plasticflesh

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Posts posted by plasticflesh

  1. Posted

    The Alien NPC designs are tight. They are such weird fun aliens. They're not all TV headed robots. For example, there's also a parrot-man.

     

    This game also reminds me of what an FPS "FTL" might feel like. What with the focus on jumping from star to star, planet to planet.

     

    Then I begin fantasizing what a more "Star Trek" style space combat system would look like in NMS. That asks a lot, enough to be basically a whole different game. Like having a AI crew to send from station to station.

     

    That's like my most wanted thing at this point- multi-room space ships. Maybe it's like my private space-station that I park in orbit. I could do base-building inside it. Keep a little zoo of space-pets. Fly down to planets with my space-car. That makes more sense to me than terrestrial base-building.

     

    I think there's an instinct with "universe simulation games" to ask for more and more...

  2. Posted

    Sometimes I worry if it was beneficial in the long run or not for Sony to spotlight this game as a flagship indie and market it so intensely. 

     

    But that lets you get Bill Bailey to do a promo! That makes it all worth it.

  3. Posted

    I got to a planet that had over-sized creatures, like a story tall. That was exciting.

     

    I also found out you can feed certain creatures if you have an isotope they find yummy. Then that animal will bond to you, follow you around, find goodies for you. Cute!

  5. Posted

    I numerous awards for Walking while exploring my first planet. Oh the best one was after learning a new alien vocab word.

     

    Cue Metroid power up music: "You learned 5 words!"

     

    goddamn patronizing UI

  6. Posted

    Well, I went for it and played a few hours last night. It is cool. Very vaporwave / seapunk colors and sound track.  Very pretty wild life; cool aliens and space stations. Lots of looking at rocks. Seriously, where's the Zinc?

     

    Naming things is sort of a chore, but the game gives you money for it, so a lot of plants and ainmals get names like "Rhuk" and "Bulp," or I'll go crazy with the auto-complete words, and name things with long random strings, "The Desire of Finality is the Ontological Realm." The futility of naming the vaguely idiosyncratic instances of an obscure rock is as wide as the void of space; but to reiterate, you get paid for it. So there is economic meaning.

     

    Plus why am I "discovering" things on a planet that has Waypoints and Shelters all over it? What company is paying these Explorers to rename animals and rocks? Maybe the game answers these things eventually.

     

    The most interesting thing to do with the naming might be to theme the naming conventions of systems and planets. The "Emily Bronte" system. Planet "Wuthering Heights." The "Heathcliff" carbon plant.

     

    Instead I have the "Magentastan" system, with the moon "Little" orbiting the giant planet, "The". I have a lot of mis-named entities. There is no way to fix that. A planet where everyone is named "Not Sure."

     

    In conclusion, this is "Similar Face: The Game."

  7. Posted

    As far as video game worlds I want to live in:

     

    "Zelda Link to the Past" Hyrule village always enamored me. That ending cutscene showing the happy villagers, that is when the game should begin.

     

    Also "Zelda: Links Awakening" I played over and over again as a youth.

     

    Like Ninja Dodo, I also replayed "Twinsens' Oddysey" many times as a youth. That is a very pleasant world.

     

    "Myst" introduced the entire concept of world-building to me. The characters in that game are deliberately building their puzzle-worlds with their magic-books. Compelling stuff. I was already "world building" as a kid by copying level layouts from Nintendo Power. But Myst introduced a fictional layer over that, now I'm a wizard constructing a world.

     

    "Minecraft" continues to fill this niche for me. Short asides into things like Stardewvalley or Rimworld. But Minecraft takes the cake for me, in creative mode, on a friendly server. Great alternative to realty.

  8. Posted

    On the subject of "boards." What about those from a D&D background? My older brothers were into D&D, and so we had a few "modules" on the book shelves.

