may CharlieFoxtrot memorial chat thread: see you next mission

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > may CharlieFoxtrot memorial chat thread: see you next mission

Haha ok but seriously what should we do about the entrenched Bowsetteers This poll is closed.
Join them	106	13.23%
Convince them to move on, to Melinda Megamelons	39	4.87%
Abstain	16	2.00%
	28	3.50%
	14	1.75%
	32	4.00%
	429	53.56%
Flame grenadegg	112	13.98%
	10	1.25%
	15	1.87%
Total:	801 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

exquisite tea posted:

I understand why skill trees exist as an abstraction but I wish games would do a better job at integrating them diagetically.

Old RPGs (and probably some new too) would have you go find a trainer. So people complained trainers were hard to find/tedious/backtracing etc.

# ¿ May 13, 2020 00:25

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# ¿ Jun 1, 2024 18:50

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

The 7th Guest posted:

afaik there is no Metal Slug XXX

Now I want Metal Slug Xrd.

# ¿ May 13, 2020 10:48

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Help Im Alive posted:

could we get better graphics if we used squares instead of triangles

Triangles have the interesting property of being, mathematically speaking, super simple to draw (because they're always flat no matter how you place the points), while squares have the interesting property of being, mathematically speaking, a nightmare to draw (because tthey're almost never flat and when they aren't flat they're undefined in a lot of ways). So long ago everyone figured out they're just use two triangles instead and be done with it.

Waffleman_ posted:

I think the Saturn used squares and it was a bitch to develop for

Indeed! For reasons kinda unrelated to the above though. But the short version is 3d was shoehorned into the saturn which wasn't designed for it so it never really worked right.

Harrow posted:

This makes me think about the really cool "3D that looks like hand-animated 2D" effect that games like the new Guilty Gears and Dragon Ball Fighter Z have going and how much I'd love to see that sort of aesthetic in more genres. I think it's probably not feasible to do it on a large scale right now for something like a big RPG or a Zelda game or something, but maybe one day.

It's not so much a matter of scale as a matter of camera freedom. The tricks that really sell the 2d illusion in Arcsys games are fundamentally fixed point of view tricks. Without a fixed camera it ends up looking like the Kill la Kill game, so you easily discern the 3d-ness of it.

Khanstant posted:

chances any of this ever get used in a game or perform as advertised? because i think the gamecube and original xbox had tech demos like this that were just as impressive but likewise never really manifest itself in an appreciable way

A big thing of every GPU that currently exist is you actually lose a ton of performance on very small triangles, because for technical reasons a GPU always rasterizes triangles as a bunch 2x2 tiles and cuts away the excess. So if you render very small triangles it can be as much as 4 times slower than bigger ones, and so devs are gonna stay away from micro-triangles because that'll allow them to render up to 4 times faster. Even if the engine has some super efficient culling that has you only submit the necessary triangles to the GPU, you'll still be up to 4 times faster if you use bigger triangles.

Chev fucked around with this message at 17:06 on May 13, 2020

# ¿ May 13, 2020 17:00

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

802.11weed posted:

if you made a 4D game , would squares be as good as triangles?

They'd be even more terrible, with their terribleness spreading to an extra dimension! Boo!

Notice how you can use triangles in both 2d and 3d? Technically you can even use triangles in 1d, although that'd be a little silly. Well, in the same way, triangles just work fine in 4d. Each point is 4d but you still have 3 points.

ymgve posted:

No, in 4D you would use tetrahedons I guess

Ah, now we're talking something different, the Simplex, but tetrahedrons are the 3d simplex, not the 4d one, that'd be a pentachoron. Simplices are irrelevant to our discussion though, apart from the fact you can easily draw them using triangles (drawing them with squares would suck, of course).

Chev fucked around with this message at 17:22 on May 13, 2020

# ¿ May 13, 2020 17:18

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Cowcaster posted:

the many triangles and the completely 100% dynamic lighting system are great and all but apparently it's claiming to do away with level of detail stuff? as it, every visible model will be rendered at full fidelity out to the draw distance? can that be right

The whole micropolygon virtualization *is* a LoD thing, technically. I suspect they mean you won't need to worry about handling LoD yourself.

# ¿ May 13, 2020 17:20

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Khanstant posted:

one step test to tell if your game sucks rear end:

do they make you shoot a gun? then the game sucks because it is just a murder simulator for idiots and teens

In Receiver 2 you only shoot automated turrets and drones so it's not murder. Well, except you're possibly playing a paranoid survivalist conspiracy theorist who's been training themselves to perceive human beings as inanimate objects to the point they don't even parse their own reflection in the mirror as a person. Also you don't just shoot a gun, you carefully interact with it, bullet by bullet and piece by piece. It's a game where holding the tab key is for holstering your gun while quickly pressing and releasing the tab key is for shooting yourself in the thigh.

