Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Stench Guzman]

Ever want to see a Simcity 2000 map in full 3D?  After 28 years, the wait is over.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1527140/SC2KRender/

[Ulfarr]

A bit of a call back to my previous post in this thread..

I did stick with Metro: Last Light Delux afterall and I just finished my first playthrough. I have to say I did enjoy it, despite my rocky start with it. It's probably just a pet peeve of mine, but I get really annoyed when a game bombards me with too many cutscenes and sadly the first part of the game is just that. It gets better though.

About the UI stuff, I think it has to do with the difficulty settings. I'm not sure what I chose but I didn't have acces to features like ammo counters (they were only available in the "invetory screen" when I was in a market place/station), maps (I could pull up a compass showing where to go, though it wasn't need most of the time) or crosshairs (most guns had iron sights, scope or a lazer so I could aim most of the time).

The gameplay is rather nice. It has some survival elements but they were mostly for flavor, it might has to do with the difficulty though. Weapon/ammo scarcity was rarely a problem. Most of the time I was swimming in ammo. Most of the time. The few moments were I had to count my shots or resort to just my knife where quite memorable though. The filter mini game was just a gimmick, at least in this run. There was only one time I had to really scramble for new filters and I suspect that the game removed my stock at that time. One moment I had 10 mins worth of filters the next I had 0...yeah 

Stealth is the way to go though if shit hits the fan, which in some cases it will, you can just fight it out. I enjoyed both aspects of combat, thought I wish the AI was less forgiving and more competent when it came to look for you after you were spotted. I might have to do a rerun just to try out the wackier metro style weapons. I sticked with the more convential ones, using mostly a silenced pistol and an assault rifle and occasionaly switching one or the other for a shotgun.

[Aoi]

About the UI stuff, I think it has to do with the difficulty settings. I'm not sure what I chose but I didn't have acces to features like ammo counters (they were only available in the "invetory screen" when I was in a market place/station), maps (I could pull up a compass showing where to go, though it wasn't need most of the time) or crosshairs (most guns had iron sights, scope or a lazer so I could aim most of the time).

I'm pretty sure that's an intentional design decision, not a difficulty thing, unless it was added after release; part of the design concept of Metro was to minimize UI in favor of realism/immersion. To that effect, there's no number showing the amount of ammo remaining in the weapon, but there's (almost) always some kind of visual indicator, like an exposed slit in the clip so you can see when there's only a few rounds left, etc. Same for the map and an onscreen reticule.

[Ulfarr]

Now that I don't worry about spoilers I checked the metro wiki. The UI might be minimal by design but it turned out that I was playing in the so called "ranger mode" which disabled those things.

[Robsoie]

Yes, some difficulty modes are expurging some UI elements (and make items/ammo more rare, along with making the AI less easily to stealth around)  .

The filter mini game was just a gimmick, at least in this run. There was only one time I had to really scramble for new filters and I suspect that the game removed my stock at that time. One moment I had 10 mins worth of filters the next I had 0...yeah

I found that when you change a filter, it can and will cut up to a few minutes from oxygen of your reserve, i guess those filters going bad does not mean they're near empty at all.
So a good idea is to NOT change a filter when the game mention that you should do so, wait until you start to see the effect of those ruined filters to change them, that's already lot of air saved . 

Additionally, on higher difficulty when you're not sure where to find new filters, it's a good idea to remove your mask for a dozen of seconds and put it back while you're in the surface before you die, that's always a dozen of seconds of oxygen saved. It's a bit gamey but can save your like if you miss some filter stash.

Also there's a moment in the game in which i need to put a mask as there's some surface area , then a bit later you're back in the underground but at that very moment the game does not remove the mask for you, and does not remind you that you don't need it anymore, and it's -very- easy to forget you are wearing that mask. That's a lot of air you can lose this way before you have a "oh damn i still have the mask on" moment

[Iduno]

I've been trying the Gloomhaven game off Steam, because I never learn my lesson about Steam. The game is maybe half finished, probably won't ever be finished, has a UI that frequently works against the player (did I choose the right number of targets for my attack? Oops, I attacked instead of changing it), crashes frequently (about 1-4 times per hour in multiplayer, which is the only way you'd want to play it), and is very very slow (one mission is about an hour if you're prepared and are trying to get done quick, maybe 2-3 hours otherwise), but it looks pretty nice for a board game (which also means you misclick constantly because you aren't looking at the right part of the right character/hex and it decides you meant to target something else).

If it gets a full release in the next year or so, avoid it because it won't work or be finished. If it takes 3-4 years, it'll be polished and worth picking up on sale.

Yes, some difficulty modes are expurging some UI elements (and make items/ammo more rare, along with making the AI less easily to stealth around)  .

Oh, do they then complain that stealth is OP, because they removed the balancing the devs did that made everything else equally good? "You should have less ammunition/longer attack times with guns so you have to use other attacks." "Oh no, people planned around using non-gun attacks exactly like I wanted, this is BS!" I've lost count of the games where that's happened.

[Kagus]

Oh, do they then complain that stealth is OP, because they removed the balancing the devs did that made everything else equally good? "You should have less ammunition/longer attack times with guns so you have to use other attacks." "Oh no, people planned around using non-gun attacks exactly like I wanted, this is BS!" I've lost count of the games where that's happened.

"I survived. Please fix."

