GiP Gaming: Atlases are only hard if you suck

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > GiP Gaming: Atlases are only hard if you suck

orange juche: Mar 14, 2012

Looking at the RGO thread lots of people are griping about lack of any sort of a tutorial or even instructions on what button does what or basic systems, as well as other balance issues. I'd say give the game a while to stew it might be worth waiting for it to hit steam because it doesn't feel quite done yet.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 10:52

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# ? May 16, 2024 06:03

Icon Of Sin: Dec 26, 2008

mlmp08 posted:

The real challenge of the game was time management and, to a lesser extent, ordnance management.

Turbolasers don't have much range, and the enemy AI gunners only do a constant line lead, so jinking on the way to a target made the enemy essentially incapable of hitting you. Missiles required constant maneuver to evade (or just shoot them), but you could essentially fly in a mass of enemy fire and never get hit if you constantly changed direction. That just meant if you didn't defang them by killing enemies, knocking turrets out, etc, you'd eventually be so swarmed that you basically couldn't straighten out for more than a fraction of a second to fire at a target or scan something or the like.

On missions without time limits, to run the score up, this meant a single TIE fighter could eventually knock out capital ships and such if you were exceptionally patient just to run up the score and get more tats.

I'm pretty sure X-Wing: Alliance followed this same model, although you could pull a shortcut and shoot all your missiles at the shield generators on star destroyers to knock the shields out faster than you otherwise would've. The wingman command system was an extreme pain in the rear end, but if you could master it there was no reason you couldn't finish almost every level on hard mode. Mag Pulse torpedoes also disabled targets for a short span the same way ion weapons would, so if you were feeling lazy with a Y or B wing you could load up on those, park behind the bridge, and just go to town :v:

# ? Aug 14, 2019 11:35

Nostalgia4Butts: Jun 1, 2006; WHERE MY HOSE DRINKERS AT

the one reason i keep an IG account is to see what weird crap gets marketed to me

# ? Aug 14, 2019 14:26

bloops: Dec 31, 2010; Thanks Ape Pussy!

�The large sleeve fits past XXL� says everything.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 15:34

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

I don't know if I want to bother pulling the trigger on RGO in its current state. The controls are apparently pretty bad (even using the designed-for 360 controller) and the difficulty curve is all over the place. But I think what bothered me the most was people saying there's a limited amount of ship/component/weapon customization. That's the part I was excited for the most.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 19:44

Riot Carol Danvers: Jul 30, 2004; It's super dumb, but I can't stop myself. This is just kind of how I do things.

Vasudus posted:

I don't know if I want to bother pulling the trigger on RGO in its current state. The controls are apparently pretty bad (even using the designed-for 360 controller) and the difficulty curve is all over the place. But I think what bothered me the most was people saying there's a limited amount of ship/component/weapon customization. That's the part I was excited for the most.

That's a shame. I'm still gonna try it out tonight since I already bought it. I will give the devs the benefit of the doubt considering how much I enjoyed RG, and the entire dev team consists of five people, and assume they're going to get the game to a better state sometime soon. Wouldn't be surprised if the publisher rushed them to meet a deadline, too.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:29

orange juche: Mar 14, 2012

Vasudus posted:

I don't know if I want to bother pulling the trigger on RGO in its current state. The controls are apparently pretty bad (even using the designed-for 360 controller) and the difficulty curve is all over the place. But I think what bothered me the most was people saying there's a limited amount of ship/component/weapon customization. That's the part I was excited for the most.

Several people who played it said "This isn't Freelancer, this is Privateer 1"

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:35

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

orange juche posted:

Several people who played it said "This isn't Freelancer, this is Privateer 1"

Tired: reusing the mechanics from a well loved, 15 year old game

Wired: reusing the mechanics from its 25 year old precursor

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:54

Steezo: Jun 16, 2003; Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

mlmp08 posted:

The real challenge of the game was time management and, to a lesser extent, ordnance management.

