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CJacobs posted:Max Payne 3's file structure counts as a little thing if you're a big ol nerd who likes to see game infrastructure trainwrecks. That game is almost 30 gb large because there are separate copies of every texture and model file for every map it's in- every gun, every ground texture, every random trash model of a traffic cone. Everything that appears more than once has an exact copy stored in the .rpf file for the relevant chapter. There are 13 models of Max, which pull from a resevoir of almost 40 different head and arm textures, like 30 different clothing textures, and so on and so on. The fmv cutscenes and audio files are all completely uncompressed. There's an unholy amount of stuff that is completely unused because it was either cut or phased out in development but still required for the game to run. It is just a wonderful piece of madness to behold. It's really a wonder that game even runs at all, let alone as well as it does. Except the entire reason it's like that is an optimization, since sequential reads are faster than random ones. They wanted loading a level to done all in one long read from disc, so they duplicated every asset.
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Feb 18, 2016 05:47
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In Dead Space 3, human enemies have a RIG just like Isaac and Carver that shows their health levels. I thought it was a nice touch even though those enemies are too far away for you to really notice it most of the time. I also really like how there is a stasis sharing weapon perk for cooperative play, as it really comes in handy if one player has a ton of stasis packs in their inventory while the other player has none.
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Feb 18, 2016 06:32
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QuietLion posted:In Dead Space 3, human enemies have a RIG just like Isaac and Carver that shows their health levels. I thought it was a nice touch even though those enemies are too far away for you to really notice it most of the time. I also really like how there is a stasis sharing weapon perk for cooperative play, as it really comes in handy if one player has a ton of stasis packs in their inventory while the other player has none. All the human characters wear RIG's, and they're a really clever idea for both in-world and game-wise; They're there to let everyone else have a general idea of what your health/stasis is during dangerous space work.
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Feb 18, 2016 06:54
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I liked how in Dead Space 3 all human enemies would get torn to shreds by your weapons. Which makes sense, you're basically using the equivalent of construction gear.
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Feb 18, 2016 06:56
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Neddy Seagoon posted:All the human characters wear RIG's, and they're a really clever idea for both in-world and game-wise; They're there to let everyone else have a general idea of what your health/stasis is during dangerous space work. Even the crappy direct-to-DVD cartoon movie went to the trouble of animating RIGs on everyone. 
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Feb 18, 2016 07:04
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I bought Dragon Quest Heroes since I have a console now. I put it in, turned on the game, the music started, and I got punched in the face with nostalgia. So there's that. I like that. I hope there's a part where someone constantly asks "Dost thou love me?" Edit: Holy poo poo the dialogue is incredibly cheesy I love every bit of it. Edit 2: I just went super Saiyan. This owns. Push El Burrito has a new favorite as of 07:34 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 07:07
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princecoo posted:I really appreciate how XCOM 2 is so open to modding. It's like the developers went "here is the game we wanted to make, have fun. But also, we know there are things that people will probably want to change, so gently caress it, here you go, make something great with our game." It's especially good to see from XCOM 2, because unlike Bethesda, Firaxis don't have a consistent and deep history with modding. They've had it in the past, sure, but it was a very minor focus for Civ and not at all a focus for XCOM: EU. But they loved what the Long War mod for EU did so much that not only did they expand mod support massively over any of their previous titles, they specifically brought in the Long War guys to help with it. In fact, they're kind of upstaging Bethesda here on this one, the Fallout 4 mod tools still aren't here.
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Feb 18, 2016 07:22
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carry on then posted:Except the entire reason it's like that is an optimization, since sequential reads are faster than random ones. They wanted loading a level to done all in one long read from disc, so they duplicated every asset. And yet, their loads are hilariously long and buried in unskippable cutscenes. I would say that their optimization theories are mildly flawed.
