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Chris

Idle Thumbs 115: Robot News

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I'm not bothered by empty crates/barrels as much as oblivious/apathetic merchants. After destroying a man's entire source of livelihood, he should at least jack up prices the next time you drop by.

You'll love Spelunky.

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I always liked in Wind Waker and Super Paper Mario how there was the one token story scene based on the fact that the player will invariably break somebody's priceless vase because that's all they've been doing up until this point.

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Speaking of shopkeepers, this is why I wish the influence of roguelikes extended beyond permadeath, and random levels. The shopkeeper AI in a game like NetHack is a thing of beauty. That's part of why I love so much about Spleunky, the design really reflects a genuine love of roguelikes by capturing lots of amazing details, and not just the big, broad game design features of a roguelike.

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I'm not bothered by empty crates/barrels as much as oblivious/apathetic merchants. After destroying a man's entire source of livelihood, he should at least jack up prices the next time you drop by.

 

It'd be neat if the next time you dialogued with the shopkeeper, he would say you have a bill to pay for the pots and you couldn't buy anything until it was payed off. Maybe other merchants would immediately kick you out, having labeled you as 'pot-breaker.'

 

On a similar note, in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, if you stole from the shop the merchant would attack you the next time you entered it and every character in the game would then on refer to you as 'Thief' instead of the player-entered name. Neat.

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Speaking of shopkeepers, this is why I wish the influence of roguelikes extended beyond permadeath, and random levels. The shopkeeper AI in a game like NetHack is a thing of beauty. That's part of why I love so much about Spleunky, the design really reflects a genuine love of roguelikes by capturing lots of amazing details, and not just the big, broad game design features of a roguelike.

What are the shopkeepers like in NetHack?

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It'd be neat if the next time you dialogued with the shopkeeper, he would say you have a bill to pay for the pots and you couldn't buy anything until it was payed off. Maybe other merchants would immediately kick you out, having labeled you as 'pot-breaker.'

 

On a similar note, in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, if you stole from the shop the merchant would attack you the next time you entered it and every character in the game would then on refer to you as 'Thief' instead of the player-entered name. Neat.

 

Yeah, exactly! It's those little interactions that would go a long way in making your actions in a world seem impactful.

 

It's also hilarious that in any given RPG, your grand world-saving exploits change the way in which NPCs will speak to you, but then you go on a pot-breaking rampage and nobody cares that you just ruined that town's economy.

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The catharsis of body slamming a pile of fine china after losing all your souls is more than enough justification for rooms full of empty vases-this is actually the first time I've seen anyone discuss about how weird they are at length, which is a bit surprising considering everything else about Dark Souls has been analyzed to death.

 

I remember thinking "this is strange" when I entered a room full of empty barrels for the first time, but that thought quickly left my head when I learned how fun they are to smash.

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I think they're actually less strange in the world of Dark Souls than in most games they're conventional in. Since it's an entire town of undead, I feel like the implication is that whatever these pots were used to store has long since rotted away into nothing. Also, given that the undead merchant actually IIRC sells bottomless boxes that you can stash all your crap in, I think it's a safe bet that the crud scattered around him isn't actually his wares, just a bunch of barrels that came with the place.

 

Outside of the Undead Burg the equivalent elements tend to make a lot of sense: The urns in Anor Londo appear to be purely decorative, and the various smashable skeletons and trees elsewhere have a pretty obvious source in the history of the world.

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I think they're actually less strange in the world of Dark Souls than in most games they're conventional in. Since it's an entire town of undead, I feel like the implication is that whatever these pots were used to store has long since rotted away into nothing. Also, given that the undead merchant actually IIRC sells bottomless boxes that you can stash all your crap in, I think it's a safe bet that the crud scattered around him isn't actually his wares, just a bunch of barrels that came with the place.

 

Outside of the Undead Burg the equivalent elements tend to make a lot of sense: The urns in Anor Londo appear to be purely decorative, and the various smashable skeletons and trees elsewhere have a pretty obvious source in the history of the world.

 

And it's quite subtly explained that Seath has an overwhelming fetish for spherical astrolabe's, so Dukes makes perfect sense as well. 

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You know what's weird, and great, and weird? Mentioning that you tuned in for "a little Smash Brothers at EVO" sounds as natural as someone asking if you caught The Local Game last night and you answered that you caught just a couple of minutes before halftime.

 

Maybe it's just my own entertainment habits, but watching video games being played on the internet is now just another competitive event you can tune in to see.

 

You know, it's funny. I'm really not a sports guy, and the only traditional sport that I've ever found even nominally interesting is roller derby, which I find interesting not because of the actual play of the sport but because as it's currently played in America today, the athletes tend to be attractive punky women in my age group and the culture around it isn't one of celebrity but rather going out after the game and hanging out with the athletes at a bar or something. There are obvious reasons to like this approach. Other than that, I don't understand the rules or strategy, I don't know who anyone is, and I find the whole subject pretty intensely dull.

 

So for the longest time when I heard about the concept of e-sports, particularly Korea's professional Starcraft scene, I was really excited by the idea of these things blowing up into a legitimate US scene that would eventually have people talking about e-sports in roughly the same context as today's physical sports. Almost certainly not to the degree that they'd compete with the really big league sports, but just to be part of the conversation as a whole. Because, you know, I like playing Video games. I like watching people play Video games. I have -context- for e-sports that I don't for physical sports. I figured this would make for sports I could actually be passionate about. And now that's happened, more or less. I'm sure there's still some ways to go before they're quite at the level I was envisioning, but the scene's there and the conversation's there.

