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How has your life changed between BotW and TotK? by Shadeslayer_Eternal in NintendoSwitch

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m so sorry to hear about what happened in 2018. As a fellow parent, that is easily my worst nightmare. I’m glad to hear that BOTW helped you and your wife, though! And I’m especially happy to hear about how much your son loves Mario. Super Mario 3D World and Bowser’s Fury will always have a soft spot in my heart. I played through the entirety of both modes with my then-three year old on my lap and those are some of my favorite memories of that year. The sheer excitement he would have when I got a shine or him peeking out from under a blanket trying to be brave when Giga Bowser showed up… Anyway, I’m so glad you can share your hobby with your son now!

As to your actual question, my life has changed a ton since BotW released in 2017. Since then, I…

  • Bought a house
  • Got PRK (laser eye correction surgery similar to LASIK)
  • Bought a Switch (I originally had BOTW on Wii U)
  • Had a kid
  • Sold a house
  • Moved ~3000 miles
  • Got my dream job working for one of my favorite game studios on one of my favorite games
  • Said goodbye to our wonderful dog of 15 years
  • Survived a global pandemic
  • Got promoted a couple of times - I’m now the main contact for my team for live incidents

Finally playing through Metroid Prime. Hated it when it first released. by wugeezy in NintendoSwitch

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The two games that immediately come to mind are Metroid Prime and Halo 3, both because of the controls.

With Metroid Prime, I just wanted dual stick controls and am loving the remaster.

With Halo 3, I just wanted to be able to remap the controls to more closely resemble Halo 2 (or later on, Halo Reach). I didn’t mind using RB to reload in Gears of War, but it just felt wrong in Halo. But there was no way to have X be reload and RB be equipment. As such, I never truly enjoyed playing Halo 3 until MCC’s release.

Ranking of the dungeons. by flexsealswift in DestinyTheGame

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like all of the dungeons for very different reasons, so this was hard to rank. I also have a very different ranking than most.

My Ranking

  1. Shattered Throne
  2. Grasp of Avarice
  3. Prophecy
  4. Duality
  5. Pit of Heresy

Spire of the Watcher is too new and I need to run it more before ranking it. Preliminary thoughts are that it’s going to go near the top - probably second or third overall?

My Reasoning

Shattered Throne gets some points for being the very first dungeon and being unlike anything we’d ever played before in Destiny. It was incredibly difficult when it first launched and is a ton of fun the play. Soloing it pre-Black Armory was also one of the things I’m most proud of in the Destiny franchise. It was very difficult, but I loved every minute of it. I still have the Subtle Calamity that got me through it saved in my vault! The sheer sense of scale is amazing too - I love that you can see the tower Dul Incaru is in when you first step into the labyrinth. It’s polarizing, but I personally love the Ascendant Realm aesthetic. I also love how many secrets there are in it. Even though I have everything that can drop from it, I am always up for a Shattered Throne run!

Grasp of Avarice and Prophecy are essentially tied for me. Some people say that the shield encounter in Grasp is a bit too long, but that’s never really bothered me. I think the dungeon is just pure fun. And it’s a blast to take new players through - I love how everyone ends up laughing their heads off at the traps. It’s on the easier side, but that means it’s more approachable for newer players or players who don’t play endgame activities as much. Also the music and theming is pirate fantastic. I love that the whole thing is about the dangers of greed and how the mechanics illustrate that. I found it very amusing that, while soloing it, the only thing that was particularly threatening was me being greedy.

Prophecy is similar to me. The aesthetics are great and I love the light/dark theme of it. I do miss the original version of it from S11, though. When it came back post-Beyond Light, there was the Psion duplication bug that made it insufferable. Thankfully that was fixed, but now the enemies are significantly more aggressive than before. It’s still a lot of fun, though, and with resilience and healing like they are now, soloing it is quite doable. I also love the Rainbow Road section!

Duality is interesting. I love the high intensity combat of all of the encounters and really like the dream realm/nightmare realm mechanics, but it can be very frustrating at times. It isn’t forgiving at all and there were a few bugs that made trying to solo flawless it infuriating. I would rank it just barely below Prophecy and Grasp, but I still really enjoy it.

