Still working from home
Technicolor Thunderstorm by Hylian Lemon
Remix of Dark Mountain Forest from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
When I hear this tune, I picture a dance troupe dressed up as the multi-colored Links from Four Swords, doing a number that looks like they're exploring a dungeon together -- holding up lanterns, moving in single file while peeking around each other's shoulders, breaking out to tumble around imaginary dangers, etc. Could make a very amusing performance, I think.
Hi all. Pretty quiet month. I understand restrictions are expected to start lifting soon, although of course that'll be partly decided at state/county/city levels. Looking forward to getting a haircut. e.e
In ASCRS development, I've got the Character Panel mostly working, with the Ability panel as a sort of subservient panel to that. I previously had a New Character Panel used specifically for the initial creation of a Character, but I've reworked it so that the Character Panel handles that too. It turned out a little ticklish because one of the fields that needs to be editable is the Character's name, but I don't want it to be editable after initial creation because the name is used as a key in data storage (lesson for future projects: always use a hidden unique ID key for data structures, even if you think you won't need to change the names of things at run-time and it would be more convenient to use that as a key).
I also finally found out how to get Unity's layout components to line things up nicely without distorting the sizes. Turns out that in addition to the containing object having a layout driver component, the individual UI elements need to have a layout element component which lets you set things like their minimum and preferred size and how much of any extra space there happens to be they should take up compared to other elements in the group (the naming conventions on it are a little unintuitive). I imagine I'll go back and redo the layouts of just about everything when I have some time.
Finally, as an experiment I tried deploying the ASCRS to an Android device. It took some finangling, but I finally managed to get it running on my Fire Tablet. It seemed to work in the essentials, but a lot of UI elements did not display for some reason. I could tap on the spot I knew a button should be and it would give the expected response, but it wasn't visible. I might try to fix this eventually, as it would be rather cool to have my app on a smart device ready to pull out and run a scene with on the spur of a moment. ;) That's pretty unlikely to ever come up, though, and it's very likely the problem is in the Unity-Android integration (or maybe Fire Tablet specifically) which I have no control over.
In Ninja Burger RPG, my little brother was the GM again. His character Brutus is of a canine alien species from a sci-fi story he's been writing for a while now, and as you may recall, in our last session he caught rabiesallergies from my brother-in-law's character, Baxter. Conveniently, our next delivery was to a research base where a cure for the disease has been developed...on the Moon. We encountered several other species from my brother's story world in our excursion, starting with the shark-like owner of a trebuchet store. Yes, we used a trebuchet to launch our delivery van up to the Moon, with much guffawing discussion amongst the physics-minded members of our play group as to the effects there would be from the necessarily very rapid acceleration involved if this wasn't such a cartoonish setting. Anyway, we succeeded in both delivering the order of food and obtaining some serum, curing Brutus. It was ruled that Baxter, the source of the ailment, could be cured as well, but it will take regular treatments over the course of the next few sessions...and of course he'll have to come up with a new weakness for his character. On the return trip, the problem of reentering earth's atmosphere without burning up was treated a tiny bit more seriously than getting out in the first place, and assigned a task difficulty that was, if I recall correctly, literally impossible without bonuses -- a 13 or maybe 14 from 2d6. But with the whole group throwing in bonuses to a single roll, it turned out doable. My character Koseitama managed to contribute +4 between her trick umbrella weapon being used as a makeshift drag chute and her magical talent for manipulating the elements of nature, like the air they were falling through. What would've happened if the dice had not been on our side as we careened down I don't know, but as it is we survived.
On Zelda RPG, after Daray and Artifa got back to the island in the middle of what used to be Lake Hylia, they got a surprise visit from Majora. Majora informed them that it was he and Ghirahim who trapped Ganondorf in the 'place between dimensions', but he wouldn't try to stop his return. In fact, he'd assist in it...for a favor. He gave them a sack of masks that are replicas of himself, and told them the masks act as his eyes and ears. Furthermore, they contain a potential devil's deal: the wearer can draw upon Majora's power, but once they do so, they are obligated to obey any commands they receive from him, for the rest of their life. Majora's condition for helping to bring Ganondorf back was that the masks be distributed and worn amongst the Yiga -- not necessarily used, but of course with a clan of evil-serving ninja there are bound to be those who yield to the temptation. Artifa did all the talking on the Yiga side, and she was circumspect in her responses, saying she had no intention of even wearing one herself, but she may find some people who were interested in them. She managed to finangle a remote-control beetle from Majora in exchange for this, with the question of Majora helping with bringing Ganondorf back still open for negotiation.
