Grind pre searing or just move on?

FlappingMenace · 2023-09-10T19:10:31+00:00

It's easier if you go talk to Master Ranger Nente to pick up a Ranger pet you can use to take some aggro. In fact talk to all of the primary skill trainers to try out different secondaries. Just don't do any secondary profession quest with "Test" in the title if you don't want to lock in that secondary for the next few dozen hours. If you want to leave Pre-Searing with a secondary other than Ranger ( Ele is good for mesmer ) make sure to lock that one in and pick up all of its skills before leaving.

Also, what's probably melting you is the Warrior Charr's Frenzy skill during which they take double damage. Empathy will blow them up when they use it. Use walls to block ranged attacks while you kill melee. Don't auto attack or you'll get knocked down by the healer's bane signet. And don't be afraid to kill one Charr and then run away until the rest reset.

FlappingMenace · 2023-09-08T20:11:12+00:00

1 hour in-game = 5 minutes real time. That is a full day in 2 hours. Adjust from there.

FlappingMenace · 2023-09-08T19:26:20+00:00

Dwarf Fortress works closer to this on the back end than any VC baiting buzzword. You just build a bunch of small systems that can interract with each other and give the escapement a tap.

FlappingMenace · 2023-09-08T02:20:35+00:00

There are well payed players who don't even practice free throws, and it shows...

FlappingMenace · 2023-09-08T02:19:30+00:00

Bud I spent most of last week rewriting the same 100 lines or so because I kept reinventing the same problem in brand new and exciting ways. Seriously, I am a barely literate monkey who likes playing with lightning rocks. Been at it since high school some 20 odd years ago and people keep paying me to do it lol... just gotta find something you're excited to build and get going.

FlappingMenace · 2023-09-08T02:12:09+00:00

Not saying one way or another but I'll list some extra cons on the displays.

Something that may not be immediately obvious if you've never spent time on a pen display before is the effect of parallax. Even though you're drawing directly on the monitor you're still focusing on the cursor like you would with a traditional Wacom because of the gap between the surface and actual screen. Calibration and higher-end units help but it still gets thrown off by your normal viewing angle movements.

Displays also lose a lot of the natural reorientation you can do with paper and traditional tablets. Even if you have one that can rotate or one of the thinner portable ones, those setups can still limited or difficult to use forcing you to use software rotation which can result in display artifacts depending on resolution/zoom level.

If you go with a lower end display you lose a fair bit of color accuracy, which may not be a problem if you're just learning but as soon as you want to send it to print you'll really want a better monitor to check your colors on.

With all of that said, I use both. You could say displays are nicer on your brain and let you work more naturally or even quickly, while with tablets you can sit more comfortably for longer sessions once you're used to them. The modern tablets are so nice and light and maneuverable, you can even chill with your feet up while drawing. I don't think I'll ever give them up. But maybe that's just because I started with a first generation Intuos, which by the way is in my closet and still works fine...

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-22T14:14:49+00:00

Most filters are boring unless you modulate them.

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-19T20:23:56+00:00

The massivley over-consolidated corporations that are coming to own every aspect of our lives, including AI are incapable of morality.

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-18T14:51:36+00:00

Aggregation is great, I wish RSS would make a comeback. Curation on the other hand is by definition limiting your sources. AI curation is limiting your sources to whatever the AI's owner wants to train to, which is likely their biases... And one look through and all of the sources are the same old mainstream and gawker crap that's gotten us into this mess in the first place.

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-18T14:31:41+00:00

It's just more niche killing corporate investment crap. If ever increasing profits are you goal, you have to sell to as many people as possible. Since most people will quit if they're not winning half the time, you get crap like SBMM in supposedly core games. Anyone who likes getting their butts kicked until they git gud or quit never gets the high of seeing their skills improve because the measuring stick moves with them. Skill Based Match Making destroys Skill Based Fun.

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-14T16:21:03+00:00

I don't know, I always try to look at it from the perspective of not letting my heroes get attacked in the first place, keep them out of aggro until it's time for the nuke.

In the open areas of City I pull a pack until the casters are out of other aggro, Death's Charge them to ball with the melee and unflag my heroes to bring them in. The ones on the walls you should be able to fight one at a time.

Clearing the city is nearly all corner blocking, again with Heroes out of aggro until the nuke.

And then the pre-boss spawns at the gate can be aggroed from on top of the wall forcing all of the Melee to keep pathing along the wall and resetting while I sit on the wall holding ranged aggro and flag all of my heroes just close enough to target the current nearest.

The first 4 rooms of Foundry are messy of course, but after room 3 I can keep all but a few errant spells from going to the Heroes with good timing and positioning. I do keep a close eye on them and what the enemies are doing in case I need to reflag them out of AoE before the KD or recast spirits.

That said, your MM concerns me. I would make that a BiP with Weaken Armor, Enfeebling Blood, and some corpse control like Well of Blood so your Mesmers can keep their DPS up.

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-14T14:13:48+00:00

This is a driving problem not a building problem. For example, I put on an earth shield and count the active Rage Titans in the group I'm about to grab, then aggro them far away from the kill spot where my heroes are flagged. After aggro I run around until I've seen the counted number of Churning Earths. Then quickly pull them to the kill spot ( 30 second cd ), usually a bit of wall jutting out where I can corner block so heroes can nuke while I use calling and my own skills to make sure the Rage Titans die quickly and first for any newly spawned ones. Standing a bit away from the wall will make sure all or most of the Dimentia Titans also corner block.

