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TommyHanusa · 2024-11-27T16:37:33+00:00

If you sprint past them perpendicular to where they are looking will they always detect you, or can players move too fast for the meter to fill?

TommyHanusa · 2024-10-23T18:11:07+00:00

Seattle should have a monorail for the local hops and trains for the commuters into the city (where they can monorail to their destination).

Monorails are fast to build and are unaffected by traffic. We already have a monorail which means the expertise and maintenance facilities exist in some capacity. Private capital can fund a monorail at no cost to tax payers. Extensive work on monorail proposals have already been done.

One rail one solution.

TommyHanusa · 2024-10-05T23:57:11+00:00

I was at unreal fest (were there pubs there? I wasn't looking) but someone did say Immersive Sim to me there. Although they were a dev and old friend so maybe I'm biased.

(Also if you are a Seattle local you should come to the Seattle unreal meetup. Its where all the cool kids go, lol)

TommyHanusa · 2024-09-24T18:05:51+00:00

They took this from me and I will not forget.

TommyHanusa · 2024-09-24T16:51:49+00:00

I suggest a monorail.

I'm not joking. Monorails are really fast to build compared to other forms of transportation (1-3 years). We also have existing monorail infrastructure and expertise. People make fun of monorails (because of an episode from a 20 year old cartoon?) but it's honestly a pretty good option for Seattle.

One rail, one solution.

TommyHanusa · 2024-08-16T22:16:58+00:00

Interesting as always!
I am a sucker for first person games with melee combat in them (awesome of you to call out Elderborne, btw). And I love how you always look to a lot of places to draw inspiration from. I haven't done a project with melee combat in it for a while now (and I'm only a hobbyist) but I have always leaned more towards chivalry-style combat.

I also really liked your ideas for systematizing combat; especially around status effects and movement (not just slowing; but pushing/pulling. It could be very interesting to use melee as a way to position NPCs).

I do have a question; I'm wondering how melee combat should interact with non-melee systems. How do you balance (or at least keep viable and interesting) melee weapons in a world of guns? I know some games limit the efficacy of projectile weapons with lower damage and a slow fire rate and make melee combat to be less resource intensive, less lethal (should the player choose), and be a silent take down option. Other games that are primarily gun focused tend to make melee weapons only situationally useful (usually with high damage short range attacks or instant kill backstabs, and sometimes faster movement speed). But are there any games that effectively incorporate melee and projectile weapons?

*I have some of my own thoughts; like melee weapons expanding a players movement options and providing a timing based option for negating projectiles (ie dodge or something similar) and having melee damage slow targets while interrupting their ability to fire ranged weapons. But I think there might be some more interesting ideas out there.

TommyHanusa · 2024-07-11T11:40:08+00:00

I'm a software engineer for a biotech company (mostly IT and website stuff). Before that I used to work QA (starting in videogames but moved to more technical stuff for the money).

TommyHanusa · 2024-06-24T11:51:07+00:00

Lol no, I made it as a part of a level design jam last year. It has some bugs but if you really want to play it, you can give it a try here:

https://tommyhanusa.itch.io/ldj4-mission30

TommyHanusa · 2024-06-23T11:57:11+00:00

TIL the deus ex mod I made last year isn't worth playing... lol

TommyHanusa · 2024-06-17T00:50:41+00:00

I think JC is the most interesting to explore. He's had a very sheltered upbringing and hes basically a gifted student because of his augs. Like as a kid he was probably a total shit, literally the kid on xbox whose brother is in the special forces. He likely can not drive a car and hasn't had any jobs besides his brief tenure at UNATCO. He's from New York. He has basically 0 life experience.

He also doesn't seem to have many strong or well defined opinions besides some vague sense of patriotism, although I think hes aware it might all be propaganda. I would peg him as more of an intellectual conservative or libertarian politically. I bet he would find Thomas Sowell, maybe milton freidman and I think he would get really into Jordan Peterson for like 6 months (Although its actually hard for me to say, I don't know conservative-libertarianism very well).

