DynDataAccess update
Monster by Skillet
Hi all. It's been a quiet month for the most part. My team at work went bowling (ON COMPANY TIME EVEN 8O ) last Friday. Our supervisor was treating us to celebrate a huge increase in productivity compared to last quarter. My performance wasn't that great, I scored 80-something in both of the games I played. Interestingly, my left leg was the part of my body that suffered the day after. Guess that crouch to release the ball takes some toll.
There wasn't much progress to speak of in the ASCRS app this month, mostly because I got sidetracked for a brief side project: updating the DynDataAccess plugin. Somebody actually created a bunch of new comment commands to expand it and sent it to me. 8D It's nice to be validated in the extra effort I went to making that an open project. I had to do a fair bit of work myself to update the official plugin, though. I examined the commands and found that some of them weren't named in the best possible convention; the big thing was that a bunch of them had "hero" in the name, but they were being referenced according to their position in the party rather than their hero ID, so I changed those to "party_member". I also rearranged everything according to the order of the data classes used as listed in the DynRPG website. And the guy who made the additions didn't provide any test scenarios, so that fell to me. Not to bash him, any work done is better than none as I mention in the project's readme, but that was a decent bit of slog remaining for me. I got stuck for quite a bit and nearly thought I'd run into a mysterious bug of DynRPG itself because I got some parameters out of order for a command and referenced a monster that didn't exist, causing the game to crash. X) I also can't say I did a thorough job of testing the new commands, just the "happy path" of confirming that a command I'd expect to work with some chosen parameters does work. Anyway, that's all updated and posted on the DynDataAccess utility thread.
On the Zelda RPG, Esava and Tommy managed to pick off quite a few of the lizalfos through the tactic of Tommy baiting small groups of them with hints of his presence and Esava ambushing them from the rooftops once they were drawn away. But there were too many to deal with entirely this way before they caught on and started converging. Esava made a last stand imitating the fighting style of Naruto's Killer B, tucking short swords into every place he could grip them and jumping around in the midst of the enemy. AND THEN THE CAVALRY ARRIVED, literally! A band of desert-dwellers from another village rode in on horseback and made mincemeat of the remaining lizalfos.
...But it turns out this village isn't on friendly terms with Esava's, they just hate lizalfos too. c.c Tommy and Esava were conked out and woke up in an underground prison. This, of course, was Tommy's time to shine. He pulled out a wire hidden in his boot, shaped it into a lockpick, and unlocked their cell while the guard was away getting water. Esava was then able to overpower the guard when he came back, and they headed up to the surface with Tommy on point as scout.
Meanwhile, let's give an update on the main plotline, which I haven't talked about much here because I haven't been very involved in it personally. X) Ganondorf went from Termina back to Hyrule through the portal in Clock Town, then sealed it behind himself so that the heroes who were questing there would have a hard time following him. He then proceeded to go to Gerudo Fortress (which, remember, is occupied by the anti-Ganondorf Gerudo Remnant led by Nabooru) and demanded Princess Zelda's surrender. Zelda came out rather than let her allies suffer Ganondorf's wrath, and hey-presto, it's crystal prison time again for her. Ganondorf did dispel the dark cloud that was keeping Hyrule in permanent night once he had Zelda, on the bright side (ba-dum-TSS). So now Hyrule is pretty firmly under Ganondorf's thumb, and the heroes in Termina are finding alternate routes back to Hyrule.
Freedom Planet:
I got this for "free" using gold points from my My Nintendo account. They make something old but decently worthwhile available that way every once in a while (well, nearly all the time actually, but more often than not it's something I already have).
Freedom Planet is like a Sonic the Hedgehog game, except not made by Sega and not using the same fictional universe. You could almost call it a fangame. There are plenty of references to Sonic. The name itself is a reference to one of the old cartoons, in which Sonic is part of a group that call themselves the Freedom Fighters and are trying to liberate their planet, Mobius, from Dr. Robotnik's control. There's a cutscene in which the main protagonist Lilac says her sidekick friend Carol is "like her tail." The themes of the stages echo memorable stages from the Sonic series, like an underground mine and a flashy urban area with an occasional giant slot machine (although these ones give out a fixed prize when activated and only work once).