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Feb 18, 2016 08:33
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carry on then posted:Except the entire reason it's like that is an optimization, since sequential reads are faster than random ones. They wanted loading a level to done all in one long read from disc, so they duplicated every asset. Files aren't stored as giant contiguous sequences of bytes. Just cramming everything you want to load together won't magically improve load times, because that one file is probably in a bunch of pieces all over the disc. It would probably reduce the total seek time but it wouldn't eliminate it and let you load everything with one sequential read, and it's questionable whether that's worth increasing the size of the game so much (as well as what a mess it must have been to have to update an asset in 5 different places during development). Owl Inspector has a new favorite as of 09:11 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 09:00
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The reason Max Payne 3 uses such a nutso file structure is because the game uses the same engine Rockstar uses for the GTA games, slightly modified a bit. The problem is that their world-bubble-streaming-loading thing doesn't really work when you apply it to a linear story based video game, so to get around that they made cutscenes into loading zones since there are so drat many of them. What this results in however is that they have to make sure the game is loaded before you are able to skip the cutscene so you don't plop into an unfinished section of the level, and thus all of the cutscene skip points in Max Payne 3 are predetermined and it actually doesn't matter how fast you load the next segment. So their optimization technique was basically totally useless.Nuebot posted:Except exactly the opposite happened with GTAV. You could easily just pop open cheat engine and gently caress with the game to your heart's content but very few people got banned for it. Meanwhile when they cracked down on cheaters, it was people using graphics mods and stuff for the single player that first got hit by the bans. This did not happen. edit: In fact, the only evidence I ever saw of people getting banned for single player mods in GTA 5 is when they were a dumbass and didn't disable them before going into the multiplayer. Rockstar even straight-up said they wouldn't ban people for single player mods. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 10:55 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 10:44
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Cleretic posted:In fact, they're kind of upstaging Bethesda here on this one, the Fallout 4 mod tools still aren't here. I've never understood how Bethesda keeps making games from the same bundled-together Oblivion engine incrementally improved and can yet never release their mod tools on time.
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Feb 18, 2016 12:15
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In Gang Beasts, your gelatinous brawling characters keep giggling. I don't know why they included this, but somehow it makes the game so much better
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Feb 18, 2016 13:02
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CJacobs posted:edit: In fact, the only evidence I ever saw of people getting banned for single player mods in GTA 5 is when they were a dumbass and didn't disable them before going into the multiplayer. Rockstar even straight-up said they wouldn't ban people for single player mods. Gotta get that funbuuuux. Also they give pretty much zero (0) fucks about hacking online. Constant server-wide instant killing are fine, unless you're hacking money, then you get banned.
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Feb 18, 2016 13:29
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How big would Max Payne 3 PC have been had they properly compressed the assets? I recall Titanfall being 40gb in size, with 25gb of that being uncompressed audio.
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Feb 18, 2016 13:37
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Inspector Gesicht posted:How big would Max Payne 3 PC have been had they properly compressed the assets? I recall Titanfall being 40gb in size, with 25gb of that being uncompressed audio. Audio.rpf is thankfully only 4-ish GB because they were smart enough to make multi-track audio for the game's music instead of making a bunch of different audio files that layer on top of each other. The real killer are the fmv cutscenes- game has nearly 12 GB of uncompressed cutscenes that are maybe a minute or two long apiece. The biggest ones are the connecting videos they stuck between chapters of the game:  (s_fashion is only 3 minutes long) But this is just a small sampling. Anything that shows up on a computer screen, or a television, or a logo or anything like that is in nearly uncompressed 1080p unless it's seen from a very far distance, which is crazy. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 13:53 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 13:47
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BROCK LESBIAN posted:I bought Dragon Quest Heroes since I have a console now. I put it in, turned on the game, the music started, and I got punched in the face with nostalgia. So there's that. I like that.  I never played a DQ game growing up, though I watched others play; I was more into FF. I started feeling like the FF series took itself way too goddamn seriously, though, so I'm firmly in the DQ camp now.
