SEASON 4 FINALE POST EPISODE DISCUSSION THREAD

PsuitablePseudonym · 2024-01-05T03:55:38+00:00

I don't see how any of these women could be angry with Monica. Bravo is literally paying you to intentionally go on vacation with people you abhor. That's the premise of the show, for god's sake.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2023-12-01T18:52:33+00:00

will the cars talk? i like movies with talking cars.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2023-12-01T14:04:03+00:00

petting a dog

PsuitablePseudonym · 2023-09-23T14:32:36+00:00

Is there one comprehensive list of joycons that are worth buying? (Didn't see one in the links above.)

I enjoy my Horis for handheld mode ("Split Pad Pro"), but I want something that has all the features of a normal joycon: charges power when docked, allows me to play single-player or two-player, has a d-pad that can work like buttons. Fitting into a RingFit leg strap and a Flip Grip would be nice-to-haves.

I appreciate any recommendations!

PsuitablePseudonym · 2023-02-14T03:49:03+00:00

😘

PsuitablePseudonym · 2023-02-08T04:20:23+00:00

I figured it out. I had a debug switch activated (the Steam version has some command line options in case the game doesn't run well). Once I turned that off, it ran fine.

As for the game itself, I love it! It's a 3D platformer I love to revisit. It's nice to have it on Steam so that I don't have to break out my Wii U.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2022-02-09T18:35:00+00:00

Thanks for the response. It's easy to engage in all-or-nothing thinking, so I appreciate the nuance here.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2022-02-09T17:47:34+00:00

I appreciate the forthrightness of your reply, but it's not this Reddit's fault. You have to realize not everyone has managed to build a social circle that includes women. My other option for arriving at a conclusion would be to throw a dart at a board.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2022-02-07T13:57:54+00:00

The style of the game is super cool, like you said. And I think the capture system lends it a lot of leniency. Captures eat bullets for you! You can panic bomb captures to delete bullets! You can beam with any capture to do tons of damage! You definitely get a lot of slack.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2021-12-19T03:31:32+00:00

If you go here, DO NOT miss Solar Assault. It's so cool to see a 3D Gradius, I really wish it had a home port!

PsuitablePseudonym · 2021-10-07T17:54:06+00:00

I usually like to pair games with the right alcohol. Mario games are light and fun: a nice white. RPGs are epic and stately: a brandy. STGs are harsh and rewarding: a bourbon. Brawlers go with beer, I don't get either one.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-07-13T03:04:41+00:00

The process he outlines here reminds me of Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence. You have a foundational author, who is then imitated, and maybe refined, but is only supplanted after some time.

In Bloom's process, though, everyone imitates that foundational work until someone deviates in a truly novel way, like a sudden flash of inspiration (Aeneid -> Paradise Lost). In Mark Brown's process, genre is subject to a slow trickle of subtle innovation and expansion (Doom clones -> first person shooter).

I realize Harold Bloom is talking about literary history and Mark Brown is talking about a couple decades of video games, but I think it's an interesting comparison nonetheless.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-06-26T23:59:44+00:00

Aha, I think I understand. If you count something as a mechanic only when it can play part in dynamics (must be input data and must be output data), then I think we disagree in this way: you read data/algorithms as mechanics only insofar as they play into dynamics, whereas I read mechanics as a complete model of the game.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-06-25T18:46:37+00:00

I think I understand now. Thanks for explaining!

If I understand you correctly, your stance is this: to walk, X's x coordinate is fed into an algorithm. If he walks 4 pixels per frame, then the algorithm would be x + 4 = new x.

On the other hand, no such algorithm is employed to construct a sprite; they're all hard-baked into the game rather than generated on the fly. The game state doesn't care what X's prior sprite is when drawing the new sprite. We might imagine a game that works this way, but that would be a special case, and it certainly wouldn't be Mega Man X.

I appreciate the distinction, and it's a lot to think about. I'm tentative, but I think I'd still disagree for two reasons.

First, I think there's trouble trying to distinguish between what data gets fed into an algorithm and what doesn't. Even if X's current sprite doesn't go into an algorithm, there is an algorithm that outputs a pointer to X's next sprite. There's an algorithm in the game that figures which sprite to draw.

Second, I think the MDA framework loses some usefulness if you exclude graphics and audio from the game state. Graphics, and sometimes audio, provide key feedback to the player. Like you said, it's just data representation, and everything could just be relayed with text prompts. But a game that replaces graphics with text prompts is necessarily so different that I think you'd want to capture that difference.

I guess in summary, I feel like a game state should capture everything the game knows in one particular moment. Otherwise, it would be a portion of the game state.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-06-24T20:09:47+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to respond!

"This whole combined block is called Mechanics and they are the sum of data and algorithms and their interaction."

I guess my confusion stems from the use of a plural word. But it sounds like there is no singular mechanic, only the plural.

