STiFU
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Posts posted by STiFU
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@Destined @peter_spy maybe wait for a bigger sale. While the game is hilariously fun, it isn't too engaging on the long term. I had played it over the course of the weekend and eventually managed to beat it on "hard". I then started to grind "hellish"-difficulty a bit, but I see no chance of succeeding there, as you die after just two hits on that difficulty. So, after just 6 hours of playing, I think I am going to drop this game.
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To everyone who likes innovative game concepts: you should definitely check out "BPM: Bullets Per Minute": A Rogue-like Shooter meets Rhythm-Game. xD It's really tough in the beginning, but it's actually quite fun.
I recommend just starting on "practice" difficulty or this game will rip you to shreads!
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2 hours ago, chakkman said:
and Splinter Cell, which is a better shooter now.
I would agree with that with respect to Splinter Cell Conviction, but Blacklist is true to the core gameplay of Splinter Cell. Conviction had fun coop, though, albeit action rather than real stealth.
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7 hours ago, chakkman said:Thief 2014 is actually anything but crap if you take it for what it is: A reboot, and a pretty good stealth game on its own.
You know, I'm often quite a diehard as well when it comes to certain franchises I like, but, sometimes I think such games aren't given a fair chance. It's not the best game in the world, but, it definitely has its moments, has a great atmosphere, and fun gameplay. The characters are quite pale, but, apart from that, it's a pretty nice game, IMO. People simply expected too much of the old Thief's in it. Same issue as with Thief Deadly Shadows, kind of. Again, I can understand where people are coming from, but, if you are a bit more open minded, you can judge the games more fairly.
I enjoyed all the Thief's. The first two were probably the best, but, I played TDS through 3 times, for example, and it always was a fun experience. And, I also played Thief 2014 through, and probably will do so a second time.
Thief 2014 started out quite exciting, with that big hub-area, but after some time, you notice its problems and so it gets boring quickly.
- Linear level sections
- Inability to return to previous level sections (that's a big "no no" for games that revolve around finding loot)
- Extensive viewport animations whenever you grab something (makes me dizzy)
- Magic escape dodge doesn't feel very stealthy
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1 hour ago, OrbWeaver said:
The logical place for this would be either DR or the game itself, since both of these are already parsing the asset tree and know what they are loading or not loading in a particular map.
Doing it in a standalone script is of course possible, but then you have to start from scratch with parsing entity defs, MTR files and the like.
I basically agree. However, if I remember correctly the filesystems of both DR and TDM do not actually know where a file came from, i.e., which pk4 (or mod folder), does it?
Also, you usually don't have to write full parsers for applications like this. Here, it suffices to identify the name of an entity / material / whatever and delete its full definition if you cannot find that name referenced anywhere else. Repeat a couple of times and you got yourself a clean folder.
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15 hours ago, Dragofer said:
I think what drives most of the large FMs to be as voluminous as they are is that they contain custom assets which don't get used. Mappers might try out various ambients before choosing one, download texture packs and only use some of them, re-export the same model multiple times and so on. In such long projects, assets come and go, and I think more often than not they never go.
More major factors would be briefing videos, which can easily become gigantic if one isn't careful with the quality settings, and mappers not adhering 100% to conventions, i.e. converting as many .tga images as possible to more compact .dds or choosing a sensible resolution. Also, some compression programs (7z) seem to produce more compact zip archives than others (WinRar).
Ironically, The Painter's Wife has just now been undergoing optimisations and trimming to bring the file size down. The lowest hanging fruit included checking for images and sounds that were never included in a definition, looking for assets that already exist in core TDM and downscaling oversized custom textures. More intensive methods included loading the FM without the custom texture folders to see which textures the game actually wants to load, according to the console.
As a result, that particular FM has already been brought down from 550 MB to under 200 MB, and still has some ways to go, mostly just by cutting ballast. Loading times dont seem to have improved yet, but that might change once all the custom models are looked at (quite a few seem to have way too many vertices due to an exporter bug that was fixed in DR 2.9).
Down by the Riverside would be another example. Some alpha packages of that FM weighed 150 MB, but that was trimmed down to 56 MB for the beta and release (i.e. by checking which paintings out of a custom paintings pack are actually used).
So there's a surprising amount of potential for savings in FM sizes if an author is willing to put in the extra technical work of doing such trimming. Though I can understand if they'd rather just focus on polishing and releasing the mission after having already worked so long on it. In particular since there isn't really much in the way of tools to assist in the process.
Checking for unreferenced assets in an FM package is something that could be achieved fairly easily with a python script. Checking for duplicates with core-mod would be a little more advanced in python, but of course also possible.
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2 hours ago, madtaffer said:
I've miswritten. I didn't mean to change to new engine but adapt from QS performance and low size maps to the TDM.
The size of the Painter's Wife does not just come from the map format, but from the massive amount of custom assets and there is no way to decrease their size without sacrificing quality.
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Dandara is free on Epic and I can totally recommend this game, if you like innovative game concepts.
