Idle Thumbs 183: The Anonymouses

[malkav11]

IIRC the lack of controller support was also because of Flash. And having just tried my PS+ copy of Vita Binding of Isaac Rebirth, holy -crap- is it easier to play this game with two joysticks than with the weird keyboard controls. I'm still bad at it, but I can actually make some progress. Even made it to the second floor without too much trouble. On the Flash version I usually die inside three rooms.

 

Edit: Rebirth apparently also has a local coop mode (though presumably not on Vita), the ability to save and resume mid session and the ability to enter seed numbers so that you can revisit a particular layout and/or share it with friends - this should make it possible to do an impromptu daily challenge sort of thing ala Spelunky, although right now it would have to be community based since it's not actually built into the game at the moment. They could probably patch such a thing in if they wanted, though.

[DarthEnderX]

Haha, loved the Batman eye makeup discussion. I like how in the movie Kick-Ass the Big Daddy and Red Mist characters still have their eye makeup when their masks are off. They even show Nicolas Cage putting on the makeup while he's suiting up. You can see it

around 0:54.

I was thinking about that exact same thing during this discussion.

 

Before seeing that movie, I never even noticed that the Batmans were always wearing that makeup.  Now I can't not see it.

 

Fitting, since Nick Cage is basically doing an Adam West imitation in that movie.

[CollegeBaby]

I disagree with the idea that better visual quality will make older movies more appealing to people. If you look at people's listening habits, they've basically spent the last couple of decades moving to formats with decidedly worse audio quality for the sake of convenience/cheapness. While there is a market for people that would rather listen to vinyl than mp3s, or people that are interested in a properly remastered album, those people (and full disclosure: this includes me) are a distinct minority of music listeners. I suspect the same is true with restored older films. This is tremendously exciting for connoisseurs, but most people aren't going to give a shit. They're just going to watch whatever is new on Netflix.

 

I don't think I agree. There has not been as much marketing push from the audio industry to guilt people into high quality audio equipment as there has been for televisions other video devices. With the rise of portable music libraries listening habits have changed a lot. Many people these days simply listen to music on their crappy Apple earbuds, their factory-equipped car speakers or portable iPhone docks. A lot aren't even aware of audio formats that are not mp3, however the rise of torrenting has lead to more people becoming more savvy with video formats and visual quality. In addition with Blu Ray being a proprietary format it is putting on a harder sell than FLAC would ever do.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

 

...oof. I mean, the overall look is pretty nice but... they have those outlines EVERYWHERE? That looks damn ugly. :/

I like the idea of it being pixel art but they shouldn't have made it pixel art that tried to be the same as the vector look. The two drawing methods have different visual strengths, and constant thick outlines is not a strength of the pixels like it is in vectors.

[Gormongous]

I disagree with the idea that better visual quality will make older movies more appealing to people. If you look at people's listening habits, they've basically spent the last couple of decades moving to formats with decidedly worse audio quality for the sake of convenience/cheapness. While there is a market for people that would rather listen to vinyl than mp3s, or people that are interested in a properly remastered album, those people (and full disclosure: this includes me) are a distinct minority of music listeners. I suspect the same is true with restored older films. This is tremendously exciting for connoisseurs, but most people aren't going to give a shit. They're just going to watch whatever is new on Netflix.

I don't think I agree. There has not been as much marketing push from the audio industry to guilt people into high quality audio equipment as there has been for televisions other video devices. With the rise of portable music libraries listening habits have changed a lot. Many people these days simply listen to music on their crappy Apple earbuds, their factory-equipped car speakers or portable iPhone docks. A lot aren't even aware of audio formats that are not mp3, however the rise of torrenting has lead to more people becoming more savvy with video formats and visual quality. In addition with Blu Ray being a proprietary format it is putting on a harder sell than FLAC would ever do.