# ¿ May 13, 2020 21:32

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

I said come in! posted:

Star Citizen switched out of Crytek a few years ago. It is now using Amazon Lumberyard, which is technically a offshoot of Crytek Engine but still pretty different.

They were in a big lawsuit recently that involved the fact they're actually still using Cryengine despite claiming they switched to Lumberyard. It only got dropped because they technically can't be accused of releasing a game using Cryengine, one of the most amusing defenses ever.

# ¿ May 14, 2020 22:30

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Rinkles posted:

what were they thinking with this projection?

maybe you get used to it quickly. i've never actually played an ultima game.

It makes more sens if you've seen Ultima 6, but basically it's a way to do isometric style graphics with simpler math and a square tile engine. For all that Origin bragged about rewriting the engine from scratch for each major game, the Ultima games were really evolutionary engine-wise, and 6 and 7 very much are intermediate steps leading from U5's tile engine to U8's isometric engine. Other games that went isometric at the time U7 still had to be in oblique perspective didn't have nearly the same level of background and prop density.

Chev fucked around with this message at 19:56 on May 19, 2020

# ¿ May 19, 2020 19:54

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Beast Pussy posted:

If I wanted to watch a show about giant robots fighting other giant robots or monsters, what should I watch? Please try to recommend something without horny Master Roshi vibes or where every female character is a super booby lady like one piece (I assume anime has the best robot fighting).

Others have mentioned Gurren Lagann, which I heartily recommend as it's one of the very best. It's rather boob-happy but apart from ones specific episode that's an actual booby trap I feel it's still within tolerable limits. If you do feel like that's going to be a problem watch Promare instead, which is basically a refined, condensed movie-length remake of Gurren Lagann's third act by the same staff and with a much, much lower quota of boobs and refitted to firefighting.

Also already mentioned, Big O is robo-noir, basically "what if 90s animated batman had a giant robot" and really good apart from a possibly confusing ending. The much more recent SSSS Gridman evokes the same vibes for me despite not having the film noir aspect at all. Instead it leans much more into being the animated version of a live action rubber monster suit series, down to the characters knowing Ultraman and making parallels between it and their predicament. There's a swimsuit episode but you should survive it, and it's got a really great villain. If you like Big O's neo-retro feel there's also the Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still OVAs. One low-key choice is Dai-Guard where instead of being world-saving heroes the protagonists are just normal employees and the giant robot their company's mascot, no matter how much one of the salarymen would want to be starring in Mazinger instead. It isn't incredible but it's fairly entertaining.

On the western side Symbionic Titan is very well worth a look, it's really great although it does come with the caveat that it doesn't have an actual conclusion as it was canceled after its first season. But what a season it is!

(Some people have made the case that Attack on Titan is a giant robot story with flesh robots, which is fair, and has a very nicely elaborate mystery story. Very gory, amoral and violent though).

# ¿ May 20, 2020 00:47

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

LeafyOrb posted:

I�ve always found it weird that Ubisoft of all companies bought Might and Magic and took out the overarching meta plot involving space aliens, given you know all of Assassin�s Creed.

It's pretty simple, they wanted a med-fan brand, so they bought one, brought on an unrelated but fashionable french med-fan illustrator and a dev known for its HoMM knockoff. You can smell the powerpoint pitch from here. What's more, they really only bought Might & Magic for Heroes of Might & Magic, which had stayed away from the sci-fi stuff to the point that most HoMM fans reacted very badly when a sci-fi faction was planned for a HoMM3 expansion because most of them didn't even know sci-fi was part of the M&M lore. If die hard HoMM fans didn't even know about that part, how could you expect people looking to just buy the brand to know?

# ¿ May 21, 2020 14:21

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Waffleman_ posted:

Who would you rather trust with your medical care: a baby, three men in a trenchcoat, a dolphin, or a corpse

A still living corpse, so you want whoever his doctor is.

# ¿ May 27, 2020 12:30

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Mercury Crusader posted:

Streets of Rage 4 involves fighting one of the most dangerous gangs in the city: cops

Similarly, River City Girls.

# ¿ May 30, 2020 10:17

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# ¿ Jun 1, 2024 18:50

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

SFV and Tekken are pretty different sorts of fighting games, so your choice kinda depends on whether you prefer 2d or 3d gameplay.

Chev fucked around with this message at 19:48 on May 30, 2020

# ¿ May 30, 2020 19:26

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > may CharlieFoxtrot memorial chat thread: see you next mission