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Topics - Eliasfrost

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General / Desura Parent Company Filed for Bankruptcy
« on: June 05, 2015, 03:07:45 pm »
Ought to let everyone know.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/245334/Desuras_parent_company_has_filed_for_bankruptcy.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29

EDIT: The post editor is acting up again, omitting parts of the post. Sec..

EDIT2: whatever, can't copy/paste the text, just click the link. :/

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Discussions / Valve now allow modders to charge for their games
« on: April 23, 2015, 11:03:27 pm »
So just now Valve announced that they will enable modders to charge for their work on the steam workshop, first out is Skyrim. There's been a bit of a heated discussion the past 4 hours or so about this and I'm a bit torn on it myself.

Here's a bit of info:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/241836/Game_mods_can_now_be_sold_on_the_Steam_Workshop_for_real_money.php

On one hand this can incentivice creative modders to work even harder on their mods to push out even better quality than they were allowed before when there was no money involved, teams of modders can potentially earn a living selling mods, that's not a bad thing at all. On the other hand, the publisher is in control over the revenue share and it's not completely unrealistic that some publishers will take advantage of that fact, Bethesda is currently cutting 75% of the profit of paid Skyrim mods for example. One can hope that the revenue share will stabilize over time so that the model becomes profitable for both the modders and the publishers.

I think it's a great thing that the big boys are starting to find ways to make modding profitable and actually trying to establish a market for things like this but do you think this is the right way to do it?

3
General / People seem too alike
« on: May 19, 2014, 09:26:36 pm »
I've played Underrail for a good 10+ hours over the last week and I've got a bit of a concern about character personality and language in the new content.

This is something that can be hard to get right (I write characters as well for my game), especially with just one or a couple of writers but one thing I noticed is that a lot of the characters in the new content seem to be just a tad bit too alike each other. In their phrasing, how they build sentences and how much they speak, it felt as if they all had the same vocabulary with little to not enough unique phrasing and articulation. To be fair there were a lot of characters with interesting personalities, quirky dialogue and all around likable but here's a few things that could be of interest for your writer when writing characters, some things that I've picked up over the years and a few tips I've gotten from different sources that helped me a lot when writing dialogue.

  • Phrasing - Lots of the time the characters use the same phrasing, one very common phrase I noticed was "would you believe it", I think at least a handful of different characters used that exact phrase which seemed weird to me. Mixing it up a bit by lending the characters their own way of saying things can make the world seem bigger than it is. When characters use the same phrasing it can make it seem like they all come from the same local area, which in turn can make the world seem smaller and less diverse.
  • The length of their speech - Some people are very formal, other talk poetically, some talk lots and drag on. What I noticed was that a lot of the new characters talked a lot, and not always because it was necessary, in some cases the characters could have used less words, or use one word to describe a longer sentence. More often than not, the characters would talk whole paragraphs, which is completely fine but I'd also like to see a healthy mix of different lengths in character speech.
  • Unique wording - I really liked the way Styg chracterized most of his characters by giving them special ways that they say things, words that only they use or words that are at least uncommon. It's one of the things that really sucked me in from the beginning but I've seen a steady decline of special wording the further I get into the game. For example everyone at the camp talked the same, except for Fred, Fredd  Freddy, I liked them a lot - but the point is that when delivering characters through text it's extra important to give the characters a vocabulay that make them unique and stand out, I was excited to meet the Rat Hound King until I realized he talked the same way as the deputy. Don't be afraid to play with words, real people do that all the time, why not the characters in Underrail?
  • Articulation - How a character linger on some words, or how they emphasize certain words says a lot about that character but I didn't see a whole lot of that. I'd love to see some more emphasis on having some characters repeat words to get their point across, articulate certain words to bring them out, stuff like that. A lot of the new characters are very formal, it would be a welcome addition with some articulation to build character.

Other than that I like the new characters, it's clear that a lot of love have been squeezed into making them but the language kept me from loving them even more!

Keep up the good work and keep making awesome new characters :)

4
Bugs / TNT blueprint (?) item bug
« on: September 29, 2013, 01:51:44 pm »
I was going through the muti infested underground when I found this item in a footlocker.

Seems like an item generation error or something


5
General / Homosexuality?
« on: September 29, 2013, 10:33:53 am »
Will there be any instances of homosexuality/bi/trans in Underrail? I'm wondering since I've taken great interest in the subject lately and would love to know how sexualities other than hetero will be represented in the game, if any at all?

I loved the way Fallout New Vegas handled other sexualities without it being fetishized or laughed about and I would love to see some instances of gay people in Underrail, to add to the realism. And it would be awesome if there was an option to flirt with a character of the same sex (kind of like confirmed bachelore).

Thanks!

