Nerd, from the Brontoforumus, asked me to write about why Darkstalkers is or is not the best game ever. Well, all I’ll say to that directly is that Vampire Savior is a perfectly playable, good game with a high execution requirement. It’s also the game where Daigo Umehara made a name for himself, after he switched from Pyron to Bishamon. The top tier is a bit too strong and the bottom tier is a bit too weak, but thats indicitive of all games of that era. If you wanna play a Darkstalkers game, Vampire Savior is as good as it gets.

But thats not a very interesting post. Theres not much to say about how fun Darkstalkers is to play — it succeeds at what it tries to do for the most part and is playable. But what IS interesting is how massively influential the series was. While Street Fighter laid the foundation for fighters to follow, Darkstalkers went TOTALLY BATSHIT CRAZY and tried to buck every trope they established. They introduced crazy new systems and piled them on top of each other. The series was highly experiemental and most modern games take more then a handful of systems from the series.

Obviously lets begin with the original Darkstalkers. Darkstalkers was released just before Street Fighter Super Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha. What systems did this game have?

Chain Combos: Making normals cancel into other normals — the feature seen in the majority fighters these days. MVC2, Guilty Gear, Blaz Blue, TvC, Melty Blood… All these games and more owe this system to Darkstalkers. Called Hunter Chains (or maybe they weren’t called that until the next game?) they allowed you to, in a precise way, chain a number of normal moves together, going from lightest to strongest attack. This is actually more liberal then a lot of systems that exist today. The system was also put into the first Street fighter alpha, but was dropped. Guy and a few other characters retained their chains, but generally speaking, their role was vastly reduced. These chains only grew more liberal as the series progressed.

Enhanced Air Mobilty: … Air dashing and double jumping? Yeeeeah. All the way back in 94. Darkstalkers was the first game to bring fighting into the air. These systems aren’t universal like in Guilty Gear, but there were characters who possessed these abilities even back then.

Air Blocking: Another staple these days. Also featured in the Alpha series. Air blocking was necessary to allow the crazy air mobility to work. At this point you have every air system that modern, high mobility games use… back in 94.

Dashing… at all!: Oh wait you couldn’t even dash at all in any game before Darkstalkers. Where you can dash on the ground… AND the air.

Guard Cancels: Oh you know., Alpha Counters. Attacking out of blockstun, another hallmark of the Alpha Series existed first in Darkstalkers. Pretty much every god damned game ever uses Guard Cancels these days.

Flight Modes: Like Sentinel in MVC2 and other games. In fact, the other crazy thing with this is it uses the super meter. This game also had the first utility supers, wow!

It also featured even more ideas that were used in other games. I-no’s airdash in Guilty Gear is based off of Morrigan’s airdash. Faust can walk while crouching like Felicia. The game also featured a unique superbar immediately after super Bars were concieved. The bar would drain while filled and while active would cause special moves to have more effects, like additional damage or better properties. You could also use a super before it totally drained. This wasn’t a popular system, but it was indicitive of the creativity that went into Darkstarker’s design. There were other quirky decisions too. Fireballs would clash in different ways based on distance traveled and the strength used, based on the amount of ‘momentum’ they had left. So you could overpower a projectile by countering it with another one at close range. You also had weird ideas like Bishamon, who had a dragon punch that could ONLY be done as a 1 frame reversal.

Vampirer Hunter/Nightwarriors was Darkstalkers sequal that spawned even MORE new systems.

Stockable Meter: Now you can hold maaany levels of super. 99 levels I beleive, more then you could ever possibly use.

EX Attacks: These were actually called ES attacks (while EX attacks were basically Supers), but they were bigger, badder special moves that used the same meter as your super. Tons of games use this. SF3 and SF4, Guilty Gear with it’s Force Breaks and, in ways, FRCs, Melty Blood., etc etc.

Pursuit: Not to popular, but saw a lot of use in the Samsho games. Involves diving after grounded opponents for a free hit. You lose a chance to mix them up, but you get extra damage.

Tech Roll: Very common in a lot of games (SFA, SF3, SF4, and BB at the least), it allows the defender a safer way to get up by rolling after a knockdwn.

