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I like the no map for the first time, but on a replay yeah just give me a fuckin map please.
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Oct 30, 2022 18:04
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Sassy Sasquatch posted:Some sort of cartography system that you can gradually work on would be amazing but for some reason the studio doesn’t seem keen on that idea, or maybe they have not found an interesting implementation yet? Honestly it would be super complex to implement and design a reasonable UI for, especially since there's a lot of 3D.
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Oct 30, 2022 18:20
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Ehh, a topo map that reveals based on sonar pings and just marks caves with a big “OOH SPOOKY” would suffice
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Oct 30, 2022 18:21
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I wish the game had echos so when I did HONK HONK in the caves I got HONK HONK honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honk
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Oct 30, 2022 19:12
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Omnicarus posted:I wish the game had echos so when I did HONK HONK in the caves I got HONK HONK honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honk And then a distant echo of a leviathan roar in return.
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Oct 30, 2022 19:13
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MikeJF posted:Honestly it would be super complex to implement and design a reasonable UI for, especially since there's a lot of 3D. I played the last time with a classic 2D fog of war style map and that was enough for me, it doesn't need to give a perfect 3D representation of the area just give you a broad idea of where the regions are
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Oct 30, 2022 20:03
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That's all I need, something so I don't spend so much time alt tabbing out to a map online.
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Oct 30, 2022 20:05
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The echo thing reminds me of how reaper roars are meant to be echolocation and it makes me think there should be a leviathan with actual echolocation-style clicks and they're really stealthy in visibility but you can just hear in the distance a faint sound of the clicks and you spin around trying to figure out which direction they're coming from and try to figure out if they're louder the way but if they see something they're interested in they speed the clicks up, and then send out bursts if they lock on which means they're coming unless you lose them, and then in caves there can also be echoing to further confuse the issue...
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Oct 30, 2022 |
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Oct 30, 2022 20:16
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Omnicarus posted:I wish the game had echos so when I did HONK HONK in the caves I got HONK HONK honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honkhonk honk honk honk You got my vote.
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Oct 30, 2022 20:51
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Yo, did the pop-in ever get fixed for Subnatica 1? Either by the devs or a mod?
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Nov 1, 2022 00:33
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McCracAttack posted:Yo, did the pop-in ever get fixed for Subnatica 1? Either by the devs or a mod? lol what does your heart tell you 
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Nov 1, 2022 01:41
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McCracAttack posted:Yo, did the pop-in ever get fixed for Subnatica 1? Either by the devs or a mod? The next big patch coming is to port Subnautica 1 into the Subnautica 2 engine. Theoretically that should fix the worst of the pop up. Maybe. Who knows.
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Nov 1, 2022 01:52
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That’s an ambitious update for an older game.
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Nov 1, 2022 04:01
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I mean it's still the same engine, just with additional work on it, yes? My ignorant rear end imagines that it's mostly just porting existing working material forwards and catching the bugs. Like, the SeaMoth is in Subnautica2, it's just an untextured dev toy is all.
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Nov 1, 2022 04:05
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I still wanna see a Seatruck in the first one 
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Nov 1, 2022 12:30
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I was checking out a playthrough by Grohlvana, which is recent, and there's a ton of pop in. I'm so used to playing it on the Switch that it doesn't really bother me, but I know he's playing it on a good enough rig and it's still there.
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Nov 1, 2022 12:34
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My understanding of the reason for the pop-in in the first game is its related to the early builds where the terrain was changeable and morphed to fit around buildings and you had a specific tool that you could use to move terrain from one part to another. I believe it caused issues with save bloat and stuff, so they made the terrain static. In BZ they were able to build the map from the ground up to be static so the pop-in isn't anywhere near as bad. At least, I think so. I hope that back porting the BZ updates to the original game help with the pop-in too.
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Nov 1, 2022 15:52
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Cartoon Man posted:The next big patch coming is to port Subnautica 1 into the Subnautica 2 engine. Theoretically that should fix the worst of the pop up. Maybe. Who knows. Zesty posted:That’s an ambitious update for an older game. Subnautica 1 seems to be their biggest money maker to this day so getting it off that rickety older engine will probably pay dividends when it comes time to port the game to Nintendo's next console or whatever.
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Nov 1, 2022 16:13
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I still love the fact that their answer to their buggy terraforming code breaking the game was to just delete the terraforming tools but leave the actual code causing the problems lying around for years afterwards and making it easily accessible by console commands . 
