MrFinnbean
@MrFinnbean@lemmy.world
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 6 days ago:
Coming back to the map markings. It is also economics. How many players are going to use the feature versus how much work it is. It migh seem simple thing, but when you add option for player to write on the map there are lots of things you need to take in to account.
How many symbols can be used, what happens if the games resolution is changed from the settings, how the text wraps if its close to the edge of map, what if there appears new automatic map marker under text user has wroten, are there interactive symbols for fast travelling or something else, will those go under the text or on top, what if writing uses special characters etc etc. Not to mention if devs have been cute with the map and its not just a flat texture. Skyrims map for example is the game world and you can see storms on it. Spending time to make and test all those features when it really serves a tiny fraction of the playerbase is wastefull.
About saving the game. For better or worse its also a game mechanic and now days its not necessary about the limitation. For example if you could save in a middle of an battle in pokemon you could just save the moment you start a fight with shiny pokemon and you could infinetly try to catch it without any stakes. Or if you could save in middle of epic multiphase jrpg boss it would take away from the feeling of succes after long battle.
But i absolutelly agree games should atleast have exit save, so if real live happens and you need to close the game, it should not punish the player and loose their progression.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 6 days ago:
Three first ones can also be game engine limitations. Im not saying its good desing and its always because the limitations, but there might be more happening under the hood that does not show to the end user. Things like quest stage flags or loading things behind the cut scenes.
Dialogue history i agree completelly. I love the way pillars of the eternity did this. I also loved how text refering to things like cities, characters and gods were highlighted and you could see short summary hovering your mouse over the higlighted text and clicking it opened the codex where you could read about the topic. This helped me immerse to game because my character would what the capital of the country is or what god uggapugga is. Also it helped when there was long times between game sessions.
About map markers. I like when i can add markers or text on the game map, but inherently i think game should do these things for you, either adding a symbol in the map, or adding something in to games quest log or codex. But on the other hand i lived in a era where if i wanted a map for game i needed to draw it by myself on the grid paper. The habit has stayed with me and in games like Dark souls, Remnant and blue prince i keep small notebook with me, where i write my notes and stupid theories. To me its really fun to read those scribles later and try to figure out what i have missed or how dumb i was.
Hollow knight, Project Zomboid, minecraft and Legend of Grimrock have all very different tools for you marking your map and in all of them the map system is part of the game desing and gameplay loop. While these games benefit from the map system to most of the games its just unnecessary. The ability to mark “digging spot #31” just is not necessary.
I love how in pillars of eternity and satisfactory you have in game notepads. And now days steam notepad is also great. You can even add screemshots to it, but i like my oldschool hand writing stuff more.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 1 week ago:
Same thing happens with games to some degree.
There are many stories from gaming about placeholder music becoming integral part of the game.
In original doom games Carmack and Romero loved Black Sabbath and listened it during testing amd working on the game. That led to now legendary doom ost.
During the development of Max Payne 2 Remedy used Poets of the fall song as a placeholder and in the end they decited they wanted it in to the game, but because they could not get in to agreement with the publisher, and because PoF members are just cool guys, they eventually made song just for the game to get around the licensing debucle. That song was later released as a single.
I remember hearing story about Brutal Legend having some licenced music as a place holder in meeting with investors and it lead that music ending in to the game.
Im writing this while im little busy, so everything is coming from my memory, without fact checking, so who ever is reading this take it with a pinch of salt.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 1 week ago:
Well Germans kind of were the Holy Roman Empire so in my books they can call those cities in italy what ever they fancy.
- Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany 1 week ago:
Kanada.
- Comment on If you have an exceptional intelligence... You live in IDIOCRACY right now 1 week ago:
I think they meant that we still live in inequal society where minorities are more likely to have poor sosioeconomic position that can reflect how well people do in IQ tests.
You can wave nazi card or think why certain social groups do worse in those test and what that does tell about the society as a whole.
- Comment on Björk Calls for Greenland Independence, Warns of 'Cruel Colonizer' 1 week ago:
I urge Björk to take a long walk in a short pier. Because thats what she is asking from Greenland right now.
The way Trump is acting, its not time to alienate closest ally.
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 1 week ago:
To be honest im not sure what you are referencing now.
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 1 week ago:
How about europe? EU alone has 450 million people with higher density living than USA and neighbors like Russia, Turkey and very short boat ride to Afrika and middle east, not to mention recent and not so recent wars that left millions of guns and and even more munitions, and explosives in the cellars and attics of people.
USA has multitudes of more gun related violence than whole EU.
I just cant understand how you guys see the problem and just resist doing anything to it. Like its some great victory for freedom to have children have to do shooter drills in schools. Espesially when there are so easy steps you could do.
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 1 week ago:
And how excactly you responded to my comment about the pepper spray? Or how gun violence and gun laws go in hand to hand? Look how Australias statistic went down after 1996. Must be coincidence that after gun law reform fatalities with guns went down.
I went on a rant about your “militia against the tyrannical goverment” bull. Its just convinient excuse for cowboys to feel good owning guns.