The game also featured a number of other weird systems, like auto-block mode, that lets you block for free when not attacking up to 10 times in exchange for not having the ability to control your chain combos.

Vampire Savior, the ‘best’ of the DarkStalkers games brought even more systems into the fold. None of these are quite as overt, but they are influential. You know Eddie from Guilty Gear? That whole concept comes from the Helper Dark Forces in Darkstalkers. The game also features variations on Alpha style custom combos (having your shadow be on the opposite side of the opponent to negate pushback for example). Super and Hyper armor moves are created — moves that can absorb one or many hits before being interrupted. It also added push-block, a feature that would appear in MVC2, GG, BB and TVC. The game even made some goofy changes. Life bars drain the opponent direction. A match is really one big round. Not necessarily good changes, but it shows how ‘out of the box’ DS was trying to be when compared to Street Fighter.

After Vampire Savior, Vampire Savior 2 and Vampire Hunter 2 came out. Both these games were like Savior, but with slightly different casts due to memory limitations. These gimmick releases were sort of ignored to my understanding. Still, Darkstalkers had a profound influence on later fighting games. I’m probably missing even more examples of new moves and character archetypes. Darkstalkers is easily the second most influential fighting game ever made, regardless of the playability of any individual title. These systems are EVERYWHERE and DS spit them out in mass. There was definitely a crazed genius involved in the creation of these games and while I don’t play them, I appreciate them fro their massive contribution to the genre.

Hope that’s good enough, Nerd.

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First attempt at pure digital painting! Woo!
It’s come a long way as you can see

I guess I’ll expound on Cassara and the Ignition Trigger a bit more. Additional information is with the original Ignition Trgger picture.

The Ignition Trigger is caused by the attraction of spirits to Cassara’s emotional state. Cassara creates something similar to a gravitational pull in astral space, attracting fire spirits. The effect is the same as the gravitational experiment with a sheet and balls. The big ball creates an impression and attracts smaller objects. As Cassara’s rage builds, eventually this energy gathers and creates even more force, until such a point that it creates a riff between the astral plane and physical space, similar to how a black hole. The fire enters the ‘real’ world and clings to Cassara and attacks her enemies based on her emotinal reactions to them.

The Grand Trigger is a level above that, where the spiritual boundry between physical space and astral space is suddenly shattered. While the magical fire still tends to Cassara’s whims, it ingulfs and destroys whats around her, besides what her will might explicitly spare. In the state Cassara usually is in to trigger a Grand Trigger, she usually isn’t looking to spare much! The release is like the bursting of a dam, with the initial release going off like a bomb.

Anyways on a technical level, this was done as Sai with no lineart as backing. This is basically my first attempt at pure digital painting. It was pretty fine to refine a blob of some base colors into this. I’m pretty happy how it came out and it took me less time than most of my more traditional illustrations.

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Again, DA blurb

I already gave Reese a rundown on the Hot for Teacher picture, but I’ll try and continue with some history with her.

So (as a brief catchup) Reese is a sharpshooter who was a cross dressing soldier in both World Wars do to divinely obtained immortality. She eventually ended up with the British S.I.S sometime sortly after the invasion of Normandy. By the end of the War, she finds (and initially shoots) Kayin, who is just as surprised as she is. Anyways, some random stuff.

Reese is Farsighted, though she possesses every acute vision at a distance, thus her glasses despite being a sniper. As an avid reader and for general convenience she wears thin, stlish glasses. Upon being gifted immortality, her ability to see far off objects has only grown, reacing a supernatural level. Reese has also developed an amazing intuition of ballistic weapons that allows her to accurately hit targets at extreme distances, though whether this is also a super natural occurance or simply a result of her massive accumulation of experience is unknown. Though most proficent in long distance shooting, Reese is skilled in combat with all classes of firearms. The gun pictured about is, a Luger P08 (properly called the “Pistole Parabellum 1908″), which Reese carries as her basic sidearm. It’s a pretty small gun, so it fits the roll, though it is a bit underpowered. I am tempted to have Reese possess one of the few .45 Lugers that were prototyped, but that seems a tad bit exotic and there would be better guns for situations where she would desire a larger cartridge.