Hollow Knight:
Another indie darling! I actually didn't get this from a Humble Bundle (though it's been in at least one), I asked for it as a Christmas gift and my Dad bought it for me. Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania with a rather peculiar aesthetic. Most of the environments are rather dark and foreboding, and the story deals with solemn themes. Yet the characters, including the enemies, are drawn in a simple, cartoonish, traditional cel-animation style, and it's hard to feel too afraid. Except maybe in Deepnest, the spider area. e.e Yick.
The story is that you are a bug in a world of sentient, slightly humanoid bugs. You are fed lore primarily through chats with NPCs; the mayor of the town where you start assumes you've come to seek fortune in the abandoned kingdom of Hallownest which is buried beneath the town (and being a silent protagonist, you couldn't contradict him even if you knew what you were after). You soon learn that most of the bugs wandering around down there are soulless husks animated by some sort of infection. With your trusty sword (although they refer to them as "nails" in-universe) you carve a path through the subterranean province, discovering areas like a mossy forest, a fungus-filled cavern with acidic pools, and the capital city of the dead kingdom. And the aforementioned claustrophobic Deepnest where spiders literally come screeching out of nowhere to attack you. :P Along the way you'll gain new capabilities like air-dashing, double-jumping, and even blasting yourself through the air in a straight horizontal line until you hit something. You'll also gradually pick up pieces of the history of Hallownest, its god-king, the infection that destroyed it...and your own place in the legend.
Hollow Knight has a reputation as a tough-as-nails game, and as you get into the later areas, especially the optional challenges, that reputation holds true. Some of those optional challenges dip into fake difficulty, primarily by introducing random elements. It's one of those design lessons that sounds obvious, but can easily bite you if you're not on guard against it: make very sure that any permutation of challenges your game produces can be humanly overcome without knowing beforehand what it will be. Arguably an occasional impossibility can be acceptable depending on the genre and intended audience (Solitaire occasionally produces impossible games for example), and "humanly" is a subjective benchmark, but it's a good principle to at least aim for. Anyway, Hollow Knight IMHO has a few definitely unfair optional challenges.
The game is also a bit less generous than most modern Metroidvanias about the exploration aspect. Usually you're given an automatic mapping system that displays areas you've already been, which Hollow Knight does as well...but only after you've stumbled across the map-making NPC in a given region and paid him for his craft. Furthermore, any parts of the region you've been to aren't added to the map until you find a bench to sit down and rest. Finally, if you want important things like benches and shops to be marked on the map, you have to buy the associated pins from the map-maker's wife back in town. One set of pins is for the player to manually place their own marks, but I didn't figure out how to use them until I was nearly through the game (you have to press the main action button while looking at the map in a certain mode, with no indication of that). It would've been handy to mark spots that I couldn't get past due to obstacles I didn't have the ability for yet, would've saved me some time checking those places on the edges of the map that looked unexplored. I recall getting stuck for a good while early on, even to the point where I started looking things up online to make sure I wasn't missing some method of getting past things.
One more gripe: this is one of those games where graphical wow takes priority over gameplay clarity. There are foreground elements which can block your vision, usually not in places where it matters much, but it can happen. There's also plenty of splashy particle effects when you beat enemies, especially bosses...and occasionally bosses consist of multiple foes at once, so you're still in danger while one of them is bleeding orange over half the screen. Most importantly, there are effects that obscure the edges of the screen (and muffle the sound) for a bit after you take a hit, especially once you get down to one health point remaining. So once you take a hit, it very often chains into being blindsided by the next attack. And the bosses tend to make the screen shake even when you don't get hit. :P
That all sounds fairly negative, but as usual it's easier to spot and describe things that went wrong than things that went right. Despite some foibles, Hollow Knight is an enjoyable quest for experienced gamers, in part because it is fairly challenging if you go for more completion than less. It feels good to get skilled at the advanced aspects of the game like bouncing off enemies and hazards by striking downward and utilizing the combination of double-jump and air-dash to reach otherwise impossible places.
Bottom line? A challenging and engaging Metroidvania with a few annoying aspects. Get it if you like explorational action platformers.