Not being a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, especially the 2D entries, I didn't have huge expectations of liking Freedom Planet. I will say that the developers apparently were not wholly blind to the weaknesses of Sonic and made a number of subtle design decisions that eliminated or at least mitigated those problems. The top running speed is not as high in Freedom Planet as in Sonic, and there are fewer situations in which running headlong on the provided path will slam you into danger with no time to react (although there are still a fair few situations where you might miss out on optional goodies that way). A large part of the reason for this is that most enemies aren't ubiquitously dangerous to touch; they have to be doing a specific attack action to hurt you, so if you run into them unexpectedly, very likely you'll go past them without damage. On the flip side of that coin, merely jumping isn't how you attack -- you have to do a specific attack of your own, and very few enemies can be taken out with a single basic attack. Also, instead of the peculiar mechanic of dropping rings when hit and being able to stay alive as long as you manage to recover at least one of them, Freedom Planet uses a fairly common style of health meter with pick-ups to restore it.
Despite improvements, Freedom Planet still suffers from some of the foibles of Sonic, and arguably some new ones of its own. Specifically because the enemies are tougher, progress tend to be slower and more painful, especially in the later stages. Some of the boss fights require experimentally finding ways to put yourself in a position where the boss's next attack won't hit you. Unless you already know the stage and are making an effort to speed-run it, it can take upwards of half an hour to complete a stage, and THE GAME WILL NOT SAVE until you actually start the next stage -- which may not be until after a potentially lengthy cutscene. (On the plus side, if you quit after the save and come back later, they'll replay the cutscene, so you can skip the cutscene in order to save if you're in a hurry -- but I had to find that out the hard way.)
Speaking of the cutscenes, they put a fair bit of that into this game. I suspect the characters originated as Sonic fan-characters, and the creators wanted to show off their personas as much as they could. X) It's a bit hypocritical of me to poo-poo that after I used my own role-playing characters in a game, but I hope the cutscenes in The What-Iffers in: Final Fancy didn't hold up the gameplay too much. Getting back to the topic at hand, Freedom Planet's cutscenes follow the old style of using in-engine sprites and movements as much as possible, augmented with text-boxes and some special animations for dramatic poses and talking. There was actually one instance where the protagonists have to bow before royalty, and it uses their in-game ducking poses for it...and they actually point it out by having Lilac whisper to Carol that she needs to bow. -.-; I'm not sure whether they intended that as lampshade-hanging ("Haha, look at our conformance to cheap old animation tricks that were used on systems with limited graphical storage!") or just to clarify that they were bowing in-story when some players may not recognize it as such. There's also voice-acting to go along with the text, but not great voice-acting -- it felt annoyingly slow to me.
Bottom line? If you have stronger nostalgia glasses about Sonic than I do, you might enjoy Freedom Planet quite a lot -- or conversely, hate it for its differences. X) Personally I did get some fun out of it -- enough to slog through it as all three playable characters even -- and I regard it as a pretty good indie effort, but it's far from a favorite, and I may never bother with the sequel. (Although now that I write that, it occurs to me it'll probably end up in a Humble Bundle sooner or later...)
Tales from the Borderlands:
The Humble Bundle churn continues. Tales from the Borderlands is another TellTale Games offering, set in the Borderlands fiction. It's in the same general style of mildly-interactive movie that TellTale has focused on since their The Walking Dead series. There's one thing that sets it apart from the others, though (at least, the ones I've played). It's not even a true mechanical difference, but it's psychologically interesting: you play as two different characters at different moments. This gives you an opportunity to roleplay different personalities without the cognitive dissonance of having one character behave in radically different ways when you start choosing inconsistent options. Personally, I usually play the characters using the nicest dialogue options and such available, both because I'm like that and because it seems like the most likely path to get cooperation from the NPCs. And that's what I did with the first protagonist...but then when I was introduced to the second one, I thought, "Hey, let's try making her as nasty and cynical as possible, just to see how the game reacts to that!" X) (The answer is that it doesn't seem to make too much difference, although there was a point near the end where I had to choose between some NPCs to form a team and there were some that weren't available because of choices I'd made).
As for story, for obvious reasons you aren't one of the gun-toting, psycho-blasting, nigh-invincible murder hobos the main Borderlands series stars. Those characters are encountered throughout, sometimes as allies and sometimes as enemies, but you start out following an employee of Hyperion -- a soulless bureaucracy whose business model is to sell weaponry to the lawless population of Pandora while simultaneously working to track down the legendary Vaults containing untold riches in alien technology. This corporate lackey catches wind of an opportunity to acquire a Vault Key, simultaneously one-upping his rival. So he heads down to Pandora with his buddy from accounting to seal the deal on the artifact. Much hilarity with the bandit locals ensues before they finally make it to the meeting place and negotiate the trade...the result of which is left a little ambiguous while the game rewinds a bit and introduces the other protagonist. Who is part of a con outfit which FABRICATED the Vault Key. Yep, it's fake -- but that won't stop them all from getting whirled into an adventure to find a real Vault Key and claim the treasure of a Vault. It's kind of hard to explain if you're not familiar with Borderlands (I've only played the first game myself), and story is about all a TellTale title has, so I won't spoil much of it.