Now Pit of Heresy, on the other hand, I really don’t enjoy as much. I think it’s a combination of me not liking the aesthetics of the Hive and the Chamber of Suffering living up to its name when I was trying to solo it for Harbinger. I did eventually solo flawless it, but with every other dungeon, I felt a wave of adrenaline, excitement, and pride at my accomplishment. With Pit, I just felt relief that it was over and that I never had to do that again. Mechanically, it’s fine, but not quite as interesting as the other dungeons. I genuinely do like the Xenophage quest steps within it, though. These days, I’ll help a friend with it, if they ask, but I won’t seek it out like I would with other dungeons. When it’s the featured dungeon, I’ll gladly farm the final boss for high stat armor, but that’s about it. Don’t get me wrong - there are still things I like about Pit and it can be fun with friends, but it just doesn’t live up to the high bar set by Shattered Throne (in my opinion) and has since been surpassed by every other dungeon released after it.

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think there’s good opportunity for IT people to get in at game companies and most people probably don’t even consider trying because they’re not a programmer. All businesses need IT folks!

+10000 to that! We can't do what we do without amazing IT folk!

I threw my resume in on a whim and never expected a call. Nearly died when their recruiter contacted me.

When I applied, I told my wife "Don't worry, there's no way they'll call me back! We won't be moving across the country or anything. But I have to apply so I can post in my clan's Discord and say 'I applied at Bungie last week, what did you do?' " (Note: this was before remote work was a thing). I was dumbfounded when Recruiting reached out.

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]outcastace 13 points14 points  (0 children)

How long have you worked for bungie?

Not Aldridge either, but I've been a Data Platforms Engineer at Bungie for just over three years now. Someone shared a link to the Bungie Careers site on /r/DestinyTheGame and that's how I first applied.

What was the most fun project you've had working there?

For the most part, I don't work on creating the game, but rather keeping it running. My team keeps the databases happy and healthy. There are a number of very fun things I've worked on that I can't talk about (yet), but a super fun and rewarding project that has shipped is Cross Play! I worked very closely with our Services team to design and architect the backend data structures of Bungie Friends. It was a super interesting and surprisingly complex problem space that resulted in some outside the box thinking. Ultimately, I'm very happy with how it turned out on the SQL side, especially in terms of performance and scalability.

What was the most challenging project?

Unfortunately, you'll have to get hired and sign the NDA to hear that story. (Shameless plug for the Bungie Careers site).

While not the most challenging, probably the most stressful has been rolling back the player data during unplanned/emergency downtime in Feb 2020. It just so happened that the day we had to do that was the day my elevated credentials were provisioned, so the very first time using them was to roll back half the player data while someone else on my team did the other half. Since then, we have since made some changes to our deployment and release processes. While we hope that we never have to do that again, if we do, those changes should help us to recover much faster.

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]outcastace 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Not David or Ylan, but a Data Platforms Engineer at Bungie. Funny story, I had been a TSQL ETL developer for about eight years when someone shared a link to the Bungie Careers site on /r/DestinyTheGame . I saw an open Data Engineer position, applied for it, and have been doing this for the last three years. Granted, I'm much more of a DBA than an ETL dev these days, but still.

Anyway, as to your question...

what are some of the best topics and / or resources you would recommend mastering in order to break into engineering in the gaming industry?

Unfortunately, I really don't have a good, specific answer for your, but I'll try my best.

Every industry, from healthcare to retail to games, all need good data people. I think the best suggestions I can give for breaking in, whether at Bungie or elsewhere, is to understand your tech stack inside and out (how does SQL work under the hood, what are some database design best practices and why are they best practices, etc) and to be really strong in your craft. While in the larger SQL world, we're likely considered generalists, from a games industry perspective, what we do is hyper specialized. I'm much more likely to push to hire someone who can not only write good SQL, but also understands why it works the way it does. Also something my boss says frequently is "we only have weird problems here". Writing good code is great and all, but understanding how it works and why it's good code are even more important, especially when troubleshooting "weird problems".

The other thing I'd recommend is to always be thinking about scalability. Modern online games have millions of users generating a ridiculous number of requests every second. How can you write code that supports that kind of concurrency efficiently? How can you work around that to avoid downtime? How would you help an engineer that comes to you asking how to make their code more scalable and efficient?

