ThunderPeel2001

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by ThunderPeel2001


  1. That's a good offer. One (superficial but annoying downside): "You will receive an e-mail within two days after the release of the game detailing how to redeem your free download of XCOM: Enemy Unknown."

     

    Pre-ordering on Steam gives you instant access to Bioshock 1 and X-Com.


  2. Why don't you go and see your doctor, rather than using walk-in centres? I know you want to see a particular psych, but that's no reason not to see your doctor.


  3. I just can't take life anymore. I've skipped work for the past two weeks due to severe stress, I'm having the hardest time convincing myself to go outside, and I feel absolutely crushingly depressed. I'm trying to get recommended to a psychiatrist for some personal problems that I've been having for years, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to get anywhere.

    That's horrible, man. I know it sounds obvious, but... anti-depressants? The more severe your depression, the more effective they tend to be.


  4. I finished Limbo the other day. I didn't really like that game very much... I'm certainly glad it's as short as it was since I felt oddly obligated to finish it. It's got buckets and buckets of style but the gameplay is just some of the dullest stuff I have ever participated in. I was also not fond of the combination of inerta based physics puzzles combined with character motion and physics that felt like they where mired in mud.

    I really disliked the gameplay, too. It felt very repetitive and trial and errory to me. "If I stand here... I die. If I push this... I die. So I won't stand there or push that. 'Puzzle' solved!"

    I thought the "narrative" was weak and uneffective, too.


  5. It was just so awkward and out of character - she's usually pretty quiet and meek. We went out for lunch again today and our interactions were as per normal! Maybe she was just fucking with me. X:

    I just had a crazy idea: Why not ask her?


  6. That's true. But old-school platformers didn't have scrolling backgrounds. Maybe when that became feasible, the convention had been already set.

     

    (just guessing of course. I don't have answers   -_- )

     

    Good point! I'd forgotten about games like Hunchback.


  7. North Korean documentary about life in America. I wish somebody could confirm whether the English translation is a joke or if the original is actually that insane.

     

    I'd like to know that, too. Obviously North Koreans are allowed to leave their country to work abroad (but usually provided they have a family back home that can be used as a bargaining chip if they refuse to return), but there's a lot of crazy news in that country. Did you know that Kim Jong-Il scored an unprecedented 11 holes-in-one during one round of golf? That makes him the best golfer who ever lived.

     

    Man, Team America: World Police went far too soft on him.


  8. I think it's a very real possibility - i imagine a lot of game designers/programmers in the old days had to be well versed in math, and they tend to teach math with cartesian coordinate system going positive-right and positive-up (2d). So they could've been more comfortable seeing stuff moving from left to right (because that's how most math and physics problem present themselves in school).

     

    Yes, but obviously the background scrolls from right to left -- surely meaning it would be easier to comprehend if games scrolled the other way.


  9. This sounds like the best explanation for this.

     

    I'm not so sure. The X/Y 0,0 co-ordinates are surely arbitrary, and if anything they'd allow for easier to understand code if games scrolled right-to-left.


  10. Japanese is written top to bottom in columns, or left to right in rows, not right to left. English is a left to right language and you would no more say that English is read top to bottom than you'd say that Japanese is read right to left. When you're talking about a single dimension, the most significant dimension is the one being referred to. Right to left scripts are a thing and include languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, etc.

     

    Depending on the context, Japanese is either written in tategaki, vertically, or yokogaki, horizontally. You'll find yokogaki is more frequently used in technical writing such as scientific papers and engineering textbooks, while tategaki is used for things such as letters, newspapers, and literature, though yokogaki is becoming increasingly prevalent. For reference, yokogaki has been around since the late 1800s with the introduction of left to right languages such as German and English in the Meji era.

     

    I guess I should also add that the introduction of left to right languages directly caused the initial shift because while Japanese kanji is morphosyllabic, English is not. Hence, the direction the characters run in English is critical, while in all Han character languages it doesn't make that much of a difference, which is why Japanese was adapted rather than English.

