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WTF is Telltale's new game?

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Hey Jake, I'm really interested in the AI that's used... I'd love to learn more.

Did you give the NPCs pre-set traits? Do their chance of making a "mistake" (i.e. not playing optimally) change for each turn? How accurate is the poker simulation? Etc. I've always wondered when it comes to these sorts of games.

Thanks!

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I never enjoy playing card/board games electronically because I feel like my luck is way worse with electronic cards than real life cards. Real cards are random, electronic cards are rigged... RIGGED!

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The elevator intro reminds me of the PC Gamer CD-ROMs.

Completely unrelated to the game, Steve and I were talking about these during his "get the fuck out of town and go make a bioshock you dick" drinks last week and I quietly realized that we were ripping them off in Poker Night. As the game is a bottomless pit of references, I was pleased by this.

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Completely unrelated to the game, Steve and I were talking about these during his "get the fuck out of town and go make a bioshock you dick" drinks last week and I quietly realized that we were ripping them off in Poker Night. As the game is a bottomless pit of references, I was pleased by this.

I was sad Strong Bad didn't add "dot museum" to the end of his "dot com, dot co dot uk" etc rant. :(

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Excuse me for just about to start sounding retarded...

If I download my copy from TellTale directly, will I still get the Steam achievements?

(Told you I'd sounded retarded.)

The reason I ask is I hate the way Steam games require Steam to boot and connect before the game itself will run. But I would like some tasty achievements for no good reason.

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I never enjoy playing card/board games electronically because I feel like my luck is way worse with electronic cards than real life cards. Real cards are random, electronic cards are rigged... RIGGED!
I agree. Not because the cards are rigged, but because most of the fun of poker for me is trying to outwit my friends and guess when they're bluffing me. You just can't get that sort of thrill when you're playing against an algorithm.

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Please tell me the difficulty level only affects the player AI. I keep getting rivered on Hard.

Yeah it just makes the NPCs make smarter decisions.

Hey Jake, I'm really interested in the AI that's used... I'd love to learn more.

Did you give the NPCs pre-set traits? Do their chance of making a "mistake" (i.e. not playing optimally) change for each turn? How accurate is the poker simulation? Etc. I've always wondered when it comes to these sorts of games.

Thanks!

The NPC AI has two axes -- skill, and aggression. If I'm not mistaken, Strong Bad is moderate-to-low skill, high aggression, the Heavy is moderate-to-high skill, very low aggression so he plays conservatively, Tycho is high skill low aggression, and Max's values more or less swing wildly as he plays.

I never enjoy playing card/board games electronically because I feel like my luck is way worse with electronic cards than real life cards. Real cards are random, electronic cards are rigged... RIGGED!

People claim this shit is rigged, and I don't get it. What motivation do we have to make it rigged? We went out of our way to make sure the character AI only makes decisions based on what cards it has, what's on the table, and how others have bet. The deck isn't stacked, and the different AI players don't have the ability to peek. With a game where there's no money at stake and the game is surely more fun if there's no cheating, why in the hell would we make it work that way? People really confuse me when they make that assumption.

Excuse me for just about to start sounding retarded...

If I download my copy from TellTale directly, will I still get the Steam achievements?

(Told you I'd sounded retarded.)

The reason I ask is I hate the way Steam games require Steam to boot and connect before the game itself will run. But I would like some tasty achievements for no good reason.

Apparently I'm not retarded at all... it doesn't make a different, or so Jake says:

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=397674&postcount=55

I lied. The Telltale copy does not include Steam achievements. That said, buying it from Telltale gives you a complimentary Steam copy. Visit www.telltalegames.com/tf2unlocks while logged into the TTG site, and assuming you bought Poker Night from us, it'll give you a Steam product key to unlock your copy in Steam.

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Did anyone notice if they have any tells? Also, if you pay attention, you can look at the cards they fold once in a while... although I don't know if they're realy the cards they were holding.

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Did anyone notice if they have any tells? Also, if you pay attention, you can look at the cards they fold once in a while... although I don't know if they're realy the cards they were holding.

I haven't been clinical about analyzing it, but they do seem to have certain postures when they've got a good or bad hand. I notice the Heavy seems to play with his ammo belt a lot, and will raise an eyebrow from time to time. Mostly I'm judging them by how they bet, and what they say.

Right now i'm totally buying the illusion, and I don't want to ruin it by looking for canned animations.

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I've gotta hand it to Telltale, this is a heck of a game. It isn't trying to do something amazing but it excels at what it should; character interaction and video poker. Every time I boot it up I get a chuckle out of something I never noticed before or something funny that gets said. I feel that the writing is very strong for all characters, especially Tycho and The Heavy (I haven't every really been a Home-star Runner guy and only played Season 1 of S&M). Although I was initially disappointed by the lack of Holkins, Tycho's voice has grown on me. I know Holkins had some oversight on the dialogue for Tycho but did Telltale write for The Heavy or Strong-Bad?

Lastly, I have to ask is The Heavy crossing his arms a reference to this

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I laughed A LOT when the heavy told the story about the engineer... the delivery from the voice actor was PERFECT.

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I have to agree with Bohls. Tycho's voice is actually getting under my skin in a good way. At this point, I'd still prefer The Holkmeister, but I don't have a problem with his voice.