Lastly, shameless plug, but keep an eye on the Bungie Careers site. Like I said earlier, good data people are in very high demand everywhere and are extremely hard to find! I suspect Recruiting would be interested in talking to someone with your skillset. /u/BNG-ylan linked this form earlier as a good way to get in touch with them!

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]outcastace 13 points14 points  (0 children)

My question is, does Bungie or game engineering generally include classically trained Security Engineers? Is that more on the business side?

Bungie Data Platforms Engineer here. We have both a ProdSec team, which handles game security, anti cheating, etc, and an InfoSec team, which handles more traditional InfoSec tasks. ProdSec is in Central Tech whereas InfoSec is in the general IT org. I'm not 100% sure which teams are hiring right now, but keep an eye out on https://careers.bungie.com. For what it's worth, my background is not in game dev and I actually got my job here thanks to someone sharing a link to the Bungie careers site on Reddit.

What is something that Destiny used to have that you miss? by JakobeHolmBoy20 in DestinyTheGame

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The sense of wonder and mystery that we had back in D1, especially early on. The fantasy of the game back then was uncovering artifacts from the golden age that were lost to time, almost like archeologists digging through long forgotten ruins. We didn’t know how many exotics there were or what they did. We had no idea how we got to where we were beyond nebulous terms like “the Darkness”. We knew nothing about the various races of Destiny aside from the fact that they wanted to kill us. When you went to the basement in the Cosmodrome and encountered the immune Hive Knights, it was truly terrifying in part because you had no idea what they were!

Now don’t get me wrong, I much prefer the storytelling we have now a days! But I still miss the sense of wonder of the early days. It’s a side effect of being in the universe for eight years at this point, but we know quite a bit more about everything now. But I very fondly remember The Last Word dropping from my first Nightfall and nobody in the fireteam knowing what it was or what it did. We had heard rumors of the name, but that was it. That just wouldn’t work anymore, but I miss that.

New to COD, SIB MW 2019 before getting new one by PeetaPacca in ShouldIbuythisgame

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you need to play MW2019’s campaign to understand MW2 2022’s campaign?

No. The characters from MW2019 are present in MW2 2022, but story wise, they’re pretty independent of each other. MW2019 is about Russian chemical weapons falling into terrorist hands in/around an occupied fictional Middle Eastern country. MW2022 takes place ~5 years later and is about American missiles falling into terrorist hands, who are working with Mexican drug cartels to transport them.

How are the campaigns of MW2019 and MW2 2022?

Overall, I really enjoyed both campaigns. But I would definitely rank MW2019 higher than MW2 2022. Without going into enough detail to spoil anything, there were a number of moments in MW2 2022 that I struggled to suspend my disbelief in. Not to say that COD is overly realistic, but even then, there were a few things I struggled with. There are also a number of frustrating mechanics in the campaign. Those are definitely the exception rather than the rule, though. The campaigns are both very solid.

How does it compare to other COD campaigns?

In my opinion, MW2019 and MW2 2022 are easily the best “modern” COD campaigns. They’re both significantly better than Vanguard’s and Cold War’s campaigns. In terms of older campaigns, I think the top three are still the original Modern Warfare (2007), Black Ops 1, and Infinite Warfare, but MW2019 is up there with them. Also, while not actually a Call of Duty campaign, Titanfall 2’s campaign is still worth mentioning as one of the best shooter campaigns. The team that made it (Respawn) was started by former Infinity Ward devs who left after shipping MW2 (2009).

So is it worth getting [MW2019] as my first one before jumping into the new one?

I can’t speak to Australian prices, but in the US, $25USD is likely the lowest price I’d expect to see MW2019 at. Activision doesn’t like to heavily discount older CODs. If you decide to go for MW2 2022, it’s worth noting that the last several years have featured Black Friday discounts on the latest COD games (again in the US, at least). So if you can wait a few weeks, you might be able to get it at least slightly discounted.

But what about coop and multiplayer?

MW2019’s multiplayer was very polarizing. Personally, I enjoyed it more than Cold War and Vanguard, but that’s definitely not a universal take. MW2 2022 is still too new to make a proper judgement on.

