Video Games

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:14 am

Neeeek wrote:So I was in the beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic over the weekend, and they've removed the NDI gag order regarding the game, so if anyone wants to ask anything about it, I'll answer if I can.

How's combat? What's possible, what's not? Is the setting worth caring about? Can you kick ass as something other than a Jedi, or do Jedi not kick as much ass as they ought?

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:14 am

The VGA version (don't have the original) of the first Quest for Glory is an excellent game, and I agree about the combat system... it's really satisfying when you can finally take out those manta ray things, and I recall also being very proud when I took out the troll and minotaur in melee.

The combat system of the VGA remake of II (again, don't have original) is insanely difficult, though; I had a character from the 1st game (the one mentioned above) with a Weapon Use skill of 90+ (I don't recall the exact amount) and he lost every time to things like bandits (which, of course, he wiped the floor with in the first game).

Although, I have a pretty crappy laptop as my computer, and it isn't really a gaming computer... the keyboard layout's rather poor, which might be why I sucked at that game so bad.

Haven't played the 3rd though, so I can't comment on that.

Haven't played any of the other games you've mentioned either, for that matter.

/quest for glory rant

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:21 am

I got the hang of Quest for Glory 2 combat, playing as a fighter. Not gonna lie--not easy, but the rules were fair and out there and you could learn them...problem was, learning involved a lot of being good at not dying.

It really does have one of the finest grains for a sword combat system, ever. I started off on low difficulty and practiced with the Adventurer's Guild lady until she wasn't a challenge, and then worked the bar on up until I felt I had enough practice with the board to be able to adapt to junk.

Hadanelith · Post by **Hadanelith** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:46 am

How's combat? What's possible, what's not? Is the setting worth caring about? Can you kick ass as something other than a Jedi, or do Jedi not kick as much ass as they ought?

(hey, someone else in the beta here)

Combat's...a fairly simple system of click an attack, wait for cooldown kinda stuff. My experience is with the Jedi Guardian and his opposite the Sith Warrior, which are both melee force users with limited force powers. Most of your attacks are on a universal cooldown of about 1.5 seconds, with a couple of special interrupt powers ignoring that limit. Both classes use a rage meter (the jedi call it focus), with a basic generator and a bunch of spenders with various effects. Your really good attacks, giant surprise, have longer cooldowns, long animations (that are interruptable), but frequently don't use rage. So, basically, your basic MMO combat setup, nothing too unusual, though the short cooldowns and rage meter combine to make it more fun for me than the other MMO's I've played (Guild Wars, Star Trek Online, WoW).

Setting: not tying the game to the movie era makes many things better. Star Wars is still pretty schizo tech wise - and unfortunately, the story lines frequently include experimental techs that would drastically change the setting by the time of the movies if anyone had a brain, but thinking this stuff through is not what we pay them for (that's Lucas's job, and he...never does). Generally, you have the Republic (looks just like the Republic of the prequels) and the Sith Empire (who look and act just like the Galactic Empire of the movies - same uniform and everything), and they're currently in a fragile peace after the Sith curb stomped the Republic and took over Coruscant (the capitol of the galaxy). Lots of cloak and dagger stuff, trying not to reignite the conflict, keeping the status quo - makes the whole thing easier for the writers. Plenty of nods to old lore, too, especially if you're a Sith - your starting location is the Valley of the Dark Lords on Korriban, and you go robbing all the tombs of the guys from the Golden Age of the Sith comics. Lots of nods to the KOTOR games (Revan is a major lore character whose legacy drives a couple of plot lines). Lots of planets you've heard of (Alderaan, Tatooine, Nar Shaddaa, Hoth), plenty you haven't.

Classes: the melee Jedi kick ass. But not always with a lightsaber - standard MMO loot rules apply; finding a good lightsaber can be hard, finding a vibrosword that's better than a lightsaber isn't hard. Kinda irritating. Dunno much about the other classes, but general chatter says the story for the Republic Trooper is awesome, and I really haven't heard too many complaints about classes that suck. Disclaimer: I haven't done much PvP or grouped PvE, I play alone - and that works for like 75% of the game, which is awesome.