 

This is only tangentially related, but I remember seeing John Carmack speak at a convention in 2007. He spoke about a lot of things, but my favorite anecdote was when he talked about diminishing returns with aural and visual fidelity in games. He said that Doom 3 had a fully simulated 3D audio engine that modeled the level geometry as positional sound data and used texture flags to determine what mix of audio effects would be applied to the output for the player. According to him, it was a masterpiece of engineering, but a buggy mess that never worked a hundred percent even under perfect test conditions. One night, frustrated by the whole thing, Carmack stayed up late and ripped it all out, replacing it instead with the long-standard system of environmental effects presets for individual rooms. He said it took the rest of the team two weeks to notice, and only then because one of them realized that the audio engine hadn't crashed in a while and dug around to find out why.

 

His point then was that there's a practical limit to any kind of fidelity that just relies on the five senses, but I think it's also worthwhile to use his example to point out how low the average person's threshold for aural fidelity is, even when fully aware of the complexities at work. Some of that is probably natural, since sight is the dominant sense for most people and hearing a distant second, but I also think that CollegeBaby has it right that the film and television industries have done a reasonably good job educating their markets on the defects of SD content in order to drive sales, although sometimes to the detriment of producing truly HD content, while the music and consumer electronics industries have done virtually much the opposite in order to keep the mp3 bubble nice and full. I'm sure there's a much more interesting point to be made by extrapolating further, but it's late, so I'll leave it to someone else.

[Ben X]

Yeah, it was me just wanting to up my game because I was impressed -- and that just means "be better."

 

Uh oh, sounds like 'quality creep' to me...

[SecretAsianMan]

RE: Left 4 Dead 1 versus Left 4 Dead 2. I gotta say, I never really understood why people were so excited about Left 4 Dead. I did get and play it, but I found it a pretty monotonous experience because there was so little enemy and weapon variety, and so few gameplay mechanics, that even different maps felt like essentially the same experience, just with different hallways and quips. I have to assume that the people that liked it are the sort of people who get really excited over really subtle variations and nuances on a strong (but essentially singular) mechanical design, and that's just not me. It felt more like a proof of concept than a full game. Left 4 Dead 2 felt to me like the game people were talking about Left 4 Dead 1 being. Every map had genuinely different twists instead of being slight reconfigurings of the same formula, there was a significantly larger range of weapons with much more rewarding feel to them (pretty sure all the dismemberment effects and such were new in 2, no?), the new enemy types mixed up encounters a lot more, etc. It ended up still not really being entirely up my alley - there's just not enough narrative there and I've never had a full group to play with (the bots are nigh useless) - but I could finally understand the appeal.

 

I agree with you to a degree about L4D1, but I believe this is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  There aren't a lot of weapons, enemies, or mechanics, but when you combine them with a group of people the experience is much better than it seems like it should be.  The game not only encouraged but to a huge degree required teamwork, on both the co-op and vs side, which is what really makes the game shine to me.  At the time of release, there were other "team" games or ones that had co-op, but L4D really made that a core part of the game instead of an added feature.

 

I'll also agree that L4D2 plays better than L4D1, but I'm with the Thumbs in their preference of L4D1.  Whenever I play it, I always choose the L4D1 maps because they integrate all the L4D2 gameplay improvements and changes but leave everything else the same.

 

I suspect the Payday games would be more to my taste but I still have the "reliable coop partners" issue.

 

If you're interested, several of us have been playing Payday 2 quite a bit lately.  Check out the multiplayer thread.

[malkav11]

If you're interested, several of us have been playing Payday 2 quite a bit lately.  Check out the multiplayer thread.

 

Will do. Hopefully the time zones work out.

[Jake]

Uh oh, sounds like 'quality creep' to me...

The part in the game Sean was talking about is now already written for what it's worth...

I'm pretty proud of our team and its resistance to intense creep. For instance: We are upgrading to Unity 5 and resisted the urge to rewrite our entire lighting system to use the new baked probe system*, and instead are using unity 5 to save us a full render pass on our existing tech, which is going very quickly and freeing time up to close out our long standing rendering wishlist.

