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This has probably already been covered, so feel free to send me to the relevant page, but anyone know what's up with the story reboot of Below Zero? I haven't been following it closely, but I heard the lead writer left or was pushed out because people hated his story?
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Feb 24, 2020 16:03
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Oasx posted:We don’t know any details other than that the writer left and that they decided to change the story. The two are almost certainly linked, but it could easily be that the writer left on good terms. I was worried the answer was "chuds"
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Feb 24, 2020 17:22
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I guess in Below Zero there are actual living NPCs you can talk to (so I've heard) so a silent protagonist is probably not the best way to go- I don't think that's ever worked well, with one or two obvious exceptions.
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Feb 24, 2020 19:07
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I assume we're taking a really broad definition of "sassy".
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Feb 25, 2020 13:28
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DEEP STATE PLOT posted:
Just sent me looking for old roger zealazny novels, cause I thought this might be "The Doors of his Face, The Lamps of his Mouth" but it's not. But now I'm deep in a nostalgia haze for my childhood bedroom, absolutely stacked with scifi paperbacks.
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Feb 27, 2020 10:22
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Not having a map makes it a better game. The in-universe justification for it could just be that it's a broken PDA, same reason you can't make a cyclops when you first land. Only difference is that if they told you that your map is damaged, they need to give you a way of fixing it. Much better to just not put it in and not mention it. Putting in a feature that makes your game worse or encourages degenerate play just because the universe implies it, is bad design. Lore should never dictate gameplay, it should exist to enrich it. I agree though, that there are solutions for it; using PDA messages or something to explain why there's no map might help with your immersion issue, but I don't think that actually putting a map in would make the game better. One of the chief joys of Subnautica is the player's gradually expanding mastery of the environment, and building a mental map of that space, rather than relying on an automapper, is a huge part of that.
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Feb 28, 2020 14:47
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enraged_camel posted:Y'all seem to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, tbh. u seem to be suffering from turd brain syndrome a terminal case, my goondolances Anyway, a map wouldn't be as much fun as learning the terrain. Might be cool for a replay, but that's why there's a mod for it.
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Mar 5, 2020 10:12
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I found my first time capsule last night- had a stasis rifle and a note wishing me luck. <3 <3 <3 <3
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Mar 5, 2020 13:24
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MY STOREFRONT
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Mar 9, 2020 13:54
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not emptyquoting this is especially true when you are doing something new, either to your particular team/studio, or to the industry at large. and turnover in gamedev is so outrageously high that at any given time, even in a veteran studio, a majority of the workforce might have little to no experience maybe we need more software consultants edit: not commenting on any studios in particular, this one or any other- but yeah, it's amazing any game gets made, ever ikanreed posted:I think the problem is that game development is mostly stumbling around blindly feeling for something that works, and expertise/professionalism only helps with a few specific varieties of problems like bugs and asset polish. Comte de Saint-Germain fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Apr 1, 2020 |
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Apr 1, 2020 17:12
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I saw a sneak peek at the story from some guy on youtube, new story seems to be that you are a spy or something from some rival transgov, and you crash land near an alterra base
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Apr 3, 2020 10:17
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Ambaire posted:I still wish they'd let the Sunbeam be an alternate means of escape from the planet if you had cured the disease and shut down the defense platform first, rather than it 'staying in orbit'. It would be cool but really expensive, a small developer like that would be pretty foolish to waste time on that to secure an event that you'll only see if you are cheating or speedrunning.
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Apr 3, 2020 16:03
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Ambaire posted:The Sunbeam event is not time based. It's dependent on you listening to radio messages, and triggers after a certain number. This is what I consider to be aberrant play, no (or few) normal users will intentionally delay fixing the radio until after disabling the platform. It's worthwhile to spend resources to secure things so that a user in an aberrant situation won't break the game, it's even worth it (frequently) to put cool polish on that security. What it's not worth it to do, usually, and especially for a team/project of this size, is to put a lot of resources into securing that stuff. I'm usually not a fan of Schrodinger design solutions, but in this case I give it a pass. In W3, the major dilemma in Velen, how to deal with the crones and the tree spirit, can be completely derailed by doing things out of order, and a decent number of non-aberrant players will; so it's totally secured in such a way that if players do that, they get a slightly different outcome. But even in a game like W3, those outcomes are just a remix of states and scenes that already exist in the game.
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Apr 5, 2020 12:57
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I keep a seamoth on my Cove Tree base so I can shuttle between it and my safe shallows base as needed. My Cyclops doesn't leave the depths anymore, too slow. I got my moth down here by piloting it and my cyclops in tandem. I'd use the moth for a bit to explore and figure out where to go next, then I'd leave it in place as a beacon, seaglide back to the cyclops, move the cyclops to the position of the moth, repeat.