Bottom line? Same ol' same ol' from TellTale Games, which isn't to say it's bad, although Borderlands isn't a favorite fictional setting of mine. Get it if you're a fan of either TellTale or Borderlands.
Art of Balance:
Yet another game I got for free through My Nintendo. Art of Balance is a game about stacking blocks on each other without, you guessed it, having them fall over. There are versions for Wii, 3DS, Wii U, and Switch (oh, and PlayStation 4); the one I have is for Wii U. It's played with the Wii U gamepad's touchscreen, although you can also use a Wii remote if you like, and there's a multiplayer option that makes Wiimotes a practical necessity.
You might think a game with that premise is all about a delicate touch and fine placement, but it's really more about the order, position, and orientation you place the blocks in. Each stage starts with three blocks available to choose from and several others shown in outline. Each time you place a block, a new one becomes available until the outlines have been exhausted. Then once all blocks have been placed, if the structure stays standing (or at least nothing hits the ground) for three seconds, you win. Also, while the location of the block you're placing is fairly fine-grained, the rotations you're allowed to do are in strict 45-degree increments. That actually makes things easier for the most part since you can be sure you're placing something flat, although there are situations where the surface you're trying to stack on turns out not to align with that.
The game keeps things interesting by introducing new mechanics along the way. There are blocks that shatter when you stack three other blocks on top of them, blocks that shatter a short time after you put anything on top, volatile blocks that shatter if they touch EACH OTHER, and blocks that REVERSE GRAVITY when they're placed. There are also different bases on which to build, including ones with some blocks already placed and "scales" wherein placing weight on one base causes it to sink and another to rise.
There's really not that much more to say. There's no story, the graphics are pretty but not hugely varied, there are only a few pieces of music (mostly relaxing stuff), and it all boils down to a slew of abstract puzzles. If you like that sort of thing, it's a pretty good value for your buck. Otherwise, don't bother.
Click to viewHi all. It's been a quiet month for the most part. My team at work went bowling (ON COMPANY TIME EVEN 8O ) last Friday. Our supervisor was treating us to celebrate a huge increase in productivity compared to last quarter. My performance wasn't that great, I scored 80-something in both of the games I played. Interestingly, my left leg was the part of my body that suffered the day after. Guess that crouch to release the ball takes some toll.
There wasn't much progress to speak of in the ASCRS app this month, mostly because I got sidetracked for a brief side project: updating the DynDataAccess plugin. Somebody actually created a bunch of new comment commands to expand it and sent it to me. 8D It's nice to be validated in the extra effort I went to making that an open project. I had to do a fair bit of work myself to update the official plugin, though. I examined the commands and found that some of them weren't named in the best possible convention; the big thing was that a bunch of them had "hero" in the name, but they were being referenced according to their position in the party rather than their hero ID, so I changed those to "party_member". I also rearranged everything according to the order of the data classes used as listed in the DynRPG website. And the guy who made the additions didn't provide any test scenarios, so that fell to me. Not to bash him, any work done is better than none as I mention in the project's readme, but that was a decent bit of slog remaining for me. I got stuck for quite a bit and nearly thought I'd run into a mysterious bug of DynRPG itself because I got some parameters out of order for a command and referenced a monster that didn't exist, causing the game to crash. X) I also can't say I did a thorough job of testing the new commands, just the "happy path" of confirming that a command I'd expect to work with some chosen parameters does work. Anyway, that's all updated and posted on the DynDataAccess utility thread.
On the Zelda RPG, Esava and Tommy managed to pick off quite a few of the lizalfos through the tactic of Tommy baiting small groups of them with hints of his presence and Esava ambushing them from the rooftops once they were drawn away. But there were too many to deal with entirely this way before they caught on and started converging. Esava made a last stand imitating the fighting style of Naruto's Killer B, tucking short swords into every place he could grip them and jumping around in the midst of the enemy. AND THEN THE CAVALRY ARRIVED, literally! A band of desert-dwellers from another village rode in on horseback and made mincemeat of the remaining lizalfos.