Gonna sign off here - beta is still on, for another two hours, and hopefully my server is back online. Bloody outages...

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:52 am

Hadanelith wrote:Dunno much about the other classes, but general chatter says the story for the Republic Trooper is awesome, and I really haven't heard too many complaints about classes that suck.

Republic Troopers are really satisfying, although I can't speak to their mechanical effectiveness. Good story, their abilities are all punchy and effective-feeling, pretty great all around.

I will say this, though: if you don't like WOW for what it is (as opposed to not liking WOW because Blizzard screwed it up or something), then you won't like TOR. It's more of the same theme park MMO sameyness.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:29 am

I've never really done MMO's, but I'm fairly genre-literate. And a big chunk of my folks all played the Star Wars Galaxies MMO as something to do together. If they get in on TOR, I may join them.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 6:24 am

I read a blog entry about SW: The Old Republic not too long ago. It wasn't very optimistic.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=14239

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 3:59 am

Maxus wrote:
Neeeek wrote:So I was in the beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic over the weekend, and they've removed the NDI gag order regarding the game, so if anyone wants to ask anything about it, I'll answer if I can.
How's combat? What's possible, what's not? Is the setting worth caring about? Can you kick ass as something other than a Jedi, or do Jedi not kick as much ass as they ought?

Combat is interesting. What's good in PVP isn't remotely the same as what's good in PVE.

The story/setting stuff is arguably better than anything from any of the Star Wars movies.

Jedi/Sith aren't as asskicking as they should be. The classes are pretty well-balanced, though some are a little weird/quirky.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:43 am

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/sk ... ifieds.php

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 5:50 am

Dayumm, that's funny. You definitely have to hold your nose at some of the goofiness of the Skyrim world.

What's missing in those ads is someone to complain about the terribly bad healing in the temples. Sure wish I could remember names, but the temple in the central city is ridiculous--there's guys laying around, groaning in pain. In a world where all injury is healed in seconds, I just don't see it.

Then there's the guy that died of a disease in his shack...he writes as much in his journal. He had time to write in his journal, but not make the 30 second walk to town for an instacure? The stuff in his shack was worth more than enough for it.

Fenrisulfr · Post by **Fenrisulfr** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:09 am

My personal favorite moment in Skyrim thus far:

His important business? Watching that Argonian sleep for hours.

I think it was a mercy when I killed him.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 10:22 pm

Anyone interested in multiplayer Terraria now that 1.1 is out? My school quarter is going to be over pretty soon, and I might be able to host a game once I'm done with my finals.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:54 pm

On the Skyrim front, has anyone else noticed that Destruction magic at higher levels, save for the stunlock perk, is a giant pile of ass and shit? Only reason to use it is for impact.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 7:55 pm

I noticed that a while ago. The Master level stuff is still good when it's free, but yeah, once you get impact, it's fucking amazing, until it's ass.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:08 pm

Been focusing on archery too much to really try destructo, though my next character will try being a full mage--I've always found magic lame in the Bethesda games, so put it off until last.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 1:44 am

Okay, Dark Souls has me interested. From what I hear, gameplay is unforgiving but fair. Lots of exploration and it's...well, Skyrim or Fable without the soft and fuzzy

Also, any game where the top sorceror (read: Wizard. Heavily Int-based caster) is named Big Hat Logan and dresses like so:
(Big image)

Has my attention.

Also, to quote how a friend found a place called Ash Lake...

It's beautiful.

In Blight Town, there is a tree. A huge tree. I climbed it. Inside was an illusory wall. Behind it a chest. Behind that, another illusory wall. The inside of the tree was lined with roots. I went down for a long, long time, even very nearly falling to my death once in this place called The Great Hollow and still it took a long time to reach the first flat land. It looked like...mycellium? The mushroom mesh. Further down. Now hopping across purple mushrooms, using them as steps to head down, further down until I can't go any further. There are mushroom people there. I kill them all. I press onward, and find....sand. Near-white sand. It looks soft, fuzzy around the edges, blown into curvy, steep dunes on the edge of a lake so blue it's nearly black, and so vast I can't see it's edge. There is a hydra. I kill it.