Reese is an avid gun collector, owning an impressive amount of modern firearms, though they’d practically be considered antiques where she’s from. Since firearms have not progressed much further, they still consider to be very reliable weapons for her. A short list of her most used guns.

*Luger P08 (pictured)
*Mauser Karabiner 98k (Another sentimental weapon, though still extremely accurate and reliable)
*Dragunov SVD (More modern sniper rifle)
*Barrett XM500 (Anti Material Rifle)
*FN-Five-seveN (Yes it’s really capped like that. Low caliber, light weight, armor piercing self defense pistol)
*H&K .45 USP (Higher caliber, adaptable pistol)
*FN P90 (Because everyone has to use this god damned gun. Chambers the same rounds as the Five-seveN. SMG with a boxy bullpup design)
*H&K G36 (Highly customizabl, reliable assault rifle)
*MG3 (Modern version of the WWII German heavy machine gun)

Besides these and a few other weapons, Reese’s arsenal is for casual shooting and collecting (such as my personal favorite handgun, the Mauser c96)

Despite all her years as a soldier and further combat experience afterwards, Reese is a very relaxed individual. As mentioned in the last picture I did of Reese, her favorite hobby is Reesing and she enjoys boardgames. She is generally quiet and soft spoken, though she emits of an air of confidence. She is also extremely confident in her appearence and often gets flirtatious after a few drinks. Reese is generally the most prone to planning in her household, approaching situations in a more ponderous and methodical matter than Cassara and Kayin usually do. She almost never yells, though can still be angered. Reese’s anger is projected through stern, condescending speech. She is also has the capacity to deal with situations in a eerily cold and brutal fashion.

Reese’s favorite music tends to come from the 70s and 80s. After all the fighting she’d done, she was quick to dabble in the hippy movement. This was also about the same time she grew fond of dying her hair.

I think thats about all I can spit out about here I think.

I love typing up a frenzy for when I post a picture, though I doubt few people bother to read it. Probably doesn’t make much sense out of context. Also this picture was a remake of an older picture.

Old Reese

Comparing the two makes me feel good about how far I’ve come over the last few years.

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Okay, typical forum post rehash. Lets start with talking about why Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is a bad game and why fireballs are good for games.

Fireball lockdown in ST only occurs in a specific situation. A blocked, slow, followed by a fast fireball at the right range. Anything else has holes and these holes can be expertly disguised. Other thing to remember in ST — everything hurts a lot, BESIDES fireballs. Personally I find the strategy and tactics of dealing with fireballs one of the most rewarding aspects of the game. Slowly inching forward or using various gimmicks (Balrogs headbutt, Fei’s short chicken wing, a DP) to advance,followed by a good prediction at close enough range to nail them with a jump in combo that robs them of most of their life.

I tended to play the extreme ends of the spectrum — Shotos, Dee Jay and Guile or, alternatively, fireball vulnerable characters like Honda and Fei. It’s satisfying as hell to manuever through their attempted zoning before stuffing their fireball with a well spaced cr.fierce or Rekka combo. In non-HDR SF2, O.Sagat can be pretty dumb but generally, besides for a few matchups, fireballs are pretty fair, just knowledge intensive to properly apply and counter. Even then though, I could regularly win the Honda/Ryu matchup against pretty much anyone who didn’t totally main Ryu. The game really does reward subtly and knowledge.

As for defensive game — games with great defense are naturally kind of bad/boring. When the less sound move is to attack, the game starts rewarding nothing which can lead to not much of a game. If your game is going to have strong defensive systems, they need to not lead to strong offensive gains (like parry) and should instead allow you a chance to reset the situation (any type of pushblock). If you have a not of defensive systems (Guilty Gear), you need an even GREATER offensive force. Thats partially why Guilty Gear is so insane. The defensive options aren’t there to make defense strong, they’re their to keep you from just flat out being ran over. It’s a delicate balance.

Of course how defensive or offensive you like your game is up to personal preference, but I would venture an assumption that a defensive oriented game that was good (maybe CVS2? even with the RC bug, the game is viable) would still have significantly strong offense. Just not as crazy as Guilty Gear or Super Turbo. This is part of the reason why Yun owns bitches in 3s — Ginei-jin actually allows him to be offensive without much risk but with great potential rewards, while the rest of the cast mostly lacks that ability.