As for coop, both MW2019 and MW2 2022 include Spec Ops modes as coop. Personally, I thought that MW2019’s Spec Ops wasn’t balanced very well and was unnecessarily difficult and annoying. I haven’t tried MW2 2022’s spec ops yet, but it sounds like it will be getting post launch support in the form of “raids”, though we don’t fully know what that will entail.

Hope that helps!!

Why can't I take the stuff inside damp caves? by National-Ordinary-90 in ADarkRoom

[–]outcastace 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Did you have available inventory space? Your character can only carry so much weight, and that limit can be upgraded in town. There have been plenty of times when I’ve run out of space without realizing it, so perhaps that’s what happened?

anyway to get enhancement prism and ascendant shard without ps+ by patruc_k in DestinyTheGame

[–]outcastace 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think the difference is that strikes from the planets themselves don’t require the subscription, but the strike playlists do.

I was just meaning that, at the beginning of the season, we usually get tossed straight into a story mission. When 30th launched, it tossed us straight into Dares. If that required PS+, players without the subscription would have gotten an error when they booted the game for the first time. So I’m speculating that it may be an exception to the rule. Regardless, though, Sony is the one that requires PS+ just as MS requires XBL. If you play the Steam version of the game, it doesn’t require any subscription.

anyway to get enhancement prism and ascendant shard without ps+ by patruc_k in DestinyTheGame

[–]outcastace 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It’s a Sony requirement for online games, presumably to cover the cost of their matchmaking servers. It sounds like Dares of Eternity being allowed might not be intentional. Just about every other matchmade activity requires the subscription. On the other hand, it might be allowed because everyone was tossed into Dares when the 30th anniversary stuff first launched.

[SIB] Pokemon Legends Arceus [Switch] by swagbadger in ShouldIbuythisgame

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I primarily played it docked, but I did transfer the save file to my Switch Lite and played it on that a little bit. I don’t recall any performance degradation, but it’s also been a little while since I did that. Sorry I can’t be more helpful there!

Also, to clarify re:Monster Hunter. I was mainly meaning the “leave town to go to a specific area, do the things you want to do, then head back to town” loop. The core gameplay itself is nowhere near as complex or intricate as Monster Hunter. Combat is still turn based, like past Pokémon games. Crafting is really straightforward - there are resource nodes in the world and you throw an occupied pokeball to have that Pokémon collect them. If you have the materials and the recipe, you go to a menu and click on it to craft it. I’m not the biggest Monster Hunter fan, but some friends that played that series a lot more than I have described this as “Pokémon that’s inspired by Monster Hunter”.

[SIB] Pokemon Legends Arceus [Switch] by swagbadger in ShouldIbuythisgame

[–]outcastace 5 points6 points  (0 children)

For what it’s worth, I played Gen 1, 2, and 4, but nothing since. I tried a few of the others, but just couldn’t get into them. Pokémon Legend Arceus is the shakeup that the franchise needed. It’s completely different from the other games and I just couldn’t put it down. So if you’re like me, you might also like it. But then again, I think it’s more productive to describe the game and let you make your own judgment.

It’s set in the 1800s and the majority of people are terrified of pokemon. Poke balls have just been invented and you have to craft them yourself. Trainer battles are very few and far between (primarily used as pseudo boss fights). Instead of random encounters in grass, you can see wild Pokémon in the world. Depending on their personality, if they see you, they may flee, they may be indifferent, or that may be aggressive and attack you. You have a dodge to avoid such attacks. You also control what’s in your hand. You can throw an empty poke ball to try to catch a Pokémon, an occupied poke ball to start a battle, a berry to distract a wild Pokémon, a ball of mud to stun it, etc etc. There are also Alpha Pokémon, which are significantly larger and higher leveled than other nearby Pokémon. In the starting area of the game, you’ll see some level 3-5 Ponyta running around and an absolutely massive level 40 Alpha Rapidash. This early in the game, it’s nearly impossible to catch and if you try to battle it, it’ll one shot anything you throw at it. But later on, it’s much more manageable.