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Apr 6, 2020 08:00
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madfury posted:fellow goons, I loved base game and have been waiting for the expansion to be feature and story complete before diving in. Its one of those very rare games that I do not want spoiled so I have avoided this thread like the plague. But the last info from dev was that they are changing writing and story direction due to personnel changes. I haven't played it, but I've watched a few clips of the early access gameplay. Basically, the previous story was unfinished and will never be finished because the writer left and they've decided to totally redo the story. The new version has some characters and story beats in common, but otherwise is totally new- it's also not done yet. I'd wait till it comes out of early access to be sure the story is done.
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Apr 16, 2020 08:59
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I once got the cyclops stuck in a cave passage leaving the lost river, so I deployed my prawn suit and jumped on the top of the cyclops until it dislodged. I actually thought that was pretty cool. Another time I was exploring the lost river in the seamoth and swimming around to collect all the nickel. When I went back to my moth, I discovered that it had somehow been sucked underground and wasn't accessible anymore.  I drowned
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Jul 28, 2020 09:09
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Okan170 posted:I've had Outer Wilds gifted to me and I'm very curious, but whenever I read about it the idea of resetting every 20 minutes it just fills me with anxiety. Subnautica taps into the chill take-your-time vibe that it seems isn't present in Outer Wilds? TBF this usually isn't a problem, the game is very well made, so each "expedition" usually takes about 20m to finish. Usually when the reset comes you are actually looking forward to it. God it's good.
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Jul 30, 2020 11:45
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Mason Dixon posted:I started Outer Wilds a while back, but only played maybe an hour. I keep meaning to go back, but then I keep remembering how controlling that ship just felt incredibly awkward and annoying, makes exploring feel like a chore rather than fun. I'd rather navigate the Cyclops in the Lost River any day. It's a little funky at first but it's well worth your time to try again. Really, would I steer you wrong?
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Jul 31, 2020 08:28
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I tend to take steam multiplayer for granted, until I play a game that doesn't have it and I get real sad. Speaking of which, anyone spent any time with Grounded yet? Still in early access and I hear the story can be beat in a couple of hours at the moment, but they are planning on many many more updates. I spent about an hour with it and was really impressed so far. Comte de Saint-Germain fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Jul 31, 2020 |
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Jul 31, 2020 11:16
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Okan170 posted:Honestly, if the time loop was two hours, I probably wouldn’t have an issue with it. Under a short timer the idea of exploration for me tends to get really compressed into a “need to make the best of the time I have, get the most done before it all goes away thing that really pulls any fun out of exploration. I’ll probably uninstall it and watch/read spoilers for it until such time as any kind of mod becomes available to remove or mitigate the timer. It sucks because otherwise it’s a game that is right up my alley in every other way, but that one thing is totally enough to kill all the rest of it for me. Nah man, really, a 2 hour or no timer would kill the game. 22 minutes is exactly right. 22 minutes is just slightly longer than every expedition you make, and in that time you are likely to 1) die 2) lose your ship 3) get lost 4) run out of stuff to do. I hate timer games and I've never once in this game had the timer run out on me before I was ready to restart. A few times I've wanted a way to speed it up cause I've gotten myself into a really terrible situation and want it to end. Really.
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Aug 3, 2020 08:10
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Seems like we're getting close to 1.0. Time to reinstall the original and finally finish it. I've got my cyclops parked next to my base at the Ghost Tree, how long do I have left? Can I push through it in a weekend?
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Oct 30, 2020 11:14
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Serephina posted:The year is 2020, post-release support is a luxury and no product should ever be purchased on the assumption that "They will fix that". As opposed to the old days, where if you wanted to have a bug fixed, you needed to mail your save game on a floppy disk to the devs through the US postal service.
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Dec 4, 2020 14:24
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OgNar posted:Came across an LP of Subnautica that was started like 2 weeks ago by someone saying they are an aquatic scientist, or at least in school for it. link?
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Dec 17, 2020 12:47
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OgNar posted:Sure. if she's a fan of cephalopods, I'm a fan of her
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Dec 18, 2020 11:09
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I managed to walk to Delta first try with no problems, but every subsequent time I've visited it I've gotten lost and walked around in circles for 15m.
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Jul 5, 2021 10:17
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Cartoon Man posted:Navigating a fully upgraded Cyclops through the lost river and into the lava zone was the highlight of the game for me. Dropping distraction torpedoes, hitting the shields when you get attacked, steering it through the cramped passageways. All of that was fun as hell. But gently caress those lava leech assholes forever. I actually felt like the first game peaked (in terms of environments and awe) at the ghost tree. I hated the lava zone, I crosscrossed that thing in my cyclops a dozen times before finding the geothermal plant, and it was way way too dark- so I had to rely on sonar, which isn't actually super fun imo. My game was also breaking down at this point and huge chunks of stuff wouldn't load properly, including the *lighting* in the very final area before the alien containment. Maybe the lighting in the inactive lava zone was also broken and that's why it was so dark? Dunno.