Parries do a lot more complicated damage than that. For one they severly weaken situational advantage. In ST, if I knock someone into the corner as Ryu, they are now in a very interesting disadvantage. They have to escape my fireball trap and once they do that, I will likely still be at a slight advantage. On top of that, various situations in other games have very different counters for different characters that lead to more dynamic game. The character interaction leads to unique risk/reward matrixes across the different matchups.

In 3S you are always one guess away from having initiative and that guess isn’t always a risky one. In SF2, if I think someone is going to sweep me I can go SHORYUKEN, and get some damage and a knockdown by clipping his foot. If I misstime, he can punish, and he if he does nothing he can really punish me. Since the Shoryuken when applies can beat almost anything (hell, you can shoryuken through fireballs if you time it right), it comes connected to a lot of recovery. Parries not so much. If I hit down expecting you to sweep and misstime, I get swept, sure… but if you do nothing? I lost nothing for making a potentially high reward guess.

Mind games are reduced to a simple “I thought he was going to do something and he didn’t and I was surprised!” which is pretty shallow. Whats even worse about parries is you can even tact them on to moves. Tap forward before attacking and pick up some random parries here and there — pros do it! It works!

As for fireballs, they’re bad even regardless of parries. Metallic Sphere and and EX whateverthehell Oro has are the two most useful protectiles. Remy ALMOST has a functional fireball game, but suffers from being a charge character with fireballs that aren’t appropriately strong for a charge character. Most other fireballs are simply used as a midrange poke. Fireballs and dealing with them are like, the hallmark of the SF series. Real combat at a distance is a thing few 2d fighters get right. The dynamic between a ‘zoner’ and a ‘rush down’ character is a classic kind of fight.

Instead of 3s when two characters are at max range they whiff medium punches to build meter. Booooo. Range advantages are also homogenized due to parries. Optimal range for most characters is within throw range, since thats the only time you have a sure fire parry counter and can exhibit some real pressure. There are a handful of exceptions (Chun’s stupid low forward), but the health of the range game is way worse then pretty much any game in the SF series.

Anyways I’m not sure what you meant by your fireball comment (… that Pros like strong fireballs because scrubs can’t deal with them? If so thats false, but I don’t know if thats what you meant), but the whole issue is much deeper and complicated than whatever you were implying.

Again though, this only begins to grow apparent as you get better. Don’t let me stop anyone from enjoying some 3S. There are great fighting game players that still enjoy the game despite it’s inherent flaws. For me, personally, it removes my favorite parts of the game. When I played it I only did so because Makoto was so god damned fun.

Now some stuff about Piracy.

Thief is a poor word for it. Piracy seems to be the right word, because it’s divorced from physical theft. The Twix argument is also bad. People directly lose money from direct theft. Piracy on the other hand has the same net effect as loaning games(though piracy is obviously illegal, but the theoretical loss is the same). Nothing physical is lost. Physical loss comes with the loss of manufacturing and distributional prices. When I pirate something, nothing is lost but potential consumer surplus.

Now this doesn’t make Piracy right. It makes it a less damaging crime per capita. Now this isn’t an excuse for piracy either, it’s just the facts of the matter. Anyways, I’m going to post something I wrote up on another forum.

“Quote:
Heh, it really is that simple. Many current software business models are just not sustainable. I really have no pity for companies losing money to piracy. We have companies releasing free products and are making major bank on it. Lets all just think about farmville for a moment and then all vomit in our mouths. And it’s not just the immoral, possibly criminal developers like Zynga. Tons of companies are making bank on free to play. Thats Korea’s entire MMO market. Play for free, pay for stuff!

Valve has also shown how to make money off the ‘traditional’ payment model. Featurized DRM that feels logical instead of arbitrary. Matchmaking and friend services. Access to sales that grabs consumer surplus. Companies like Ubisoft see steam and try and imitate it but only copy what benefits them. Thats not how you make reoccurring customers. You gotta be good to the consumer — not because you’re a nice guy, but because it makes money. Google supplies tons of free applications and service — not because they are the sweetest, cutest guys in the world, but because they designed a business model from the start that would profit from being good to the consumer.