 

And it turns out I find them just as baffling and impenetrable as every other sport.

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Yeah, I never would have thought I could be as completely disinterested in a video game -- any video game -- as I am in sports, but then DOTA came along. I did enjoy watching the tail end of the Smash Bros. EVO stuff, though.

 

Is it mandated that competitive Smash Bros. be played only on the most boring stages, or is that just the players' personal preferences? If it's the latter, is there like, one guy who always chooses Poké Floats or something just to throw off his opponents? I would enjoy that.

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Yeah, I never would have thought I could be as completely disinterested in a video game -- any video game -- as I am in sports, but then DOTA came along. I did enjoy watching the tail end of the Smash Bros. EVO stuff, though.

 

Is it mandated that competitive Smash Bros. be played only on the most boring stages, or is that just the players' personal preferences? If it's the latter, is there like, one guy who always chooses Poké Floats or something just to throw off his opponents? I would enjoy that.

 

I may have it wrong, but i'd assume that any stages with random elements or layouts that would favor one side over the other are generally excluded from competitive play.

Apparently Melee was actually the second most watched Stream at Evo this year, with a simultaneous viewer peak of something like 130 thousand people. (More people were watching Melee than SSF4AE!)

Overall, Evo had something like 1.7 million unique viewers this year.

I completely missed the live streams though, so i've been slowly going through the archives to watch the finals at least.

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I want to see a version of this reskinned to be about weird birds feeding their chicks.

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Yeah, I never would have thought I could be as completely disinterested in a video game -- any video game -- as I am in sports, but then DOTA came along. I did enjoy watching the tail end of the Smash Bros. EVO stuff, though.

 

Is it mandated that competitive Smash Bros. be played only on the most boring stages, or is that just the players' personal preferences? If it's the latter, is there like, one guy who always chooses Poké Floats or something just to throw off his opponents? I would enjoy that.

 

There are 5 "neutral" stages which give minimal unfair advantage to any character: Yoshi's Story, Pokemon Stadium, Dreamland 64, Battlefield, and of course, Final Destination. There is one additional "counterpick" stage which you can select after you lose a match, which is Fountain of Dreams. All of these are pretty basic "boring" stages because they lack certain features which are completely unfairly favored toward certain characters and actually make the game less interesting to play. I'll go over some of them.

 

Stages where you can walk to the blast zone (e.g. Yoshi's Island, Mushroom Kingdom, Onett): Fox can 

 players off the stage and it's impossible to break out of if executed properly.

 

Moving stages (e.g. Big Blue, Icicle Mountain, Poke Floats): certain sections of these stages emphasize movement ability more than fighting ability, giving mobile characters a huge advantage. It's nearly impossible to keep up with both the stage and the opponent as Bowser, DK, Ganon, etc.

 

Temple: It's way too big, allowing a fast character to essentially run away forever to time out the match, after taking a stock advantage. Also it's nearly impossible to die when fighting in the lower pocket.

 

Stages with walls (e.g. Fourside, Peach's Castle): Fox can waveshine players into a wall for free damage anytime (think wobbling but anytime you want and extremely easy to pull off).

 

 

Of course, even the neutral stages give slight advantages to certain characters. Yoshi's Story is sometimes called Marth Story because the platforms are exactly at tipper height. Two of Pokemon Stadium's transformations have walls for Fox to waveshine into but they only last about half a minute. Even Final Destination isn't perfectly neutral because its flatness and lack of platforms favors projectile users.

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I may have it wrong, but i'd assume that any stages with random elements or layouts that would favor one side over the other are generally excluded from competitive play.

Apparently Melee was actually the second most watched Stream at Evo this year, with a simultaneous viewer peak of something like 130 thousand people. (More people were watching Melee than SSF4AE!)

Overall, Evo had something like 1.7 million unique viewers this year.

I completely missed the live streams though, so i've been slowly going through the archives to watch the finals at least.

 

Kinda funny then that Nintendo tried to ban them from streaming "their" content. They would have lost out on reaching 130k people of free advertising (which they desperately need) over an irrational fear of something that at it's most basic level is pretty much just hanging out at a buddy's house watching some friends play smash. It's not like the EVO folks are raking in the millions.

 

Btw, anyone else think that viscera game is edging the line of "games as art" that people talk about so much? 

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Btw, anyone else think that viscera game is edging the line of "games as art" that people talk about so much?

It certainly seems to be intended as commentary... on first person shooters.

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Or maybe it's just a funny joke?

 

I mean I've long wanted a game like that to exist, but purely for the morbid humor opportunity it presents. And this game delivered perfectly on that front.

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I'd say that jokes can be art. I'd consider satire to be a category of art, as well as comedians and comedy movies. 

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I'm not contesting that, just saying that it doesn't seem at all like it was intended to be commentary on first person shooters to me. Or, rather, that either case is just as likely as the other.

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Also, the debate on whether games can be art is not about whether or not they can be pointed and meaningful (a ton of games have been exactly that for years), but about how one defines the words "game" and "art". I don't think Viscera Clean-Up Crew really changes that debate at all.

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