Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

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mharr
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby mharr » Sat May 30, 2020 7:54 am

Night Dive just pushed a new demo of their endlessly dramatic System Shock remake, history suggests it might disappear from Steam at any moment, grab it now. https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock


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Thad
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Thad » Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:43 am

Today I played the castle entrance level on Rondo, and then I played the castle entrance level on Vampire Killer for the MSX2.

There's something immensely satisfying about how the Castlevania series in general, and that opening area in particular, iterates on recognizable stage design.

Rondo's version, of course, is "you're going through the courtyard and BAM, NOW YOU'RE BEING CHASED BY A SCREEN-FILLING HELLBEAST, anyway now the hellbeast is dead, here are the stairs down to the fish-men."

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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Thad » Mon Jun 15, 2020 10:15 pm

Decided to try the newly-modded joystick on the SF2 30th Anniversary Collection. Got some really godawful latency. Decided to try SF4 to see if that worked any better. Discovered SF4 is not in my Steam library. Ultimately realized I bought it on disc. The good news is that apparently Steam will take the key from the disc version; the bad news is I have no idea where the fuck I put the thing.

Man, it's been a really long time since I discovered I couldn't play a game because I misplaced the physical media somewhere.

I'm sure it's in the house somewhere, because I am a goddamn packrat and have never gotten rid of a game. (Seriously, I still own Home Alone for the SNES, and I'm pretty sure I know where the box and manual are.) I'm considerably less sure that I will find it before the next time I move.

I have been thinking of packing my Genesis and Sega CD away now that I've got a MiSTer. Maybe when I go through my closet to do that I'll find the game.

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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Thad » Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:09 pm

Anyway I wound up playing KoF97 on the MiSTer instead, and it was pretty fun! I think maybe I should start a Neo Geo thread to go with the TG16 thread?

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zaratustra
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby zaratustra » Thu Jun 25, 2020 6:16 pm

Newbie wrote:If you have PC or Xbox One, I would advise in the strongest possible terms that you acquire and play Outer Wilds.


black hole
flew into the sun
clipped through geometry? anyway black hole
bridge fell and then black hole
i think a huge rock fell on top of me? where the hell did that come from? anyway black hole
surfed a column of sand kickchop 720, jumped back to the sand planet once it emptied, warped to an area suspiciously like the home planet, then everything exploded for some reason again

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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Newbie » Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:22 pm

This is an important quality of life tip: if you haven't already done so, find Gabbro. (You can find that person on the water-world, on one of the islands.) You should talk to them, die, then talk to them again. Ask them how they stay so calm.

Re: the black hole - have you visited the space station at the black hole's exit yet?
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zaratustra
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby zaratustra » Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:17 pm

Newbie wrote:This is an important quality of life tip: if you haven't already done so, find Gabbro. (You can find that person on the water-world, on one of the islands.) You should talk to them, die, then talk to them again. Ask them how they stay so calm.

Re: the black hole - have you visited the space station at the black hole's exit yet?


yeah, now i figured out how to turn it on.

Current status: visited a lot of places, found the lost explorer, particularly proud of navigating the Interloper.

got through one quantum instruction tower. Everything about Brittle Hollow still sucks and i hate it. can't get either to the top of the tower there, or find the route to the southern lab

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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Niku » Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:39 pm

getting to the last thing you mention felt like me hacking the goddamn game when i did it. i still don't think it was the intended solution.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby beatbandito » Fri Jun 26, 2020 8:28 pm

The Brittle Hollow Southern Observatory has two ways of getting in, one of which is the easy exit after you get in the "proper way" but would definitely be possible to use it as an entrance.

While I don't like giving away answers directly (because even a dumb bitch like me figured everything out without a guide, and navigation is basically the entire game play challenge) I will say that the "top" of The Hanging City is the only time I can think of that you need to get there from another planet.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Newbie » Sat Jun 27, 2020 12:58 pm

Brittle Hollow has one or two big landmarks that make it a lot easier to get on the trail of your destination. Remember that even if you fall, clever use of your jetpack can get you into subterranean orbit, after which it should be relatively simple to get yourself caught in a tractor beam. Keep track of the landmarks where you can refill air (trees) and/or fuel (metal cylindrical tanks) and it'll get a lot less irksome.

