|
Eason the Fifth posted:Speaking of Myth, are there any good Myth-likes? Well there's Riven: the Thequel to Myth
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 20:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 12:48 |
|
|
just a couple of demos this afternoon.  American Arcadia is Limbo meets Republique, with a Truman Show backdrop. anyone feel like the truman show increased the feeling in gen x'ers that they were the main character of humanity? that's not related to anything, never mind, ignore that. The game is fine. The characters talk too much, but it's by the dev of Call of the Sea, a game with a very talky protag. So no real surprise there. At least it's not "THAT just happened", more just.. Aloy-ing, I guess. "Am I supposed to follow these arrows?" the MC says, as you're already moving him in the direction of (and past) the arrow signs. Not optimized for the deck, froze twice on me so that'll need to be addressed before launch unless this is an earlier build.   Another Crab's Treasure reminds me a lot of Blue Fire. It's a Soulslike by the developer of Going Under that has a major focus on platforming in addition to the usual bonfire lighting (in this case, activating Moon Shells), hack & slashing, and frantically dashing away from the boss so you can get off a heal before they attack again. A unique aspect to ACT is that you wear temporary armor in the game by picking up objects to act as your shell. These objects have a temp HP total as well as a special ability you can fire off, kind of like weapons in Elden Ring. In the tutorial area your first shell has a spell that summons a bunch of orbs that home in on a target (I think this may have been an enemy attack in ER in that upsidedown place?? it's been a while since I played). Your jump has a limited hover that reminds me of Yoshi's Island. This one is also not optimized for the Deck but it's further out, and it at least ran OK for the most part once i turned the settings down from High/Highest. Wishlisted.   Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is my favorite demo all year. It's just fun as gently caress. It's Crazy Taxi meets 3D Platformer Collectathon. You don't have a jump button but you do have a turbo button that allows you to launch off any incline and that's how you get air to get on certain platforms. The level design is very Mario 64, as Bombeach (perhaps an ode to Bob-omb Battlefield) is a city map that has an uphill climb to a boss, so there's not so much falling to your death as there is "how do I get on top of that?" Of course it's also Crazy Taxi, which means you've got a ticking clock which you can extend by picking up passengers and taking them to their destination. Gears are stars in this game, and there are a whopping 91 of them in the demo to collect, and 4 stages on top of the existing explorable hub. The hub by itself has 20-some gears. It's got content, folks. I got about 25 gears before feeling like I was playing too much of the game so I stopped there. I think the only concern I have is whether the time limit/taxi component of the game will feel too superfluous or just an unnecessary layer of stress. The store page says that story levels can be explored at their leisure, so I'm not sure if two of the levels I encountered were.. NOT story levels? But they definitely had a bunch of gears, and a time limit. The first level Morio's Home didn't, so.. IDK. Maybe it'll be an option you can switch on/off. But easily wishlisted.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 21:23
|
|
|
DXVK is one of the reasons why some games run better on Linux than on Windows, and now the Windows people are appropriating it.  Another game that benefits massively is Guild Wars 2. People always complain about frame drops, meanwhile I can run around all the open world events at a steady 60 fps. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 21:52
|
|
|
No Wave posted:Ok, I get tired of hearing people get accused of just being nostalgic all the time. But THIS is just nostalgia. For games in the past decade, I absolutely loved the Monster Hunter, Megaquarium and Grim Dawn expansions. Can’t really think of any other games in my library that got anything close to that treatment. Not so hyped about getting a new party member in an rpg or whatever. Heck even Paradox dlc are very much a “get it in a couple years on sale” kind of thing. E: this is maybe getting into a “what’s the difference” conversation accidentally and I don’t have answer to that beyond “I know it when I see it” Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Oct 15, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 21:54
|
|
|