[Stench Guzman]

I finished playing through Quake 4 for the first time this afternoon.  It's ok.  It feels too much like those generic military shooters that were so abundant in the mid 2000s.

[Kagus]

I finished playing through Quake 4 for the first time this afternoon.  It's ok.  It feels too much like those generic military shooters that were so abundant in the mid 2000s.

Yeah, 4... 4 was... Not great. There were itty bitty elements here and there that were things that could've been found in a good game, and the pumping wall-hearts were definitely some snazzy interior design, but all in all I was not impressed. Especially not impressed with a couple of the boss fights, good lord...

What I'm really sad about is the fact that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars died before it ever really took off. That thing was actually kinda dope.

[Stench Guzman]

It's not a bad game.  It's just a forgettable one.  It feels like a weird mix of Doom 3, and a budget Halo clone or something.  Maybe a mix of Doom 3 and Alpha Prime.

No quad damage powerup in the main campaign?  How could you do that?

[Robsoie]

Remember the open source RTS named 0 A.D. that looked awesome , played similarly to the Age of Empire serie, but had some very noticable performance issues ?
3 years after their last big release, there have been a new major one only 2 days ago !

https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-24-xsayarsa/

Looks like there's a bunch of cool improvements.

For me the installer wanted to install wrongly in some user local appdata directory, be sure to check before clicking continue where it wants to install and give it a more correct path like any program should have.

I playtested on a  1vs1 skirmish with the AI on a small map (acropolis) , it sure was really pretty and framerate was surprisingly good.
... for a time unfortunately.

Once i started to have enough workers to get a good economy flow and upgraded my town center (or whatever it's called on the Athenian empire i had selected), i focused on building lot of units (a mix of athens base soldiers and peltasts) along with making some towers (no idea if i had to populate them or if like in AOE they would shoot on their own) .
(sadly upgrading the town center unlike in the AOE serie does not visually change any building)

Then things finally started to get interesting when i did an initial harrassing operation on the enemy territory (no idea which empire the AI random choice was, buildings were different from mine and looked as pretty) with several of my peltasts.
After killing a bunch of his workers that were gathering far from his main city, some of his troops started to run at me, mostly melee units as my peltasts were dropping them before they reached my position, but after a while they were too numerous (it was also time i started to notice a slight but constant slowdown in the game) and i retreated my guys toward my towers and my main army.

And during the big fight that occured it's there that very sadly the biggest 0 A.D. issue i always had is still there, as mentionned in the new release article :

Despite our best efforts, the game can still lag when there are a lot of units on the map.

A pity as you see there is so much amazing effort on the visuals, animations and etc.. in that game, but performance is not good enough for me to enjoy this once there are troops fighting, too bad hopefully they'll find a solution one day to get performance on par with commercial RTS.

[Robsoie]

And during the big fight that occured it's there that very sadly the biggest 0 A.D. issue i always had is still there, as mentionned in the new release article :

Despite our best efforts, the game can still lag when there are a lot of units on the map.

I ran into this interesting article by Intel that tries to identify the source of this super annoying and fun-breaking problem with 0 A.D.
https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/identifying-the-frame-rate-bottleneck-in-0-ad.html

I thought it had to do with pathfinding as coming from Dwarf Fortress everything bad about performance was always involvings bugs and pathfinding , but apparently it's javascript in this case :

The numerous transitions associated with thunking in the frame gaps, coupled with the various “js” entries that pop up throughout the results, strongly suggest that the game’s bottleneck is its Javascript usage. The exact nature of the problem remains unidentified – it could be excessive garbage collection or too-frequent interfacing, but most likely it’s the use of the Javascript to run significant portions of the game logic, which would likely be more efficient if written in C++.
Intel has reported our findings to Wildfire Games, but unfortunately, updating the Javascript is a massive undertaking, so as of writing, the bottleneck remains.

Sadly it sounds like there will not be a solution anytime soon as i imagine rewriting tons of inefficient javascript code into efficient c++ is a huge amount of work, a real pity as 0 A.D. is such a very good improved clone of Age of Empires concepts and mechanics (and looks incredibly good), but performance just kills its interest for me as those issues always start to appear when the game start being really fun (i mean when all sides begin to have actual armies)

[Iduno]

Yeah, Javascript and inefficient go together like feet and socks.

[Aoi]

Fights in Tight Spaces... Slay the Spire card gameplay meets the tight tactical battlefields of Into the Breach, wrapped in a rather pretty minimalist aesthetic. ...Really all that needs to be said, if you're familiar with them both.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And if you're not: It plays like a 1-unit turn-based tactical RPG where your actions are determined via card draws from your deck, and you have to fight in very small battlefields... I believe the largest one I saw in the first area was 5x10, with about a third of the tiles being solid terrain features. You, as Secret Agent 11, need to go in, beat up the enemies of the day, while deftly sidestepping their blows, or, better yet, kicking their own allies into the path of friendly fire.

Edit: Okay, some of the predictive indicators could be a little more comprehensive. Just killed myself on two different runs via counter damage that I just derp'd and didn't see. Oops.
One thing that's kind of dumb is that, unlike EtB, you're usually *penalized* by preventing an enemy from spawning. One of the most common bonuses for a stage is "Kill X Enemies in Y Turns", and preventing a spawn doesn't increment the counter; it just pushes it off to the next turn.

[Egan_BW]

Sounds pretty fun, guess I'll give the demo a try.