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_modules

     

     

    While I'm at it. I brought one of these module books to elementary school, in 1994 or so. The teacher found it and was outraged, threatening to throw it away. She never specified why she was so outraged by it. I still wonder if she thought it was pornography, or if she thought it was Satanic.

  10. Posted

    I downloaded the game, made my colony, had a good thing going for a few game days, naming the colony "CloseCry." But, as usual, I failed to get my kitchen-and-hunting online, and starvation began to take its toll. Cool was the first to... lose her cool.

     

    In desperation, I sent Goldblum to slay a grizzly bear lurking in front of the compound. Naturally, the grizzly sought revenge. It maimed Goldblum, and murdered Cool and Rich. 

     

    Meanwhile, at the moment of outraging the Grizzly bear, another Grizzly across the map spontaneously tamed itself. 

     

    Here is that moment of catastrophe:

     

    PevoehW.jpg

     

    Here is Goldblum's dying breath; covered in lacerations from his ferocious hunting victims.

     

    lg6VitL.jpg

     

    Soon after I get the Game Over screen. But is the game truely over? Or has the pet Grizzly's game just begun? I continue playing.

     

    In the following picture you can see the pet Grizzly and Turkey chillin' out in their bungalo. The Grizzly lead an active life, wandering around the house, happily eating corpses.

     

    K4z0gUg.jpg

     

    Eventually that bear defeats some raiders; and is killed by other raiders. Later a survivor named Ernesto takes refuge in my abandon Compound. Ernesto, a Sheriff, bears the curse of having only 6 skills, and none of the useful ones. He is soon wounded by a raider and goes to die in bed.

     

    See in this image, Ernesto's sleeping corpse, the raider hell bent on trashing my kitchen, and the rotten corpse of my former pet Grizzly.

     

    BscRPss.jpg

     

    The end.

     

    Well, maybe not, maybe I'll let it play out some time later and see if survivors with any skills will wander in. Probably not before everything useful burns or rots away.

     

    -Epilogue-

     

    It is worth noting that this "permadeath" file format does not completely prohibit save-scumming, it just makes it slightly inconvenient. I went ahead and save-scummed to the original file from Dibs. This new colony soon died in a fire. I took this as a message that I shouldn't be save-scumming this. Also as a message that I am not effective at any difficulty level above "Basebuilder."

  11. Posted

    I agree that this game has a way of taking the best intentions and dragging them to the pits of hell.

    I try and stay progressive in my forts. But of course you've got to have turrets. And eventually I was burying my turret corpses under the turrets. Okay, that's a little blood thirsty. For a while I was capturing injured raiders and healing them. At one point I tried and keep them around to coerce them to join my fort. Brainwashing, indoctrination, sure. But after a few prisoners died from infection, bringing the whole fort into a malaise, I changed my policy. First, stop having everyone schmooze with prisoners, thanks to the Hospitality mod. I healed injured raiders until they could walk, at which point I released them. Eventually I watched a naked prisoner, able to walk but still bleeding otherwise, get mauled by a boar on their way out. So I decided summary execution of injured raiders was the most humane option after than. Humane.

    I see how this slippery leads straight into harvesting organs from those euthanized raiders. Or just selling them to slavers. Is human trafficking is more humane than genocide?

  12. Posted

    Yes to clarify, the game does call them all "raiders." The developer calls the digging behavior "sappers" internally. Or, so I understand.

     

    I enjoyed the Hospitality Mod a bit. It adds new behaviors and interactions with visitors, and adds a "guest bed" furniture item. Your people can be assigned as 'negotiators' who will then chat up the visitors and improve (or diminish) relations with their faction; good behavior earns gifts when the visitors leave. Visitors can be coerced to join. 

     

    Some of these functions might be vanilla, but just for prisoners if I understand correctly? 

  13. Posted

    In my experience with people digging through walls, "sappers," is that they seem to find random points on the walls to dig into, that are at least far away from the turrets. 