Re: the "easy exit"--is it possible you're thinking of the northern glacier? The place we're talking about only has one exit, and that exit cannot be used in any way until you've already gotten inside. That said, I totally cosign your second spoiler. I've seen so many people waste hours trying to get there when they're going about it the completely wrong way.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby beatbandito » Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:59 am

Newbie wrote:Re: the "easy exit"--is it possible you're thinking of the northern glacier?


Am I misremembering that you can either go from Riebeck's camp and do the tractor beam jumping or basically land right next to the entrance through an opening next to the gravity cannon?
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby beatbandito » Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:59 am

Newbie wrote:Re: the "easy exit"--is it possible you're thinking of the northern glacier?


Am I misremembering that you can either go from Riebeck's camp and do the tractor beam jumping or basically land right next to the entrance through an opening next to the gravity cannon?

Edit: other than just squealing about impactful moments and how great Gabbro is, there is one question / maybe discussion to have about the very very end I'd like to bring up: do people think entering the eye causes the end of the universe? There is the one "recent" Nomai message suggesting the heat death was already happening that, for all we know, was from moments before you show up to read it. Chert doesn't notice an abnormal number of supernovas until partway through the cycle. And since only memories go back in time, canonically, the end always comes one cycle prior to an observe entering the eye (approximately, based on the time it takes to get the core and to the ship). This does kind of bring into question how the cycles started before you became aware, but the "natural" explanation still has the plot hole that "oh, I guess these stars were all just way older than we thought" despite the lifecycle of a star being so important to so many aspects of the plot.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Newbie » Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:56 am

Nope, you're right, both of those are viable routes. I just didn't consider the second path significantly easier than the first one because while it basically cuts the distance you travel in half, both routes require at least one jump up between tractor beams, plus all of the gravity crystal navigation on the walls of the southern glacier itself. The other thing that had me confused was that I'm pretty sure you can't reverse the tractor beam that brings you up into the observatory itself, so once you're in there, the ONLY way you can leave is via the door out to the surface.

On the other subject, I always assumed that there was a natural explanation, but I'll have to think about that and get back to you. So much of the scientific process is about being proven wrong by unexpected discoveries that I never considered the possibilities you've raised.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Niku » Sun Jun 28, 2020 10:17 am

The way that I took it is that you don't cause the end of the universe by any means, that part was always inevitable. Entering the Eye just puts the player in place to influence what comes next in some small way. "You can't save the world, but you can help make the next one better" kind of thing. But I am a pretty basic bitch when it comes to analysis so.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jun 28, 2020 1:08 pm

Okay. Avorion.

Do you want to play Minecraft in Space?

Do you want to play minecraft in space in a procedural galaxy with a rock-solid mechanical foundation that allows you to do damn near anything to progress and prosper? Mining, manufacturing, arms-dealing, trading, salvaging wrecks, smuggling, piracy, bounty hunting, knight-errant, mission agent/courier, space mad scientist, and pure explorer are all viable playstyles. You can even do plot shit!

The shipbuilding engine is incredibly robust and easy to break in a way that let's you cheat-but-not-actually-cheat (25% block overlap is allowed by default). It has angled bits and all kinds of snap functions and it's fairly easy to break the build engine so you can have cool-LOOKING ships without at all breaking the game mechanically (mass is still mass and volume is still volume no matter what you do), and the physics balance is great - larger ships will have more features, but will become ever-harder to keep manoeuvrable. Build a fleet of ships, or go all in on your own personal Space Battleship Yamato (seriously, you can download Yamato from the workshop). There's excellent fleet automation (minus a little problem with friendly fire and allies in larger battles, but they'll probably fix that soon) and they just updated the galaxy map UI.

Speaking of the workshop do you just wanna play this shit and not build anything? Steam workshop's got you covered bruh. Anything you need, someone's made real nice sexy shit already. Wanna spend a couple hundred man-hours building and tweaking a handful of ships looking and handling exactly the way you want? Yeah, you can do that too, even though only a crazy person would do that don't look at my hours played on Steam I was totally having space adventures that whole time don't gimme that look.

Oh and you can play multiplayer, not just with friends in allied (or enemy) ships, but even multiple players ABOARD THE SAME SHIP. One pilot and as many gunners as you have guns, though realistically it's probably not useful past 2 or maybe 3 players on the same ship. But still, you can totally do a Han and Chewie thing.

Also, say you have a single-player game and your buddy wants to try it out. You can make it multiplayer at any time by just hosting the same existing save as a multiplayer game.

It just hit 1.0 recently (the big UI update was yesterday so technically that's 1.1 now), but the devs are still cranking out content, so there's only going to be more to come.