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Nov 1, 2022 22:39
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If your PC is up to it you can always fix the pop-in by going into the ini and making the draw distance GO EVEN FURTHER BEYOND Terrible for the frame rate though, even on my 3080 RTX at 4K it was dipping down to 30 and below
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Nov 1, 2022 22:42
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The pop-in issue just added to the terror of the game so I’m all for it
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Nov 1, 2022 23:30
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OK before I start, caveat that I didn't finish Below Zero yet, but I noticed something about the story that has been bothering me. There are two main stories, one is searching for your sister and learning what went wrong at the base, the other is building a robot body for this alien. Of the two, the former seems interesting and I am mostly enjoying it, but the later... wheww boy. It seems to massively misunderstand what's interesting about a game like this. I wanna learn about cool alien environments and get hints about an alien civilization- I absolutely have no interest in explaining love to an alien. I am a real life human on real life earth, I already know what love is, in far more dimensions than this game is prepared to present- what about this story is supposed to be compelling? It's not even like I'm contrasting alien and human societies, because I never learn almost anything (so far) about the alien civilization, just that they don't share a lot of human concepts. Who gives a poo poo? Maybe it gets good later?
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Nov 20, 2022 16:37
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:OK before I start, caveat that I didn't finish Below Zero yet, but I noticed something about the story that has been bothering me. There are two main stories, one is searching for your sister and learning what went wrong at the base, the other is building a robot body for this alien. Of the two, the former seems interesting and I am mostly enjoying it, but the later... wheww boy. It seems to massively misunderstand what's interesting about a game like this. I wanna learn about cool alien environments and get hints about an alien civilization- I absolutely have no interest in explaining love to an alien. I am a real life human on real life earth, I already know what love is, in far more dimensions than this game is prepared to present- what about this story is supposed to be compelling? I have to agree, I never really cared about any of that story even right to the end. To be honest none of the story in below zero was particularly compelling to me. I'm not even sure why, maybe because they straight up give you so much info that it feels less rewarding compared to stumbling upon something important in Subnautica and finding out more of the story that way. I basicall had to force myself to finish Below Zero, just to say I did it. Not awful but definitely not nearly as good as the first.
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Nov 20, 2022 16:48
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The whole Degasi story still sticks with me. The Mercury, too, but to a much lesser degree. I'm a sucker for audio logs talking about a terrible situation in the past. Kinda surprised me when I learned that the Degasi stuff was 10 years ago.
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Nov 20, 2022 17:08
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:something about the story that has been bothering me. There are two main stories There's a reason for that, and I think it's basically because the writer was swapped out during development so the different writers had different ideas and the end result is kind of a jumble of the two. In the end, I don't think I was satisfied with any of the storylines. Like I know the appeal of trying to explore details about this weird alien, but it's not particularly a unique or exciting take on the premise, and I think I've also gotten tired of future capitalist distopia stories where the only punchline they work towards is how it turns out it sucks living in a future capitalist distopia. Just enjoy the fish.
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Nov 20, 2022 17:28
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SlothfulCobra posted:There's a reason for that, and I think it's basically because the writer was swapped out during development so the different writers had different ideas and the end result is kind of a jumble of the two. Any idea which story was which? Neither so far are super good, but one of them I at least understand the appeal (find out what happened to your sister and the research colony) and the other which is just... ugh
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Nov 20, 2022 17:51
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A version of the Alan story was present in the early Early Access drafts of Below Zero. (In fact, Alan's name is derived from 'Almanac' which is what the Architects were called in that early story.) I'm not sure if it involved building a body for Alan or him getting stuck in your head, though. I think the sister story came later.
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Nov 20, 2022 18:09
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:Any idea which story was which? Neither so far are super good, but one of them I at least understand the appeal (find out what happened to your sister and the research colony) and the other which is just... ugh It was the first one. The Sister story was already present during the beta/early access, but it was also a much bigger deal and a central mystery. I think her death came in the second revision - she was alive with the other crew in orbit originally wasn't she?
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Nov 20, 2022 18:09
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When I played through the last/second to last early access, I managed to somehow skip all of the Alan storyline. I got down to the bottom after finishing the sister storyline and was wandering around like “…ok? Where do I go now?  ”Fake e: first one still the best, I keep coming back to it yearly or so. Second one just doesn’t do it for me, somehow.
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Nov 20, 2022 19:13
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I finished the game without ever figuring out what happened to Sam. Had to look it up after the fact to figure out what I missed.
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Nov 20, 2022 22:02
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:Maybe it gets good later? It does not.
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Nov 20, 2022 22:40
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I want a Subnautica 3/Subnautica: Other Subtitle, and I desperately want co-op in it too, but what justification for you being stranded on what I hope is still 4546b can they give that would be as compelling as the first game? This is why I'm not a writer, because I can't think of anything. Fundamentally, I just hope the next game is primarily underwater, more so than BZ, and with multiplayer. I wanna co-pilot the Cyclops, without having to rely on a janky mod.