* After talking about it a lot because holy hell that new shader set looks nice. We have enough tools in our belt to get the base look we want right now though, and are excited to build on top of what we have instead of throwing it out for something new. But anyone starting from scratch on unity 5, check that stuff out!

[Ben X]

In case it wasn't clear, my 'quality creep' remark was a joke. I don't think that the impulse to "be better" is a poor design method!

[mikemariano]

Mmmm, baked probes...

[RubixsQube]

Maybe this is a thing that I shouldn't ask about, but throughout the early portion of the episode, Nick has moments where he makes a repeated sharp intake of breath, which could either be something like indigestion (on the banal end) or a tic (on the extreme end). I was wondering if Nick is ok? Am I being rude by even bringing it up? 

 

ANYWAY, also I really liked when Sean said that his entire 80 Days journey went to pot in Amsterdam and you could hear Jake (I think) making a silly noise in the background from the pun. I like that Jake can't help but make that noise. 

[sclpls]

I don't think I agree. There has not been as much marketing push from the audio industry to guilt people into high quality audio equipment as there has been for televisions other video devices. With the rise of portable music libraries listening habits have changed a lot. Many people these days simply listen to music on their crappy Apple earbuds, their factory-equipped car speakers or portable iPhone docks. A lot aren't even aware of audio formats that are not mp3, however the rise of torrenting has lead to more people becoming more savvy with video formats and visual quality. In addition with Blu Ray being a proprietary format it is putting on a harder sell than FLAC would ever do.

 

I don't think that's right. Before the mp3 came along there was a lot of advertising and marketing for high end stereo equipment. That market lost out and is now just a niche thing.

 

The issue though isn't whether the audio equipment industry got it right VS the Blu Ray industry. It's whether or not an improved format will create an interest from people in a particular song or movie or whatever where previously there was no interest? And I think regardless of the differences between the audio equipment industry and the Blu Ray industry, the answer to that is still no. It's not as if film restoration is a new thing. You sometimes see restored films appear in theater. There usually isn't a huge wave of interest in these things though. People appreciate better quality things, but it isn't what drives interest largely.

[Arathain]

I played quite a lot of both Left 4 Deads. The single biggest change for me, and the reason I couldn't go back to the first one until they'd updated it to include the new stuff, was the addition of the Spitter special infected. As often happens in multiplayer games, an optimal tactic had arisen to handle the big horde events that were otherwise the highlight of the game- corner stacking, or Shiva stacking. All four players would gather in the same corner, models all clipping into each other, mostly just spamming the melee attack and shooting a bit. This was perfectly safe no matter how many zombies came at you- the only thing you'd break it up for would be a Tank. It was boring as all heck, but in that strange way optimal behaviour has of trumping fun, it was all anyone wanted to do.

 

The Spitter spat a blob of acid from range that would pool on the floor, doing damage to anyone standing in it. Problem solved. Fun restored. I did miss Louis, though.  

[Twig]

Everyone misses Louis. ):

 

Rochelle is almost as good, though.

 

The only thing I really disliked about L4D2 was the melee weapons. I felt the melee knockback from the guns was more than sufficient. But it wasn't a huge negative, so oh well.

 

I want to play L4D2 again.

[Nick Breckon]

Maybe this is a thing that I shouldn't ask about, but throughout the early portion of the episode, Nick has moments where he makes a repeated sharp intake of breath, which could either be something like indigestion (on the banal end) or a tic (on the extreme end). I was wondering if Nick is ok? Am I being rude by even bringing it up? 

 

ANYWAY, also I really liked when Sean said that his entire 80 Days journey went to pot in Amsterdam and you could hear Jake (I think) making a silly noise in the background from the pun. I like that Jake can't help but make that noise. 

 

Haha. It was, in fact, indigestion. Not totally unrelated to the topic of making video games, I think I have an ulcer or two. The cast before last I felt downright nauseous.

[twmac]

I don't know if Jake meant it in this way but I am culturally damaged.

