCs forehead or whatever, but in a lot of ways we're moving backwards when it comes to videogames. When is the last time you played a videogame with a working mirror?
Well, the issue is more that the way mirrors used to be generated you essentially had to double up on processing and so on, which could really put a load on the processor/GPU. My impression is that RTX makes that easier, but I have no idea.
The other issue is that the way your character is animated in when you are in first person looks utterly ridiculous when in third person, and matching those animations does not help with verisimilitude.
The original way mirrors used to be generated was to just have the "mirror" be a hole in the wall displaying an identical but mirrored room that was physically rendered on the other side. Then you just have a character sprite or model set to mirror the player's actions when the player moves in front of the mirror. The variance in first and third person animations can be kind of goofy (like when Dead Island shipped with a bug that made the third person animations display while you were in a first person view), but there has been at least one game (TimeSplitters Future Perfect if I remember right) that just had the mirrored model use third person animations, so it looked normal when viewed by the player. Amusingly enough, this method was also used for the Airport level in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - there is an upside down version of most of the level that is underneath semi-transparent tiles on the ground that gives the appearance of a waxed reflective floor.
You could fake this with portals, though. The game Portal showed that you could have a rendered environment with multiple portals showing the same environment without causing significant increases in resource usage. Since the majority of time you'll find mirrors in bathrooms, and not a lot of action goes on in bathrooms (unless you've got a wide stance) I think using portals to let the player view an identical mirrored room stored somewhere else on the map should be doable way more often than it is done. Trying to accurately reflect the room (like a true mirror would do) is what is incredibly taxing, because its a shitload of math going on for basically no reason when the alternative is just looking into another room.
Hitman has mirrors I think (they might have been patched in with Hitman 2? Working mirrors that NPCs can spot you in or sth?), they do some trickery to reduce load.
Another reason why Deus Ex is GOTY forever. Best mirrors, full reflections
Posts
Anyway, as a proactive measure I'm going to delay my stream until next Sunday, the 23rd. My driving is bad enough on a normal day, let alone when there is a rendition of the hit 2000 film A Perfect Storm being performed inside of my stomach.
I'm going back to bed.
Steam | XBL
Perhaps. But based on that last mission, I think my response to that probably remains, "WOOOO GONNA REND ME SOME MUTONS!"
(Sorry, Smokes! Get some rest!)
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Is that virtuous?
Normally when I play D&D games (especially in person) I use 27-point-buy for generating stats. Here I've opted instead to use the game's dice rolling and roll 3 sets for each character, keeping the best set. It yields considerably better scores but whatever. It's a video game and it cheats anyway. :razz:
We have Mina, our half-orc battle cleric of Einar. She likes to smash faces and is hoping to live long enough to learn to throw fireballs, too. I went with battle cleric because they get some great wizard spells and martial weapon proficiency, and the idea of a fireball-tossing, sword-swinging cleric is too good to miss.
Pic & Attributes:
Then there's Thawmus Spinestealer, an academically-inclined snow dwarf wizard. For now his best spells are magic missile and fog cloud, but he has great ambitions and will one day be tossing around cones of cold and disintegrating things.
Pic & Attributes:
Shooting things from dark corners and providing dinner in the wilderness is ... Koopah Troopah. Pretty sure that's an alias, but I'm not arguing with a stabby ranger. Koopah is also responsible for dealing with all traps and locks since we don't have a rogue. No pressure.
Pic & Attributes:
Finally, there's Iolo Jones. Half-elf, lawbringer. Paladin. Taker of no shit. Group heartthrob and obligatory ginger. Also, he makes up in charisma what he sorely lacks in intelligence... (edit: he's a follower of Pakri, a member of the Order of the Owls, and all about justice and law)
Pic & Attributes:
I have nevet been able to get my arms around Civ games in a way that makes me comfortable. I want to enjoy the games, but something doesn't click.
It's like a reverse Total Warhammer, where I also don't really have a grasp on anything at all, but still enjoy those games to pieces.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I was huge into 1-4, even played quite a bit of Rev, but I hated pretty much all of the changes in 5, and only tried to play 6 a couple times, but was completely overwhelmed by all the incomprehensible bullshit that it threw at you right from the start. The main thing that sticks in my head was that there were pseudo-achievements that you're supposed to remember for literally every single fucking tech... as well as every civic, so basically doubling the amount of dumb trivial stuff you were supposed to look up and remember right from the start. And I just... nope. Rage quit right out. Ease me in. Libraries increase science. Build libraries for more science. Oh, and they also do this other thing too. Pile on the intricacies and shit as you go, don't spew it all up front in one intimidating mess.
