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Liquid Dinosaur posted:Hey Kazerad, how do you always seem to find the /co/ threads? Do you just lurk /co/ after an update, or do you have some kind of bot that detects when a Prequel thread happens somehow? I usually just peek every once in a while at the catalog; usually when a thread pops up it uses one of the latest panels as the first post image. It's not terribly obvious when reading the comic normally, but the panels have a sort of gradual color shift depending on the scene -  - if you know which color you're looking for, the right thread will pop right out. And if not you just sort of do a search for "Prequel" to be sure.
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Oct 21, 2012 09:47
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| # ? May 29, 2024 05:24 |
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We have an update!  http://www.prequeladventure.com/2012/11/2435/
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Nov 1, 2012 13:58
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Ah, she's definitely a player character now: she's doing the thing where you just sort of join all the guilds.
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Nov 1, 2012 14:33
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Talking about Sigrid? Oh this does not look like it will end well (see also: every other page of Prequel.)
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Nov 1, 2012 15:03
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quote:For the nines’ sake become hardened and world weary already. You can’t play to cute and innocent cat-girl anymore, that poo poo obviously hasn’t been working. This may end up being a really, really drat good thing for Katia.
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Nov 1, 2012 15:15
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Oh dear, I reached the end of this one and thought to myself wow, things are looking up!, then realised that the only reason that I'd thought that was because nothing had gone wrong over the course of this one strip.
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Nov 1, 2012 15:20
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Am I terrible for thinking the eyepatch looks cool and just wanting it to stick around for the immediate future? (Because I do).
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Nov 1, 2012 17:32
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Maybe if she got a proper badass-looking eyepatch instead of just a bandage.
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Nov 1, 2012 17:41
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Besides, you only get half as many tears from making a one-eyed catgirl cry. With that low output, what's even the point?
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Nov 1, 2012 20:58
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But the tear duct is likely still intact! 
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Nov 2, 2012 04:05
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Crying from a bandaged eye must be relatively high on the creepyness scale. I picked Prequel up a few days ago and I'm rather surprised how good it is. Oh well, another webcomic to read. holy hell those HTML5 panels were awesome
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Nov 2, 2012 11:36
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Tollymain posted:But the tear duct is likely still intact! Hell, maybe should could start crying blood, like the villain from Casino Royale! That get you off?
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Nov 2, 2012 15:06
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She should watch the Riddick movies and take after his example, kill some people and get someone to surgically implant night vision eyes that actually loving work.
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Nov 2, 2012 15:14
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That only works if you're sent to a prison where they tell you you'll never see daylight again. Plus, I'm not sure they have menthol Kools in Tamriel.
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Nov 2, 2012 15:32
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Phylodox posted:That only works if you're sent to a prison where they tell you you'll never see daylight again. Plus, I'm not sure they have menthol Kools in Tamriel. Meh, if she hangs out underground long enough, she could become like a Falmer Khajiit. Crazy hissy albino cats with weird eyes.
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Nov 2, 2012 15:49
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Yonic Symbolism posted:She should watch the Riddick movies and take after his example, kill some people and get someone to surgically implant night vision eyes that actually loving work.
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Nov 3, 2012 18:02
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Riddick was lying about that, those were his real eyes. No he wasn't? It happens in the canon and actually very good video game.
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Nov 3, 2012 19:00
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Silentman0 posted:No he wasn't? It happens in the canon and actually very good video game. In Pitch Black and the game, the eyes were substituted. In the second movie, Riddick is a member of some crazy-rear end ultra-violent demi-human species whose eyes change after killing someone the first time. Or something along those lines. For some reason I can't remember much about that movie.  And while an eyepatch would look cool, this is a retarded way of losing an eye and I hope it recovers: admit it, Kaz, you did it so that forumites would stop telling Katia to use Eye Of Fear on everything. 