 

I cannot watch Die Hard, Terminator, Predator or pretty much any prominent 80s action film in the new super duper Blu Ray versions. I absolutely hate them as I need the scuzzy artifacting and the slightly blurry camera for it to seem 'real'. The same goes for certain 90s coming-of-age or dumb comedies, they look wrong. The worst is definitely Die Hard, which I just can't enjoy in 1080p and clean.

 

This isn't the same for most of the other genres released in the 80s or 90s just those specific types - I cannot explain it.

[Badfinger]

Haha. It was, in fact, indigestion. Not totally unrelated to the topic of making video games, I think I have an ulcer or two. The cast before last I felt downright nauseous.

 

 

Lindsey!! 

[RubixsQube]

Haha. It was, in fact, indigestion. Not totally unrelated to the topic of making video games, I think I have an ulcer or two. The cast before last I felt downright nauseous.

 

Oh shit, I'm sorry! I just noticed and hoped for the best. I hope you're ok. I've been really happy to have you on the last few episodes, so thanks for working through the nausea and indigestion!

 

My work-related stress has lead to a giant, half-dollar sized spot of perfectly white hair on the back of my head.

[Gormongous]

Oh shit, I'm sorry! I just noticed and hoped for the best. I hope you're ok. I've been really happy to have you on the last few episodes, so thanks for working through the nausea and indigestion!

 

My work-related stress has lead to a giant, half-dollar sized spot of perfectly white hair on the back of my head.

 

Yeah, take it easy, Nick! You're the most unique voice on the podcast, it's always better with you there.

 

I guess I'm lucky that gray temples seem to be the only physical effect of my job. It made for a good Littlefinger costume this Halloween. Wait.. no, I take Tums semi-regularly now, so there's that, too.

[syntheticgerbil]

Huh, I was imagining something much worse, kind of like these you often see for $2:

[melmer]

F*ck Nick

Congrats Nick

Take it easy Nick

Hope you're okay Nick

You should take better care of yourself Nick

Try learning some relaxation techniques like Yoga Nick

Please don't die Nick

[Ben X]

It's whether or not an improved format will create an interest from people in a particular song or movie or whatever where previously there was no interest?

 

I can't remember if this is what the Thumbs were saying, but I just want to point out it's not what I was saying. I meant that growing up with older films only available in crappy transfers has probably contributed to a lot of people having an aversion to them. The stylistic differences also figure into it a lot, of course, but I think being able to watch, say, Lawrence Of Arabia on one's telly and have it look just as gorgeous on one's telly as Prometheus might make those differences more palatable. Then again, looking at that Reddit thread makes me think some people are just morons.

 

Anyway, the conversation may have simply moved past my point onto yours, but I wanted to clarify!

[CaptainFish]

ANYWAY, also I really liked when Sean said that his entire 80 Days journey went to pot in Amsterdam and you could hear Jake (I think) making a silly noise in the background from the pun. I like that Jake can't help but make that noise. 

Oh yeah I almost forgot that sound. It was like onomatopoeia for "I think this is dubious." Between that and the glass clink, it was a good episode for sound effects.

[malkav11]

I can't remember if this is what the Thumbs were saying, but I just want to point out it's not what I was saying. I meant that growing up with older films only available in crappy transfers has probably contributed to a lot of people having an aversion to them. The stylistic differences also figure into it a lot, of course, but I think being able to watch, say, Lawrence Of Arabia on one's telly and have it look just as gorgeous on one's telly as Prometheus might make those differences more palatable. Then again, looking at that Reddit thread makes me think some people are just morons.

 

Anyway, the conversation may have simply moved past my point onto yours, but I wanted to clarify!

 

Speaking as someone who rarely seeks out any movie older than myself, I suspect the dreadful covers have more to do with it than the quality of the picture (and of course, the further back you go, the more vastly different the style becomes, as I was reminded when I watched The Spy Who Came in From The Cold with my family a couple weeks back. Just...nothing like pretty much any films of today, or even the other Le Carre adaptations I've seen regardless of age.). I've never heard of The Sweet Smell of Success, but if I came across it with the old cover I'd never touch it. The Criterion one actually makes me interested.