Mr.Vic20

On 5/1/2024 at 2:56 PM, Biggie said:

This is really a nice update!

And bonus, even in beta I’m not seeing new bugs and crashes! @Commissar SFLUFAN, you were right! 

Thanks for scratching a very particular itch in developing this lovely looking blobber! I’ll be there day one to give it a run! 

9 minutes ago, best3444 said:

It's unfortunate because on paper the game is fantastic. 

So your saying a table top version would sell gang busters?! 

Looks like a green fall on that chart. 

11 minutes ago, ort said:

Aren't all colleges "for-profit"?

Some for-profit private schools pay out to their owners. Most private schools and all public schools reinvest profits in the school. 

24 minutes ago, legend said:

I've been trying to talk myself into starting Starfield, but this thread is not helping!  

 

The main thing that has been holding me up is its endless load screens. It's simply inexcusable in this era of open worlds. Makes it seem like Bethesda is incapable of growing with the genre they practically invented.

In a word, Gamebryo! I run large project teams and I can say from experience that when better tools come along there is a collective puckering from the staff about having to learn new things. Then come the power point presentations that ostensibly indicate how not moving to new tech will save time, money, and pain. What those charts don't show is how staying comfortable also builds cultural intrenchment and allows for the same dumb mistakes over and over. Proof that in life, there are no problems or solutions, only configurations in time/space. 

11 hours ago, JPDunks4 said:

Biggest issue with Starfield was the Proc Gen was some of the worst I've ever seen.  If you are going to rely on proc gen for a game creating thousands of planets, you have really got to flesh out your systems to be as robust and unique as possible.

 

The fact they reused the same exact structure layouts, with the same exact enemy placements, item placements, ect was just beyond inexcusable.  I remember finding a magazine in one of the POIs on a random planet.  And every time I found that same structure on any planet, that magazine was in the same spot in each and every one of them.  Surrounded by the same stim paks on the same dead body in the same shower ect ect.

 

Going into Starfield, and seeing what an indie studio like Hello Games did with No Mans Sky, i really expected Bethesda's proc gen in Starfield to be next level, and make really interesting and believable worlds.   But after visiting a dozen or so, you see the same like half a dozen fauna designs.  Creatures can sometimes be wild looking, but the vast majority were all similar.  I also noticed immediately after I landed on any remote planet, within seconds I'd see another random ship landing just a little ways off from where I landed.

 

I really think if they did a better job with those systems, the game would have worked a lot more in capturing the fun of exploration.

100%! After enough visits to floor plans A,B,C, I would know where the safes, containers, cases would be and if they would be locked, just by sight. I get that space is hard and an argument could be made for redundancy based on modularity, but the lack of variation in the Lego build  was/is terrible.

1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

I'm playing King's Field 1 right now. Not the same at all, but weird that this would come up on the day I started playing it. Surprisingly fun game, weird to see how similar it is to a lot of FromSoft's modern stuff.

So what's so good about Dungeon Master, what do the other games not nail about it that you liked, and does this look like a good spiritual successor?

I would say that the appeal of DM was that it was very hard, the dungeon had a lot of traps/puzzles to overcome, and you could die from starvation or thirst. All of these challenges has solutions and even secret exploits that would allow you to overcome every challenge. The game did not provide a lot of explanation, but left plenty of clues  to encourage discovery. Magic was rune based and you had to guess at spells based on the incomplete notes of a student of magic that was part of the game's physical manual. You had control over a party of four characters and they could all be multiclass because you leveled not based on XP but based on whatever actions you spent time on. Cast spells, gain wizard levels. Throw knives, gain ninja levels. Use armor and weapons or take damage, gain fighter levels. Make potions and wards, gain priest levels. Each character had encumbrance and could be configured with equipment of all kinds. For its time, it was simply amazing! You can find a free java version out there now if it ever sparks your interest. 

As I may have mentioned a 100 times over the years, I truly loved FTL's "Dungeon Master" released in 1987. All follow ups where not quite as good and frankly its not the type of game most are itching to make or play these days. So imagine my surprise when I  stumbled across what appears to a homage to DM on Steam:

Labyrinth: The wizard's cat on Steam

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM

---

Enter the dungeon and help the master wizard to find his cat in this oldschool dungeon crawler. Discover powerful magical items and weapons. Solve puzzles and traps and fight the enemies in this real time combat dungeon crawler game.

For me the short comings of Starfield can be boiled down to the following:

* Insufficient variety of activities and random mission types on planets

* Points of interest on planets are way too repetitive 

* Buildings on planets reuse the same base structure/layout way too often

* Environmental impacts lack punch. Where are volcanic flows? Meteor strikes, cyclones? Sand storms? If most worlds lack civilization then capitalize on that with the fury and beauty of nature!

* Lack of vehicles

* Poor local maps

* Too few settlements/cities

* Limited amount of melee weapons (we're in the god damn future, surprise me!)

* House Va'runn, where you at? (likely cut from the original game to create the story arc of Shattered Space)

* Lack of massive space stations/capital style ships to board and fight your way through

Everything else that isn't great about Starfield are existing design styles that have always been staples of their games, like them or hate them. 

I'm playing Starfield again and uh, yeah, its a game! 

I agree! Most of your games have been 8's that got 9's because of their scale. Starfield is a 6! 

2 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Starfield barely has any mods, so probably not very much at all.

You must believe, its Bugthesda! 

But what will it break? 

Baldur's Gate 4 in house? 

Just now, Keyser_Soze said:

 

You did this in another thread too. Helpful tip: the  button that says "share" beneath the video, just copy that URL. Looks like whatever you're pasting is also pasting a fixed video resolution, which is very wide.

50/50 on whether or not I follow this simple direction. Stay tuned! 

Just now, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Almost as revolutionary as your embedding that breaks the page!

I'm not just a monster, I'm an incompetent one! 

Just now, TheLeon said:

Oh shit, that’s actually what I was picturing. I definitely mashed up those two games in my head as Bioshock Infinite 2.

That' fair, its certainly begging to be mistaken for a Bio entry! 

24 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

Are you thinking of Judas, AKA Definitely Not Bioshock? Because I do want more of that. 

Its clockwork Revolution. 

joins a fine history of such colonization! 

I would love to take a look at the contract(s) language of the impacted contractors. Usually there is boiler plate to cover all of this kind of boneheaded eventuality. Of course, in the interim the little people have their lives torn apart.  

If the last 10 years has taught us anything, its that whatever you are counting on to stop an authoritarian likely won't hold.  

Man, the 21st century has really turned out to be one hell of a protracted hangover from the previous one.