I do have a problem with how his nose fucking up and vanishes at certain angles. Was this intentional, Jake?

Also, on the rigged note: I can say with fair certainty is not. It's entirely possible to force the AI to do things maybe. . .7/10? If you bid properly it's pretty easy to force the AI players into folding/going all in. All it takes is a sufficient show of force or timidity to make the AI think whatever you want. Going all-in on the hole cards only, for instance, will usually remove a couple AI from play. Usually. Sometimes, sometimes, THEY ALL GO ALL-IN IN AN ORGY OF POKER DEATH.

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This may not be possible, but is there some way to acquire audio from the game?

Specifically I want the Heavy's line "Check, check, check on my saaaandvich, cha cha cha!" It's caught in my head and I keep saying it all the time, so I figure I might need to have the clip to listen to as a mantra. I looked in the steam game folder, and the only thing there were 6 armpit fart .WAVs.

Also, why are there 6 armpit fart .WAVs?

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I lied. The Telltale copy does not include Steam achievements. That said, buying it from Telltale gives you a complimentary Steam copy. Visit www.telltalegames.com/tf2unlocks while logged into the TTG site, and assuming you bought Poker Night from us, it'll give you a Steam product key to unlock your copy in Steam.

Damn you, Jake! Oh, well. I still had a huge amount of fun playing it last night! :tup:

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Interesting:

I do carefully explain this in the piece. Anyone who plays poker will echo this – someone playing randomly, or extremely badly, makes it a very difficult game to play.
The problem is that making that irrational, brainless move is likely not going to work and will cost you money. It’s 100% definitely true that bad players make the game tougher for good players, because at that point they are basically forced to just play their cards and the odds

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People claim this shit is rigged, and I don't get it. What motivation do we have to make it rigged? We went out of our way to make sure the character AI only makes decisions based on what cards it has, what's on the table, and how others have bet. The deck isn't stacked, and the different AI players don't have the ability to peek. With a game where there's no money at stake and the game is surely more fun if there's no cheating, why in the hell would we make it work that way? People really confuse me when they make that assumption.

I guess because they think it'd be easier to program?

So, let me get this 100% right: The deck is a "real" deck. Which is to say, if I fold when two players go "All in", and I watch the cards being dealt ("the river", or whatever it's called) and realise I would have won if I'd gone "All in", too... Then I REALLY would have won if I'd gone all in. It wouldn't have been different cards that would have been dealt?

If so, I'm very pleased :tup:

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(Although I’ve not heard any reference to the failure of the Penny Arcade games, which is a tad elephantine.)

Maybe this is just me, but I didn't think the penny arcade games were 'failure' at all. Perhaps Walker is referring to the fact that the series ended, but that was more because Mike and Jerry didn't have time, not because there wasn't demand for them. Either way, reading that let's me discount his opinion of humour in games.

Anyhoo, knowing what I know about the AI from Jake's post, I totally understand why Tycho is constantly sitting out, and the Heavy often only bets on decent hands. I disagree that the behaviour is random, outside of Max. The game is less like sitting down to play Hold 'em at a casino, and more like having a weekly game with your buddies. You have to learn the behaviour (and skill level) of the people you're playing with. Strongbad is more likely to bluff than Tycho or the Heavy, so I know I can try to deal with him if he makes large bets. I'm not any sort of poker player though, so maybe my opinion doesn't really count.

He does kinda have you guys with the Strongbad Deck, although anyone can recognize most numbers from their top half. It's only really a problem with 8s and 9s. I haven't tried it yet because the Inventory deck is by far my favorite. I also really like the visual effect of the Automata table.

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I do agree the AI plays it a little loose on calling another players all-in, but other than that I couldn't disagree more with the RPS article.

Also, finally had time to read through the comments on Giant Bomb. Practically every post is a thumbs reference, there must be more Idle thumbs fans on the giant bomb forums than here.

There are two major areas I hope that could be refined if a game like this is ever made in the future.

1. the dialogue needs to be monitored a bit more, and have a skip/interupt feature. If the Heavy starts a conversation the player has heard more than once, the player should be able to hit a key like [Esc], [space] or [Enter] to prompt the discussion to terminate. Whether it's a direct cut-off or some other transition like a character like Strongbad yelling at them to shut-up. I've been playing for a while now and though I feel like there are a few conversation trees I haven't heard yet, I'm still getting a lot of repetition on the lowest dialogue setting.

2. key bindings. I know that space has become standard in the telltale games for pause, but [Esc] and [F1] are menu keys, the spacebar should be used for a user action. Also, it'd be nice if every action had either a direct key mapping, or the ability to select with arrow/tab keys without using the mouse. The interface is really slick, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass to use as you're constantly pixel hunting. If you have the capability, throw a heatmap on and analyze your play over an extended period. The mouse is constantly having to travel from the bottom left of the screen, to the bottom right.

I haven't looked to see if the files are portable, and introducing the steamworks api for cloud support may have been a bit much, but I wish my stats could be tracked between my PC and my laptop.

Murder at the Inventory would be an excellent idea for a mini-game/board game collection.

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I just wish it tracked which conversations had been heard across all games. That way it wouldn't start repeating until I'd already heard all content.

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1. the dialogue needs to be monitored a bit more, and have a skip/interupt feature.

I think right click skips.

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