itsamoose

I used to like TB, but lately he seems to be infatuated with his persona. For a guy who claims to be all about facts to basically use the "I haven't seen it, therefore I can't imagine it" argument just sucks. I can't remember if it was here but a while ago I saw a tweet from Steven Colbert that said something to the effect of "it's cold out, so global warming isn't real. Also, I just ate so world hunger is over!".

What do people mean when they say they are sex positive vs sex critical/sex negative? I've only ever heard these terms referenced loosely by people, and usually as a kind of catch all to justify whatever opinion they are espousing. Those terms tend to come up when discussing pornography, but beyond that I can't help but feel they tend to get used in lieu of explanation, kind of like how people preface their political opinions with I'm a Liberal/Conservative/Libertarian/etc.

Yeah that bit wasn't as clear as I would have liked. I see this as the difference between representing a circumstance vs representing an exact or particular series of events. So Unity of command is about the circumstance of the Russian army in WW2, whereas splinter cell tells the particular story of Sam Fisher. What I mean by specificity here is where the game lies on the spectrum of exact to applicable. For example Splinter cell isn't really interested in discussing the war on terror so much as they are interested in the story of Sam Fisher, whereas Unity of command isn't interested in the plight of the soldiers on the Eastern front in WW2, and no one battle is guaranteed to carry it's real world historical significance. By the same token Oregon trail isn't a story about a particular pioneer's journey west, it is about the circumstances people in that situation might encounter. I suppose this is more a function of the game design, where something with a narrative will naturally be more specific than something in a sandbox. What I liked about Spec Ops so much was that it was able to tell a specific story that was also a wonderful exploration of the effects of the war on society without making it about any particular group of people. I won't go into spoilers if you haven't played it yet, I will only say the game starts out with the player having some purpose to their actions but rapidly decays when faced with the grim reality of war. At the start you have a concrete goal, although It's not clear who you are fighting or why you are fighting (your team members have some dialogue asking who the group they just killed were). You are just fighting, and eventually the fact that you are fighting becomes to sole impetus to keep fighting. In case you have played it, the situation I am speaking about is:

I see the perspective, but I'm not sure this is necessarily a hard and fast rule. From the outside the Modern warfare series seems like something that is pro-war, but in playing through it you realize the game has a rather cynical opinion of it, and each time more soldiers get involved the overall conflict gets worse. In the end the conflict is ultimately resolved not by some final battle but by the politicians of the world and the soldiers the story follows generally only jeopardize or hinder their efforts. In fact: I've also heard from a couple places that games taking place in the middle east are incredibly popular there and are seen as largely cathartic. On the topic of aliens representing a group vs. using the real world equivalent, this has always to me been a function of specificity. Take for example Oregon Trail, Unity of Command, or any other game set in a specific place and time. Now the two games I mentioned I don't think anyone would call unethical, but these are largely nonspecific games. Unity of Command has a pretty horrific setting, but the player never really sees the grisly reality of that due to the game's perspective. Splinter cell, on the other hand, seems to revel in tying itself to the kind of "ripped from the headlines" style thematic elements in a personal, visceral (weee!) way. Now Contrast both of those games with Spec Ops: The Line, which is about a fantastical conflict set in a specific real world place and time that, to some extent, is able to have it's cake and eat it too. As you make your way through the campaign the veneer of heroism and honor slowly falls away and all you are left with is violence seemingly for it's own sake. I think the reason you use aliens or some made up organization is so they can embody the particular traits you want to talk about or to combine a general philosophy into something more concrete, but in general I find this makes them a little one note. Take the Asari in Mass Effect for example. Bioware claims up and down they aren't all women or meant to represent women, but all Asari characters look like female supermodels, they are all voiced by women, the themes of many of their missions involve motherhood and nurturing, almost all the pole dancers are Asari, the head of their society is called a Matriarch, etc. I can't help but see this as the developers wanting to create a space to talk about women's issues, but not wanting to go so far as to invoke anyone's prejudice. I suppose this is nothing new, but I have a hard time seeing the explicit or exact representation of a real world conflict or group as more or less ethical. I suppose like anything else it's more in the way the conflict is represented, whether or not the game seeks to question the status quo vs. just paying lip service to the same. Personally I've always seen the fantastical elements of games as being less about the thematic elements and more related to creating a reasonable basis for it's mechanics.