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 1 week ago:
I live in a country where there are about 30 guns per 100 citizens and over half of the adult males have served conscription and we have one of the lowest amount of gun related violence in the world because strick gun control
The tyrannical goverment argument is strawman. USA alredy has soldiers (national guard) walking in cities, minorities are unlafully detained by troops without showing any signia or seemingly needing any due process for their acts. Bombing and attacking neighboring countries, sinking civilian ships on international waters. 1.25 million citizens are in federal custody in system that is designed around to keep minorities in prisons whitout any care of rehibiliating them because the law essentially gives the goverment the right to use them as a slave labor. Your workers rights are a joke where any employee can be fired without any reason, unless they have managed to somehow unionise in the system that gives companies every change they can to crush unionising.
The second amendment is joke that people seem to cling on thinking some addition made to a paper, your president seem to ignore at every turn it suits them, would be somehow relevant in after hundreds of years have passes since people who wrote it have allready died. If it had any real meaning in the original meaning, there would allready be some militia rattling around.
Just google little around and look how mysteriously in countries with strick gun laws have less gun releated violence.
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 1 week ago:
Less guns there are in rotation and more screening there is when getting one effects straight how likely it is for the bad guy having a gun.
Nobody is suicidal until they are and nobody leaves the guns out for children until they do. Also guns at house escalate domestic violence cases.
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 1 week ago:
I cant but wonder if bear spray would have had the same effect.
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 1 week ago:
How many school shooting has been done using pepper spray vs guns?
How many unintentional discharches has let to death with pepper spray vs guns?
How many drive by’s have been done with stolen/illegal pepper sprays vs guns?
How many times police officers have been killes by a pepper spray vs gun, that perp took from the victims house?
How many times officers have mistaked victim as threath when they have had pepper spray vs gun on them?
Did you know that if assailant is pretty close to you or if you panic even a little, you might shoot yourself or miss the assailant completelly when pulling the trigger? Missing a shot won’t make a person to drop a knife. Using gun may lead to somebody elses death than attackers.
If normal civilians did not have so many guns there would be less guns in rotation in the streets. The less there are guns in rotation the more expensive they are. Normal thugs wont use guns in petty robbery if they costs 15 000$ in black market, but if they can buy one from the street with 300$ you bet your ass the robber will bring the gun.
Also when its likelly that the perps have guns police will always act like they have guns leading to police using violence and excess force also in situations where its not needed.
- Comment on Midnight is a stupid time for the clock to roll over to the next day 2 weeks ago:
That would mean summer for me is just one 2,5 month long day. Same with winter.
- Comment on We'll probably never see a Grand Theft Auto set in a futuristic city like GTA 2 because the team "hated it": "People didn’t connect with the game or its city" 2 weeks ago:
I like how it looked. And to me it was and is game with perfect sized map and story lenght.
Nothing feels like its too far to travel at any time, but the map is large enough to feel like city. But small enough that you can learn it.
With SA i always feel like im over the game when i get to the last island, but in vice city the story pacing feels so good and it never outlasts its welcome.
I feel like newer rock star games are just too large to complete fully and keep your intrests, but Vice City hit the sweet spot where you could complete the game without getting tired of it and after short break you could start a new playtrough. I loved gta 5, but after playing seemingly all content it had it took years and few rereleases for me to pick it up again, but VC was a game i played trough twice or trice a year for a long time.
- Comment on We'll probably never see a Grand Theft Auto set in a futuristic city like GTA 2 because the team "hated it": "People didn’t connect with the game or its city" 2 weeks ago:
Are you me? I 100% agree.
- Comment on Being afraid of vaccines is literally childish behavior. 2 weeks ago:
Being afraid of what you dont understand is instilled to us by our own evolution. We lived tens of thousands of years in a state where unfamiliar berry or strange animal could mean death.
But you are right. School system sould be better in explaining what vaccines do and how they work and society should be better shooting misinformation down.
Also instead of ridiculing the antivacciners people should try to be polite and try to help them understand what vaccines are. Being hostile or condesending just makes people to withdraw in to their own safe belives
- Comment on Being afraid of vaccines is literally childish behavior. 2 weeks ago:
I get you are pissed, but shingles generally is not contagious (exept for people who havent had chickenpox), nor dangerous (for healthy people), so i get that its pretty low on the priority lists.
Alltough if its lasted that long i would be worried why. Getting shingles usually is telltale sign for weakened immunity system, or mark off high stress and both of those are bad things.
- Comment on After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us' 2 weeks ago:
Why there are bugs in the release? Mistakes happen.
- Comment on After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us' 3 weeks ago:
Your analogy is not fitting.
Placeholders are never meant to be part of the meal. They are there in the development stage when there needs to be something on the screen. They dont go trough the art department. Visual director wont review them. They are not representing the finalized game. They are there just as placeholders so people can see things work and not to need to look at wireframes when they work on the project. Often at parts of the game that has no quarantee to even be at the finalized game.