Croccers posted:Cripes Laika: Aged Through Blood demo has a very loving depressing vibe to it yeah I played the demo... it is dark. really dark Wasn't crazy about the gameplay to be honest. Cool idea but I doubt I'll get it Jossar posted:The other FutureCop recommended game is GUNHEAD. I had a lot of fun with this one. Probably not on my immediate list of buying priorities anywhere in the future, especially since I still need to get through Gunfire Reborn. But it certainly did hit all the right notes for bouncing/jetpacking around in a mini-mechsuit while shooting stuff. Looks a hell of a lot like MOTHERGUNSHIP Play fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Oct 15, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 21:57
|
|
|
Most likely my last batch of Next Fest demo impressions: ah, time is so fleeting!  NICE - Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom: As The 7th Guest already put it, this is juicy and fun as heck. In a similar way to how Laika Aged Through Blood is introducing vehicular movement into Metroidvanias, so does this introduce vehicular movement into 3D collect-a-thon platformers, giving us a cool combination of Banjo Kazooie meets Crazy Taxi (and I'm not just talking about how you're a taxi: while some levels are platforming challenges, others are quite literally taxi passenger delivery time-trials).    HMM - Skybreakers: A somewhat decent Bullet-Heaven/Survivors-clone that feels more like you're playing a hack-and-slash like Dynasty Warriors. It's got decent combat mechanics, diverse characters, and juicy effects, but ultimately stagnates quite quickly and feels repetitive. To add insult to injury, it is badly translated: a very common happenstance I keep running into.     NICE - Sovereign Syndicate: An impressive story/dialogue-heavy RPG set in a Victorian London steampunk world of minotaurs, centaurs, opium, and cogs. Feels very much like a Disco Elysium clone set in the world of Arcanum where you have voices in your head that correlate to your primary statistics, you have to roll on choices where stats bolster your chances, and where picking choices related to stats feeds them and thus makes them chime in more. It doesn't have combat: rather any fights you get into will be solved through stat-based choices and rolls just like dialogue. Also has a temperament meter that reminds me of Indigo Prophecy: being filled with hope or depressed can open up new dialogue options. It also has that mechanic where highlighted words can be hovered over for lore/definitions: typically used here to explain British slang. I found this very delightful to play, and was impressed at the depth of choice and paths. Looks like it is also a multi-character journey where you switch between them.     OK - The Thaumaturge: Another impressive story-heavy RPG, this time taking place in 20th century Russian Warsaw where you, as The Thaumaturge, solve various disturbances by gathering emotional vibes and secrets given off by objects and talking to your Stand, all while hanging out with your new friend Rasputin. Kinda reminds me of the Witcher, doing a bunch of odd jobs involving tracking and deducing spooky things. Unlike Sovereign Syndicate above, though, this does have turn-based combat where you and your Stand fight using cards, being mindful of the timeline, setting up combos and enhancing your deck with boons granted from your skill tree. I do think it is quite good, but I wasn't able to get enough of an impression from the demo: what kind of disappointed me was I never felt like I needed to deduce much, gameplay usually just being to turn on your detective vision, click on everything, and bam, correct conclusion auto-acquired. Curious how it evolves: maybe just a case of being too early in the game. Gonna see if I can cram in a few more last-minute ones, then do a final summarization of recommendations! FutureCop fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Oct 16, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 00:12
|
|
|
FutureCop posted:
holy poo poo? I was curious about that game, but "effective mash-up of Disco Elysium/Arcanum with multiple characters" is one hell of a pitch and way better than what I expected.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 01:14
|
|
|
It's weird how often decent games have horrible translations. Is it really that hard? I feel like I could translate one of these games in a few days. Also the Thaumaturge looks amazing, I've been very excited for that game since I first saw it in terms of concept and worldbuilding, hopefully it lives up to it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:05
|
|
|
Play posted:It's weird how often decent games have horrible translations. Is it really that hard? I feel like I could translate one of these games in a few days. How well do you speak Chinese? If the answer is "very well", how much do you like money? Because you'll get a lot more of it doing professional business translation stuff than video games. Getting a monolingual native speaker to just do copyediting would probably be a lot cheaper than hiring a real translator, but then the real challenge is "how does a dev who only speaks Chinese find and hire someone like that?"