...But it turns out this village isn't on friendly terms with Esava's, they just hate lizalfos too. c.c Tommy and Esava were conked out and woke up in an underground prison. This, of course, was Tommy's time to shine. He pulled out a wire hidden in his boot, shaped it into a lockpick, and unlocked their cell while the guard was away getting water. Esava was then able to overpower the guard when he came back, and they headed up to the surface with Tommy on point as scout.
Meanwhile, let's give an update on the main plotline, which I haven't talked about much here because I haven't been very involved in it personally. X) Ganondorf went from Termina back to Hyrule through the portal in Clock Town, then sealed it behind himself so that the heroes who were questing there would have a hard time following him. He then proceeded to go to Gerudo Fortress (which, remember, is occupied by the anti-Ganondorf Gerudo Remnant led by Nabooru) and demanded Princess Zelda's surrender. Zelda came out rather than let her allies suffer Ganondorf's wrath, and hey-presto, it's crystal prison time again for her. Ganondorf did dispel the dark cloud that was keeping Hyrule in permanent night once he had Zelda, on the bright side (ba-dum-TSS). So now Hyrule is pretty firmly under Ganondorf's thumb, and the heroes in Termina are finding alternate routes back to Hyrule.
Freedom Planet:
I got this for "free" using gold points from my My Nintendo account. They make something old but decently worthwhile available that way every once in a while (well, nearly all the time actually, but more often than not it's something I already have).
Freedom Planet is like a Sonic the Hedgehog game, except not made by Sega and not using the same fictional universe. You could almost call it a fangame. There are plenty of references to Sonic. The name itself is a reference to one of the old cartoons, in which Sonic is part of a group that call themselves the Freedom Fighters and are trying to liberate their planet, Mobius, from Dr. Robotnik's control. There's a cutscene in which the main protagonist Lilac says her sidekick friend Carol is "like her tail." The themes of the stages echo memorable stages from the Sonic series, like an underground mine and a flashy urban area with an occasional giant slot machine (although these ones give out a fixed prize when activated and only work once).
Not being a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, especially the 2D entries, I didn't have huge expectations of liking Freedom Planet. I will say that the developers apparently were not wholly blind to the weaknesses of Sonic and made a number of subtle design decisions that eliminated or at least mitigated those problems. The top running speed is not as high in Freedom Planet as in Sonic, and there are fewer situations in which running headlong on the provided path will slam you into danger with no time to react (although there are still a fair few situations where you might miss out on optional goodies that way). A large part of the reason for this is that most enemies aren't ubiquitously dangerous to touch; they have to be doing a specific attack action to hurt you, so if you run into them unexpectedly, very likely you'll go past them without damage. On the flip side of that coin, merely jumping isn't how you attack -- you have to do a specific attack of your own, and very few enemies can be taken out with a single basic attack. Also, instead of the peculiar mechanic of dropping rings when hit and being able to stay alive as long as you manage to recover at least one of them, Freedom Planet uses a fairly common style of health meter with pick-ups to restore it.
Despite improvements, Freedom Planet still suffers from some of the foibles of Sonic, and arguably some new ones of its own. Specifically because the enemies are tougher, progress tend to be slower and more painful, especially in the later stages. Some of the boss fights require experimentally finding ways to put yourself in a position where the boss's next attack won't hit you. Unless you already know the stage and are making an effort to speed-run it, it can take upwards of half an hour to complete a stage, and THE GAME WILL NOT SAVE until you actually start the next stage -- which may not be until after a potentially lengthy cutscene. (On the plus side, if you quit after the save and come back later, they'll replay the cutscene, so you can skip the cutscene in order to save if you're in a hurry -- but I had to find that out the hard way.)
Speaking of the cutscenes, they put a fair bit of that into this game. I suspect the characters originated as Sonic fan-characters, and the creators wanted to show off their personas as much as they could. X) It's a bit hypocritical of me to poo-poo that after I used my own role-playing characters in a game, but I hope the cutscenes in The What-Iffers in: Final Fancy didn't hold up the gameplay too much. Getting back to the topic at hand, Freedom Planet's cutscenes follow the old style of using in-engine sprites and movements as much as possible, augmented with text-boxes and some special animations for dramatic poses and talking. There was actually one instance where the protagonists have to bow before royalty, and it uses their in-game ducking poses for it...and they actually point it out by having Lilac whisper to Carol that she needs to bow. -.-; I'm not sure whether they intended that as lampshade-hanging ("Haha, look at our conformance to cheap old animation tricks that were used on systems with limited graphical storage!") or just to clarify that they were bowing in-story when some players may not recognize it as such. There's also voice-acting to go along with the text, but not great voice-acting -- it felt annoyingly slow to me.