Remix of Dark Mountain Forest from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Click to viewWhen I hear this tune, I picture a dance troupe dressed up as the multi-colored Links from Four Swords, doing a number that looks like they're exploring a dungeon together -- holding up lanterns, moving in single file while peeking around each other's shoulders, breaking out to tumble around imaginary dangers, etc. Could make a very amusing performance, I think.
Hi all. Pretty quiet month. I understand restrictions are expected to start lifting soon, although of course that'll be partly decided at state/county/city levels. Looking forward to getting a haircut. e.e
In ASCRS development, I've got the Character Panel mostly working, with the Ability panel as a sort of subservient panel to that. I previously had a New Character Panel used specifically for the initial creation of a Character, but I've reworked it so that the Character Panel handles that too. It turned out a little ticklish because one of the fields that needs to be editable is the Character's name, but I don't want it to be editable after initial creation because the name is used as a key in data storage (lesson for future projects: always use a hidden unique ID key for data structures, even if you think you won't need to change the names of things at run-time and it would be more convenient to use that as a key).
I also finally found out how to get Unity's layout components to line things up nicely without distorting the sizes. Turns out that in addition to the containing object having a layout driver component, the individual UI elements need to have a layout element component which lets you set things like their minimum and preferred size and how much of any extra space there happens to be they should take up compared to other elements in the group (the naming conventions on it are a little unintuitive). I imagine I'll go back and redo the layouts of just about everything when I have some time.
Finally, as an experiment I tried deploying the ASCRS to an Android device. It took some finangling, but I finally managed to get it running on my Fire Tablet. It seemed to work in the essentials, but a lot of UI elements did not display for some reason. I could tap on the spot I knew a button should be and it would give the expected response, but it wasn't visible. I might try to fix this eventually, as it would be rather cool to have my app on a smart device ready to pull out and run a scene with on the spur of a moment. ;) That's pretty unlikely to ever come up, though, and it's very likely the problem is in the Unity-Android integration (or maybe Fire Tablet specifically) which I have no control over.
In Ninja Burger RPG, my little brother was the GM again. His character Brutus is of a canine alien species from a sci-fi story he's been writing for a while now, and as you may recall, in our last session he caught rabiesallergies from my brother-in-law's character, Baxter. Conveniently, our next delivery was to a research base where a cure for the disease has been developed...on the Moon. We encountered several other species from my brother's story world in our excursion, starting with the shark-like owner of a trebuchet store. Yes, we used a trebuchet to launch our delivery van up to the Moon, with much guffawing discussion amongst the physics-minded members of our play group as to the effects there would be from the necessarily very rapid acceleration involved if this wasn't such a cartoonish setting. Anyway, we succeeded in both delivering the order of food and obtaining some serum, curing Brutus. It was ruled that Baxter, the source of the ailment, could be cured as well, but it will take regular treatments over the course of the next few sessions...and of course he'll have to come up with a new weakness for his character. On the return trip, the problem of reentering earth's atmosphere without burning up was treated a tiny bit more seriously than getting out in the first place, and assigned a task difficulty that was, if I recall correctly, literally impossible without bonuses -- a 13 or maybe 14 from 2d6. But with the whole group throwing in bonuses to a single roll, it turned out doable. My character Koseitama managed to contribute +4 between her trick umbrella weapon being used as a makeshift drag chute and her magical talent for manipulating the elements of nature, like the air they were falling through. What would've happened if the dice had not been on our side as we careened down I don't know, but as it is we survived.
On Zelda RPG, after Daray and Artifa got back to the island in the middle of what used to be Lake Hylia, they got a surprise visit from Majora. Majora informed them that it was he and Ghirahim who trapped Ganondorf in the 'place between dimensions', but he wouldn't try to stop his return. In fact, he'd assist in it...for a favor. He gave them a sack of masks that are replicas of himself, and told them the masks act as his eyes and ears. Furthermore, they contain a potential devil's deal: the wearer can draw upon Majora's power, but once they do so, they are obligated to obey any commands they receive from him, for the rest of their life. Majora's condition for helping to bring Ganondorf back was that the masks be distributed and worn amongst the Yiga -- not necessarily used, but of course with a clan of evil-serving ninja there are bound to be those who yield to the temptation. Artifa did all the talking on the Yiga side, and she was circumspect in her responses, saying she had no intention of even wearing one herself, but she may find some people who were interested in them. She managed to finangle a remote-control beetle from Majora in exchange for this, with the question of Majora helping with bringing Ganondorf back still open for negotiation.