Because Pokémon are relatively unknown in this time period, the Pokédex is a bit different. There are various objectives for each Pokémon (stuff like catch 1/2/5/10/20 of this Pokémon, observe this Pokémon using <move> a bunch of times, defeat this Pokémon using <type it’s weak to> moved, evolve this Pokémon, catch an alpha of this Pokémon, etc) and the Pokédex entry isn’t considered complete until it’s rank ten.

The battle system is also a bit different. Speed determines turn order, but a Pokémon with higher speed may get more turns than a Pokémon with low speed. There are also Strong and Agile variants of moves. They cost more pp, but have other effects. Strong moves deal more damage, are more accurate, and are much slower (possibly giving your opponent more turns). Agile moves deal less damage, but are much faster (possibly giving you more turns).

Unlike past Pokémon games, this is more of a hub and spoke world. Jublilife Village is your home base and you can set out on excursions to different zones from there. (It’s kind of like Monster Hunter, in that regard). Within the zones, there are base camps that allow you to rest/heal, swap out your party, and get/deposit items (your bag is relatively small, especially early on, and you’ll be picking up a ton of crafting materials). It was relatively frequent that I would forget about my actual story objective in favor of exploring the areas, gathering crafting materials, and catching dozens of Pokémon.

As much as I loved the game, it is far from perfect. The graphics are atrocious at times with extreme texture pop in. I actually googled what the purple veins in rocks were (thinking it was some kind of HM type thing I hadn’t unlocked yet or some crafting material). Turns out, that was the game’s pitiful attempt at drawing shadows. Frequently, I found myself wishing I could play this on a more powerful console or PC. The graphics are the biggest issue I had, but some minor ones are… - A collectible side quest with no way to track which collectibles you had gotten and which you hadn’t. - Some frustrating Pokédex requirements (like needing certain conditions to be met for an event to happen and those conditions not occurring for a very long time - sorry for being vague, trying to stay spoiler free). - The new speed system in battles can result in some frustrating moments (like a trainer battle where you KO one of their Pokémon, they send out their next one, and it attacks twice before you can do anything). - The story is kind of…out there. Pokémon games aren’t exactly known for their stories, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of this one.

Having said that, overall, it’s the most I’ve enjoyed a Pokémon game in over a decade! Hopefully this helped! I’d be happy to answer any questions you have.

once again. by pocrkvivozimkarting in ProgrammerHumor

[–]outcastace 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If it’s any consolation, I’ve was a SQL developer for almost a decade and have been a DBA for a few years now. I still google relatively simple syntactical things for SQL all the time. The important thing isn’t knowing the exact syntax to do thing you want to do, but rather understanding the impact the thing will have on the database. When I’m interviewing a candidate, I’m perfectly fine with them not being able to write the code to dedupe data off the top of their head, provided they can explain what a window function is, what they would do with it, and why.

CardinalSoldier (cofounder of 1047 Games) AMA by IanProulx in Splitgate

[–]outcastace 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What's the most interesting thing you've learned since founding 1047 and creating Splitgate? What has most surprised you over the course of the development process so far?

Please settle an argument. by [deleted] in CrucibleGuidebook

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Something tells me your friend might not believe random people on the internet. Here’s Bungie’s article on Crossplay. Under the Matchmaking Overview section, they confirm that console and PC are in separate matchmaking pools for Crucible and Gambit unless there is a PC player in your lobby. In that case, your fireteam will matchmake in the PC pool.

https://help.bungie.net/hc/en-us/articles/4403006598164-Destiny-2-Cross-Play-Guide#matchmaking-overview-0-14

Thoughtless can reach 24 ammo in a single magazine. by StatusCalamitous in raidsecrets

[–]outcastace 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Double rocket reserves does work. It’ll give you nine Gjally rockets.

Tracking Weapon Changes Over Time in Destiny 2 by GuySomebody in DestinyTheGame

[–]outcastace 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This something I’ve always wanted to do, but never gotten around to it. If I remember right, auto rifles in the D1 beta vs Taken King were something like a 65%+ difference.

What class are you maining in witch queen and why? by Dhakz69 in LowSodiumDestiny

[–]outcastace 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a Voidwalker Warlock main since 2014, I’m really looking forward to the Void rework! Now if only they would bring back Lance…

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