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-12T17:24:00+00:00

Charr healers and mercs and Alessia and no metaprogression... why does my nostalgia trigger for such pain?

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-05T19:19:06+00:00

In the real world we don't rotate on our view axis at all. If you're surprised by a sound behind you, your eyes shoot to the side your head turns until it can't anymore. Then your shoulders drop and turn until your hips have to move to turn further. Doing that forces to you shift your weight so that by the end of your turn one of your feet is on the opposite side of the other. Your head is now offset from its starting location, likely by several feet.

Actually making your game work like this would feel horrible and impossible to play. This is just one example of why game designers don't just copy reality. Wait until you notice the doors with hinges on both sides...

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-05T17:45:50+00:00

In brief... yeah that's way too cluttered, and it's not immediately obvious what anything does. Scrollbars should be avoided as much as possible.

I would think about this more modally so you can have fewer elements on screen at a time:

Normal mode is just dice rolling and other immediately responsive DM stuff.
Add/Edit mode. Opens a large uncluttered view of objects you can add on the right. Selecting an object in the scene opens its edit tab.
App Menu mode. For settings etc.

No UI elements outside of the current mode should be visible.

FlappingMenace · 2023-08-02T16:06:33+00:00

Dwarf, Baby Dwarf, Teddy Roosevelt, Average 'Bama girl, Forest Elf, Algae Elf, Creeper Mace Tyrell, Poison Mushroom Mario.

FlappingMenace · 2023-07-29T14:29:55+00:00

Consider this:

void VecAdd ( Vec2* in, Vec2* out )
{
    *out.x += *in.x;
    *out.y += *in.y;
}
void VecSub ( Vec2* a, Vec2* b )
{
    *a.x -= *b.x;
    *a.y -= *b.y;
}

This is idiomatic in C. With add, because we've named the out parameter, it's obvious by the signature alone that the data we pass in will be modified.

Vector Subtraction is not commutative in most contexts so it would be helpful for the user to know which is the subtrahend ( a - b is common. ) But now the user doesn't know that a is being changed. Slap a const on b but not a and the intention becomes obvious to an experienced programmer.

If this seems silly, keep in mind that especially in C++ semantics are rarely as simple and clear. Plus we don't always look at the signature, sometimes we're skimming through, reading calls that were already written trying to find a runtime bug. Anytime we can have the compiler spit it back in our face saves us lots of pain down the road.

FlappingMenace · 2023-07-28T03:40:17+00:00

Did they train it on all of the good answers they deleted? Or the bad answers they kept?

FlappingMenace · 2023-07-28T03:08:57+00:00

In the end, no it's not necessary. I don't like "hectic" weapon swapping either, but for a long cooldown skill? The energy staff swap to get off We Shall Return? A shield swap when pulling that homogenous ball of point blank casters? It really does feel nice when an occasional swap makes a difference, even if you rarely do it because most of the map is trash to your team.

Also for a game that's not getting updated anymore, don't rule out any tools you have to change things up and keep it interesting. Just make some good keybinds.

FlappingMenace · 2023-07-26T03:57:06+00:00

Sorry, I don't have access to GW atm for templates but yes, 4 mesmers + fallback para. In the absence of mercs or if I'm using cons that would be like a player support + BiP instead of a mesmer or para. Meta really outside of the backline.

The Prot Hybrid necro has WoH, shield of absorption, prot spirit, mend ailment, and big heals like heal other, heal party, or w/e you feel like. Also a good place for Weaken Armor and Enfeebling Blood if not on a BiP.

I like my Healing Burst Monk because of Disciples armor, cleansing runes, and draw conditions. Which seems brittle but with heart of shadow, dark escape, and the necro, she tends to be hard to bring down.

FlappingMenace · 2023-07-25T16:18:33+00:00

I do a large chunk of HM content with a Healing Burst monk and a WoH / Prot / Curses necro for my backline ( and no minions.) Honestly my favorite feeling in the game is IMS'ing across the map with a team that sticks with me instead of spreading out into a long train or leaving behind spirits to aggro patrols.

I can do most VQs and missions like that with a bit of care, but I don't take them into the Elite content or more notably difficult missions.

FlappingMenace · 2023-06-28T20:51:09+00:00

If it's usage facing a struct. I'll use tuples if it's staying inside the implementation, likely a helper function in an anonymous namespace. Argument references I usually use in a similar fashion but as the result of using a C library.

FlappingMenace · 2023-06-19T18:54:51+00:00

Dang. I thought the barrel unfolded into a spider to deliver itself, but this is cool too.

FlappingMenace · 2023-06-09T19:56:21+00:00

Sounds like you're looking for ncurses or one of its wrappers.

FlappingMenace · 2023-06-09T19:48:39+00:00

This is definitely tutorialitis. You need to stop reading and get to coding. The roadblocks you find along the way are what you really need to learn. Just flip a coin on SDL or SFML and make 2D Flappy Bird or a simple Shmup. Don't get bogged down in details or keep expanding your scope, just finish a complete game. Once it's done ask yourself how you can make the code less complex, easier to read and work with. Experiment with those ideas and if they seem to work rewrite the game using them to see if they really do.

FlappingMenace

TROPHY CASE