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Nov 3, 2012 19:13
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Hauling a discussion from the Webcomics thread over here instead:Kazerad posted:If you're going to portray a fantasy setting with non-human races coexisting with human ones, you pretty much have a choice between addressing it as a major theme or just hoping people accept it as "oh, this is a fantasy thing" and don't question it any further. It's probably more accurate to say that authors who want to show racism often do it with a fantasy setting. Unsounded also comes to mind (though with the majority of racism existing between human races than between human- and non-human ones), as does Astral Aves and Gunnerkrigg Court. And that one I write. Pinstripe Hourglass posted:You mean the one Bethesda writes? Kazerad posted:They didn't write very much racism. I poke fun at that. Rincewind posted:The Stormcloaks? Skyrim for the Nords? The Gray Quarter of Windhelm? Human resentment of the White-Gold Concordant? Bongo Bill posted:It's present in the lore but less so in the quests, especially in Oblivion. Now, I always thought that was part of the joke. There's all kinds of books and stories about how downtrodden and drug-addled Khajiit are, but you play as a catperson PC and nobody seems to give a poo poo. You get the same dialogue from everybody.
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Nov 5, 2012 02:12
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If you're an Argonian, though, everyone threatens to turn you into boots when you start stabbing them. 
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Nov 5, 2012 02:37
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Was just about to do the same thing. You a bro, Peas.Rincewind posted:The Stormcloaks? Skyrim for the Nords? The Gray Quarter of Windhelm? Human resentment of the White-Gold Concordant? The racism in Prequel is a bit of a commentary on the relative lack of racism in Oblivion (or similar fantasy things). The recurring "joke" is that, while everyone is nonhostile about it, they are all actually incredibly racist against Katia. They - and she - just kind of shrug it off as statements of fact. Pakled posted:If you're an Argonian, though, everyone threatens to turn you into boots when you start stabbing them. 
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Nov 5, 2012 03:09
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There is some rather overt racism against Khajiit in Skyrim. Khajiit cannot enter any of the walled cities in the game, with the exception of J'zargo because he's a member of the College of Winterhold, and the player if you happen to choose a khajiit. There's no really good reason for the player to be let in any of the cities except for the fact that it'd make the game unplayable, or at least until you joined the College.
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Nov 5, 2012 03:40
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Racists in Oblivion: That one countess is racist and openly expresses that she'd love to get rid of all the beast-people. She also has a kinky torture dungeon reserved for Argonians. And Calipers, that always show up in evil places. That one Argonian that tells racist Khajiit jokes. Even if your a Khajiit. The people of Hack-Dirt who hate you, your family, your pets, your friends, your friends pets, etc. Fingers crossed she never meets Ushnar on Shivering Isles, he's not racist but an encounter with him could not end well...
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Nov 5, 2012 03:58
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scarycave posted:Fingers crossed she never meets Ushnar on Shivering Isles, he's not racist but an encounter with him could not end well... It's lovely in the Isles right now. Perfect time for a visit.
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Nov 5, 2012 05:59
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Kazerad posted:The racism in Prequel is a bit of a commentary on the relative lack of racism in Oblivion (or similar fantasy things). The recurring "joke" is that, while everyone is nonhostile about it, they are all actually incredibly racist against Katia. They - and she - just kind of shrug it off as statements of fact. To be honest this would be a little more effective if it weren't for the fact that it feels like the universe itself would bend to ensure Katia has the worst day possible, so racism she encounters is just part of that. If Katia parked her car next to a meter which expires she'd be the only one with a ticket even if the guy next to her is double-parked in the handicapped space. If Katia was at a golf club during a thunderstorm the lightning would dodge all the golfers and hit her under the club pavilion. Neither would sound much like commentary on traffic law or the physics of thunderstorms, you follow me? I guess my point is any commentary about how racism is used in Oblivion is sort of lost so long as it just looks to be one more hard luck thing to happen to Katia. Maybe if it was a bigger theme of the story, or affected other characters as significantly, or even affected Katia in neutral or even positive ways (meeting someone who likes Khajits, or a Khajit who's sympathetic to her missing sense of cultural identity rather than offended).
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Nov 5, 2012 07:12
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A.o.D. posted:There is some rather overt racism against Khajiit in Skyrim. Khajiit cannot enter any of the walled cities in the game, with the exception of J'zargo because he's a member of the College of Winterhold, and the player if you happen to choose a khajiit. There's no really good reason for the player to be let in any of the cities except for the fact that it'd make the game unplayable, or at least until you joined the College.
