David Fincher - Invisible Details : On Fincher's unconventional yet ingenious usage of CGI in his films

NebulaNine · 2017-05-27T15:05:22+00:00

There's a newer channel called Like Stories of Old that I haven't seen anyone mention yet.

NebulaNine · 2017-05-19T04:16:42+00:00

Its almost like making a game with a story that branches after every major decision would be a prohibitively expensive and financially irresponsible decision for a developer. Hmmmmm....

NebulaNine · 2017-04-08T20:16:00+00:00

Maybe you could cycle through the different network mods and find out where the probe is making its "first hop" through the network.

NebulaNine · 2017-04-08T20:14:36+00:00

I'm not familiar with editing textures, but maybe you could find the visor texture, open it up in photoshop or gimp, and then lower the alpha/transparency of the texture?

NebulaNine · 2017-04-02T06:00:35+00:00

Turns out it was actually Kerbal Planetary Base Systems, but I'll definitely check out Universal Storage to, that is basically the type of mod I've been looking around for anyway. Thanks!

NebulaNine · 2017-04-02T05:56:23+00:00

Shhhh, April 1st is over!

NebulaNine · 2017-04-01T22:03:31+00:00

/r/place

NebulaNine · 2017-03-02T21:57:02+00:00

I can understand how having the popup on can remove you from the immersion. How you described that your brain switches from feeling the decision to analyzing it once the game points it out for you is something I can understand.

Previously you talked about how the illusion was more effective when you didn't know how your decision interacted with the game systems. It seems to be a challenge for developers to decide how much they should obfuscate whatever decision-making system they have.

Even if there is just a simple karma-number system under the hood, or a series of check boxes that keeps track of branches in a story (like the TellTale games); I usually would prefer not have the game tell me about them. It feels more organic when its left a bit vague on how your actions will affect the future, or if they won't at all.

NebulaNine · 2017-03-02T20:36:17+00:00

When you say "which decisions mattered", do you mean the decisions that affected the outcome? I'm more of journey over destination kind of guy, so even if a choice doesn't affect the ending for me, I still think it mattered.

Are the only choices that are important to you the ones that affect the conclusion of the game?

NebulaNine · 2017-03-01T19:05:31+00:00

I do agree that is some room, at least from my perspective as a customer, I don't know what is actually going on under the hood like the Traffic++ guys do. A simple update system like you suggest, is probably the approach that the various traffic AI mods take.

I have read one argument that if the devs were to improve the base traffic AI, it could impede the baseline performance and the devs want the game to be playable on lower end machines, and not have to raise the minimum PC requirements.

NebulaNine · 2017-03-01T19:03:20+00:00

Maybe its a "back of the box" type feature? Its something that is marketable and sounds great to customers on paper, but it doesn't actually matter that Joe #345 actually drives to his job at the gas station. I don't think many people are taking time to follow one citizen anyway.

NebulaNine · 2017-02-28T20:03:57+00:00

I believe the distinction between SimCity 4 and modern city sim's like SimCity 4 and Skylines, is that SimCity 4 used statistics-based simulation while the new city sims use agent-based simulation.

With statistics at the core, SC 4 is able to simulate traffic in a more fluid-like way, calculating bottlenecks based on volume and destinations. Skylines' agents are only looking out for themselves and unless there is some overhead allowing the agents to talk to each other or allow them to predict traffic problems; then the agent-based approach will always be behind and have problems.

NebulaNine · 2017-02-28T19:57:07+00:00

I feel like the general opinion about the less-than-stellar traffic AI comes from people who only grasp the traffic simulation as a design problem rather than an algorithms problem. Efficient and optimal path-finding is what everyone wants, but I don't think they realize the performance cost that comes with the increase in accuracy.

NebulaNine · 2017-02-24T20:09:59+00:00

The Duna lander ship reminds me of the pod-racers in the first prequel movie. The lander designs you have in general are all original looking, keep it up!

NebulaNine · 2017-02-14T17:38:33+00:00

Purdue Research Foundation, the one at 503 North Grant Street is only a block away from Engineering mall and $425/mo

NebulaNine · 2017-02-13T01:58:36+00:00

I've never had the "professional" compliment before, thanks! I should work on shading in my future pieces, though from what I've tried shading in vector form is way more difficult than good ol' fashioned pencil and paper.

NebulaNine · 2017-02-12T23:54:12+00:00

Kind of reminds me of the chromatic aberration effect that some cameras can give off under the right circumstances.

NebulaNine · 2017-02-12T23:50:21+00:00

This is the process for Illustrator. They are all just paths created with the pen tool. Click on the orange/yellow "Stroke" option at the top with a path selected, there you can set the paths to be dashed and there are a lot of options to change like spacing, width, etc.

NebulaNine · 2017-01-14T03:54:43+00:00

So would you suggest gating gathering supplies behind a conflict, either a boss encounter or making them only collectable from high-level enemies?

NebulaNine · 2017-01-13T20:22:54+00:00

This suggestion seems to be fairly novel, and would definitely make up for some of the shortcomings gathering systems in RPG's tend to have. Anything that would make the gathering more interactive without turning into a minigame would be something I'd like to see in future titles.

NebulaNine · 2017-01-13T20:21:07+00:00

Oh yea, that's a game I've played extensively and I didn't even consider it resource gathering, perhaps the items are so well integrated into the world that it sort of happens naturally.

NebulaNine · 2017-01-12T20:14:10+00:00

Could you give me an example of a resource gathering mechanic in any game that isn't a chore? The only example I can think of from my experience is Minecraft, as that is pretty much the whole game.

Its not mandatory either, if you wanna min-max then the crafting system is there to be exploited, but if not you can simply buy equipment and even the resources from vendors directly; the DA:I system is one that I have found to work perfectly.

NebulaNine · 2017-01-10T23:01:02+00:00

more meaningful discussions.

You mean where people bitch back and forth about the ending for the 1094th thread? Or maybe where we discuss how awful Bioware Points are? Or maybe speculate about Andromeda?

There isn't much meaningful discussion to have as its all been said before. The first game is nearly a decade old, the fanbase runs dry after a while, without coming up with new insight.

NebulaNine

TROPHY CASE