You bring up a good point here, in that for one reason or another we tend to see fantastical violence as not really a big deal, which becomes a bit muddier when there is an explicit effort by the team to ground that fantasy in an all too familiar reality. I remember one level in I believe Modern Warfare 2 where you and a couple of kitted out soldiers cut your way through a favela presumably full of people who's only possession may be the rifle they are using. I couldn't help but feel as though I was taking the role of the oppresive government (a la the empire in star wars) which I think was ultimately the point. This seems to be happening in movies as well, although the violence there seems to be going more toward the fantastic. I saw Fury recently, and in that all the German guns shoot green lasers while all the American guns shoot red ones and there are a number of what could only be described as Mortal Kombat style fatalities throughout. I don't really know how to feel about all this other than to say that if I were one of the COD developers organizing a deal with an arms manufacturer I don't think I would be able to sleep well.

I actually came to a similar situation, although in a roundabout way. i was really into space as a kid, so I tended to like sci-fi stuff which inevitably lead me to military gear. I think I've always been fascinated with how things work, which has really been the impetus for my interest. I enjoy military fiction (for lack of a better term), but those kinds of things don't usually hold my interest long because they are more interested in special effects and lavishly praising soldiers than anything else. I think this doesn't bother me as much since I do like these things, but not for the reasons people typically do. I enjoy learning about the inner workings of crazy pseudo-scientific future weapons, even if that kind of thing is largely consequential to the actual game/movie/whatever, and something about high level strategies of war captures my interest as well. I enjoy learning thing such as how the Japanese kamikaze fighters weren't nearly as effective as I had been lead to believe in my high school history class, or how the cuban missile crisis was actually averted due to the failure of an incredibly powerful but as of yet untested submarine engine that was itself a relic of WW2. I'm in agreement when you point out the live action promos for call of duty being a little gross, and even for me the gamestop in-engine commercials where they say things like "nothing like a firefight to put a little spring in your step". I'm not sure if this is more an American perspective, but I think this feeds into the current Chickenhawk (meaning someone who is willing to go to war, as long as they don't have to be the one to go) foreign policy attitudes of many of my peers.

Do any of the requisitions do anything besides gain power? I remember one quest where I had to craft and wear an amulet to challenge the leader of some mercenary group, but other than that I'm not sure if the actual things you create will affect any quest outcomes. I've basically stopped paying attention to those, particularly once the power merchant shows up in skyhold.

I never followed him all that closely, but he's always seemed like the kind of person who wasn't interested in forwarding a debate in any meaningful way. He seems more interested in pointing out how a particular viewpoint or argument is misguided or wrong, which I suppose is part and parcel with being an online personality. I'm not sure if he is to blame for this style, as its something I've seen crop up in virtually all online discussions, that really are just a series of non sequitors or deflections (I believe this is called Whatabout-ism). Basically I can't decide if people like TB are the cause or the effect here, and as such don't really know how to engage that viewpoint.

Is it the visuals/perspective that bothers you, the gung-ho attitude those games have or something else? If you look at games historically, video games are kind of late to the party here. Military academies have been using wargames as part of their curriculum since the 1700s maybe? Most of today's pilots are trained in some kind of virtual environment, and this past year both the CSTO and NATO conducted massive war games over potential future conflics in the arctic. I mean I get that the video gamey-ness of it is a bit unnerving, mainly in it's proximity to the consumer product, but really this is the same thing they have been doing for years in one way or another that some COD developers decided to take credit for.

Yeah that's another unfortunate product of modern multiplayer games. You really aren't able to get off the ground until around level 10 or so when you finally are able to purchase whatever 4 abilities you want. That and the starting equipment is so weak compared to what you find, as much as 4-5 times the damage of the starting items. I'm kind of surprised I've gotten into the multiplayer as much as I have given how frustrating it is.

I would imagine any shaders that involve post processing would still be pro only, and in the same vein the new lighting model will probably work with the free version minus soft shadows and other non critical features.

That's just a great idea in general, especially if you'll be doing the programming. I was actually planning on sitting down and doing something similar for my own projects over the next year as opposed to just working on them when I find time as I do today.