It is a souls-esque metroidvania with an interesting control concept that could be just a little more precise every now and then. You only move forward by jumping from surface to surface. There is no clear up or down in this world as it rotates frequently around you, which makes navigation challenging, but interesting. The difficulty is relatively high and cranks up quite a bit towards the end, especially at the final boss.
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43 minutes ago, peter_spy said:
Actually, we already have game prices that are similar, if not identical to EUR in terms of the exchange ratio. A new AAA title on Steam is 250 PLN, which is around 60 EUR, and it has been like that for years now.
Ah ok, sorry. I just based my assumption on that article you cited, which explicitly named Poland as one of the contries whose keys were geo-blocked. Didn't mean to be offensive or anything.
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2 hours ago, peter_spy said:
About that geo-locking thing, Valve and other companies just have been fined for this: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2021/01/20/valve-and-five-publishers-fined-e7-8-million-for-geo-blocking-steam-keys/
I wonder how that will affect video game pricing here in europe, as they will have to equalize prizes accross the Europe. Considering how Germany yields the highest video game revenues in Europe, I don't expect they will lower the prices here much. Consequently, they will probably raise the prizes in eastern Europe quite a bit. So, sorry peter, I guess you'll have to pay more in the future.
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On 1/13/2021 at 8:55 AM, cabalistic said:
The new GOG Galaxy client is a god-send in that regard, as it can integrate with your other accounts and list your entire library. I've used it repeatedly to verify if I really don't own a particular game or just forgot under which account it is
I have just tested it. It's really cool. All my games from GOG, Bethesda Launcher, Origin, Epic, Uplay, Battle.net and Steam under one hood. The only feature I am missing right now is "sort by date of purchase" because I usually want my most recent purchases at the top.
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We probably need @cabalistic here.
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As the title says! I am just curious. The answer doesn't necessarily have to be your all-time favorite game, because I would argue that some games even get better after the first playthrough. Obviously, all answers without major spoilers, please.
So for me, it would be the Outer Wilds and the Splinter Cell Series.
Outer Wilds, because it is an unbelievable intense experience to explore the physically simulated cold outer space and unravel the secret about that innovative 22-minute supernova timeloop that leads to some very interesting gameplay ideas. Sadly, it will never be the same as in the first playthrough, so this ist definitely my 1st place in this category. I learned about this game on this very forum and after Marc Brown (Game Maker's Toolkit) explained in one of his videos how this game works, I just tried it eventhough I thought that these types of games were not my cup of tea.
And I say the Splinter Cell series, because there is just nothing like it and I am hungry for techy espionage stealth thrillers.
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1 hour ago, chakkman said:
You know why stuff like that is complete nonsense? Let's say there is a TV station which negotiates deal with different countries on broadcasting licenses for sport events. The EU says geoblocking is against their laws. Which means that the TV station doesn't have any valid base to negotiate different deals with different countries, meaning every third world country with third world wages and a third world economy has to pay the same as the richest country in the world.
See why that is just total BS? Apart from that, the EU can't pretend to rule everything. Engaging in non-EU country economics leads to obvious conflicts. And, imagine everyone here would buy cheap Chinese or Indian game keys. Then every single games publisher and developer studio has to close its doors. Great stuff.
You know, it just confirms my conviction anyway. The EU consist of left-liberal oddballs which have no idea about the bigger picture, and only act from the stupid consumers perspective. That will only lead to the decline of everything which is positive in a wealthy society. Add Corona to that, and the prospects are really, really dark. They will destroy everything if they go on acting stupid.
There are no third world contries inside the EU and EU-rules only apply to EU-members, i.e., when you sell a product in EU-contries, so your whole argument is moot. That being said, yes, not everything the EU does is fantastic, but there are tons of really good things that the EU made happen and the British government are utter dumbasses for their Brexit and many many Brits and other Europeans will now suffer the consequences.
But wow, the next topic derailed into a political discussion. Maybe we should start enforcing stricter on-topic rules.
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Using the fragment shader to render a fake sphere on flat surface.
https://bgolus.medium.com/rendering-a-sphere-on-a-quad-13c92025570c
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11 minutes ago, peter_spy said:
You don't have to look far to find examples, Thief reboot had animations for taking loot from all the cupboards and drawers, and it was boring as hell.
I would even go so far to say that it's actually annoying due to those frequent unwanted viewport animations.
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55 minutes ago, peter_spy said:
There are Steam-exclusive games?
I don't think I've bought any, not consciously at least. And I thought it's obvious that there's a difference between PC-only game being made like that for various legitimate reasons (budget, control scheme problems, etc.), and a game that can easily be multiplatform, but it's locked to one one console or storefront because reasons. Using shallow symmetry arguments like that is cheap trolling, you know 
Otherwise, I believe all console players, or other account owners should be able to play all the games being released, on a platform of their choice.
It was not meant as trolling. Just wanted to point out in a funny way that there are tons of games exclusively being published on Steam and the same goes for Battlenet. This used to be true for Uplay and origin as well, but both can now be accessed through Steam as well.
Admittedly, most exclusive Steam games are from indie devs that likely couldn't find a better publisher, but there are also AAA-titles, like Alyx or Left 4 Dead for instance. The only difference here is really that Epic pushed comparatively aggressively for exclusiveness in a time where people are used to buying almost everything from Steam. If Steam hadn't such a dominant standing in the PC-Gaming community, I bet nobody would really care about the couple of exclusive deals by Epic.