Turbolasers don't have much range, and the enemy AI gunners only do a constant line lead, so jinking on the way to a target made the enemy essentially incapable of hitting you. Missiles required constant maneuver to evade (or just shoot them), but you could essentially fly in a mass of enemy fire and never get hit if you constantly changed direction. That just meant if you didn't defang them by killing enemies, knocking turrets out, etc, you'd eventually be so swarmed that you basically couldn't straighten out for more than a fraction of a second to fire at a target or scan something or the like.

On missions without time limits, to run the score up, this meant a single TIE fighter could eventually knock out capital ships and such if you were exceptionally patient just to run up the score and get more tats.

The targeting system was also incredibly robust, with sub system targeting in a display that oriented to you, making it easy to tell if you had angle on that cannon, launcher, engine or whatever from where you were. The minefield missions are good practice for figuring out your current craft and the targeting system. Until you get the missle-boat, then slam overdrive everywhere.

You could deal with the swarming by distancing yourself from capitol ships and popping the fast bastards first since one wing of fighters is bound to try and follow you. One hundred percenting missions in that usually involves a lot of cat and mouse, and scanning everything before it runs away. You can't always kill all of your targets but the secret order appreciates you tagging everything.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 20:56

orange juche: Mar 14, 2012

Vasudus posted:

Tired: reusing the mechanics from a well loved, 15 year old game

Wired: reusing the mechanics from its 25 year old precursor

Pretty much. There's a reason why Freelancer improved on a lot of poo poo from the Privateer days (because a lot of it sucked!)

It still scratches an itch to play poo poo like Privateer though because christ I haven't played that since like 1993-94 on a neighbor kid's computer, because my parents wouldn't buy it for me (my parents wouldn't let me use their computer for games).

Dude had Tie Fighter, and Privateer 1/2 and a couple of the Wing Commander games so I was always hanging out at his house playing that poo poo.

# ? Aug 14, 2019 23:29

Naked Bear: Apr 15, 2007; Boners was recorded before a studio audience that was alive!

Y'all act like you've never poopsocked X3.

# ? Aug 15, 2019 00:58

Dude McAwesome: Sep 30, 2004; Still better than a Ponytar

mlmp08 posted:

The real challenge of the game was time management and, to a lesser extent, ordnance management.

Turbolasers don't have much range, and the enemy AI gunners only do a constant line lead, so jinking on the way to a target made the enemy essentially incapable of hitting you. Missiles required constant maneuver to evade (or just shoot them), but you could essentially fly in a mass of enemy fire and never get hit if you constantly changed direction. That just meant if you didn't defang them by killing enemies, knocking turrets out, etc, you'd eventually be so swarmed that you basically couldn't straighten out for more than a fraction of a second to fire at a target or scan something or the like.

On missions without time limits, to run the score up, this meant a single TIE fighter could eventually knock out capital ships and such if you were exceptionally patient just to run up the score and get more tats.

dude that rules so much. just a lil TIE plinking away so your guy gets more purple ink

what�s jinking?

Steezo posted:

The targeting system was also incredibly robust, with sub system targeting in a display that oriented to you, making it easy to tell if you had angle on that cannon, launcher, engine or whatever from where you were. The minefield missions are good practice for figuring out your current craft and the targeting system. Until you get the missle-boat, then slam overdrive everywhere.

You could deal with the swarming by distancing yourself from capitol ships and popping the fast bastards first since one wing of fighters is bound to try and follow you. One hundred percenting missions in that usually involves a lot of cat and mouse, and scanning everything before it runs away. You can't always kill all of your targets but the secret order appreciates you tagging everything.

so it�s pretty much just about staying at maximum range all the time? that sounds very time consuming

# ? Aug 15, 2019 05:20

PookBear: Nov 1, 2008

I don't know what's funnier, starcitizen never coming out or companies trying to beat them to market with bad games

# ? Aug 15, 2019 05:20

Steezo: Jun 16, 2003; Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

Dude McAwesome posted:

dude that rules so much. just a lil TIE plinking away so your guy gets more purple ink

so it�s pretty much just about staying at maximum range all the time? that sounds very time consuming

Depends on how you want to play it. you can peel the cover off or dodge like a madman and shot off the guns and missile launchers off capitol craft. Also depends on the mission objective. Sometimes you have to destroy the capital ship. Sometimes you're fighter escort for the bombers, sometimes you're in an ambush trying to survive till reinforcements can hyperspace in. Or you're the ambusher trying to take them out before theirs show up. If you're in a fighter yeah, you've only got two guns and so much power cap. Once you're in an interceptor you have more options and bigger engines.

