Murdoc

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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    2015

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Posts posted by Murdoc

  1. Posted

    There's so little to do with the iPhone that's actually interesting anymore. The watch just reeks of desperation.

    EDIT:

     

    Apart from sounding like a terrible idea, three of the five chains listed don't have any locations in Canada.

    As far as I know only Walgreens isn't in Canada, the rest are, albeit scattered, but the same can be said about them in America.

  2. Posted

    I'd be really curious to know the general break down of that, I imagine it includes marketing, since that usually costs more or equal to the development. 

     

    With GTA they have characters to scan, voice actors to pay, scouting locations, and other general development fees, so I can see that getting up there. But for a fantasy scifi world that, at least in my perception, isn't a massive amount of content, can only imagine it all went to high level contracts and marketing.

  4. Posted

    They spoke about it on the radio news, saying it was the most expensive piece of entertain created, dwarfing blockbuster movie budgets

    I wonder if they factor in advertising budget or if they were talking about purely development costs.

     

    As far as I know GTA's usually are the most expensive video game produced, but their sales warrant a cost. To put so much money into development for a new IP is a bit crazy(as in interesting).

  5. Posted

    All of this stuff is super cool, but the biggest problem coming from a developer stand point is who is going to have all this crap to take advantage of it for a game? A VR game, cool! Ok, what about a controller? No guarantees even for something as basic as that. Peripherals like Leap? No one is going to have that and the only reason anyone would is an awesome product that took advantage of it, but the probability of an awesome product that warrants to cost of VR and a Leap before a user base is low.

     

    That's the most disappointing thought about all of this cool stuff, we're still years and years off from ever seeing any of these cool ideas adopted by any significant amount of developers, if it ever does. It'd take the initiative of a Sony or MS to release their next console with all the bells and whistles any sort of headway can happen with this stuff in games.

     

    I'm sure there will be neat experiments along the way for those that's want to buy all these odds and ends to get the experience; I'll probably be watching them through youtube.

  8. Posted

    Does anyone know if they tuned the difficulty in Gods and Kings? Because I just had the most bizarre civilization game of my entire life. I'm playing on the difficulty I always do(which is super low, but it was always a challenge to me) and I just trounced everything. Near the end even the second super power was fighting my giant death robots with men on horseback, I don't remember ever seeing that large of a gap between civ eras in any of my games before, it was really weird.

     

    Yeah, I think I'll try Brave New World as some of the features seem to be cool for the late game, but am a bit disappointing with the pricing structure of these. I want Brave New World for the game-play additions that seem like it could very much be a mod/dlc/ or something that would have been in the base game, but it seems like the pricing on this is more for the additional content they added like civs, which is something I don't necessarily care about.

     

    Trading might only be crippled, but I find it totally broken. The AI is completely unreasonable, they want a 10:1 value on any trades it seems. Also, and this seems just a bit picky, but Mongolia was asking for Uranium when they were two eras behind and had no idea what Uranium even was.

     

    I'm not entirely sure if the religion system ended up being all that cool. It really didn't factor in at all on the surface and as far as I can tell, it basically boils down to perks for your civ, which helped me greatly in terms of money and such, but didn't seem to do anything politically. Most of the world was predominately one religion, except for Germany, who was trying to advance their own, but it didn't seem to do anything in terms of the other civs perception of Germany or their alliances. So it really left me to wonder what it's all used for,

     

    I've been playing civ since the beginning and is one of my favorite series, but I think maybe my expectations or a bit high after 4 or I am looking for something a bit different and more robust in terms of politics in a game like this. Maybe BNW will help on the politics side with the world congress thing. 

  9. Posted

    Maybe they have tuned it a bit better for the consoles, but when I stuck it on expert, the enemies became sponges and while there was a risk in dying, it was utterly boring to watch my dude bash an enemy for 30 hits until it went down.

     

    I put it down after my post above and never picked it up again, with all the recent console talk, maybe it's time to give it a shot again. 

  10. Posted

    So apparently TurboPubx-16 take away of Civ 5 is the same as mine. I just bought Gods and Kings, I did't get Brave New World, I might check it out if the world congress thing seems interesting, but I didn't feel like I needed more civs.

     

    My thoughts revisiting Civ 5 and Gods&Kings are here, rather than duplicating posts; but it seems like Turbo hit the nail on the head so may not be worth reading. I'll update when I get further into my game to see if any of this religion stuff matters int he end or its just a system to distract me from the stuff I don't like.