     

    For example, here's my Afawef colony in its latest iteration:

    RYEcSOz.png

     

    The south-west corner is the official entrance. But "sappers" will often target the walls on the North or East. The outer wall-corridors meet at the inner keep at the very south, and there are various secondary entrances along the outer-walls. So when a sapper attacks, I send a solider to distract them, then have the solider enter the complex through a secondary entrance. This distracts the sapper to find a new entry, hopefully routing to the main entrance.

     

    This is a very sloppy solution. Before I added the secondary entrances, my people would be gunned down by their own turrets while returning to the main entrance after distracting the sappers. But I'm banking on sort of abusing the path-finding of people.

     

    On a grim note, notice the jail room / corpse incinerator room in the south-east of the keep. This screen shot is mid-process of incinerator all my corpses. Which I exhumed en-masse, as you can notice the piles of skeletons around the turrets in the south-west. Naturally, I was burying each corpse under the turret that killed it. This was a horrible way to do this, as everyone is traumatized by witnessing 10x corpses everywhere.

     

    As for traders not buying certain goods. It seems that each trade caravan has a different set of supplies and demands. Some are food oriented, some weapons oriented, etc. So some will only accept buying some stuff and not other stuff. Or so I've gathered.

  14. Posted

    I've been enjoying base management games a lot. When I play base management games, I personally am aiming to make a doll house. With my characters in their organized little home. I love Dwarf Fortress for this reason. I mean listen to Chris's game play of Rim World, he was playing a doll house game for all intents and purposes. And this I think is a very good thing.

     

    The games I've managed to hook my girlfriend on have all been base management style games in a light hearted fantasy setting. Kingdom for Keflings, Raw Fury Games' Kingdom, Terraria, Fable and Fable 2, and played Fable 2's real estate market in detail. Fable 2's real estate mini-game was awesome, What a great aspect of that game. I could never hook her on Minecraft mostly due to the FPS POV. However, she really enjoyed Skyrim, for the fantasy setting, and the crafting and gathering of materials. Civ 5 also hooked her for a few weeks. Most surprising she got really into XCOM Enemy Unknown. She also really enjoyed the Simpsons phone app for a while, not a robust experience at all, but essentially a base builder. 

     

    It is exciting that Rim World is making the dynamic stories aspect of Dwarf Fortress so much more accessible. However, both these games still have a strong military focus. It's just easier to make a fun game that has this sort of focus. But all I really want is a game where I can recreate bucolic English period piece drama. Dwarf Fortress meets Jane Austen.

     

    I have been hoping for a long time that these genres will evolve into Sit Com and Period Piece simulators. Strategy during peace time.

  15. Posted

    Ah right. I guess because I keep all the gaming shit like Origin and Steam tucked away on a separate partition it doesn't bother me so much. Origin and Steam are both pathetically under-developed though — both still look like hell on a high-pixel density display. So annoying when I use them.

     

    I know Windows generally isn't free but if you ever get the opportunity to grab a Windows 7/8/10 key I'd highly recommend installing it with Bootcamp. I noticed that the same games installed on both Windows and OS X literally run at twice the frame rate in some cases, or at the very least a good chunk faster. It's a very effective way of getting more gaming life out of an ageing (or even new) Mac, if that ever becomes a concern.

     

    Fair point! Technically I have messed around such a thing. My problem is I'm an amateur-level information technician, and casual-level game player, so I opt for laziness and convenience over access and customization. I am a Mac user, after all. A lot of lazy excuses is what this sounds like, huh?

     

    I save scummed my Afawef build, since I'm so pleased with its organization. The electrical fire occurred again in exactly the same spot, but I managed to put it out without disaster. And I've rerouted all my power lines to be in the walls. I've become paranoid about the conditions that create electrical fires. But I don't know how much longer this colony can last... since I'm already scraping the components barrel.

     

    Part of the problem with components is that most production workshops that use them cannot be 'reinstalled' at another location, instead you have to disassemble and reassemble. And you lose a percentage of the resources when you disassemble, and might lose more of reassembly fails. So there's that sort of shrinkage occurring.