So, do you wanna play Minecraft-But-You're-A-Fuckin'-Space-Pirate?

(the only indictment of the game is that it's not really viable to START as a Space Pirate. It's only really viable mid-game and on when you get hangars with let you run fighters and boarding shuttles which can bring troops to enemy ships for boarding actions. Before that you have to fight ship-to ship, which will usually destroy most enemy cargo. I just went with bog-standard "mining magnate" for my first game, so I could spend more time buil... having *ahem* cool space adventures.)
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby mharr » Sun Jun 28, 2020 1:57 pm

People have been trying to build exactly that game since forever, but especially after Minecraft hit and they've all been some kind of trash fire disaster. I'd stopped even looking at them. You're seriously telling us someone did everything right and the internet just completely blanked on this?

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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:03 pm

mharr wrote:People have been trying to build exactly that game since forever, but especially after Minecraft hit and they've all been some kind of trash fire disaster. I'd stopped even looking at them. You're seriously telling us someone did everything right and the internet just completely blanked on this?

I know!

I was even looking for a game like this forever myself (without even the Minecraft aspect!) and never found it until a friend pointed me at it.

I think what happened is that it first came out as early access in 2017 and there was a lot of interest (most of the wiki entries, articles and forum posts date to 2017/2018), but it was still missing a number of things.

So the hype died down - but the devs never stopped beavering away at the thing and wow omg this game is criminally underpopular.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby zaratustra » Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:42 pm

re: outer wilds

i'm sorry, i solved most of the puzzles but the last one is not a good puzzle. It's a finicky thing and having to start the whole process over every time is not good game dev.

i watched the ending on youtube, cancel my gamer card if you must.

re: the plot hole

but the "natural" explanation still has the plot hole that "oh, I guess these stars were all just way older than we thought" despite the lifecycle of a star being so important to so many aspects of the plot.


Apparently if you talk to Chert at different times of the loop you get different information from him and this is exactly one of the things you learn. They were just all kind of dumbasses, apparently.

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Thad
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Thad » Fri Jul 10, 2020 12:06 pm

Continuing from the Doom talk on the Deals thread:

Brentai wrote:gzDoom (or GZDoom or gzDOOM or whatever) is the only bearable way to play the game in the modern era imho. If you install any of the supported games on Steam they'll show up automatically in gzDoom, so that's a nice way to go about it all legal-like.

Fired it up. Just like you say, it automatically detects that I've got Ultimate Doom, Doom 2, and the two Final Doom sets installed. Haven't tried adding any other WADs yet (Sigil, Chex Quest, etc.) but it should be compatible with any WAD that runs on the vanilla engine (Doom/Doom 2/Heretic/Hexen/Strife).

That doesn't include Doom 64, which uses a heavily modified version of the original engine.

Both -- GZDoom and Doom 64 -- look pretty good for how old everything is. Animation and movement are smooth.

GZDoom defaults to the original '93 controls; the official Doom 64 goes with a more modern WASD/mouselook scheme (though calling it "mouselook" may be a little charitable since this is still Doom and you can't look up or down). Obviously WASD/mouse is the objectively better control scheme, but try telling that to my muscle memory; I keep wondering why the arrow keys, Ctrl, and spacebar don't work.

Didn't play either version for very long, because they're both pretty uncomfortable on my right hand. Nice to have them in the ol' library, though, and hopefully one of these days I'll be able to play FPS's comfortably again.

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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby IGNORE ME » Fri Jul 10, 2020 12:39 pm

I must have spent the requisite amount of time getting gzDoom to use WASD+M because I totally forgot it does that. Those original controls are something I never really got comfortable with; enough to finish the E1 of Doom (and Wolfenstein and Ken's Labyrinth for some reason) but as a result of them I never really "liked" FPS games until somebody foisted Quake III Arena on me. A lot of the reason I stump for gzDoom is because it allows WASD+M to work the way you expect and not the way the DOSBox versions do it which maps mouse up to forward and augh.

Also if anybody's like me and wants to "unsmooth" that movement (because classic DOOM has the monsters kind of jutter around) you can turn that off under Display Options > Interpolate Monster Movement. The other big important option IMHO is setting Sound Options > MIDI Device to WildMidi, because the default device is awful. I'll leave turning off all the sprite blending as an exercise to whoever is actually reading this (not Thad, because good lord you might as well play Diablo if you're going to do that to your hand).

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