I find massive clams that walk upon spindly legs. They try to eat me. I stab them. And they, too, are beautiful. In the distance, there are trees. Great trees, and above is a hazy sky. No sun. Just grey mist. I find a path and I start to walk, and trees loom overhead, great roots like an oversized mangrove, darkening out the odd, white, sourceless light this quiet place is lit with. At the end of the path is the Everlasting Dragon. It says nothing. It makes no move from a nest of brambles. It's magnificent.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:13 pm

I got Skyrim recently. I must say, I was impressed by the first dragon fight I got into. I'd been expecting it to be a bog-standard Giant Enemy Crab, but that wasn't the case at all. Bastard could move. It was pretty intense, with it flying around like crazy and me trying to make every poison arrow count, before closing to melee with an axe of frost.

My first character is a plate-mailed Argonian who flips between two-weapon fighting, blade and spell, and sword and board according to my whim. I'm enjoying it immensely. After playing it to this point, I'm like, "Why doesn't every RPG let you do a ton of things at once?"

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Tue Dec 06, 2011 2:28 am

Maxus, Dark Souls is totally awesome.

As for Ash Lake and the Everlasting Dragon, there's actually a sad story behind that. Ash Lake was originally going to link a lot of the later game areas(Lost Izalith, Tomb of the Giants and possibly the Duke's Archives) but it, and the boss(which was a dragon larger than anything else in the gameworld or in their previous game) had to be taken out.

And yes, Dark Souls is absolutely amazing. The characters are fantastic and actually moving(if you're never going to play the game, look up the "Siegmeyer and Sieglinde" dialogues/quest chain). Its' dark and depressing, but an absolutely magnificent game.

Definite contender for Game of the year. I'd say its' better than Skyrim and Skyward Sword, easily. (Also: It has spears, crossbows and limited teleportation. No flying though.)

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Dec 09, 2011 10:38 pm

It looks like the Snowman Mafia is coming to Terria on the 15th. I'd better work on my lava fort.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:11 am

This is sort of videogame related, but mostly a curious technical question: games like Dwarf Fortress and Daggerfall are huge. Dwarf Fortress is like a 3d grid of one trillion spaces, and save files are the size of one bit for every 10,000 spaces or so. The entire Daggerfall game installation is something like 1 bit for every 625 square meters of game space. What possible representation scheme are they using that lets them get it so small?

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:21 am

Procedural generation.
Most of the data is completely random.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:38 am

That's slightly different. I understand how Dwarf Fortress generates its world, but I don't understand how it takes the generated world of a trillion cubes and reduces it to 15 MB (1 bit per 10,000 cubes).

Daggerfall turns out to be an easy one, I think: instead of describing the entire world, they just-reuse patterns and then only save those patterns. Cities are built together out of a few dozen different types of patterns. So instead of describing the entire city 'meter by meter, object by object,' they just say, "look up patterns 4, 3, and 7. Assemble." Reuse those patterns a bunch of time in the world, and voila; you save a ton of space.

But Dwarf Fortress (and a bunch of other huge games) don't do that, so I have to wonder how they do it.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:50 am

The interior of DF squares aren't generated until you land there. It generates the world, to a square, then when the dwarfs explore a square, it's generated at that point. If you explored the entire world, I imagine that there would be a very large world file.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:52 am

Ahh, I see. Thanks.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 4:16 am

A few years ago, I played this procedurally generated FPS that had vaguely impressive 3d graphics, while fitting into a file smaller than some of the Microsoft Word documents on the same computer. The only caveats were waiting for the game to unpack every time you played it and the bizarre alien appearance of the environments and all the objects within them. Can't remember the name, sadly, and I've since switched computers.