Bottom line? If you have stronger nostalgia glasses about Sonic than I do, you might enjoy Freedom Planet quite a lot -- or conversely, hate it for its differences. X) Personally I did get some fun out of it -- enough to slog through it as all three playable characters even -- and I regard it as a pretty good indie effort, but it's far from a favorite, and I may never bother with the sequel. (Although now that I write that, it occurs to me it'll probably end up in a Humble Bundle sooner or later...)
Tales from the Borderlands:
The Humble Bundle churn continues. Tales from the Borderlands is another TellTale Games offering, set in the Borderlands fiction. It's in the same general style of mildly-interactive movie that TellTale has focused on since their The Walking Dead series. There's one thing that sets it apart from the others, though (at least, the ones I've played). It's not even a true mechanical difference, but it's psychologically interesting: you play as two different characters at different moments. This gives you an opportunity to roleplay different personalities without the cognitive dissonance of having one character behave in radically different ways when you start choosing inconsistent options. Personally, I usually play the characters using the nicest dialogue options and such available, both because I'm like that and because it seems like the most likely path to get cooperation from the NPCs. And that's what I did with the first protagonist...but then when I was introduced to the second one, I thought, "Hey, let's try making her as nasty and cynical as possible, just to see how the game reacts to that!" X) (The answer is that it doesn't seem to make too much difference, although there was a point near the end where I had to choose between some NPCs to form a team and there were some that weren't available because of choices I'd made).
As for story, for obvious reasons you aren't one of the gun-toting, psycho-blasting, nigh-invincible murder hobos the main Borderlands series stars. Those characters are encountered throughout, sometimes as allies and sometimes as enemies, but you start out following an employee of Hyperion -- a soulless bureaucracy whose business model is to sell weaponry to the lawless population of Pandora while simultaneously working to track down the legendary Vaults containing untold riches in alien technology. This corporate lackey catches wind of an opportunity to acquire a Vault Key, simultaneously one-upping his rival. So he heads down to Pandora with his buddy from accounting to seal the deal on the artifact. Much hilarity with the bandit locals ensues before they finally make it to the meeting place and negotiate the trade...the result of which is left a little ambiguous while the game rewinds a bit and introduces the other protagonist. Who is part of a con outfit which FABRICATED the Vault Key. Yep, it's fake -- but that won't stop them all from getting whirled into an adventure to find a real Vault Key and claim the treasure of a Vault. It's kind of hard to explain if you're not familiar with Borderlands (I've only played the first game myself), and story is about all a TellTale title has, so I won't spoil much of it.
Bottom line? Same ol' same ol' from TellTale Games, which isn't to say it's bad, although Borderlands isn't a favorite fictional setting of mine. Get it if you're a fan of either TellTale or Borderlands.
Art of Balance:
Yet another game I got for free through My Nintendo. Art of Balance is a game about stacking blocks on each other without, you guessed it, having them fall over. There are versions for Wii, 3DS, Wii U, and Switch (oh, and PlayStation 4); the one I have is for Wii U. It's played with the Wii U gamepad's touchscreen, although you can also use a Wii remote if you like, and there's a multiplayer option that makes Wiimotes a practical necessity.
You might think a game with that premise is all about a delicate touch and fine placement, but it's really more about the order, position, and orientation you place the blocks in. Each stage starts with three blocks available to choose from and several others shown in outline. Each time you place a block, a new one becomes available until the outlines have been exhausted. Then once all blocks have been placed, if the structure stays standing (or at least nothing hits the ground) for three seconds, you win. Also, while the location of the block you're placing is fairly fine-grained, the rotations you're allowed to do are in strict 45-degree increments. That actually makes things easier for the most part since you can be sure you're placing something flat, although there are situations where the surface you're trying to stack on turns out not to align with that.
The game keeps things interesting by introducing new mechanics along the way. There are blocks that shatter when you stack three other blocks on top of them, blocks that shatter a short time after you put anything on top, volatile blocks that shatter if they touch EACH OTHER, and blocks that REVERSE GRAVITY when they're placed. There are also different bases on which to build, including ones with some blocks already placed and "scales" wherein placing weight on one base causes it to sink and another to rise.
There's really not that much more to say. There's no story, the graphics are pretty but not hugely varied, there are only a few pieces of music (mostly relaxing stuff), and it all boils down to a slew of abstract puzzles. If you like that sort of thing, it's a pretty good value for your buck. Otherwise, don't bother.