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Convex posted:Was that the one where you had to use a special eject button before your mech exploded otherwise you'd lose your save? (We don't talk about the third game.)
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May 18, 2018 16:27
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Convex posted:Was that the one where you had to use a special eject button before your mech exploded otherwise you'd lose your save? Yeah, you'll use a whole profile if you let your pilot die. The game got pretty hard after mission 5. and yeah, no body liked the third game Uncle Kitchener fucked around with this message at 16:29 on May 18, 2018 |
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May 18, 2018 16:27
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:I think another thing that keeps me from getting right back into classic RoTT is that I played the poo poo out of the shareware version, which was an entirely different set of maps compared to the retail version. I'm way more familiar with them, and it's just not the same, not going through those again. I think it's pretty widely accepted that the shareware of ROTT is the best set of levels. They put their best foot forward to get people to buy the full game. I guess that's the point though. RE: 3rd Steel Battalion It sounded like an innovative use of the Kinnect but too bad the movement gestures were frustratingly inaccurate by all accounts
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May 18, 2018 16:34
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Wamdoodle posted:I think it's pretty widely accepted that the shareware of ROTT is the best set of levels. They put their best foot forward to get people to buy the full game. I guess that's the point though.
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May 18, 2018 16:40
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:A good and smart mix of designed and procedurally-generated could wield wonders. Absolutely not.
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May 18, 2018 16:41
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The demo pack for Marathon Infinity had Ne Cede Malis, which was the first level and was confusing and slow; Poor Yorick, which is the third level and actually a really good and fairly pretty level; and Acme Station, which is like the eighth level and was pretty but an incredibly challenging vacuum maze with very limited oxygen available and lots of challenging enemies in narrow corridors. Not the best three levels they could have picked.
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May 18, 2018 16:42
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Conversely, Marathon 2's demo had Waterloo Waterpark (level 1), What About Bob? (level 4) and Eat It, Vid Boi! (level 10), three of my favorite maps in a game that's already all killer and no filler 
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May 18, 2018 16:53
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That's very true, Eat It, Vid Boi! is a great level. I disagree about "all killer no filler" since the couple levels immediately after you lose your guns suuuuuuck.
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May 18, 2018 16:55
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Mildly annoyed that Marathon: Durandal still isn't available on Xbone BC.
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May 18, 2018 17:01
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Steel Battalion is one of those things I can barely believe existed, like it fell through a portal from an alternate universe where the video game industry looks very different. I never owned it nor would it have been a good decision to do so, but there will always be a little voice in my head telling me I missed out on something unique and amazing. Direct manipulation mech controls seem like something that could make a comeback in VR but it doesn't seem to be happening. RyokoTK posted:The demo pack for Marathon Infinity had Ne Cede Malis, which was the first level and was confusing and slow; Poor Yorick, which is the third level and actually a really good and fairly pretty level; and Acme Station, which is like the eighth level and was pretty but an incredibly challenging vacuum maze with very limited oxygen available and lots of challenging enemies in narrow corridors. Not the best three levels they could have picked. The first level also had an earlier version of the terminal text which was sort of abstract, almost poetical rambling instead of the fairly straightforward plot catch-up and instructions in the final game. It also used the Marathon 2 textures for Poor Yorick, either to keep the overhaul a secret or because they weren't finished yet. I love Ne Cede Malis but it's absolutely made for hardcore fans of the series to the exclusion of everyone else (which also turned out to be true of the entire rest of the game).
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May 18, 2018 17:04
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The Kins posted:Yes. Steel Battalion and its multiplayer-only sequel were a unique and expensive kind of hardcore that will never be matched again, a sun too fiscally irresponsible and insane for any modern Icarus to fly up and reach. I’m actually surprised someone hasn’t tried to make a super hardcore mechsim in VR (although I may be wrong as I don’t follow the scene). I would think a slow methodical pace of a Battletech/Mechwarrior would work out well seeing how well flight/space sims like Elite work.