Generally graphics are one of the last things that is finalized in games. There is no point to use artists time for making placeholders, when they can spend that time doing something meaningfull.
In the end it does not matter if the placeholder is done by artists hand, is photoscanned from the doodles janitor made on toilet paper or if its done by AI. Hell, it could be pictures of spongebob fan art stolen from google search. It does not matter what people feel like is best and fastest way to get the texture, because its not representting the game and its not meant to be part if the finished product.
If you want to keep the food analogy, placeholders are the toothpicks holding your meatrolls in shape while they are in the oven. They wont end to your plate and if they do, somebody somewhere did a mistake.
Also i want to point out that not you nor i can say anything about overwhelming opinions. Clair Obscur for example has sold over 5 million copies. How big procentual part of those 5 million people you think has even read about the whole dispute, or put any meaningfull tough for the matter? Places like lemmy, steam reviews and comments on youtube videos are mostly from loud minorities that generally wont represent the whole fandom at all.
- Comment on After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us' 3 weeks ago:
If its nicer and faster why would somebody not use it?
- Comment on After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us' 3 weeks ago:
Any projects i have been on, if i need quick placeholder i take it from some existing library that is filled with free to use textures or i create some bullshit texture name temp.png or removethis_brown.jpg and some real artist comes and makes the final one somewhere down the line, 10-1000 hours later.
I have hard time understanding how creating the temporary texture that is never meant to be seen by end user is different when using generative tool versus paint. Especially when no artist looses their pay check or their spot in the credits.
However I do take offence if somebody uses ai to replace writer, designer, voice actor, or artist of any kind in the final product.
- Comment on Vince Zampella, video game developer behind 'Call of Duty' franchise, killed in mountain road crash 3 weeks ago:
Merry christmas and happy new year!
- Comment on Vince Zampella, video game developer behind 'Call of Duty' franchise, killed in mountain road crash 3 weeks ago:
Sorry if i offended you.
- Comment on Vince Zampella, video game developer behind 'Call of Duty' franchise, killed in mountain road crash 3 weeks ago:
I have really hard time feeling anything about this. In the video it seems like he is driving over the speed limit coming out of the tunnel. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I understand that losing somebody close to you hurts and i hope all the good for his family and people close to him and hopefully they get to mourn in peace without media tearing the case open, but personally i cant but think rich dude does stupid rich dude things and paid the price.
Sorry in before hand if i offended somebody.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 3 weeks ago:
In the olden days those assets were pulled from the google search and the people who had made them never saw a dime from the usage.
Placeholder is excelent use for AI.
If i need to do place holder for a dirt by hand it is900x900 brown square named brown_square.png and no artist sees a dime for it. How if somebody uses AI to generate little nicer looking dirt that is not going to end in the final game is taking money from artist?
In both cases there will be an artist that makes the final thing.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 3 weeks ago:
Atleast in my experience bigger companies have either their own libraries, libraries of bought assets or dedicated sites with free to use stuff, so they can use the placeholdes without a risk of having copyrighted stuff in the files.
Concept art is little tricky because it often is 10 version of the same character or random piece of the scenery and it takes hundreds of pieces and revision before art director finally decites “this is it, this is what our game looks like”. Personally i dont care if those are drawn on a paper or made in photoshop, paint, by a ai tool or trowing wet cats on a canvas. In the end i care that human decites what they are going to use and artist finishes the model. I dont see the point having artist spend their time creating seven different looking bandoliers for the protagonist, when nobody even knows if any version of those end in the game.
And i just want to say way before the consept art when the product is in its early planning state there are often “feeling boards” that are just i want our game to feel like picture of breath of the wild and picture of skyrim or picture of cuphead and picture of warm and cozy fireplace and these feeling boards may stay in use until the very end of the production.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 3 weeks ago:
Plenty of people called Dave the Diver indie game. There are also lots of reviews from the time that call it indie game, both from youtubers and “real reviewers” like IGN.
We can talk forever what indie means personally for everyone and everybody who has a opinion has little different view.
But originally in both movies and music indie meant indepented publishment. That means the artist have no oblications for outside parties and can freely and without restrictions carry out their own artistic vision. Budget or crew size has nothing to do with it. Only reason people associate it with small teams is that largest portion of indepentedly published projects were done by small teams and or passion projects.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is indie movie with budget of 220 million while average hollowood movie budget is somewhere between 100-150 million . Hell, passion of the crist, had budget of 30million and is maybe one of the most famous indie movies.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 3 weeks ago:
Well the definition for indie is independently published. Its not vague in its self, but the way people have started to use the word have changed its meaning to from something well defined to something more feeling based consept. I personally dont like it. People counted game like Dave the Diver to be an indie game when it had huge company Nexon publishing it.
If followed by the original meaning of the word Blue Prince is not indie game either. It was published by Raw Fury, but Baldurs gate 3 would be indie as Larian published it.
Indie as a word is like AI. It does not follow its original definition and because people have became used to misusing the word it has became the new norm.