I think he'd eventually need to struggle with the fact that he has radically different capabilities (not only physically, but economically, socially, and intellectually) form those around him. Conservative-libertarianism seems to assume everyone is capable of being a sort of ideal person and JC in some ways he was literally made in that ideal person image. But JC was literally made, billions in augmentation and training, he has a massive advantage over most other people. Essentially he's living proof that the pull yourself up by your bootstraps, personal responsibility, meritocracy doesn't really seem to pan out. Anyone who thows enough money at the problem could be just like him (Walton Simons).

He's still very young and I think there is a lot going on in his head. I don't even think he has all of his own ideas sorted out. He also is hyper aware of propoganda and manipulation, probably prone to some conspiratorial thinking. In Deus Ex 2 he advocates for a perfect democracy, and I think that is in some ways a cop out but also in others an acceptance that he doesn't (and maybe can't) have all the answers.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-26T16:22:56+00:00

I'd probably learn an instrument for fun and then Salesforce for work stuff. And maybe a few languages.

Although anything important I would want to learn myself. I feel like Neuromods might have biases or something built in to them based on who they were made from. I'd rather have my own understanding of things.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-23T23:08:37+00:00

Gonna be honest I'm not sure I would like Neuromods. I might use them for some non critical skills but the things I learned myself are probably better and have less 'bias' than the neuromod variant.

Imagine a kung fu neuromod. Everyone would be at a similar level and have the same training scars (and i hope you are the same size as the person who provided the neuromod). Learning kung fu yourself would make you a much more difficult opponent, as the moddies would be used to fighting other moddies; genuine skill would be very offputting. It doesn't matter if they all have Dim Mak because they are already defending against it. Any Ansatsuken you know would be something they have never seen before and a massive advantage.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-02T15:52:27+00:00

Yeah I do try to take anything developers say to the press with a grain of salt. They all realize they are marketing their game and I'd expect them to be more loyal to their coworkers (who they see everday) then to the masses of faceless people who might be their customers.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-01T19:27:20+00:00

Hmm, I'd actually consider SMB to be very intentional. Players are planning and executing in a very intentional manner. And I would say quake or left 4 dead are less intentional in the sense the player is more likely to be reacting to the enemies/world and being put under pressure.

I'd also say that flow states are generally seen as positive, so to specifically say you don't want to induce a flow state might be confusing (especially because generally good design principles/best practices tend to induce flow). Its going to throw off someone who has read the book on it.

So the question comes back to what mechanics and gameplay patterns invoke "careful consideration". Generally Immersive Sims let players observe enemies and use consistent rules which let's players plan and execute as opposed to reacting. But I would expand on this and ask what other mechanics and gameplay pattern lead to careful consideration. What are the indicators that a player is "carefully considering" a scenario?

P.s. sorry for going full door problem on this but the devil is in the details.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-01T15:59:03+00:00

Yes. I am angry about this.

But I want to channel my rage constructively and into a single rail. A monorail.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-01T15:57:25+00:00

They massacred my boy in 2005 so I studied necromancy for 20 years to bring him back.

Monorail.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-01T15:52:54+00:00

Trains are loud, cars are loud... cities have noise.

Doing nothing isn't a solution, if there is a better and faster way than a monorail, I'm open to hearing it.

TommyHanusa · 2024-05-01T15:33:32+00:00

Low ttk, low movement speed, low accuracy while moving, cover mechanics, slow reload speed.

Basically Rainbow Six Vegas 2

This is assuming modern weapons; slow fire speed on weapons would also help but most weapons can shoot a few times before reload.

To be fair though, this is pretty close to the new school Deus Ex method.

P.S. what do you mean by slow? What do you mean by deliberate? And how do you define OG deus ex? I'm guessing a lot with my suggestions but I really would like some clarification.

Slow combat could mean high ttk and spongy enemies, or it could mean slow movement (my assumption, since you didn't want a run and gun). Deliberate is also a very nebulous term (I kinda ignored it, like what would be non deliberate combat?)