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Nov 20, 2022 23:17
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In the original story Alan was originally much more threatening and deliberately tried to kill Robin. You started in Outpost Zero and the excavation site nearby was the team trying to uncover Architect technology. When you get to Alan's sanctuary in the twisty bridges he traps you in there so Robin can't alert anyone else and find him. Touching his storage device is an accident and he didn't intend to be transferred into Robin's head. As mentioned Sam was still alive and worked on a space station in orbit. Robin had to try and keep Alan's presence a secret so she wouldn't get experimented on, but while doing that there ended up being a beach in the containment of the Kharaa they were experimenting on. Robin goes to find the Sea Emperor Leviathan juvenile in the region to get some of the enzyme to cure it and send it up to the station. At the end of the content of that story that was written, the manager in charge of the planet operation has discovered Robin falsified her scan results that hid Alan, and that Sam has been helping her cover up a few things (although Sam didn't know why Robin was doing stuff, she did it to help out her sister). Then the station has a big explosion. Alan started off a lot more aggressive and threatening but had to co-operate with Robin for their mutual survival. There was no body plot for him at that point, and it was just about doing the things you were told to by management. The story was more disjointed and there was a lot of doing stuff because it was the next objective. It's hard to speculate if more time to polish would have resolved that before release as much of it was very different in structure and presentation compared to the original game. I think that the rework of the Alan plot makes much more sense in the new plot compared to the original. The Alterra part of the plot probably was stronger than the revised version, but I wonder if people might have found the objective nature of it frustrating compared to the open ended exploration of the first game. Also one of the jukebox discs you can find uses lines from the original plot. It's the one where it has voice lines where Alan sounds menacing and tells you to die quietly.
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Nov 21, 2022 01:28
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It's not like the original Subnautica had much of a story, though I will admit that Below Zero's is a bit of a mess. In terms of gameplay I think Below Zero holds up very well. It's better than the original in some ways, and worse in others.
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Nov 21, 2022 04:56
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Gameplay wise the mechanics are slightly better but the map design and scale of gameplay are far worse, and the design of the environment is inextricably linked to the gameplay quality in a game like this.
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Nov 21, 2022 05:01
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:It was the first one. The Sister story was already present during the beta/early access, but it was also a much bigger deal and a central mystery. I think her death came in the second revision - she was alive with the other crew in orbit originally wasn't she? I think so, and I think she was even fully voice acted.
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Nov 21, 2022 05:25
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Oasx posted:It's not like the original Subnautica had much of a story, though I will admit that Below Zero's is a bit of a mess. In terms of gameplay I think Below Zero holds up very well. It's better than the original in some ways, and worse in others. The original Subnautica didn't have much of a story, but it also didn't need one—simply exploring the world is enough to keep most players engaged, and the story elements are just enough to provide a gentle push to explore deeper and to seek specific resources. It does exactly what it needs to do, and the execution is extremely solid.
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Nov 21, 2022 06:10
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The original Subnautica story encouraged you, the below zero one directed you. And having more of a story isn't necessarily a good thing when it's a decidedly mediocre one; the threadbare story in Subnautica 1 kept it from being able to have as many flaws.
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Nov 21, 2022 06:22
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To me at least, it was always the framing device at the start of Below Zero that really harmed the game. Especially considering its the same one as the first game, done worse. In the original, you essentially wake up to an endless ocean and a crashed spaceship. At this point, it is entirely up to you to survive, get established, and start getting off this planet because you crashed. Even an hour into the game, it further reinforces this by having every escape pod empty and the spaceship blowing up again; you crashed and you are alone. This really sets the tone as even 900 meters down and knee-deep into the story, I can still draw a line backwards through the plot to this point. The plot happens to you and you resolve it so you can go home. It is what made the ending of my first play through bittersweet as I did not want to leave this place I had come to call home. Now Below Zero has to follow up this act and it is not an enviable job. I think going the route of a story driven campaign is the right call for the sequel and I like the opening. "Let's get to the bottom of my sister's disappearance and what is going on with this shady company" is a good starting point, but how you get onto the planet just pulls me out of the game. By screwing up the landing and finding yourself in the same survive-or-die situation very quickly, this opening makes my character feel a bit foolish. I kept thinking what was "Plan A" after landing. I kept coming back to it when I was getting near the end or trying to pick up a plot thread, "Why did I do this to myself". It is a shame because the environments in Below Zero are fantastic. The first time I surfaced into a whiteout blizzard was so cool.
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Nov 21, 2022 15:38
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| # ? May 29, 2024 17:32 |
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MikeJF posted:The original Subnautica story encouraged you, the below zero one directed you. And having more of a story isn't necessarily a good thing when it's a decidedly mediocre one; the threadbare story in Subnautica 1 kept it from being able to have as many flaws. The thing that really gets me is you can imagine how a few iterations with the time and budget to cut stuff would really help. "Do we really need to go to 8 arbitrary artifacts that don't do anything? What if we cut to 4 and gave them some kind of effect or utility? What if Alan took the quarantine seriously and won't risk making a new body until all khara is totally gone?" Simple touches could eliminate the feeling of being led by the nose, and make plot threads come together.
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Nov 22, 2022 03:08
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