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1 hour ago, peter_spy said:
I don't hate Epic Launcher, but I do hate exclusivity, in general, hardware or software. I'll always be against artificially limiting access to cultural works. So I'm not buying any Epic Store exclusive out of principle. I can wait
And having an app to manage all other store accounts, so you remember what you've bought is a clear sign the system is broken, and probably a mess from a GDPR standpoint
I get that argument. So, consequently, you obviously are also not buying those tons of games released on PC only, exclusively via Steam, right?
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2 minutes ago, cabalistic said:
The new GOG Galaxy client is a god-send in that regard, as it can integrate with your other accounts and list your entire library. I've used it repeatedly to verify if I really don't own a particular game or just forgot under which account it is
Oh really???? That's amazing, thanks! Gonna have to check that out!!
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On 1/12/2021 at 4:33 AM, irg said:
I was really looking forward to Hitman 3 but was rather inattentive and only yesterday learned that it was out this month, and more importantly an Epic exclusive for a solid year on PC. it still looked largely like just more of Hitman 2 right down to the UI, so i guess that helps me to hold off til a discount next year. i can almost never find a reason to ever get a game first thing on launch for the full 79.99 CDN anyhow.
well, I say that, but I am also looking forward to the PC port of Ys IX Monstrum Nox some time this year which will likely use that exact price point. fingers crossed they brought on the individual(s?) that fixed up the PC version of Ys VIII for a much more solid launch of this one.
some smaller commercial titles on the edge of my thoughts would be Gloomwood and the next episode of Hedon.
I think ultimately though, the possibility of some further Thief/TDM releases are at my most anticipated yet again.
All that hatred towards epic launcher, I don't get it. You get good sales there too and they frequently give you a 10€ coupon as well. What's bad about giving Steam some competition and paying devs more money while doing so? Then, there is also the fact that they give away games for free.
Back when Steam was released, everybody was like "nooooo I don't want it, I don't want some company tracking all my games". Nowadays, nobody wants anything else than Steam. How times have changed...
The only downside I see is that I never know under which service I own a specific game I want to play, but that problem had existed long before Epic Launcher, with Battlenet, Origin, Uplay etc.
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14 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:
It may be that he is not referring so much to the capabilities of the engine, or even the resolution of the textures and models (which is not all that easy to notice if you are not specifically looking for it), but to the style of map creation. I have noticed that some missions tend to use design techniques which were common in the simpler Thief games but look less realistic compared to the level of detail in modern games, e.g.:
- Truncated slivers of bricks around and above a doorway rather than a realistic supporting beam or lintel, making it appear that the door or window is just cut into the surface rather than built around.
- Weird, inconsistent slivers of interlocking bricks on the front of steps, rather than a row of complete bricks or a single large stone.
- Bricks on two sides of a right-angle corner which do not line up with each other as real bricks would, making it look like a brick-pattern wallpaper applied to an underlying surface (which is essentially what a texture is).
- Unsupported large flagstone textures on ceilings (which would in reality fall straight to the ground).
- No skirting boards, trim, coving, ceiling beams or any other details which often appear where walls join horizontal surfaces.
- Lack of dirt and grime — everything looks totally clean, homogeneous and repetitive, right up to the edges of rooms.
That is not to say that all missions look like this, and some (including those I have played from Grayman) are notable for their realism, but I think it's easy to fall into the trap of rapidly slapping textures on brushes (or cutting brushes without regard to texture alignment) giving a result that players can instinctively recognised as "wrong" without being able to determine the exact reason why.
Yeah, and there is also that mostly rectangular level design, which just doesn't look very natural in a medieval context. We are not designing modern north american cities here afterall.
Obviously, those rectangular designs are due to the usage of brushwork instead of models and I actually don't mind it at all, but it does reduce realism.
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2 hours ago, woah said:
Quick question, because I'm having trouble finding more information on this: What is the difference between eye tracking and pupil detection? Is one just trying to determine direction, while the other is trying to determine the complex deformation of the eye?
A more descriptive term for pupil detection is probably pupil localization: You have a calibrated camera setup and try to locate the pupils in 3d space with that. This task can usually be performed fairly accurately.
Eye-tracking on the other hand usually refers to detecting what you are looking at, so you can control the mouse with your gaze for example. Pupil detection is actually one of the required steps in optical eye tracking. After the pupil center has been detected, the eye ball center also has to be estimated. Then, a ray is shot from the eye ball center through the pupil center and intersected with the display plane to get the display coordinates you look at. As you can imagine, estimation errors add up in these various steps, which makes eye-tracking a rather inaccurate technology, especially when free head movement and uncalibrated scenarious are involved.
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That nostalgia hits hard!!
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Sad news, we lost one of our own - Sir Taffsalot.
in Off-Topic
Posted
I think referencing him by his nickname is perfectly fine. Using actual photographs is usually discouraged so that relatives and close friends of the deceised are not accidentally confronted by them. However, I guess it is also highly unlikely for this to happen in your case.