     

    *My comments read negative about the game, mostly because I'm pretty ambivalent on the changes from 4, but I'm still putting hours into it, so I think it's done something that I like, I just can't put my finger on it like I can the issues.

     

    https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/6616-civilization-5/?p=311117

  11. Posted

    Man, finding this thread again was a little difficult, but it seems to be the main IT Civ 5 thread... though I recall commenting about it more when it came out, so maybe there is another hidden one out there somewhere...

     

    Either way, I felt like playing Civ again this weekend and with the 2K sale picked up Gods and Kings as the exclusion of religion from Civ 5 was really disappointing. Since I don't see my comments that I was pretty sure I made at some point about the game, I never really got "into" Civ 5. The hexes were interesting, but not that much of a change, the politics didn't seem that good compared to Civ 4, the trading was broken, and even with mods, it just didn't capture me like Civ 4 did. I understood it was starting to change things up, but it felt bare bones and not fun like the previous civ games.

     

    With that said, I still have played nearly 30 hours of the damn thing, so something is here. Anyway, Gods and Kings. I really can't tell what they've added and haven't added other than religion. I'm dealing with spys now, that I don't remember doing before, so there is some extra intrigue here and there, the religion stuff is neat, but I haven't quite figured out if this will determine anything. It wasn't a very involved system in Civ and the fact you can only found one religion(I think) in Civ 5 does make it much more important, so I'm having a pretty fun time trying to spread my faith and there are some qualifiers that of "pressure" to each city, but I'm not sure what that actually is effecting. I don't see a change in rulers attitudes to me and I'm not sure if a holy war can exist if someone isn't following the rest of the world, like it could in Civ 4. 

     

    The system seems more sophisticated than Civ 4, but it still feels oddly disconnected from the rest of the game. I don't know it well enough, so I'm just not getting the sense it's effecting anything of meaning, it's just another way to compete or "battle".

     

    I'll keep with it to see how this shakes up as it is interesting. Trading is still totally broken, the politics/rulers are still weird, I dunno, I'm not getting the sense of consistency and history(as in my relationship with a ruler over a period of time) like I did in Civ 4 and my long standing complaint about the series as a whole is that it's still not very involved or as sophisticated as Alpha Centuri or Test of Time. Granted that might not be where their focus is. But it still feels "Gamey"; the leaders are irrational, one day they love me, the next day they don't, then they are afraid, and all I have to do is give them money or a spell book and they'll have sex with me or whatever. 

     

    But with that, it would be interesting to see a more consistent history of a factions relationship over time, an involved system of discussion would be neat to, instead of determining compatible views based solely on actions, you could discuss policies and such that would could potentially sway their opinion. Maybe I have a poor memory, but Alpha Centauris UN stuff was a little like that and a step in the right direction.

     

    The best feature is renaming a religion and it's probably the only reason I"m still playing, I like the idea that the my faction, Japan, founded Scientology in 530 BC and is the predominate religion in a struggle against Christianity, so I'm pretty much making up my own fun at this point, yet still playing; I think it does a lot of these right, but an equal amount of things I have gripes with. It's hard to go back to Civ 4, but at the same time I think I'd be better off spending my time with that.

  13. Posted

    Okay, have another one.

     

    I don't think a mockup will be necessary as it was a game discussed on Idle Thumbs at some point.

     

    I believe it was a web game, possibly rogue like. You are a little chamber(I call it a chamber because I thought thats what the game was called, but I can't find it on google) and I think there were heavy screen effects that made it look like you were going looking at a really shitty CRT or something. Top down view , you move your chamber around collecting...things(?) and possibly encountering enemies.

     

    Air might have been a resource, as I remember there was either a very specific sound design of you running out of air. The discussion on IT was what the intention of the game was, I think they thought it was underwater, where as I figured it was space. I'm pretty sure Sean thought it was underwater and had some pretty good evidence to back that up.

     

    It was also black and white or something close to.

     

    I'll create a mock up later if I can remember enough of it, Im sure it was just simple shapes, like an apple IIe game.

  14. Posted

    Yeah I remember him saying that at GDC, before I even knew who Phil Fish was. I remember I agreed with him, and while a statement like that can be taken out of context, he wasn't necessarily wrong when he further explained it. Is that what really caused it? 

     

    That's just absurd.

     

    My guess is its more the engagement of trolls than anything, though why those people exist to antagonize him is another mystery.