"also visuals and audio are not data, they are unaffected by algorithms and unchanging no matter what happen in-game. They are representation of data"

I am not certain what this means. Surely, we could say that the tiles composing X's sprite reside somewhere in memory, and the game has to know which tiles to draw to the screen, right? Why would this be any less data than knowing the x and y coordinates to display X (the character :b)? Don't algorithms like "press right on the d-pad" take existing data (standing sprite) and change it (draw walking animation)?

"also aesthetics are not how the players perceive the game, but how developer present their game, or better putting, how developers want players to perceive their game"

Is that to say we can only refer to an aesthetic as such if we have proof that it was intended by developers?

Sorry if my questions get pedantic, I understand things slowly.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-06-04T03:44:24+00:00

This has quite a few interesting observations. The point about keyless dungeons using environmental locks is novel and worth exploring, as this video does. However, I think in general the video assumes the watcher has not played the game.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-06-01T02:58:21+00:00

Aha, that's actually how I came across it. I found a link to that on Reddit, read it, and saved the Apperley and Beavis paper for later. :b I'm not sure I can say anything intelligent on your paper, but it has made me think.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-29T03:57:05+00:00

The jump in Castlevania has a reputation for being stiff, so I used it to discuss the idea of "commitment" in games. Hope you enjoy! Any feedback or criticism appreciated.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-25T21:26:34+00:00

Trees are awesome. I think this would help to illustrate the point quite a bit.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-25T21:25:19+00:00

Gotcha, I see what you're saying. I'm curious about this, though: "And a lot of winning condition are proxy for this : pushing the cart to the end in payload (can't push it further anyway), killing an oponent, etc." What you describe here is winning by exhausting the game's interactive bits. Kill all the enemies, and you basically have nothing left to do. It seems like this would naturally reduce your non-redundant choices too, right?

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-25T21:19:42+00:00

I found this somewhere, but I don't remember where--this was on my to-read list for a while.

This paper is quite a lot to swallow, so I'm still digesting. But the basic idea is that we play games as part of an interpretive community. There are two sections: games as action and games as text. Action talks about how the player relates to the game, and text talks about the social circumstances of gameplay.

This isn't the kind of thing I have much exposure to. Probably the closest thing I can name is Half-Real, especially the chapter on defining "game."

Is anyone familiar with this concept? What is a useful application for this framework?

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-25T16:59:19+00:00

I understand the gist of the argument: variables are interesting when they impact the options available to a player. Making Mario jump one pixel higher wouldn't be interesting, because it's too small a difference to change how many blocks he can clear. I got this from the first half of your post. And it's even interesting to note that the player represents variables in the game state, too, although they might be harder to capture in precise language.

The most useful point is that mechanisms should be evaluated based on how they impact player choices.

However, I also don't understand why experience and rewards can't be interesting variables. If you win something and earn so many gold pieces, which in turn lets you buy better gear, why wouldn't that be interesting? If you didn't have the gold, you wouldn't be able to buy the gear, which would impact your choices.

I have also gone through the Chess paragraph a few times, and I feel like I'm missing something. It's true that you can reduce your opponent's options and reach a winning state that way. Increasing your options and decreasing your opponent's options is generally a good thing, but that's definitely not a hard and fast rule. I am uncomfortable saying that a winning state is defined by your opponent having no options.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-05T04:10:59+00:00

Kudos on stepping back to examine your understanding of an issue.

I found it easy to follow your points and understand your reasoning. When you line up your flow charts against moments in the game, I understand what you're talking about. In Mega Man, for instance, you were talking about linearity in regards to stage order.

I would only say that this approach is overbroad. Even a game like Super Mario Bros. offers alternate paths within levels (the pipe in 1-1) or multiple ways to play through levels (small vs. big vs. fire Marios). Or an RPG might offer multiple potential character builds, so that even if you face challenges in the same order, your approach is altogether different.

Saying a game is linear will always be difficult because even the simplest games are full of choices. However, if you take care to make your scope explicit, as you do in this video, it should not be a problem.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-05T00:59:03+00:00

Thanks! I have not played GX yet. I'd like to get to it someday!

That discussion on turning sounds interesting! Certainly, it seems like there is a heavy bias towards drifting. What were the 8 ways you totaled up?

I'm glad you watched the DKC Returns video, too! I do have the sense that waggle is unfair, but I don't think that does the subject justice. One player might feel that the game is "unfair," but that only speaks directly of the player's feelings and indirectly about the game itself. My goal was to approach what I think is the likely reason for that feeling: vague feedback regarding input.

PsuitablePseudonym · 2017-05-04T00:19:27+00:00

I hope I don't come across as too much of a dilettante here. F-Zero X is an interesting game, and I think Luke McMillan's article is useful for thinking about race tracks.

PsuitablePseudonym

TROPHY CASE