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Nov 5, 2012 07:24
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Haledjian posted:Obviously it'd be not very feasible, what with limited game budgets and deadlines and whatnot, but when Skyrim came out that got me thinking about how cool it would be to have an RPG wherein your selection of class/race/etc actually makes a huge difference in where you start out, and what areas and social circles you have access to. So you could be an aristocrat navigating the corridors of power or a grifter in a slum, etc. Maybe even make it so multiple playthroughs would be necessary to see all the different sides of the game world. So dragon age origins, but with more impact? I liked playing as a casteless dwarven rogue, I wanted to be a hero and end the blight so I could become a paragon and raise my family up to the noble rank, maybe then mom would quit drinking and my sister wouldn't have to whore herself out. 
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Nov 5, 2012 07:26
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:So dragon age origins, but with more impact? Imagine if that kind of multifaceted approach to worldbuilding was made a central conceit of the game design. I think it'd be amazing.
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Nov 5, 2012 08:08
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DA:O probably got the closest we'll see to that outside of maybe some indie projects, and that only had an impact on the first hour outside of female characters romancing the templar. The amount of voice recording and whatnot that would be needed for each different character permutation would be pretty cost-prohibitive for a AAA game.
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Nov 5, 2012 09:43
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Dolash posted:To be honest this would be a little more effective if it weren't for the fact that it feels like the universe itself would bend to ensure Katia has the worst day possible, so racism she encounters is just part of that. If Katia parked her car next to a meter which expires she'd be the only one with a ticket even if the guy next to her is double-parked in the handicapped space. If Katia was at a golf club during a thunderstorm the lightning would dodge all the golfers and hit her under the club pavilion. Neither would sound much like commentary on traffic law or the physics of thunderstorms, you follow me? Eh, I probably should have clarified that I didn't mean the commentary was supposed to be a particularly obvious takeaway; more important is the idea that racism is one of the cards stacked against her. I like to think if someone really reads into it they can kind of ken some of my feelings on the portrayal of racism in fantasy, but I didn't want to hit anyone over the head with it. To forward the traffic analogy, I didn't want Katia to walk up to the meter and be like "ugh, a ticket for me when that guy parked in the handicapped space? Traffic law is SUCH BULLSHIT!". But that seems more like a setup for a story about a lawyer who fights biases in the traffic law system rather than someone who is affected by so many negative circumstances that she accepts them as normal. I'm relatively content with how it came across overall. People have expressed in the past that they liked how I handle it more than how the games did, and I figure that is the best I can ask for without drowning out any other themes. Haledjian posted:Basically! I like the idea that you could conceivably play through the whole main questline and still never gain access to some social circles (or only limited access). It'd be especially cool if, as in life, your character's social circle would color their entire perspective of the game world, from wars to public figures to factions, etc. Then on a second playthrough you might see a darker side to a faction that seemed noble, or an evil faction might seem way more justified. I experienced this transition from nonlinearity to linearity a little bit myself with the Prequel minigames; just compare Excelsior to Enter. With Excelsior there is a lot of content, it's somewhat difficult to find it all, and I only have the resources to continue the story along one path afterwards (the one that assumes you found everything, even if someone missed an important part). With Enter I accepted this reality of only being able to continue one path and designed the game such that the player had to see everything important to reach the end. Fun story semi-related to that: my newly acquired Tumblr Hate Squad (I'm a real webcomic creator now! Even if it's only like 5 people I guess) just recently managed to discover the pole dancing minigame. Their comments on it basically boiled down to "wow, Prequel isn't even being subtle about the sexualization anymore". I don't think they understand that part is over a year old. Or that Katia has always sort of been associated with sex. ... or that pole dancing isn't necessarily sexual. Even if it was ultimately just a joke about her rather thematic skillset, I did a fuckton of research for that scene. Pole dancing (sometimes referred to as "vertical dance") actually encompasses a lot of really impressive stuff. I admit at one point I even got a little sad that there is such a stigma against men learning it, because it looked fun. Anyway the moral is that if I made the game more linear they would have known to halfheartedly make fun of it sooner, so we could appreciate that while it was still relevant. Kazerad fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 10:12
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Kazerad posted:This is actually something I've been working with a lot recently in some game design decisions. The big factor you have to consider here is that it takes lots of resources to make each of those paths, and the more paths there are the less of a chance there is that someone will see all the content. If the average person is going to play your game three times and you have six paths, then you are expending twice as many resources as the average player will experience the effects of. Although there's a partial solution in the whole 'circles' concept that was talked about there, where it's not broad game-wide paths, but rather lots of smaller paths of different segments of the game in parallel, so that they mix together and you can get the seeming effect of lots of different variety with less effort, and just have to have minor adjustments/acknowledgements in each small path as to which branch of other ones they're in. But even that tends to compound in complexity to a dramatic degree. Kazerad posted:... or that pole dancing isn't necessarily sexual. Even if it was ultimately just a joke about her rather thematic skillset, I did a fuckton of research for that scene. Pole dancing (or more appropriately, "vertical dance") actually encompasses a lot of really impressive stuff. I admit at one point I even got a little sad that there is such a stigma against men learning it, because it looked fun. Hah! A (male) mate of mine does it as an athletic thing; apparently their class/studio/whatever's about fifty/fifty on the gender. What they do is pretty physically impressive. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 10:18
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Kazerad, about the minigames: Do you see yourself doing any more of them in flash, or are you going to switch to doing a full javascript/html5 like the latest homestuck ones?