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Jul 27, 2021 12:05
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wolrah posted:Were you playing with the visuals set to "Cinematic"? That makes a huge difference in how dark dark is. I think I had whatever the default is, I don't recall changing it. Had no idea this was an option. EDIT: Also, I'm certain at least some of my lighting was just broken at the end of the game. In the active lava zone outside the containment area, the first few times I visited (and built a base) it was properly lit up bright, but later something went wrong and the whole thing became this murky green. The game seemed to be falling apart at this point, from one edge of the inside of the containment area, only the lowest LoD would show up on the opposite side, and when getting close to the surface of the water, the shaders became broken, and you could clearly see all the rough polygons. Comte de Saint-Germain fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jul 27, 2021 |
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Jul 27, 2021 16:36
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I haven't finished BZ, and while it obviously has some problems, I don't think it's substantially worse than the first game. The improvements to the streaming alone is worth a lot of other changes I don't like as much. I'll trade my beloved Cyclops for the seatruck if it means that the level actually shows up. I tend to be forgiving of the story having some odd choices considering the circumstances behind its creation. It's really hard to write a story around recycled material, it takes a lot of skill and experience and even then the seams often wind up showing. I also think they've got a really unique challenge in BZ. SN came out at a time when everyone was releasing big procedural survival games with minimal or non-existent story or end-game goals, and SN shows up with a hand crafted world and *just enough* story to really surprise people. BZ can't sneak up on you like that, because everybody going in knows "oh this is the underwater survival crafter *with a story*" so expectations are just going to be very different.
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Aug 5, 2021 12:22
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I also have to say that in BZ I really liked the more chill fauna- gently caress warpers forever, what a massively annoying monster. (I haven't reached the end yet so maybe there's a BZ equivalent?)
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Aug 5, 2021 16:15
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The cyclops is one of the best vehicles in all of videogames. There need to be more games built around the concept of a customizable mobile base. EDIT: Maybe this will be starfield?
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Aug 6, 2021 11:23
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Eschatos posted:
This happened to me in the original too, I was very sad, had to drown and make a new seamoth.
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Aug 17, 2021 08:04
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Complications posted:A: Move slowly and make not too much noise. If attacked, turn the sub off, wait a bit, repair, and keep going slowly. Silent running will help but is expensive in terms of power. Noise attracts beasties. Some aggressive beasts also are attracted to light, so turning off flood lights can help. The map also usually has paths away from the main patrol routes, but they may not be obvious.
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Aug 18, 2021 09:59
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I don't really get the thing about backtracking for the cure ingredients. Portals to every ingredient are right there in the base, each one takes you to within a few meters of the thing you need to get.
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Aug 31, 2021 15:59
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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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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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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:That's the thing, education won't make it any clearer. Technically a studio that size should be able to do it in a weekend just about. lol
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Nov 28, 2022 11:27
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Laugh if you want, from what I'm assuming it's the exact same engine with a bit more player functionality additions, none of it affecting porting the worldspace or the scripts. What do you think would be hard about that then? I dunno, I'm not an engineer, but I have made a lot of games, and nothing is ever this simple when switching from one engine to another. Even if your assumptions are true, and I'd suspect that they aren't, those processes take time and automated processes 1. need to be designed and created, which takes time 2. are never perfect and will 100% require QA and human intervention.
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Nov 28, 2022 12:41
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:Then they spent a lot of effort (and salaries) on worthless work. It's not like bz is significantly prettier than og anyway. BZ runs significantly better and has far less popping-in. It's much less buggy as well. I wouldn't call that wasted work. We also don't know what kind of improvements on the tools side there might be, or back-end improvements that are mostly invivisible to players but are needed for future development. EDIT: I dunno, they may have wasted work, there's always some wasted work in gamedev- but it's clear that their streaming is much improved between the two games. Comte de Saint-Germain fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Nov 28, 2022 |
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Nov 28, 2022 12:42
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Grand Fromage posted:Never deconstruct. Leave a trail of abandoned bases in your wake for the next crashed protagonist to explore and loot. I wish this were a thing. There's a Rimworld mod that pulls from a databse of player bases and makes them "abandoned" and you can find them around the planet. It's a cool thing- wish Subnautica had something like that. Degassi bases will have to do.
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Nov 28, 2022 17:09
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Cythereal posted:Hmmm. I think it might be time to set up a forward base or two with scanners to make resource harvesting and looking for schematics easier. My base in the shallows with a fully range-upgrades scanner has been very helpful, but I think I want one deeper now. But I'm not sure where to put one. Setting up relay bases with a scanner room and some battery/power cell rechargers, maybe a desalinator, is how I got around the map for a big portion of the game. I didn't really need them, in the end, but it was a lot of fun. My only two main bases were one in the shallows, and another at a late-game landmark the ghost tree. And those two had a full setup, including grow-beds, desalinators, etc. Effectively self-sufficient. I spent a lot of time decorating them and making them pretty, too. The other bases were usually just slapped together, with a bio-reactor to power the scanner. One thing I really like to do, but never fully commit to it in either of my playthroughs, is to have a xeno containment specailizing in specific biomes. Lots of fun, but I never actually did every major biome.
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Nov 28, 2022 17:13
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