It sometimes uses you getting swamped as a sign to call for reinforcements or get the hell out of there.

It doesn't start you off by swamping you, staying past the initial objective to do more is usually up to you. Once your primary is met you can gtfo. What's time consuming is trying to figure out the hidden objectives. which show up when you look at the mission in the reaplay/holosim thing.

I dont think there was a taunt option in comms but you could usually pull aggro off a wingman by popping off a few shots. Oh and there is a training sim in the game, kind of an obstacle course. Its a decent introduction to handling and power management. You gain time by flying through the hoops or hitting targets. Been a long time, used to play the everloving poo poo out of some X-Wing or Tie Fighter...

# ? Aug 15, 2019 07:49

Icon Of Sin: Dec 26, 2008

Steezo posted:

Depends on how you want to play it. you can peel the cover off or dodge like a madman and shot off the guns and missile launchers off capitol craft. Also depends on the mission objective. Sometimes you have to destroy the capital ship. Sometimes you're fighter escort for the bombers, sometimes you're in an ambush trying to survive till reinforcements can hyperspace in. Or you're the ambusher trying to take them out before theirs show up. If you're in a fighter yeah, you've only got two guns and so much power cap. Once you're in an interceptor you have more options and bigger engines.

It sometimes uses you getting swamped as a sign to call for reinforcements or get the hell out of there.

It doesn't start you off by swamping you, staying past the initial objective to do more is usually up to you. Once your primary is met you can gtfo. What's time consuming is trying to figure out the hidden objectives. which show up when you look at the mission in the reaplay/holosim thing.

I dont think there was a taunt option in comms but you could usually pull aggro off a wingman by popping off a few shots. Oh and there is a training sim in the game, kind of an obstacle course. Its a decent introduction to handling and power management. You gain time by flying through the hoops or hitting targets. Been a long time, used to play the everloving poo poo out of some X-Wing or Tie Fighter...

God, the junkyard sims in Alliance were some of my favorites. Dump all power to engines, manage your throttle to change your maneuverability, and beat the times of Luke and Wedge in the X-Wing :black101:

Dude McAwesome posted:

dude that rules so much. just a lil TIE plinking away so your guy gets more purple ink

what’s jinking?

so it’s pretty much just about staying at maximum range all the time? that sounds very time consuming

1) random maneuvers to avoid incoming fire.
2) That's only if you're going for 100%. Most missions in X-Wing: Alliance had a 10min timer for you to accomplish your primary objectives, and some of them would go even faster. I'm thinking of the evac from home base (family mission), where everything spirals out of control hilariously fast and you can only try to stay ~~barely~~ ahead of it.

The only one that was a real pain on the clock was the "knock out the shield generators on the Executor mission, which you're doing in the Falcon. You're either going back to your home cruiser for reloads, or doing awkward orbits in a turbolaser field while your turret gunners plink away at them (one at a time). As soon as you knocked them out, the Executor would do its final dive...and if you were approaching from the wrong direction, the ship would hit you on the way down. I think it rotated strangely or something, or maybe it pulled up instead? I died to that a ton way back when.

# ? Aug 15, 2019 11:55

Naked Bear: Apr 15, 2007; Boners was recorded before a studio audience that was alive!

Icon Of Sin posted:

everything spirals out of control hilariously fast and you can only try to stay ~~barely~~ ahead of it.

This is also my memory of XWA.

# ? Aug 15, 2019 12:38

Dude McAwesome: Sep 30, 2004; Still better than a Ponytar

I never played XWA but those levels sounds like a lot of fun.