     

    Very interesting! As Twig points out, it's actually written top-to-bottom, right-to-left, though. And horizontal right-to-left is used on signage. Also, my replicas of the original Japanese Speed Racer comics are read from right-to-left, too. 


  11. What's with all the hate on wasteland? I thought their UI design was pretty strange (They appear to be using the same font as the original game... That's certainly a choice...) but I thought the game itself looked good. 

     

    Nothing. This just looks more interesting than Wasteland, and seems to have a much better UI.

     

    More detail: The idea of having all the text appear in a box on the screen, just like in the original game, seems like a really odd choice to me. And it was really jarring when I played the gameplay video in fullscreen. Plus, on a slightly different note, I am a little concerned that Brian Fargo is letting the backers shape the game too much: Don't like clicking on keywords? Don't worry, we'll write dialogue for every one! But otherwise, I'm definitely interested in seeing how Wasteland 2 comes out.


  12. By "money" I didn't mean to suggest they were each handed a check for $38m. If that's how you interpreted my post, you were reading into it. But they were obviously paid. Regardless of how much money--either as cash or stock--each of them made it is entirely possible for one person to have managed that wealth significantly better than the other, especially if the split wasn't even.

     

    Ok, we're getting side-lined here. My point was simply that it's highly unlikely they got $76m in money from the sale of HE. It was much more likely that a large part of the sale was given to them in shares (which they would not have been able to sell). But that doesn't mean they didn't get some money from the sale, of course -- possibly even millions. I just don't know how much that would last him.

     

    Maybe he's doing just fine, and he likes being a nomadic developer, as you suggest.

     

    I'd personally trust your impressions from working with the man, than what was printed about him in the press, though.


  13. Computers are older than video games.

     

    So, as soon as computers were invented the whole of Japan started reading their horizontal text from left-to-right? Wow, that's amazing. Thanks for the history lesson, Twig!  :tup:


  14. Okay, great. I'm aware of how stock sales work. I have no idea why you're explaining this, but let's just assume Ron Gilbert has some money somewhere.

     

    Er, because you claimed that Ron made millions from the sale of Humungous, and insinuated that Shelley Day had lost $38m in six years. You also asked me specifically where $76m could have gone. Remember? (Quote: "The money from the sale had to go somewhere, and where else would it have gone besides to those who owned the company?") You don't need to act like a dick about it.


  15. ...But we just finished establishing the fact that left-to-right (horizontal) was not uncommon in Japan during that time, assuming that Wikipedia quote wasn't a bold-faced lie? It for sure isn't uncommon NOW, if my six-month tenure there taught me anything! 'Cause all I really cared about was the writings, of course. U:

     

    According to that quote, the change from having to read Japanese horizontally from left-to-right is considered recent -- something that was born out of the everyday use of computers and the internet. I don't think Western influence was so prevalent in the early 80s. Also, Japanese books continue to be read from right to left, even today.

     

    Anyhoo: According to Wikipedia, the first side-scrolling platformer was a Japanese game called Jump Bug -- but it doesn't say which direction it went in!

     

    Edit: It was multi-directional, but many levels went from left-to-right! Man, this is confusing. I think I like the ScienceTM explanation best.


  16. Sure. Let's say "wealth" or "spoils" then, rather than money specifically.

     

    The shares would most likely not be liquid, as you don't want people cashing in tens of millions of dollars in shares in one go for obvious reasons. Mark Zuckerberg is considered a "billionaire" for example, thanks to the shares he has in Facebook, but he doesn't actually have anything close to that in his bank account.


  17. Well, except other cultures didn't really start making games until the standard of left-to-right was set in place...

     

    Is that a guess you just dressed up as fact? Because I'm pretty sure Japan was around during the beginning of video games.


  18. Just a minor hint. If you are going for the pacifist achievement, you are not allowed to kill even in the first kind-of-tutorial-level. Yeah, written out like this it seems obvious, but there are certain people who did not think about that. Just saying. Not that it matters, stupid achievements!

     

    And Yes, mouse and keyboard worked perfectly fine for me as well.

     

    This totally got me, since it didn't really feel like part of the game. Annoying!