     

    Anyway, didn't mean to derail the thread about an amazing game, just such a weird situation on both sides of whatever you'd call this.

  16. Posted

    I don't really follow twitter or personal stuff about developers; but what exactly makes people upset at him? I saw him on a GB thing and he seemed like a fine, quirky guy and his game speaks enough to me that maybe I'm giving him a pass for stuff I don't notice, I dunno.

  18. Posted

    Polytron and Fez IP for sale I guess. brb buying it

    Not to get into the discussion as to why, because it's absolutely maddening. But do you know if his reactionary tweet is serious?

     

    Because, seriously, I love, love, love FEZ. I don't have a million dollars or whatever it would take to do this. Is there a way we could set up a crowdfunding thing to to purchase any of this to curate it. I worry who would actually end up owning it.

  19. Posted

    Yeah I finally picked it up on the sale, I really should have bought it earlier. Though to be fair, I've watched enough footage of the game where I don't feel like I need to play it, but I did appreciate what it was doing. Still not in love with the character art.

     

    I'm going to fire it up at noon to see what might have changed or what have you.

     

    I remember talking with a friend about the game as he was helping Pittman with some feedback before release, so I'd be curious to see if some of the design suggestions were ever implemented.

     

    edit: Yeah... don't play the asylum expansion if you haven't played for awhile. It seems like a cool new area and a bit more of a challenge than some of the other areas.

     

    I do like the game and there is a certain charm to the visuals and atmosphere, I think the sound design by far does the best job to reinforce that though. I have no idea how these levels are created, but, and the obvious comparison here, is looking at it compared to minecrafts random seed(or whatever) for generation could be improved to be a bit more interesting. The lighting and atmosphere really could be bumped up too. So whether its just an update or in the sequel, it would be cool to see some improvement in this area.

     

    Like I said, it has its charm and is cool, but the possibilities of what it could be would suck me in a lot more.

  20. Posted

    Nearly every FPS theme is irresponsible at best if you consider the real life implications. Just because there are actual serious problems in the real world that are sort of, but not really related to a games theme (Meaning the real life problems that we are currently facing has nothing to do with one of the outcomes of those problems; militarized police)  makes me just baffled at the response some people are taking to Hardline when they haven't blinked at other games in the past.

     

    I'm not trying to defend anything here or point fingers, but I feel like a back seat observer and am continually confused at how people can look at Hardline and say its appalling or irresponsible but didn't say anything for the countless war games in the middle east, Africa, or about WW2.

     

    Maybe I'm dumb, approaching this from the wrong angle, but what's the difference other than timing?

  22. Posted

    I get the feeling a lot of lion head people got out after fable 2. The direction of that series took a significant shift and even being a fable studio, they aren't producing anything good with it.

    I played some more Godus today. There is a decent God game in here, but you'll never get to play it as it is wholly wrapped in f2p, casual, mobile BS.

    The game starts to feel like bnw2 a bit, but less fun, less good looking, less features, and one where you get to wait 40 minutes for a house to be built, or you wait 40 minutes while playing a really boring, puzzle-ish mini game.

    Even if they took out the additional pay features for PA the foundation and time tuning is f2p, where you won't be sitting down for a couple hours to play straight through a solid chunk.

    Decent ideas, not especially new, but wrapped in a different intention that isn't appealing to me.

  23. Posted

    Thanks Noyb! Driving me crazy I didn't save a link to that.

     

    I knew it had more pictogram (I misnamed it as infographic in my description) type things on it, but I couldn't quite visualize it my head, lol. 

     

    Kind of way off on mock up, but sort of close in a weird way. Might need to try this exercise again, mocking up a screen from some vaguely remembered video game and seeing the side by side. lol

  24. Posted

    Thought there was another, larger thread about this, but couldn't find it. So this exists and I can't remember what game I am thinking of.

     

    It was a web game, top down, very blue, iconic(like it used icons or inforgraphics or something) simple line art type thing. It was like a survival game where you roamed an island  with interiors, collecting survivors and or goods (I think) and avoiding the monsters, which I think were just floating fish type things. There was another mechanic, I think, that was shooting a fishing line and roping a monster/fish thing, but I can't remember what you would do with that.

     

    This may help or hinder my chances of figuring out what this is, but from my recollection, it looked kind of like this:

     

    game.jpg

     

    Does anyone have any clue what I might be thinking of here?