Granted you still don’t need to be good to the consumer. Console secondary sales are being fucked with by all those free DLC offers. It’s not nice, but at least it’s smart. I just can’t feel bad for people who use a dated distribution model and then complains that they aren’t making ALL OF THE MONEY. You’re doing it wrong, get over it.”

Now I do post this dismissively of priacy. Not to absolve my self (my stance doesn’t), but in the sense that THIS IS LIFE.

If you are a company trying to make money in video games, you need to THINK about this. You need to think about how to MAXIMIZE PROFITS. Griping about piracy doesn’t do that. That potential money is mostly gone! Sure, you might pick up a few people who buy after they try, but thats it — that money was never yours. The consumer, for whatever reason (piracy, secondary sales, superior product elsewhere, whatever) has chosen not to give you their money. This isn’t a fairy tale land where just doing something entitles you to money — you have the forces of society and technology against you. You need smart business.

I say this also an an indy developer who plans to sell some games in the future. That shit is going to get pirated to hell, I’m sure. Thats life. But I’m more interested in the money people are willing to pay me for a product. Though personally (and I know this can’t apply to Nich who is part of a company), I’d rather someone pirate something I did then not play it at all. Now, my stance doesn’t change the matters of the law, but it does make the facts of business easier to folllow.

Now I don’t condone piracy, but I think people approach this issue all wrong. If your business model doesn’t support people playing fair, then you either need to accept that or find a new business model. Would you make a business model based on telling people secrets and promising them not to tell? When people tell all the secrets to everyone you could blame the consumers, but as a business man you need to realize your model sucks.

Some companies are just so clueless about this. As I said above, companies like Valve get this. Other companies like CryTek are cluuueless. Crytek recently stated that game Demos are a luxury for gamers that will soon disappear. What they’re really saying is ‘steal our game’. It’s hilariously detached from reality. This is amusing to me as someone who does work in Advertising, since, well…. DEMOS ARE ADS. YOU ARE ADVERTISING. YOU ARE DOING THIS NOT AS A SERVICE, BUT TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS. YOU WANT TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO BUY YOUR GAME.

No demo? People will torrent it and try it out anyways and then they’ll be all the less interested in possibly paying for it. Sometimes you need to accept reality.

Last topic here, I got this link…

http://kotaku.com/5516263/should-she-be-chainsawable

The question here is whether the new female character in GoW3 should be killable by the trademark chainsaw gun. This chick looks pretty tough too and also has a chain saw guns.

OF COURSE SHE SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE CUT IN HALF. SHES A DAMNED SOLDIER. THERE ISN’T A QUESTION HERE. ANYTHING LESS IS DAMAGING TO FEMALE EQUALITY.

If she was a civilian or something, sure, there might be a QUESTION but she is a badass soldier chick. There isn’t a question. She isn’t even showing off tits everywhere. Even though I don’t care about Gears, I find this refreshing. I find it offensive to think this woman needs any ‘protection’.

God, if I got a chance I’d chew Stephen Totilo’s head off for making such a retarded post. This is like… the singular dumbest thing I’ve ever read about a strong female protagonist.

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So lets start with the sad news. We put our dog, Pokey down yesterday. She was a corgi/border collie mix who was “hella smart”. Everyone loved this dog, though she wasn’t particularly playful or anything like that. She was just a good dog, plain and simple. So we put her down at 14. She was suffering from lymphomia and liver failure. It was a pretty sad thing to watch the life slowly fade out of her, but I was glad I was there for it. It’s also just about a year since Ozzy died, who was the other bestest dog ever.

This leaves us now with Sophie, the unbestest dog, and Ziggy, who is adorable and useless. Perhaps together they will form a semi-functional creature. We will love them regardless.