6
Bugs / Abram/security quest bug
« on: September 26, 2013, 06:43:17 pm »
There's an issue with the quest with Abram and the embassy, when you talk to Abram the first time, but don't accept his proposition, you can still tell Garren his whole intent even though Abram never told you, it seemed kind of strange since my character never obtained the information.

7
General / Social skills and viability/usability
« on: September 22, 2013, 12:10:48 pm »
I've been thinking about this for some time and I've read and listened to some gamedev veterans speak about the subject of balance and the viability/incentive for players to pick skills (of any kind) and it got me thinking about the balance between the need for social skills in Underrail vs the greater benefit of putting those points into something that is more commonly required in the game.

Now, for me personally, I haven't really gotten the need to use any other social skills beside mercantile in Underrail because the requirement (as in situational requirement) for the other skills (especially the weapon and lockpick/hacking skills) are higher, that is, they are needed more often in most situations, OR when the choice is given, the social outcome is not rewarding enough to pick it, a clear example is the "toll" in the slums of junkyard, the sacrifice of skillpoints to access that choice is not balanced with the reward or having put those skill points on other skills that ultimately benefit the player more so than it otherwise would have. And it gets me thinking about the future of the social skills and how viable they will be in the end.

Granted, the game is in alpha and things are surely going to change and I'd like to ask you Styg: What's your view on this matter and can you estimate roughly how much the social skill requirement will increase as the development goes on? Because I'm one of those guys that talk my way out of most situations, but I also want it to feel like an alternate route rather than a disadvantage or "punishment".

I also wrote about this on my Tumblr in case someone wants to read it: http://eliasfrost.tumblr.com/post/61956760469/skills-requirement-viability-and-usability

Thanks ;)

8
Other Games / Wasteland 2
« on: August 29, 2013, 11:36:54 am »
I'm surprised no one have brought up Wasteland 2 yet on this forums, it's inXiles new turn based RPG, and one of the first majorly successful kickstarters.

They recently released a video showing of some of the basic mechanics of the game, most noticably the dialogue, combat and reactivity. I'm not fully supportive of the conversation system in the game but I think it'll work out just fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdmGthYqTbo

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Bugs / Abram Quest Bug
« on: March 24, 2013, 10:38:06 am »
The embassy quest where Abram asks you for information and (supposedly?) gives you a spawn to plant into the vent system is bugged I think. Because when I reported to Garren about the infiltration he asked me about the spawn, which I didn't even have in my inventory, and the only options I could use was to tell him "i did it" or "it's stashed", but not that I refused Abrams offer. It seemed kind of odd to me because I didn't recall taking the burrower spawn from him.

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Other Games / Might and Magic X?
« on: March 19, 2013, 09:41:24 am »

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Suggestions / Grenades And Grenade Skill
« on: January 13, 2013, 03:50:21 pm »
I was talking to some friends today about RPGs in general and we got into skills and skill check and how they influence the gameplay. It instantly reminded me of how broken the grenades are in Underrail. And we came up with a pretty cool idea to encourage skill improvement for grenades:

The thing is, right now, no matter how low skill you have, your grenades always land where you click, but we came up with an idea that makes throwing the grenades trickier. Lowering the dmg for the grenades seemed like a bad idea because it's not logical to let the skill dictate the dmg output. But instead the skill affect how well you toss the grenade and where it lands, and by having a certain area around the aim cursor where the grenade will land randomly in the area, for example, a low grenade skill will make the area larger, so it's a lesser chance of it landing on the target coord. And a higher skill will make the area smaller so the chance of landing on the target coord is greater.

Attached an image to further visualize the idea.

What do you guys think?

12
General / Grinding
« on: December 12, 2012, 08:01:12 pm »
I came to think about this infamous game mechanic when I was playing Underrail and I didn't have the money to buy meself some stimpaks so I had to find a way to get some quick money. I recalled someone saying that the mushrooms spawn quite quickly so I thought maybe I could fetch a large amount of lake mushrooms and trade them in for stims, and that's exactly what I did, to be fair it did't take that long, since you get 2 mushrooms per pick 4(?) times per cluster, it took me about ten minutes to gather around 200 mushrooms, that I sold for stims in the medic level in SGS. At the time I thought like playing my good old MMO again, but now it seemed like an appropriate scenario concidering the curcimstances in the area with Junkyard and everything.

Do you as a player support these kind of exploits, or do you think they are an abomination upon gaming mechanics? Share your thoughts!

13
Bugs / Bugs and Feedback
« on: December 09, 2012, 10:40:30 am »
I have played the new alpha a great deal and I'm surprised at the minimal amount of bugs, considering past experiences with alphas and betas of other games.