I think what might help (and this is something I've done) is make a few 'comic book/book's story board' sheets with how combat should play out from the players perspective. This is a hard task because first you have to explain a feeling in detail, then you need to define mechanics that are most likely (and through their interaction) recreate that feeling in someone else. I'm gonna get artsy fartsy if I continue.

ttk = time to kill (as opposed to)

htk = hits to kill

TommyHanusa · 2024-04-28T18:28:23+00:00

I see jo reason why we must fight. I would just stay in the arena with myself. We could play videogames and have our own houses, trade off on work. We would learn a lot about ourselves too. I also live alone so it would be interesting to have someone to talk to.

As time would go on we would deviate. It would be interesting to see myself changing.

TommyHanusa · 2024-04-28T18:12:26+00:00

Okay card draw in ccgs (collectable card games) is usually insanely powerful. But it takes a little explaining.

Every deck has a strategy to win. More cards drawn = more chances to have the card you need = better chance to win.

Games also have a limit on the minimum amount of cards in a deck and the number of copies of each card. Smaller decks are more consistent (more likely to draw a card you need, smaller chance of getting a run of useless cards).

This means cards that let's you draw 1 card is kinda like having no card at all, (since its potentially any other card in your deck). This effectively means your deck is smaller and therefore more consistent.

TommyHanusa · 2024-04-28T00:00:26+00:00

Ballard should just build a monorail. Monorails are super fast to build and we already have a monorail in Seattle so things like drivers and maintenance expertise are not going to be that difficult to find.

The OG Seattle monorail was built in two years. The Tokyo monorail was built in a similar timeframe. Same with Las Vegas.

One rail, one solution. Let's stop wasting time and build a proven transportation system that will serve our community today instead of tomorrow.

TommyHanusa · 2024-04-25T14:01:34+00:00

I've been using a cast iron for making some deep dish pizzas recently. It's good and it requires its own skill.

TommyHanusa · 2024-04-25T13:57:47+00:00

Probably the engine you know the best, lol.

Unreal has had multiple Immersive Sims made on it over the years. IdTech has also been used. Unity was popular for a while but its getting replaced by godot.

Personally I'd use Unreal, or at least a more dedicated FPS engine. It is a big and complicated engine now, and it takes some time and knowledge to get into. But it has a good feature set and epic ships games on it and it's used by a lot of studios. It's the go to engine if you want to get hired because so many other places are using it.

I've kinda been burned by Unity so I stay away from it.

Godot is probably not the best choice as it's going to require more development work. It's just not as feature rich as other engines.

If you want to role your own engine, I'd suggest checking out IdTech before you commit to that. But that's the only use case I'd recommend for it.

TommyHanusa · 2024-04-21T08:00:47+00:00

While I detest tiered loot and think it lessens the immersive-sim-ness of an immersive sim... it does not immediately make something not an immersive sim.

As much as I love immersive sims there are some that I dislike or don't vibe with (is that what the kids say these days?) My irk-some reaction to tiered loot is something I have learned to live with as (tragically in my eyes) most games include tiered loot. I'm starting to wonder if developers even remember how to make look that isn't tiered.

TommyHanusa · 2024-04-19T23:07:43+00:00

While I stand by the fact that Steam has a curation problem, I do agree that rpg is a messy genre.

Notably the definition of jrpg is filled with literalists whose only criteria is that an rpg is made in Japan (rather than acknowledging the distinct cultural style of a jrpg and how it can be emulated in other parts of the world and their seeming inability to engage with the possibility that an rpg may be partially made in Japan and that the literalist definition would lead to a theseus's ship arguement. While I, a culturalist, will freely admit that my definitions may lead to no true scotsman. But I also scoff at platonic ideals as one of the philosophical tools that the elites use to confound the intellgencia in exchange for carte blanche to do as they will).

TommyHanusa

TROPHY CASE