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May 18, 2018 17:08
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Having never really played Marathon that much (5-10 minutes here and there), the one thing that I can appreciate, aside from the engine being more advanced than the Doom engine (even if it doesn't feel as good) is their level naming style, which obviously carried over to the Halo series. Very nice.
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May 18, 2018 17:22
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Looks like pretty much no one besides me owns this, so any chance of finding someone else to have offline games with is nill  I would love to take the package out and show off what's inside, including the 100+ page thick manual, but I got no space right now and the whole package is pretty involved. I think if anyone actually wants to owns this, There might be a lucky find for like 100 bucks or so somewhere on Ebay every now and then. Keep in mind you need a gamepad to initialize the game first on a seperate port to actually initialize it.
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May 18, 2018 17:23
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RyokoTK posted:That's very true, Eat It, Vid Boi! is a great level. I disagree about "all killer no filler" since the couple levels immediately after you lose your guns suuuuuuck. I'm cool with the Robert Blake levels since they add to the whole feel of the game being an active narrative where you're a participant instead of a sequence of videogame levels to be conquered. They do drag a bit, though  That's actually one of the things that stuck with me about M2 since the first time I played it. The first mission starts with you teleporting onto a vulnerable balcony in an alien base. Before you have time to react to the guards across from you, a half dozen rowdy boys warp in from all around and start exchanging fire with the fighters. This happens repeatedly through the game, where human troops teleport in to reinforce you at key points in several missions. As the narrative unfolds, it's spelled out in no uncertain terms that they're the important characters, and you're reinforcing them. The ending barely even acknowledges you, instead focusing on the stories of Durandal, Robert and the human survivors. It's a feeling of "small part of a big picture" that I wouldn't feel again in an action FPS until Half-Life, and haven't really felt again since 
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May 18, 2018 17:25
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Marathon 2 is definitely all about you just being the instrument of Durandal's campaign against the Pfhor... and then Infinity is about you time traveling in order to avert the mess he created.haveblue posted:The first level also had an earlier version of the terminal text which was sort of abstract, almost poetical rambling instead of the fairly straightforward plot catch-up and instructions in the final game. It also used the Marathon 2 textures for Poor Yorick, either to keep the overhaul a secret or because they weren't finished yet. Several of the terminal pictures in the final release of Infinity still have images of the levels with M2 textures, so I think it's just because they didn't have them finished yet. There's a lot of things I do actually like about Infinity's level design, they are a lot more complex and advanced than M2's, but that plays to its detriment as often as its advantage.
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May 18, 2018 17:41
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Oxygenpoisoning posted:I’m actually surprised someone hasn’t tried to make a super hardcore mechsim in VR (although I may be wrong as I don’t follow the scene). I would think a slow methodical pace of a Battletech/Mechwarrior would work out well seeing how well flight/space sims like Elite work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na530jGHOtI There you go. Although the VR part really should be optional. There's no reason for it to require it - we've done these kinds sims with mouse and keyboard or joystick and keyboard for decades and they control just fine.
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May 18, 2018 17:48
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RyokoTK posted:The demo pack for Marathon Infinity had Ne Cede Malis, which was the first level and was confusing and slow; Poor Yorick, which is the third level and actually a really good and fairly pretty level; and Acme Station, which is like the eighth level and was pretty but an incredibly challenging vacuum maze with very limited oxygen available and lots of challenging enemies in narrow corridors. Not the best three levels they could have picked. Sounds completely representative tbh. Maybe they should have thrown in an Electric Sheep level too. DoombatINC posted:I'm cool with the Robert Blake levels since they add to the whole feel of the game being an active narrative where you're a participant instead of a sequence of videogame levels to be conquered. They do drag a bit, though I agree this is appealing, and adds an extra gut punch to being Tycho/Tfear’s slave in Infinity when you play the opposite game and slaughter whole shipfuls of BOB. Even if it is mostly in self defense. I think the first half of Halo 1 captures this feeling kind of well also, with the difference being that everything goes south and you have to blow all your friends the gently caress up. That said, the first level right after teleporting out of jail is a chore. Underwater fist fights with blue flickta!
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May 18, 2018 17:54
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skasion posted:Underwater fist fights with blue flickta!