But there are a few bugs that I've managed to discover, some are game breaking, some are not. Here's my list:

-When poisoned, if you by chance have 1 hp left and you leave the area the exact time you take poison damage, you will transfer to the other area BUT you will be "dead", and by dead I mean your health is 0 with no means of regaining it but you can walk around, though you drop down on the ground after walking a distance, which looks hilarious in itself

-Sometimes, when sneaking or otherwise out of combat and you want to use an ability (this happens a lot for me when using Aimed shot) the cast time will run much quicker than normal but you will shoot a normal shot without cooldown, even though I selected Aimed shot.

-A minor glitch but I thought it would be worth mentioning, there's a barrel just outside a room at the GMS compound directly south of Gorsky. When you click it, you walk into the room and open the barrel through wall, instead of walking and interacting with the barrel from the outside.

-And there's another bug I haven't been able to reproduce since. It's when you are standing in a doorway with an enemy standing directly below you, if you by chance have a ranged weapon equiped (this specific case involved a .44 gun) you can't seem to target your enemy. But if you use a melee attack, you can.

-After trading, when you click the X only the window that you closed do actually closed, instead of both the shop and you inventory, which would be handy.

14
General / Different currencies
« on: December 07, 2012, 12:06:31 pm »
So I just played a bit of the new release and I went to the Junkyard to explore and discover quests only to find out that the settlement handle its own currency. I thought it was kinda cool, like in New vegas were the legion use coins, the strip uses dollars and the rest of the wastes trade with bottlecaps.

But one thing that confused me a bit is how the value of the object is calculated in relation to the different currencies. Do all things sell for the same amount or do different currencies have their own isolated economy, because I couldn't tell. :)

Either way, I think it's a really cool addition!

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Other Games / Rocksmith - First Impressions
« on: December 06, 2012, 04:59:01 pm »
So I'm a guitar player, not a very skilled one but I can play. And I thought that Rocksmith would be a fun game to play because I like challenges and learning a few new songs would be cool, as well as honing my technique some with the speed and tech games that the game provides.

At first I thought the game was really good, it has the "story mode", technique practice, mini games and the amp that let's you doodle around and play on your own, which is really cool. The first problem that I noticed was the interface, it's cluttered, inconvenient, it freezes from time to time and it's hard to navigate.

The second problem I noticed is the fretboard, seriously? This thing is crap, the frets are all the same width and as a guitar player you know based on instinct how to move your hands to reach certain frets and the gradual narrowing of the frets the higher you go is printed into your head. Well, forget about that because in Rocksmith the frets are all the same size which creates a sort of disconnect because when you look at the screen you want to put your finger on the fret that is displayed only to be 5 frets away because the visual feedback tricks your mind into thinking the fret is closer than it is, to play this game you have to rewire your head to match the retarded on-screen display, it's a disaster! Or as AVGN would say "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!"

And on to another problem, the difficulty, christ in heaven and everything on the way up there is the difficulty crap. Basically you have two options, either you are crap at guitar or you play with a dynamic difficulty, and by dynamic I mean it's fudged up. Instead of choosing a difficulty based on your skills, it decides to adjust the difficulty IN-GAME to match your skills, it IS a cool idea but it doesn't work with this kind of game. In guitar hero it would be a great feature but in Rocksmith were you play real guitar it doesn't work, because you can't learn how to play a solo on the go, it doesn't work that way unless you are a pro.

The difficulty works like this: You play the song, fairly easy, almost too easy and you hit all the notes. Now the game adjust the difficulty to match what you just played and it's just enough to get you through, and it's fun to play the game, because it's at your skill level with enough challenge to make it feel worthwhile. Then all of a sudden the game thinks you want it harder, it throws in even more notes, it stresses you out and you fumble, only for the game to think you are shit and you play on guitar hero level again, rinse and repeat. This make playing every song a shit experience because the game never reflect your skill level like it's supposed to, and it's annoying.

Playing guitar requires motoric skills, hearing the notes, knowing the box, knowing the fret board (which is fudged up for above reason) and a lot of other things, it's not as easy as a quick time controller button prompt. It's obvious that the developers know nothing about the actual playing of the guitar, only the technical aspect of it, and by technical I mean just that, not the actual technique of playing the guitar, but how it's working. And it's garbage.

This is the biggest flaw of the game, see this image? The upper is what a normal guitar look like. And the lower is what Ubisoft think a guitar look like, it's retarded, like they never let an actual guitar player proof play this thing first? It's totally disorienting to look at the prompt and follow the song. You have to learn the song first and then play along without looking at the prompt, but then the whole purpose of the game is gone. It's incredible how shitty this game is.



Sorry for the rant, I just wanted to share my thoughts on a rather new popular game. What did you think of Rocksmith (if you have played it)

Thanks.

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