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Feb 18, 2016 15:19
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John Pastor posted:And yet, their loads are hilariously long and buried in unskippable cutscenes. Try reading. I didn't say it worked, I just said it was on purpose and something they tried, rather than some incompetent developer accident. And Steam has the ability to defragment game files, I'll bet they recommend people encountering slow loading try that.
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Feb 18, 2016 16:29
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Xoidanor posted:Hahahaha, oh how times have changed in just 10 years. Meanwhile, we got a full-frontal of a rich middle aged guy's shriveled penis and balls in Ballad of Gay Tony and nobody really cared.
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Feb 18, 2016 16:52
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John Pastor posted:And yet, their loads are hilariously long and buried in unskippable cutscenes. Actually, the worst part is, they aren't! It's all unskippable cutscenes. Someone ran some tools, and when it gives you the "still loading" prompt when you try to skip a cutscene... it isn't. At least, not most of the time. It's just programmed to say that until a certain amount of time has passed.
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Feb 18, 2016 16:55
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Meanwhile, we got a full-frontal of a rich middle aged guy's shriveled penis and balls in Ballad of Gay Tony and nobody really cared. Hating video games stopped being politically viable as all the teenagers that grew up on Quake and GTA reached voting age around that time and were having none of that poo poo. Or that's my guess anyway 
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Feb 18, 2016 17:02
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John Pastor posted:And yet, their loads are hilariously long and buried in unskippable cutscenes. The point of all that optimization was to get things to load in anything approaching a reasonable time when reading from an optical disc. We forget this in the age of ubiquitous digital distribution, but optical drives are slooowwww. I'm sure you'd find that an Xbox 360 reading from the disc takes almost exactly as long to load the next area as the cutscene skip lockout lasts. It's just disappointing they hosed up actually skipping the cutscenes on faster platforms. It's a game I quite enjoy, but I can't stand to replay it because of that annoyance.
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Feb 18, 2016 19:34
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Hirayuki posted:I love the consistency throughout the DQ series--music/SFX especially, but also character design, enemies, overall tone. You can pick up any DQ-titled game and feel that rush of nostalgia. I'm playing DQ Theatrhythm now and really digging it, and now I see I might have to pick up DQ Heroes, too. I like all the slime puns 
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Feb 18, 2016 22:23
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I haven't played Just Cause 3 yet, but I'm glad this kind of thing can happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB6_pZnc6fI
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Feb 19, 2016 01:29
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BROCK LESBIAN posted:I like all the slime puns Another thing in DQ Heroes' favor is that they managed to get the most british kid possible to voice that slime or something. I love the ridiculous accents and voices in the localizations, in the DS remakes they even went through the effort to put it into text which was great.
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Feb 19, 2016 01:41
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3DMGa7qZkw THAT BASTARD
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Feb 19, 2016 09:42
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It happened too fast, whatever it was. How did he screw himself over?
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Feb 19, 2016 11:34
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FredMSloniker posted:It happened too fast, whatever it was. How did he screw himself over? Player puts fan on wall. Recording puts fan on pressure plate, powering fan just placed on wall. Player steps into fan's area of influence, gets pushed into floating mine that was in the path of influence.
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Feb 19, 2016 12:01
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My clone dropped the forcefield, which made the fan on the other side blow me into the fan pointed at the mine. You can't move at all once a fan is pushing you so I pretty much betrayed me
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Feb 19, 2016 17:00
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Digirat posted:My clone dropped the forcefield, which made the fan on the other side blow me into the fan pointed at the mine. You can't move at all once a fan is pushing you so I pretty much betrayed me Never trust anyone. Not even yourself.
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Feb 19, 2016 17:12
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Digirat posted:My clone dropped the forcefield, which made the fan on the other side blow me into the fan pointed at the mine. You can't move at all once a fan is pushing you so I pretty much betrayed me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc5iTNVEOAg
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Feb 19, 2016 17:12
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In Dead Space 3, you can set little scavenger bots to collect materials while you're away from a workbench. If you place the bots in the snow, they leave little trails in the snow and even leave a tiny hole if they scoot into a snowdrift. Also they are absurdly powerful; I saw one push a box that was at least four times its size!