Disney would make so much money out of a Star Wars original trilogy era star fighter game.

I would buy something like that so quickly, whether it was like TIE Fighter or Rogue Squadron. Very different games but both were fun and good.

# ? Aug 15, 2019 12:59

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

I just got Shortest Trip to Earth because it just came out of early access. I don't like roguelikes for the most part.

It's okay so far. It's basically a far more complicated FTL.

# ? Aug 15, 2019 23:38

Nostalgia4Butts: Jun 1, 2006; WHERE MY HOSE DRINKERS AT

ftl is so good on ipad

its the full game and expansion and the tablet controls work so good for it

# ? Aug 15, 2019 23:41

M_Gargantua: Oct 16, 2006; STOMP'N ON INTO THE POWERLINES; Exciting Lemon

45 ACP CURES NAZIS posted:

I don't know what's funnier, starcitizen never coming out or companies trying to beat them to market with bad games

For the small price I paid in early access Star citizen is a better space dogfight simulator than most. It�s a running joke but the playable content right now is nice, there�s just no story yet. It�s like Minecraft in space, with standard alpha bugs

# ? Aug 16, 2019 00:04

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

Ok I don't like this game. It's unnecessarily complicated under the guise of ~depth~

# ? Aug 16, 2019 00:31

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

M_Gargantua posted:

For the small price I paid in early access Star citizen is a better space dogfight simulator than most. It�s a running joke but the playable content right now is nice, there�s just no story yet. It�s like Minecraft in space, with standard alpha bugs

Except it was supposed to be released 5 years ago but is still in alpha, and many of those "alpha bugs" will never be solved because they picked probably the worst game engine for their project.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 02:11

Naked Bear: Apr 15, 2007; Boners was recorded before a studio audience that was alive!

Didn't they already do an engine change? Isn't it CryEngine now?

# ? Aug 16, 2019 02:59

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

I think that's the problem. Switching to CryEngine is a terrible idea. CryTek is bankrupt or very near it IIRC and the engine was never designed for this kind of poo poo.

disclaimer: I do not follow Star Citizen but absorb random facts about it via thread osmosis

# ? Aug 16, 2019 03:00

Nostalgia4Dogges: Jun 18, 2004; Only emojis can express my pure, simple stupidity.

Nostalgia4Butts posted:

the one reason i keep an IG account is to see what weird crap gets marketed to me

I kind of want this

Ofc not at that price

# ? Aug 16, 2019 04:35

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Naked Bear posted:

Didn't they already do an engine change? Isn't it CryEngine now?

CryEngine's default is WATER. Which CIG has tried to work around by basically lowering the "water table" to the "bottom" of space. However, there are still random water animations, spray against windows, players splashing, and even drowning. In space. Because the game things it's water. Because they used a stupid loving engine. Weird conflicts arise with water they've tried to add to the planets/moons, and the only way to avoid it was to make it kill your character if you go as far as waist deep.

It's a jenga tower of nonsense.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 05:53

Steezo: Jun 16, 2003; Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

Just gonna recommend Streets of Rogue if you have any friends. Your goal is to become the next mayor. Its somewhere between streets of rage and space station 13 in terms of gameplay and insanity. There are many character classes to try each with different objectives, zombies wanna make more zombies, cops want to arrest the guilty, comedians tell a joke, werewolf wants to rage, scientists test drugs on people, all while working as a resistance plant to be the next mayor by doing missions on each level. Missions usually mean murder. You're murdering your way to mayor.

Its twenty bucks and i've already gotten more enjoyment out of it with the assholes I play battlefield with than I would have from fast food or a movie. Maybe not the best metric since i go to early shows if i can help it, less people. Fun game. Like, SNES brawler with friends on the weekend and you've got the TV to yourself and four controllers and hey wanna go ride bikes fun...

it has freeze rays, shrink rays, tasers, drugs, alcohol, getting health back with drugs and alcohol, accidentally injecting sulfuric acid because it looks like a drug, purposefully giving people who hate you sulfuric acid so they can die and its one less person voting against you at the end... and more.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 13:24

colachute: Mar 15, 2015

Steezo posted:

Just gonna recommend Streets of Rogue

Sweet!