     

    So I'm left with creating the army to mine the Ancient Constructions. Crafting assault rifles takes forever, wow. I guess I can devise some sort of trap-full gauntlet for the Mechanoids. Traps are weird because your own people can be caught in them. Dwarfs knew better.

  16. Posted

    Here's a short photo safari through two of my more successful builds.

     

    Qulin Manor, a good attempt at a Rich Explorer build,

    G4lqoLr.png
    Here is Qulin manor. This build actually got a lot more complex than this: The room Jess is in became the underused communications room, the room south west of Jess became my first walk in freezer. I eventually made a covered walkway through the central court yard to allow continuous indoor activity during toxic weather. The outer-walls are to create trenches in which to kill invaders, and also a fire-stop to prevent wild fires from evicerating the place. Notice also the sandbags yet to be built by teh main door off to the left. This became the death trap for citizens dragging each other to shelter from the mob of angered deer. Eventually I ran out of components, while also trying to reroute power for the freezer, causing the freezer to constantly lose-power.

     

    Afawef, my current build, trying to get that Components factory going...

    zj5uNiV.png

    Lots of the same style of base building. Sugar is standing at the entrance in the bottom left. Notice also the sand bag surrounded turrets to her west and south west. After entering you go through a maze of hallways, again designed to corral and deter intrudes as well as control fire invasions. Court yard for farming and tree farming. And a glorious geothermal reactor I never even made solar panels for this one; I just built fuel generators for the walk in Freezer, where West is standing, and researched like crazy until I got geothermal. Big rooms for all my people. And Tara is standing in the research room, made from one of the abandoned structures (free brick!).  Not sure how this fort will play out, at this point I have to built a military to start mining Plasteel from the Ancient Ruins. 

     

    Edit - 

     

    Small update on Afaweh,

    QIQ5SN6.png

    A random fire broke out in the dinning area, near that purple bed. My people all suffocated while trying to put it out. The fire then hollowed out the much of the fort. Ironic, when I was so concerned about fires from outside.

  17. Posted

    The Sims for Mac isn't available through the Steam store, I hadn't thought to look outside of that. It is on Origin, but I'm not willing to deal with just for The Sims. 

     

    Another thing I like about Rimworld is that it resembles the mods used for my

    , which used Fallout style mods to give Dwarf Fortress a post apocalyptic feel. Which is Rimworld default mode.

  18. Posted

    It feels like "Rich Explorer" preset was created to be a sort of beginner's taste for medium and late level tech. It provided a quick way to learn to love mounted turrets, power generators, and most important- coolers for food refrigeration. This in turn presented me with what I seems to be the late game crucial resource... Components.

     

    So now my runs are oriented around obsessively getting a components factory running. This is tricky as it and the steps leading to it are resource intensive, for resources that may or may not exist on your map. Designate a researching, but him or her in the prettiest room, since they'll be spending all their time there. The empty abandoned are great for early-game pretty rooms, they love stone floors.

     

    Another late game resource, plasteel, seems to be mined from those ancient ruins. So military might is baked into the game progression as well, just to mine that stuff.

     

    As far as the peoples needs. They desire 'space,' which includes having private bedrooms that are also large. I've been doing 6 x 6 rooms, this allows for a double bed, a small table, chairs. Wood is ugly to them, but its better than nothing, and if you keep the spaces clean, they seem to deal with it well enough. A few potted plants go a long way.

     

    I've also begun save-scumming heavily, as catastrophic failure is so easy to achieve. Doing this on the same fort creates bizarre memories of alternate lives of horror. Is this the sand bag pile where people were dying trying to rescue other wounded people by dragging them over the sand bags, while being shot from stray bullets from the automated guns, which are trying to mow down the horde of angered antelope, which is mauling the people rescuing the people trapped by the sandbags?