I've actually enjoyed the multiplayer more than the singleplayer campaign so far, mainly because I can play it in shorter bursts than the single player. I think it's a great experience, but is heavily dependent on having a capable tank in the party whereas in mass effect most classes can be effective on their own. Most of the bosses can one shot anyone, particularly on threatening or perilous difficulty, and even so many as 3-4 archers can wipe out your entire party in a few shots. It also helps to have items that give a heal on kill effect, which the loot system makes it kind of difficult to do. I really hate the trend of making rewards random in multiplayer games, particularly in ones where stats and not skill are the primary concern. From my experience there are also a number of skills that are just simply better than others, for example legionnaires have a number of offensive skills but these all pale in comparison to rogue/mage damage skills and are more likely to get you killed because you aren't holding up the shield wall or you run out of stamina and can't defend. On the other hand rogues and mages have a number of useful damage skills but certain ones are just way more effective. For example the elementalist has Immolate, which when upgraded does 400% weapon damage in an area and adds burning of 150% weapon damage x 8 seconds (1200% total upgraded), or you can take Stonefist which does 500% weapon damage to a single target and weakens enemies in the area (upgraded). You can focus your build on weakening enemies then exploiting that, but in general just killing the enemy is preferable to debuffing them, not to mention needing others in your party or a skill that can exploit those debuffs. The end result being that 9 times out of ten the extra damage of immolate is a better choice and most of the time when you see a particular class they will be using the same 4 skills with maybe 1 or 2 swapped out for preference. They seem to want people to really commit to class roles which tends to render some of the skills obsolete or measurably worse than others. Related to this somewhat is the efficacy of skills in the wild. The templar has a skill where she summons ghosts along side her ostensibly to block off a path, however in practice this rarely happens. Sometimes you left just enough space for them to get through, some enemies can just teleport or jump over the obstacle, you can still be knocked back so enemies can run through the hole they just made, and if friendly characters stand near those ghosts they temporarily dissipate and enemies can squeak through. There is a similar issue with the mage's mines, where you place one down and before it becomes effective the fight has moved elsewhere, so taking a direct damage spell instead is usually better, particularly when you consider that direct damage spells that don't hit an enemy don't trigger their full cooldown.

I found out a couple days ago that a designer named George Phillies makes his course lectures available on youtube. I've only watched the designing board wargames one so far, but it was great.

The McCulloch situation reminds me of a story a buddy of mine in the military likes to tell about something he refers to as "stand by to stand by". When the troops would be mustered, he would have to arrive something like 4 hours early and just stand around. He explained the reason for this is that no one wanted to get in trouble because someone was late. So when the department of the army set the muster time, each successive rung of the hierarchy would push it forward by half an hour or so with the end result being hours of waiting. Looking at everything McCulloch either did or was complicit in to me just seems like he was trying to absolve himself of as much responsibility as possible, from both the public and the police with little interest in doing his job well.

Man reading those comments is so frustrating. They do this thing where they say that something is OK because of some inherent quality of a person (for example a woman is the animator, therefore female representations are fine), but then cite some critic's gender as a means to discredit them. Does anyone have any idea of the relative age of these participants? I only ask because the things they say are the kind of things I would have probably seen as wisdom in my teens.

A few days ago I came across an article about the Door Problem, which I think outlines the multi-faceted nature of game development rather well. I wouldn't resign yourself to either a programming or 3D art course because they appear to be the most relevant studies. Personally I would try a little bit of everything, if for nothing else to determine whether or not you can do that kind of work day to day and enjoy it. I don't think any path is more useful than another, no matter what you choose you'll develop a functional understanding of other disciplines--it's more a question of what you prefer.

So dragons, demons, magic, elves, dwarves, all good. But attractive lesbians? Well, that's just too unrealistic. I've seen this Milo guy referenced in the thread for being various shades of asshole, but who is he exactly? Edit: Nevermind, figured it out.

Aren't all video game sex scenes forced and awkward? Also, what the fuck is this?