Steezo posted:

if you have any friends.

gently caress...

# ? Aug 16, 2019 13:28

Hannibal Rex: Feb 13, 2010

orange juche posted:

Several people who played it said "This isn't Freelancer, this is Privateer 1"

To be fair, it's Privateer 2019. It's not like they didn't make a ton of improvements. I never played the original, but it definitely has some elements from X-Wing/TIE-Fighter like managing energy between weapons, shields and speed, and boosting your shields with energy surplus. The space dogfights are a lot more fun and polished than Freelancer's ever were.

Playing an old school space sim on a gamepad took some getting used to, and the lack of a tutorial definitely makes it harder to figure out stuff than it should be, but it works very well once you've got the hang of it.

If you're on the fence, I'd say try it out for an hour and a half and refund it if you don't like it.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 17:01

Riot Carol Danvers: Jul 30, 2004; It's super dumb, but I can't stop myself. This is just kind of how I do things.

After playing RGO for like an hour, it's definitely a step back from the first game. With Rebel Galaxy I was able to hop in and figure out the basics of the game in about five minutes, and have fun flying around fighting enemies and salvaging stuff. They changed the way space combat works and it makes it much harder to follow where your enemy is shooting from or even at (which is likely why they added the "auto tracking" component). The controls aren't as intuitive and I found myself constantly going to the options to see the control map. The difficulty level is a bit grating, especially for the starting area, and tracking which mission / objective you're on is fairly confusing as well. For instance, I went to the wrong mission's objective first, and then I took a detour for a distress signal, where I promptly got blown out of the sky by pirates.

The game is absolutely beautiful, especially in 4K, but it definitely needs some tweaks and changes on the gameplay side before it's as good as the original.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 17:18

Time Crisis Actor: Apr 28, 2002; by Hand Knit

Vasudus posted:

I think that's the problem. Switching to CryEngine is a terrible idea. CryTek is bankrupt or very near it IIRC and the engine was never designed for this kind of poo poo.

disclaimer: I do not follow Star Citizen but absorb random facts about it via thread osmosis

I think they switched to Lumberyard last year

# ? Aug 16, 2019 17:28

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

isn't that a cursed engine that has yet to produce any game

# ? Aug 16, 2019 17:35

Oxygenpoisoning: Feb 21, 2006

Lumberyard is based on Cryengine as well, so yes, still hosed.

Most of their space sim competitors use custom engines built from the ground up for infinite universes. For all the poo poo they get, both No Mans Sky and Elite are solidly built games, despite a lot of the emptiness and broken promises of the former.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 17:48

colachute: Mar 15, 2015

When did the CryEngine go from �can you run Crysis?� to

Vasudus posted:

I think that's the problem. Switching to CryEngine is a terrible idea. CryTek is bankrupt or very near it IIRC and the engine was never designed for this kind of poo poo.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 17:49

Vasudus: May 30, 2003

I'm probably screwing up the details but I think CryTek was basically a one trick pony and it turns out their supposedly super advanced engine is a nightmare to build with and the further you stray from "this is a FarCry game" the harder it gets.

# ? Aug 16, 2019 18:08

Slim Pickens: Jan 12, 2007; Grimey Drawer

Oxygenpoisoning posted:

Lumberyard is based on Cryengine as well, so yes, still hosed.

Most of their space sim competitors use custom engines built from the ground up for infinite universes. For all the poo poo they get, both No Mans Sky and Elite are solidly built games, despite a lot of the emptiness and broken promises of the former.

At least Hello games eventually met all their promises despite releasing an alpha as a complete game in 2016. Once they made a ton of updates last year it was pretty entertaining for a while, but you eventually see every biome possible, and I eventually got tired of the resource grind for getting anything built or repaired. They just dropped a new patch which apparently makes resources easier to automate for harvesting, improved vehicle scaling and landscape textures, introduced VR, and now lets you ride any weird dickmonsters you find.