  19. Posted

    I picked this up and have been enjoying it. I'm always looking for a nice doll-house simulator to recreate victorian dramas in the style of Downton Abbey. I've been playing on freeplay or base-building, and still barely make it through the first winter.

     

    It has the ease of use that Prison Architect has; but has more of the the doll-house qualities I'm looking for, for example most characters won't be trying to dig out an escape from my doll-house. But the social systems are robust enough to create the dwarf-fortress like relationships, which is the glue of any good doll-house.

     

    One custom starter group I made is "The Ten," based off of the American drama television show, "The 100," where a space-station sends 100 of their juvenile delinquents down to the planet (they got grounded). Naturally this meant crash pods of 15-25 year olds with all the high-drama traits forced upon them. I forget exactly how this devolved inevitably into horror.

     

    I've had a few good runs with the "rich single colonist" start. The first guy builds everything, then a traveller comes and helps a little, then some raiders are taken as prisoners, then I try and recruit the prisoners, but accidentally keep them naked and cold, then one prisoner dies of infection, ruining the chances to recruit the other prisoner, so I set free the living prisoner, sending them off into the woods still naked and restrained. Some Abbey this was. Probably good by Prison standards.

     

    As for my obsession with doll-house aspect of this game. The obvious choices, The Sims and Stardew Valley, aren't available on mac. Stardew Valley will be in a few days, though.

  21. Posted

    Yeah I've played all of them, though I haven't finished DS2. I just killed the cleric lady boss this morning, which may have been a mistake because I apparently hadn't done an "optional" area called... something alley? I say "optional" because that seems to be the only place to get an item that lets you use powerups at the altar in Hunter's Dream.

     

    Anyway I still don't feel like I know where the hell I'm going or what I'm doing (perhaps because I played UP TO the lady cleric months ago on someone else's PS4, so I've forgotten the entirety of the first couple of areas) so if anyone wants to hook up with me and at least lead me through to the right areas, I'd definitely appreciate it.

     

     

    I believe you are looking for Charnel Lane, which you should be able to access at any time. Facing towards the door that had Vicar Amalia, go left, and you'll find the path.

  22. Posted

    I just played up to the cleric beast...and lost. The camera in that boss is insufferable. Don't remember it being so hard to see what's happening.

     

    There are some moments in the DLC where there the camera pulls back a decent amount. I noticed this during one of the larger boss fights, and during a platforming section. I thought this was an interesting new detail, clearly very specific to those moments.

  24. Posted

    In my hype leading up to the DLC, I began giving the Chalice Dungeons a more ernest try, especially after the pre-DLC patch fixed up the co-op. It's a bit of fun for the pure gameplay combat stuff, but still anathema to the beautiful environmental story telling.

     

    Really enjoying the DLC.

    It's like a medely of level design throughout the rest of the game. A really nicely done piece of environmental story telling, summarizing the history of Bloodborne lore by taking you to various enviornments. All while remixing known locations in the world, so you are constantly having a "oh I've been here before" feeling, common to dreams (mine, at least).

     

    My primary character is Captain Arthur Hastings, An affable english WWI veteran, the Watson to Agatha Cristie's Poirot.

    , explaining the etymology of Mesopotamia. Clearly he is not unfamiliar with the arcane!

    So that said, I attempted to bring Arthur Hastings to his full arcane glory with the Milkweed Rune. But I goofed and killed the NPC quest giver too early in the quest. Arthur Hastings has retained his humanity, resisting the urge to peer too far into the unknown.

  25. Posted

    The level design of the downtown city area around Goodneighbor is really interesting. Going up those destroyed viaducts while raiders take pot shots at you from near by rooftops.

     

     

    I'm approaching this game from a very casual exploration and adventure game point of view, doing just enough combat to squeeze through. I've begun footballing through areas like a Dark Souls item run. I think I'm even on easy mode, since the The Castle mission. Limited combat will keep my XP pretty low though, huh?