Hollow Knight:
Another indie darling! I actually didn't get this from a Humble Bundle (though it's been in at least one), I asked for it as a Christmas gift and my Dad bought it for me. Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania with a rather peculiar aesthetic. Most of the environments are rather dark and foreboding, and the story deals with solemn themes. Yet the characters, including the enemies, are drawn in a simple, cartoonish, traditional cel-animation style, and it's hard to feel too afraid. Except maybe in Deepnest, the spider area. e.e Yick.
The story is that you are a bug in a world of sentient, slightly humanoid bugs. You are fed lore primarily through chats with NPCs; the mayor of the town where you start assumes you've come to seek fortune in the abandoned kingdom of Hallownest which is buried beneath the town (and being a silent protagonist, you couldn't contradict him even if you knew what you were after). You soon learn that most of the bugs wandering around down there are soulless husks animated by some sort of infection. With your trusty sword (although they refer to them as "nails" in-universe) you carve a path through the subterranean province, discovering areas like a mossy forest, a fungus-filled cavern with acidic pools, and the capital city of the dead kingdom. And the aforementioned claustrophobic Deepnest where spiders literally come screeching out of nowhere to attack you. :P Along the way you'll gain new capabilities like air-dashing, double-jumping, and even blasting yourself through the air in a straight horizontal line until you hit something. You'll also gradually pick up pieces of the history of Hallownest, its god-king, the infection that destroyed it...and your own place in the legend.
Hollow Knight has a reputation as a tough-as-nails game, and as you get into the later areas, especially the optional challenges, that reputation holds true. Some of those optional challenges dip into fake difficulty, primarily by introducing random elements. It's one of those design lessons that sounds obvious, but can easily bite you if you're not on guard against it: make very sure that any permutation of challenges your game produces can be humanly overcome without knowing beforehand what it will be. Arguably an occasional impossibility can be acceptable depending on the genre and intended audience (Solitaire occasionally produces impossible games for example), and "humanly" is a subjective benchmark, but it's a good principle to at least aim for. Anyway, Hollow Knight IMHO has a few definitely unfair optional challenges.
The game is also a bit less generous than most modern Metroidvanias about the exploration aspect. Usually you're given an automatic mapping system that displays areas you've already been, which Hollow Knight does as well...but only after you've stumbled across the map-making NPC in a given region and paid him for his craft. Furthermore, any parts of the region you've been to aren't added to the map until you find a bench to sit down and rest. Finally, if you want important things like benches and shops to be marked on the map, you have to buy the associated pins from the map-maker's wife back in town. One set of pins is for the player to manually place their own marks, but I didn't figure out how to use them until I was nearly through the game (you have to press the main action button while looking at the map in a certain mode, with no indication of that). It would've been handy to mark spots that I couldn't get past due to obstacles I didn't have the ability for yet, would've saved me some time checking those places on the edges of the map that looked unexplored. I recall getting stuck for a good while early on, even to the point where I started looking things up online to make sure I wasn't missing some method of getting past things.
One more gripe: this is one of those games where graphical wow takes priority over gameplay clarity. There are foreground elements which can block your vision, usually not in places where it matters much, but it can happen. There's also plenty of splashy particle effects when you beat enemies, especially bosses...and occasionally bosses consist of multiple foes at once, so you're still in danger while one of them is bleeding orange over half the screen. Most importantly, there are effects that obscure the edges of the screen (and muffle the sound) for a bit after you take a hit, especially once you get down to one health point remaining. So once you take a hit, it very often chains into being blindsided by the next attack. And the bosses tend to make the screen shake even when you don't get hit. :P
That all sounds fairly negative, but as usual it's easier to spot and describe things that went wrong than things that went right. Despite some foibles, Hollow Knight is an enjoyable quest for experienced gamers, in part because it is fairly challenging if you go for more completion than less. It feels good to get skilled at the advanced aspects of the game like bouncing off enemies and hazards by striking downward and utilizing the combination of double-jump and air-dash to reach otherwise impossible places.
Bottom line? A challenging and engaging Metroidvania with a few annoying aspects. Get it if you like explorational action platformers.