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:23
|
|
|
Antigravitas posted:DXVK is one of the reasons why some games run better on Linux than on Windows, and now the Windows people are appropriating it. The DXVK developers are extremely irritated by Windows users cargo-culting absolute nonsense and wasting everybody's time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:24
|
|
|
RPATDO_LAMD posted:How well do you speak Chinese? If the answer is "very well", how much do you like money? Because you'll get a lot more of it doing professional business translation stuff than video games. Whenever devs try to crowdsource translation work they end up shipping code with racial slurs
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:28
|
|
|
Macichne Leainig posted:Yeah I was gonna say, Call of Duty has been charging like $20-30 for skins for years now. Nothing micro about that wait til you find out about the gun skins in valorant that had to be "leveled up" (by pouring more real-money currency into them) after you already bought them for 60bux. it cost like $300 to actually fully unlock them and get the ugly dragon skins
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:28
|
|
|
RPATDO_LAMD posted:How well do you speak Chinese? If the answer is "very well", how much do you like money? Because you'll get a lot more of it doing professional business translation stuff than video games. I guess my idea is that a lot of these devs are just doing the computer translation. So instead of Chinese to English translation, they'd just need to find someone to take the computer translation and turn it into real-seeming English. Which a literate person should be able to do. But, I don't really know much about it obviously.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:30
|
|
|
Play posted:I guess my idea is that a lot of these devs are just doing the computer translation. So instead of Chinese to English translation, they'd just need to find someone to take the computer translation and turn it into real-seeming English. Which a literate person should be able to do. So if I read this right, your logic is "have a machine translate it, then an actual speaker fix it"? Here is why this does not work: a machine translation does not use context, it just spits out a result. Because of this, it's going to output something, but you have no idea about the accuracy. So let's say it's 95% good (a high estimate)... correcting the grammar in the end on a mountain of text sans context means you're now just gussying up bad information, which someone who's just copy-editing a script has no way to recognize. The only way to find these errors is to have someone who knows both languages and can compare the computer's work to the original text... and at that point, why are you not having this bilingual individual translate the loving script correctly?
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:59
|
|
|
Play posted:I guess my idea is that a lot of these devs are just doing the computer translation. So instead of Chinese to English translation, they'd just need to find someone to take the computer translation and turn it into real-seeming English. Which a literate person should be able to do. Doing translation work is VERY time consuming. I worked on fixing the Spanish translation for a game, which wasn't a text-heavy game by any means, and it took us around three months to translate and proofread despite there already being a base translation (around 40% of it had been machine translated by the original translators) to work with and the game barely having uhhh... 17k lines of text or thereabouts? You simply can't trust machine translation as a point of reference so you need to go back to the original text, and even if the machine translation is perfect, a single menu can take you upwards of an hour. It's very rewarding work, especially when you work with fiction, but it can take a LONG time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:05
|
|
|
There's also the fact that translations may require changes that go well beyond text. For example, in English things are either singular or plural. In other languages, the type of plurality can depend on how many of something you're talking about. Doing translation well is complicated.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:11
|
|
|
RPATDO_LAMD posted:How well do you speak Chinese? If the answer is "very well", how much do you like money? Because you'll get a lot more of it doing professional business translation stuff than video games. So not to be a dick, but this is actually a super lovely thing to say, not in the least because it is being used as an excuse in the world, right now, as a way to pay translators less for more work. Just because a machine translates something doesn't mean it does so right. Even if it translates something and it looks right, it frequently isn't. I could give you a machine translated script that goes from Japanese to English right now and ask you to clean it up into presentable English and you probably could but that doesn't mean it would be right, accurate or even good. And this is on the absolute most bare bones level of translation, without any context for character voice, slang, obscure terms, and everything else that a translator does. What sounds genuinely easier to you: translating a script or getting a translated script and then having to try to fix it in comparison to the original script? Because if you say the latter think about how much harder it is to remain consistent, fact check, go over character voices and other things.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:14