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May 18, 2018 18:02
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DatonKallandor posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na530jGHOtI Interesting, thank you. Like I said I’m not into that community, but it seems like it could me a good fit.
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May 18, 2018 18:08
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RyokoTK posted:Marathon 2 is definitely all about you just being the instrument of Durandal's campaign against the Pfhor... and then Infinity is about you time traveling in order to avert the mess he created. What really made apparent how little agency I had and how peripheral I was to the story were the occasional gaps in time between missions. Nothing says "we're only thawing you out because we need an extra gun and we're out of expendable colonists" like several years passing in the blink of a teleport M2 was the first one I played, so ten year old me went in raw and had no idea what to expect. When I played M1 later, the whole "you're just doing what I say because you like killing stuff" leitmotif rang especially true 
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May 18, 2018 18:10
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A friend gave me a mint steel batallion controller a few years ago. I didn't know what it was, assumed it was just some dumb console joystick so I left it at a rental when I moved out.
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May 18, 2018 18:33
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Episode 4 for "Amid Evil" is now available, along with some changes and bug fixes.
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May 18, 2018 23:20
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Episode 4 for "Amid Evil" is now available, along with some changes and bug fixes. Sweet, just in time for the weekend 
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May 19, 2018 03:24
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Well unless I'm forgetting 2 months ago, they already have some more enemy variety. One has a shield that can deflect your attacks and there's some green teleporting guys I still really like the art style and it's reminding me of all kinds of things including Gauntlet 64 somehow, might be the music
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May 19, 2018 04:53
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ookiimarukochan posted:You're either young or you just didn't play PC games in the early-mid 90s. You may as well suggest that no one had heard of iD until Quake came out. fishmech posted:Hell yeah I played the poo poo out of that as a kid but could never convince my parents to order the next episodes. It was on two of the different shareware discs that came with our Compaq 486 back in 94. There's an LP of the game in the Archive if you're interested. The second episode had this image, which I still can't help but laugh at: 
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May 19, 2018 05:28
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HolyKrap posted:I still really like the art style and it's reminding me of all kinds of things including Gauntlet 64 somehow, might be the music It's actually still crazy to me how the weapons are "just" normal-mapped sprites--not actually 3D models. Although I'm a little confused, because recently somebody on the Steam forums asked about resizing weapons and one of the developers said this: Leon posted:The entire game is normal mapped pixel art. (which give it the 3d look) It's a very unique look which we like a lot. ...which is crazy to me because he said "the entire game", not "weapons and world textures." I mean, the enemies are 3D models right? 
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May 19, 2018 05:56
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The Kins posted:It was pretty common practice back in the day. Particularly at Id, with Romero's philosophy of doing the first few levels last so that they're backed by all the knowledge and experience from making the rest of the game. They also made the first level in Doom last.
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May 19, 2018 08:50
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I guess I understand that philosophy in concept but it doesn't really seem like it'd work in execution. Wouldn't doing it that way just mean that the middle of the game is the worst part? It's important for a game to make a really good first impression and all but you don't wanna end up like Doom 2 where the ending is pretty good and the beginning is pretty good and then there's just like 12 straight levels of "was this actually made by id" sandwiched between
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May 19, 2018 08:52
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:It's actually still crazy to me how the weapons are "just" normal-mapped sprites--not actually 3D models. Although I'm a little confused, because recently somebody on the Steam forums asked about resizing weapons and one of the developers said this: what the gently caress are you serious CJacobs posted:I guess I understand that philosophy in concept but it doesn't really seem like it'd work in execution. Wouldn't doing it that way just mean that the middle of the game is the worst part? It's important for a game to make a really good first impression and all but you don't wanna end up like Doom 2 where the ending is pretty good and the beginning is pretty good and then there's just like 12 straight levels of "was this actually made by id" sandwiched between how, precisely, do you think doom 2 ended up that way
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May 19, 2018 08:54
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TTerrible posted:A friend gave me a mint steel batallion controller a few years ago. I didn't know what it was, assumed it was just some dumb console joystick so I left it at a rental when I moved out. Were the buttons green or blue?