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Feb 19, 2016 17:38
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I always appreciate when a game rationalises a New Game Plus. In Lightning Returns, you begin the game with Lumina breaking Lightning's sword so that Snow can't just let Lightning kill him. At the end of the game you can forge the Ultima weapon, which happens to be the complete version of the sword Lumina broke. Lumina is simply making sure that you can't break the NG+ by bringing the Ultima Weapon along I always like that sort of thing.
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Feb 19, 2016 21:57
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Bastion had a similar thing. In the ending, you can use the eponymous Bastion to reverse time to before the apocalypse - it does turn back time, but not quite far enough, and you come back to the protagonist waking up after it happened, at the very beginning of the game. You also have another option for the ending, where you don't do that. I haven't messed around enough to know if it means you just don't unlock NG+.
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Feb 19, 2016 23:51
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Meanwhile, we got a full-frontal of a rich middle aged guy's shriveled penis and balls in Ballad of Gay Tony and nobody really cared.  That was actually in Lost and the Damned For content I love the champagne drinking game in TBoGT because if you do it right you pass out and wake up in some random part of LC, like inside a fountain.
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Feb 20, 2016 00:04
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Couldn't you wake up way high up in the air with a parachute? Or am I thinking of 5?
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Feb 20, 2016 00:11
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Feb 20, 2016 00:11
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CJacobs posted:Couldn't you wake up way high up in the air with a parachute? Or am I thinking of 5? Yes you could, though at least from my own experience that rarely happened. You were more likely to wake up inside the Statue of Happyness with a parachute on, the already mentioned fountain, and the ramp/dumpster in Star Junction.
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Feb 20, 2016 00:21
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Aithon posted:Bastion had a similar thing. In the ending, you can use the eponymous Bastion to reverse time to before the apocalypse - it does turn back time, but not quite far enough, and you come back to the protagonist waking up after it happened, at the very beginning of the game. You also have another option for the ending, where you don't do that. I haven't messed around enough to know if it means you just don't unlock NG+. They did a great job tying the game's NG+ mode into a story-relevant thing. You can do NG+ regardless of which ending you choose, but in NG+ the narrator sometimes interjects things like "didn't I already...?" and generally implies this has all happened before. It assumes you picked the ending where you went back in time, because otherwise you wouldn't be seeing this all a second time. It's also a pretty subtle way of indicating which ending the game considers the good ending--Going back in time isn't going to change the fact that the same people who caused the apocalypse the first time are still there and won't be any different this time around. You can only accept what's happened, make it a part of yourself and move on having learned from it. Much like the talos principle, bastion would still have been a good game if it didn't absolutely nail the ending the way it did, but doing so took it from good game territory to something memorable and awesome. Owl Inspector has a new favorite as of 00:27 on Feb 20, 2016 |
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Feb 20, 2016 00:25
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Thin Privilege posted:
Whoops, my bad.  I forgot that the rich lawyer/politician dude was connected to the bikers for a reason.Sorry, I don't make too much of an effort in keeping my memory of old guy dick and balls straight.
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Feb 20, 2016 01:47
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John C. Lilly was a prominent researcher in dolphin communication who, among other things, tried to unlock inter-species telepathy by giving dolphins LSD, trying to teach dolphins a computer language, and did an experiment where a human woman and a male dolphin lived together in a partially-submerged lab for ten weeks. He was also fond of experimenting on his own psyche, having invented the sensory-deprivation tank and spent countless hours using one while tripping balls on LSD and/or Ketamine. Unsurprisingly, he wound up being unhinged and swore that aliens were communicating with him and guiding him to be humanity's savior. The alien entity he claimed to communicate with was called the Earth Coincidence Control Office. Or, for short, E.C.C.O. 
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Feb 20, 2016 02:07
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