|
|
|
EDIT: nm
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:19
|
|
|
pseudorandom name posted:The DXVK developers are extremely irritated by Windows users cargo-culting absolute nonsense and wasting everybody's time. What does this mean
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:35
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:So not to be a dick, but this is actually a super lovely thing to say, not in the least because it is being used as an excuse in the world, right now, as a way to pay translators less for more work. i agree with all of this op idk how you got from my "cheaper than hiring a real translator" statement to the implication that the result would somehow be just as good
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:35
|
|
|
RPATDO_LAMD posted:i agree with all of this op I apologize then, I misread your tone.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:36
|
|
|
AI translate everything and let the fans sort it out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:43
|
|
|
The AI translates everything and allows experts to personalize it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:51
|
|
|
Why let AI translate it when you can just let AI to write it in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:52
|
|
|
AI turns it all around and lets the fans figure it out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:52
|
|
|
AI changes all that and lets fans understand.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:52
|
|
|
Artificial intelligence changes everything and makes the audience understand.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:53
|
|
|
Thank you for the demo fest write ups. I added a few games to my wishlist simply due to the posts. There are simply too many games coming out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:55
|
|
|
I simply have an AI read all the dialogue for me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 03:59
|
|
|
CharlieFoxtrot posted:I still think about this whenever people talk about combat drones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgrTpr-CvxA
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 04:02
|
|
|
FutureCop posted:
I have been a sucker for "games with crunchy RPG stats but not for combat" even before Disco Elysium, so this sounds rad
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 04:50
|
|
|
first, some demos that will remain available after the end of Next Fest (tomorrow @ 10AM PT): Octopus City Blues TEVI Enshrouded (until Oct 22) Forgive Me Father 2 The Last Exterminator Peripeteia CD 2 Trap Master (prologue will be made available) now a couple more demo thoughts:  Go Mecha Ball takes the roguelite wave shooter and applies Sonic 3D Blast to it. it's definitely fun, as you marble your way around the areas, ram into enemies to get ammo back, and twin stick shoot your way through various stages to get to the boss of the demo. I'm not quite sure what the overall structure of the final game will be, or whether the arenas are gonna be hand-crafted or randomly made or what (the design of them seemed solid though). I'm not one for roguelites but this looks like it will be offer something unique for fans of games like Nuclear Throne or Assault Android Cactus.  To be clear, I -liked- Forgive Me Father, so Forgive Me Father 2 doesn't need to do much to win me over except promise that its campaign won't run nearly as long. The biggest and most important change is that manual quick saves are now possible at any time, and the game also autosaves at checkpoints. No more weird physical checkpoints like it's a JRPG. The visceral level of the weapon impacts has also improved and gotten much bloodier. Once again the base shotgun audio is disappointing, like the first game. But the actual power of it seems fine. The remaining question I have will be what the playstyles will be like (as the first game had two playable characters), and what the weapon upgrades will be like.  I can't deny that there's something interesting about OverRider even though I didn't love it. It's an open world hoverboard ARPG where you perform tricks to attack enemies. I feel like they need to allow the player to let a little more loose though. Building up turbo is kind of a pain and I feel like you should just, kinda, I dunno.. have it. Always. Instead you often have to awkwardly stand in place and do a couple of quick tricks just to build up your turbo so you can go up a ramp. This is already enough friction that it takes me out of the game. I also had a difficult time figuring out where the game wanted me to go. I went to one of the places marked on the compass and it was just some sort of minigame. Needs a little more work, but an intriguing concept.  The Diary is a deduction game akin to Rivals, Obra Dinn or Golden Idol where you are piecing together a person's diary. It's a little too simple though and not very puzzling. I'm not sure this has the thinky meat to win over amateur sleuths.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 05:00
|
|
|
So how do you pour beer in Dave the Diver? Specifically, how to pour so foam builds up and does not build up, respectively?