I've only worked on 3 games, and for 2 of those it was only in a QA capacity for a period of 6 months. I guess my most recent project is the first game I've actually made and lucky for me the guy I'm working for is a 12 year veteran of the industry so he's been a big help. Rather than go on a diatribe about what you should and shouldn't do, here is a list of things that I have found work for me. 1.) Plan: Before you do anything, make a plan. Also don't try to plan everything all at once, just take one element and plan that. For example, how does the player move around the game? 2.) Plan Extensively: Don't just say the player can jump, describe how they jump, what the jump can be used to do, what happens before, during, and after, the jump, what button triggers the jump, how is speed modified during the jump, can the jump be comboed with any other abilities and what is the result, etc. 3.) Research: Always research something you've never done before. This is particularly useful when working with AI, where saying what you want to do is great but making that actually happen requires specifics. Does the player move within a navigation system, freely with physics impulses, on pre-defined paths, etc. 4.) Document: Put it all together, take the plan, the method for accomplishing the plan and make it into a cohesive whole. For me this isn't usually a full GDD or anything, just some images and notes that describe the whole process 5.) Prototype 1 thing at a time: Don't prototype the whole game, just one mechanic at at time independent of everything else 6.) Think Small: Rather than try to envision the whole project all at once, but rather take whatever mechanics you want to focus on and figure out what you can add to them rather than building a whole additonal system. 7.) Steal other people's code: Don't plagiarize their code, but do steal it. Look at it, understand it, try to recreate it, make it better, etc. A great program for this when working with .Net languages is .Net Reflector which can open up a DLL and let you look at the code. I learned so much that had previously eluded me by just looking at the code for Bastion. 8.) Make notes in the code: Prefixing a comment with // TODO: will allow you to easily resume your spot by looking at your task list (in visual studio anyway, probably other editors) 9.) Create an Implementation Plan: This plan should basically be the code you will write for the project as pseudo-code that describes to the letter what needs to be done 10.) Be aware of interactions: This is more something that I've learned on my current project where we have certain items that can interact with one another creating new effects. Every time you do something like this the work involved goes up exponentially so just be aware of that. 11.) Have someone else review your work: This is really the only way I've been able to break myself of bad habits 12.) Start over: Just because you have something done doesn't mean it is done. The first time through you'll make mistakes or do dumb stuff, and in my experience it is sometimes better to take a half hour and re-write something to avoid future problems than it is to try and tweak and tune everything until it works just right. This kind of thing is fine at first, but after a while it becomes unmanageable. 13.) Math: You think you know, but you have no idea. Learn as much about vector math as humanly possible. 14.) Make things for other people: Try writing a script for someone or doing some research to help someone answer a question you don't know the answer to. You'll likely learn a lot in the process 15.) You absolutely belong: Programmers can be colossal dicks. They are often passive aggressive, post annoyed responses to questions, fiercely argue what way is the best, and berate you for not googling something that is common knowledge to them or not knowing where in the documentation to look. Don't let it get to you. I haven't made any groundbreaking games doing these things but I have learned a lot more than I would have otherwise, and even ended up creating some stuff others have been able to use. When I wanted to learn about Component design I created a project where I basically recreated Unity's component system in XNA. Then I posted this on BitBucket and have gotten a few emails from people either thanking me for helping them or giving me pointers on what I could have done better. The last thing I would say is that you just need to be patient. It takes a long time to do all this stuff, especially if you are teaching yourself along the way.

How is everyone doing with the classes so far? I've found mages to be a bit frustrating in the early game since you tend to come upon mobs where a particular elemental resistance renders them almost useless. I started out as a 2H warrior but found they die way too easily, and DW rogues seem to take a lot of damage from melee enemies even when they aren't being targeted. I switched over to a sword and shield warrior last night and I like it a lot more, particularly when dealing with archers. The jump button in this game baffles me. It doesn't seem all that useful outside of a few specifically designed jumping puzzles, and isn't even strong enough to jump over a basic yard fence (you have to jump on top, then walk off). Plus when I try to use it in the heat of a fight I usually end up interacting with something instead.

I think the time breakdown between story and combat is pretty even if you actually want to read all the codex entries and what not, otherwise it seems about 25-40% story content depending on how much you engage with it. I've enjoyed this combat system quite a bit, but I don't think it's as solid as something like Mass Effect. Just as an example, there is one skill with the warrior where you pull an enemy right in front of you but this ability only really does what it says about 50% of the time, the other times it'll bug out or the enemy will be immune to it although it isn't always clear when this will be the case. There are a few other instances of this, and I think the separate skill cooldown times makes it kind of tough to play this as an action game (as opposed to Mass Effect's global cooldown).

Oh I see it's a quality issue. I know one solution for this is to create a kind of glow mesh that gets illuminated so you can get away with less lights. Have you tried switching to deferred lighting? You'll need a pro license to activate it, but you should be able to write a shader that fakes the above effect over multiple objects. I've never personally worked with a lot of lights in Unity before so I'd be interested to know how you end up solving this one.

You could try a self-illuminating material, make one for each color and swap them accordingly. Just a heads up though, accessing the material property on a renderer creates a new instance of the material, so you'll want to be careful about how you do it. From the docs it looks like you'll need to use material.SetPropertyBlock()

Apparently the Assistant DA that ran the Grand Jury gave the jury the wrong law regarding the use of force. This hasn't been the law since 1985 where it was ruled unconstitutional. The Grand Jury was later given the correct law after hearing all evidence, but were not given clear instructions on what in the old law wasn't actually the law any more. If this isn't the icing on the cake I don't know what is.