Steam ID: Good Life
I did this back with Civ 2 but by Civ 4 or so, I discovered that you experience less of the game that way. The tech tree takes so much time to fully research that without cooperating with other civs for tech/research, you ended up discovering railroads 50 years after they were invented IRL and stuff like that unless you know how to min/max your research output which you probably don't if playing on easier difficulties.
1 or 2 down from the default on the other hand seemed to be a balance between getting to see later techs and still steamrolling the AI while still learning the game.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Then I played a tiny map and won with domination using Rome.
Now I'm thinking of going for a science victory on a huge map again. Maybe with korea?
I never play these things on anything other than normal.
I really enjoy having a game I barely understand. Dive into wikis, always feel like I have more to learn, lots of cool stuff you can do, its fun. Super impressed the game has an actual wikipedia built in I can search terms with. That's sick.
The tech and civ bonuses to research are good for going for a specific build but seriously just do not think about them your first time through. You do not need to know what they are or consciously use them to win on normal, at all. That's for advanced players on high difficulties, who have learnt what to do. It's not expected that a new player will use them. You can just figure them out as you play multiple games and get more experience.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
My shining Shadow Tactics moment was when I
Influent is free at Humble Store for a limited time!
LIMITED TIME!!!
🖥️Steam Profile
Oh shit, fewer than 978 years to go, JUMP ON THAT!
Wow, thanks for that .01!
Especially DOTA2, where people intentionally don't win so they can farm kills while you can't do anything, and there's no surrender option. Smurfs especially enjoy allchat taunting.
It's a trip going back and seeing the blocky environments with their razor sharp corners and very specific fire effects that are the hallmark of early Source Engine games. The only issues I had were some occasional AI problems (a character somehow teleporting to an area that neither I or the other AI players could get to, then getting knocked down and killed by a Hunter since we couldn't rescue him... during the climactic massive battle where having a 4th survivor would have really come in handy, another character getting stuck on the environment and refusing to get into an elevator until I got out and pistol whipped him a couple of times, that sort of thing).
The video explores how the team behind the original Left 4 Dead put a lot of time and effort into the animations and reactions for the zombie horde, and it definitely shows in the game. It's wild how enemy reactions in a game from 2008 can be so much more advanced than a game released just a couple of months ago.
edit:
It took a zombie apocalypse, but we finally got rid of Portland. 100% worth it.
I seen that video, its good shit
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Fire spreading more realistically, vegetation reacting to explosions, enemies crawling for safety and getting rescued by their buddies. Again, from a game in 2008, a pretty amazing year for new releases.
Its like....those scenes in movies of driving through northwest or northeast forests, or American farmland really fucking hit different if you have experienced that space.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Steam | XBL
Sorry? Zombies? Busy studying all that Metal Gear Solid booty
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
so good
Well, the issue is more that the way mirrors used to be generated you essentially had to double up on processing and so on, which could really put a load on the processor/GPU. My impression is that RTX makes that easier, but I have no idea.
The other issue is that the way your character is animated in when you are in first person looks utterly ridiculous when in third person, and matching those animations does not help with verisimilitude.
Cyberpunk, but it somehow removed my pants.
Another reason why Deus Ex is GOTY forever. Best mirrors, full reflections
The original way mirrors used to be generated was to just have the "mirror" be a hole in the wall displaying an identical but mirrored room that was physically rendered on the other side. Then you just have a character sprite or model set to mirror the player's actions when the player moves in front of the mirror. The variance in first and third person animations can be kind of goofy (like when Dead Island shipped with a bug that made the third person animations display while you were in a first person view), but there has been at least one game (TimeSplitters Future Perfect if I remember right) that just had the mirrored model use third person animations, so it looked normal when viewed by the player. Amusingly enough, this method was also used for the Airport level in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - there is an upside down version of most of the level that is underneath semi-transparent tiles on the ground that gives the appearance of a waxed reflective floor.
You could fake this with portals, though. The game Portal showed that you could have a rendered environment with multiple portals showing the same environment without causing significant increases in resource usage. Since the majority of time you'll find mirrors in bathrooms, and not a lot of action goes on in bathrooms (unless you've got a wide stance) I think using portals to let the player view an identical mirrored room stored somewhere else on the map should be doable way more often than it is done. Trying to accurately reflect the room (like a true mirror would do) is what is incredibly taxing, because its a shitload of math going on for basically no reason when the alternative is just looking into another room.
Silent Hill 3 had a mirror.