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Nov 5, 2012 10:18
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Kazerad posted:This is actually something I've been working with a lot recently in some game design decisions. The big factor you have to consider here is that it takes lots of resources to make each of those paths, and the more paths there are the less of a chance there is that someone will see all the content. If the average person is going to play your game three times and you have six paths, then you are expending twice as many resources as the average player will experience the effects of. People always love finding cool secrets, but those secrets are spending time and money that could be spent on the parts everyone will find. It's why most triple-A games today are relatively linear, ensuring no huge amount of content is placed somewhere that it won't justify its cost. That necessity became really unfortunately apparent in the Mass Effect series, where BioWare would say they didn't want to "lock players out of content" which sounded positive but ultimately meant minimizing the differences between playthroughs, major decisions leading to one or two lines of different dialogue in otherwise identical scenes. I guess that'll have to be the way it is until games get better at handling social and plot mechanics procedurally (if that ever happens).
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Nov 5, 2012 10:27
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The advent of universal voice acting has really restricted things for AAA titles, I reckon. Especially games which'd construct responses and modify lines of text on the fly based on situation and state. Then again, I don't think that was ever that common besides minor things like name and title. Rose-coloured glasses.
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Nov 5, 2012 10:29
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tinaun posted:Kazerad, about the minigames: Do you see yourself doing any more of them in flash, or are you going to switch to doing a full javascript/html5 like the latest homestuck ones? I'll probably do some more Flash in the future. The Java/CSS updates were mainly for shock value; I forget if you guys have seen this little comic or not, but this basically describes the conversation that led to their creation. As much fun as it was to see people's reactions to it, the Java/CSS pages were way more difficult to standardize across browsers. With Flash, people typically can either run it correctly or not at all, which eliminates a lot of cross-platform testing and troubleshooting. MikeJF posted:Although there's a partial solution in the whole 'circles' concept that was talked about there, where it's not broad game-wide paths, but rather lots of smaller paths of different segments of the game in parallel, so that they mix together and you can get the seeming effect of lots of different variety with less effort, and just have to have minor adjustments/acknowledgements in each small path as to which branch of other ones they're in. But even that tends to compound in complexity to a dramatic degree. While there was minor interplay between them, however, it ultimately just amounted to some different penalties you'd have to contend with depending which questlines you pursued on a single character. Nobody would, say, go out of their way to play every different faction combination, rendering the entire concept an interesting detail that added very little. MikeJF posted:The advent of universal voice acting has really restricted things for AAA titles, I reckon. Especially games which'd construct responses and modify lines of text on the fly based on situation and state. My personal nonlinearity nightmare happened with a game I was making a few years back for one of the TIGSource competitions. It was a turn-based two-player game about five guys on a space station; one player was secretly a murderer trying to kill everyone, the other player was secretly trying to find the murderer.  Which character you were and what role you were in was randomized each time. My plan was for each character to have different dialogue responses and answers depending on who was talking to him and, occasionally, what role he was in. It was just basic stuff like asking where different characters were or if anyone had entered a room recently, or some flavor stuff killing time until the turn ended. I had no idea how much of an endeavor this would be. The combinations branched out into hundreds and hundreds of dialogue lines; by the time the contest deadline came, I had two of the characters completed and had done basically no testing or polishing. It was unreleasable in that state so I just kind of gave up on it. It wasn't a complete loss, though, since I got a ton of practice with the cute visual style I later ended up using for Prequel.  Edit: One alternate approach to this, of course, is to do things seriously on-the-fly. If I recall correctly, the game Chrono Cross would add in different accents and exclamations to a common set of dialogue depending on the character who was saying it. The problem there, of course, is that you have all your characters saying the exact same thing in different voices, which is just no fun and kind of bad writing. You risk ending up with something like Daggerfall where every character is basically just a piece of meat whose only purpose is to give you directions when you ask. Kazerad fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 10:54