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 05:18
|
|
|
Unlucky7 posted:So how do you pour beer in Dave the Diver? Specifically, how to pour so foam builds up and does not build up, respectively? iirc you can get a Perfect by pouring until the glass starts to straighten up, then don't start pouring again until it's fully upright; or just tap the pour button https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SRutV0A8jE&t=113s
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 05:23
|
|
|
I just played the Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom demo and I never thought of Crazy Taxi and Mario 64 as a combination I needed up till now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 05:44
|
|
|
Resdfru posted:What does this mean The Windows port of DXVK exists purely to do side-by-side testing/debuging, the performance is more-or-less universally worse than the native driver and Windows users keep stumbling into to DXVK discussions and asking absurd questions and/or making crazy demands.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 05:58
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:holy poo poo? Yeah, I remembered you asking for Sovereign Syndicate earlier on in the thread so I wanted to be sure to give it a look: it was a very pleasant surprise to me as well! The 7th Guest posted:More cool demo impressions! I might have to check out OverRider if I get a chance: dunno how I missed that since it looks so stylish, though if it is a bit meh like you say, I guess it makes sense it mighta got buried. Wonder if I should give Forgive Me Father 2 a shot: I actually didn't like the first one that much, but I'll admit it was for a very shallow reason that the art style and feedback just kinda bothers me. At least the demo will be up for quite awhile, so no rush. Few last minute Next Fest demo impressions:   OK - Crime Scene Cleaner: If you're a fan of Viscera Cleanup Detail or Powerwash Simulator, you know what you're getting into here and it will be more of the same: put broken stuff and bullets into trash bags, wipe up blood using a mop, sponge or power-washer, bag up dead bodies and shove em into your truck, collect any incriminating evidence, and deal with the logistics of hauling bags, refilling water, and so on. Meanwhile, you've got a sick daughter and you can steal money or valuable objects around as you work to help her, as long as you don't get too greedy to be noticed. Only big differences between this and Viscera I noted was that it is a bit easier (less chance of blood footprints, spillage, can highlight multiple trash items to pick up at once), there's more of a long-term story angle, and the character talks to himself a lot kinda like the first Viscera Cleanup Detail in Shadow Warrior. Seems like it can be fun for the meditative lovers of cleaning-up: not exactly pushing any new ground but still.    NICE - Another Crabs Treasure: Mostly echoing The 7th Guest's praise for this as a very cute crab-based soulslike with a really unique shell mechanic where they serve as limited durability shields that also give you a special attack (an Ash of War, as it were). If I were to have a complaint, it's the same complaint I had of Aggro Crab's previous game, Going Under, which, while also being nice, can be quite confusing and frustrating with how bouncy, flailing, zippy and dashy both the player and enemies can be: it just feels like telegraph animations can be lost amidst the bounciness and since every action has a dash or knockback associated with it, enemies can get right in your face from so far away instantly, and your attacks can easily end up sending you off cliffs or dashing right past the person you're trying to attack. Once you get used to it, though, it can be great fun: just feels like taming a bucking bronco.   NICE - Last Train Home: I unfortunately couldn't get this to run and it would freeze on the loading screen, at least until I moved it over to my SSD. Anyway, happy I got it to work as it's a pretty cool WW1 squad-based tactics game with a heavy emphasis on survival management. While the missions themselves have a very simple and familiar Commandos-esque gameplay to them with a focus on stealth and scavenging when possible, the real challenge is the long game, aka train management. Kind of like a combination of XCOM and Oregon Trail, there is a lot of management to take care of between missions: as you ride your train, you need to assign jobs to everyone, hand out promotions, decide rations and pacing, send out squads to forage or trade at villages, handle repairs and ambushes, let soldiers rest and heal, and so on. It's overwhelming, but I found it pretty engaging and the game tries to help as much as possible with tooltips and intuitive menus. It's a pretty hardcore game and the intended difficulty reflects this, but I did notice that they provided optional difficulties that can, for example, reduce train management but keep the combat difficulty high, or vice versa, if you strongly favor one focus of the experience over the other. As some reviewers have said, fans of Jagged Alliance 3, Frostpunk or Company of Heroes should find this very appealing. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Oct 16, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 06:05
|
|
|
pseudorandom name posted:The Windows port of DXVK exists purely to do side-by-side testing/debuging, the performance is more-or-less universally worse than the native driver and Windows users keep stumbling into to DXVK discussions and asking absurd questions and/or making crazy demands. I'm on windows and the one game I used DXVK on boosted it's performance by over 50%,so it's not that universal clearly.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 06:17
|
|
|
pseudorandom name posted:The Windows port of DXVK exists purely to do side-by-side testing/debuging, the performance is more-or-less universally worse than the native driver and Windows users keep stumbling into to DXVK discussions and asking absurd questions and/or making crazy demands. I guess I just hallucinated all those extra frames the couple times I used it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 06:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 12:48 |
|
|
what pseudorandom name is getting at is that dxvk exists because linux doesn't support directx so it has to run them under a translation layer to vulkan, but in windows this wouldn't make sense because it can run either directly and there is a performance overhead involved in that translation. the reason that overhead may be acceptable and windows users do see performance boosts from using it though is that not all developers are equally good at both apis.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 07:26
|
|