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May 19, 2018 09:23
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:...which is crazy to me because he said "the entire game", not "weapons and world textures." I mean, the enemies are 3D models right?
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May 19, 2018 09:27
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What Amid Evil is doing is neat. Not sure if it's right to call it pixel art though, the sprites are pretty high res and they look straight baked from models. But that's what makes it look good, in various indie platformers that add normal maps to hand drawn sprites and tiles that stuff clashes with the painted on shading. On the other hand if most players don't even notice that the weapons are sprites what's the point of doing the extra work of baking it to sprites? And you lose all the nice things you can have with models. What they could do is have way more elaborate than usual for video games animations, like movie quality stuff, but that would be a lot of work of course and it would stick out too much if the rest of the game wasn't as detailed. But things like liquid should be pretty easy, they should have some sort of a liquid weapon.
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May 19, 2018 10:44
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THE BAR posted:They also made the first level in Doom last. Didn't the post you quoted say this already?
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May 19, 2018 13:46
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:Didn't the post you quoted say this already? Sure did, my mistake. I read it as id putting Romero’s levels in the shareware version, not necessarily the last ones made. Whoops.
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May 19, 2018 14:44
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loga mira posted:What Amid Evil is doing is neat. Not sure if it's right to call it pixel art though, the sprites are pretty high res and they look straight baked from models. But that's what makes it look good, in various indie platformers that add normal maps to hand drawn sprites and tiles that stuff clashes with the painted on shading. They say pixel art cause I''m pretty sure the only non-pixelated graphics are the weapons, skyboxes and HUD. Maybe even projectiles but I haven't really looked. I posted a webm a few months ago of the pixelated shine on some textures https://giant.gfycat.com/GlaringMadBichonfrise.mp4
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May 19, 2018 17:23
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When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold, Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould; And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pixely, but is it Art ?"
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May 19, 2018 17:58
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CJacobs posted:I guess I understand that philosophy in concept but it doesn't really seem like it'd work in execution. Wouldn't doing it that way just mean that the middle of the game is the worst part? It's important for a game to make a really good first impression and all but you don't wanna end up like Doom 2 where the ending is pretty good and the beginning is pretty good and then there's just like 12 straight levels of "was this actually made by id" sandwiched between
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May 19, 2018 18:02
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Well yeah that's what I said
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May 19, 2018 18:31
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:It's actually still crazy to me how the weapons are "just" normal-mapped sprites--not actually 3D models. Although I'm a little confused, because recently somebody on the Steam forums asked about resizing weapons and one of the developers said this: I’m gonna make a small effortpost on this and say that normal mapped sprites are extremely loving cool. So typically when you’re thinking of graphics on screen, you think ok, a pixel is a red, green, blue value. During rendering, there’s usually a LOT more data per dot than just RGB, like specularity level, depth/distance from camera, and of course the normal (or in layman’s terms, what direction it’s facing). During geometry rendering, you’d usually render the texture on the geometry and use the geometry and a normal map to figure out the final values for that on the display. If you use a normal mapped sprite instead of a textured model, you can just slap the results of all of that geometry rendering right into your render buffer, saving an absolute shitload of time. Unreal 4 actually has a whole “impostor geometry” system to use this for crowd rendering: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Content/Tools/RenderToTextureTools/3 For Amid Evil it’s basically a perfect system for the style. You get to have the same floaty feel of Heretic and Hexen because there’s just a static sprite for the weapon, but thanks to pixel shaders you also get that beautiful post processed lighting and shadow. It’s a great mix of old school and new school and I am so happy to see devs playing with the idea.  I also wish I knew more about how the GZDoom renderer worked because drat would Knee Deep in the Dead look spiffy with mapped normals and full real time lighting.
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May 19, 2018 18:46
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Dewgy posted:I also wish I knew more about how the GZDoom renderer worked because drat would Knee Deep in the Dead look spiffy with mapped normals and full real time lighting. Someone did some experiments with setting up the original Doom textures for PBR materials, with varying success.  
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May 19, 2018 18:56
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