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Kalos posted:DA:O probably got the closest we'll see to that outside of maybe some indie projects, and that only had an impact on the first hour outside of female characters romancing the templar. The amount of voice recording and whatnot that would be needed for each different character permutation would be pretty cost-prohibitive for a AAA game. Vampire: Bloodlines did this much, much, in my opinion. If you are a Nosferatu it counts as a Masquerade violation to be seen by humans so you really do need to use the sewers a lot, and if you play as a Malkavian you get tons of extra crazy dialog and can use your wacko insight to bypass or subvert stuff. Recommended if you guys haven't heard of it.
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Nov 5, 2012 11:12
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Kazerad posted:Edit: One alternate approach to this, of course, is to do things seriously on-the-fly. If I recall correctly, the game Chrono Cross would add in different accents and exclamations to a common set of dialogue depending on the character who was saying it. The problem there, of course, is that you have all your characters saying the exact same thing in different voices, which is just no fun and kind of bad writing. You risk ending up with something like Daggerfall where every character is basically just a piece of meat whose only purpose is to give you directions when you ask. If I recall, Chrono Cross did that, but sometimes they had two or three variations they'd get selected amongst depending on the personality of a companion, and sometimes individuals would get their own distinct comments in places if it was relevant. And if there was a quest that was related to a specific companion in some way and you took them along, they'd get mostly unique dialogue for the whole area. It was a decent compromise, especially since the game had 40 companions. (Although only about ten that actually mattered. Those ones tended to have more of the specialised dialogue pop up)
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Nov 5, 2012 11:16
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Kazerad posted:You risk ending up with something like Daggerfall where every character is basically just a piece of meat whose only purpose is to give you directions when you ask. Every Square Npc ever. Also GameMaker.  Of course not all Npcs just tell you directions, they give horrible directions. Palm Trees and Eight - oh god that took forever, I got that "puzzle" solved by pure luck - my jaw dropped when that door opened. I know what you mean about the dialogue though, it really gets tricky, especially when you have to keep tabs on what everyone says. I've been working on something for a guy and I've been making a single npc at a time, giving him his quest dialogue, then going back to give him text to match other quests so I don't get overwhelmed.
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Nov 5, 2012 13:00
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I wonder just how much you'd have to tweak it to get authentic sounding procedural dialogue. Like if you would have to include tags for verbose characters, or parts where catchphrases could be added in. That would be pretty cool if there was a line where a character could decide to use a catchphrase more and that was added to their dialogue as a verbal tic. I really want to try writing something like this now. Though I think you'd probably have to have a pretty rigidly structured and/or linear story to build it around.
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Nov 5, 2012 13:04
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Dolash posted:To be honest this would be a little more effective if it weren't for the fact that it feels like the universe itself would bend to ensure Katia has the worst day possible, so racism she encounters is just part of that. If Katia parked her car next to a meter which expires she'd be the only one with a ticket even if the guy next to her is double-parked in the handicapped space. If Katia was at a golf club during a thunderstorm the lightning would dodge all the golfers and hit her under the club pavilion. Neither would sound much like commentary on traffic law or the physics of thunderstorms, you follow me? I want Katia to go to Border Watch. It's this little village full of Khajiits who are ridiculously friendly and welcoming. Of course they exist in the game only so that you can completely ruin their stuff (causing a vermin infestation, killing all their sheep, raining flaming dogs on their heads, etc.). Anyway, I'm curious to see how how Kaz would somehow make it a nightmare for Katia to be surrounded by people who are like her and are preternaturally nice.
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Nov 5, 2012 13:49
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