On a cooler note, I got some stuff floating around from school. My Pre-Press class had my group make an ad campaign for a videogame. Oddly we weren’t assigned a game, but whatever. Eventually my group decided on I Wanna Be the Guy. The project involved two print ads, a game case and a storyboard for a potential 15 second commercial. The billed game title was “I Wanna Be The Guy: DS!”.. Of course there won’t ever be an IWBTG for the DS, but it made a cute theoretical. So don’t get excited.

The first Ad was my favorite. The photo was taken by Jodi Contini, one of my two group members. She does pretty cool photography stuff. The concept for the ad was pretty simple. I actually put it together and finished it up. I also added the blood splatter. The ad was theoretically going to run in Nintendo Power (this is part of the project). I was shocked to see how cheap it is to run adds in NP! Just a few thousand, which is peanuts for advertising.

This isn’t the finished project, but I never had it in my hands at all. My other team member, Melissa Dooly worked this out in Illustrator. I thought it was pretty cool! Her sketches were part of the reason we went with IWBTG. The finish was just a little bit more shaded and add copy added to it so it could be a functional ad.

The game case is pretty simple. This was all me. It was fun to comb my mail for funny quotes. The front cover looks a bit cheesy but I think thats sort of appropriate? The back text could have been punchier too, but I decided to go with the websites traditional intro.

Melissa and I thought out the storyboard. I ended up making it with my shitty illustration skills, because Melissa was too busy finishing up her ad. I did have some initial sketches she did that I based it on. The storyboard speaks for it’s self, really.

I also made this Brave Earth profile minibook for another class. It’s a little bit goofier and based off of profiles from my wiki, so none of it is new information. I know a few of you guys have snooped through there, so nothing should be too surprising. Technically theres a few spoilers, so I’d take a pass if you still wanna be surprised when the game comes out, 50 years from now. :P

http://kayin.pyoko.org/minibook1.pdf

Also working on a bunch of little projects. Almost all of them have some sort of holdup. Eventually one of them will finish and I’ll have something to release, hopefully by the end of the summer if not sooner.

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Usual copypasta off my DA. I’m surprised I haven’t drawn anything weird like this sooner.

While joking about how I don’t have any ‘loli’ish characters or characters with terrible injuries, I had the idea for a girl that exhibited Zettai Ryouiki with…. artificial legs instead of stockings. I’m not sure how well I pulled that off, but over all I am very hapy with the picture in general. I ended up working out a character for her. She doesn’t fit into any contemporary time in the Brave Earth setting. Instead she exists in it’s hazy future. Recently I’ve been writing fluff on possible space travel and magic driven warping that would spread the setting out into the galaxy. She seemed the perfect fit there! So here’s a prototype history and bio for Rory McLochlainn, Starship engineer and amputee.

History: Born in an age of Galatic space travel, Rory was born on earth to a set of loving parents. They lived on an open ranch, which her father purchased upon retiring. Her father was a former spacestation engineer who spent his days of retirement tinkering away at a home-made spaceship. At a young age, Rory took interest in her father’s hobby and was often found trying to help him in his shop.

At the age of 10, Rory lost her father, as well as both her legs, when the ship suffered from a fuel explosion. Rory’s legs were severly burn and mangled, forcing both legs to be amputated above the knee. While initially devestated, Rory soon rebounded, studying science and engineering. At 12 she recieved neural implants at the base of her stumps, allowing automated prosthetics to be connected. Rory embraced her artifical limbs, leading her to tinker with them, upgrade them and eventually replace them with devices of her own design as she got older. Her thirst for both outerspace and self modification lead her to take many accelerated courses in physics and engineering while still in highschool. The thought of just going up into space was no longer enough for her — she began studying starships in the hopes of getting a job that would allow her to travel the stars.

Rory, while possessing no formal college education, is highly educated and studied in her chosen fields. She is naturally brilliant and possesses an intuitive understanding of machines and physics.

Personality: Is generally quiet but highly motivated. While not naturally outgoing, she can be very friendly and sociable when engaged in conversation. She tends to be a little sly and sarcastic, but rarely in a truly mean way. She is a bit of an eccentric and can be very silly in the right situations, sometimes lapsing into a very ‘hyper’ mood. Besides engineering and science, Rory enjoys the feeling of Zero-G, which she tends to enjoy without her artifical legs. She also enjoys music and exercise (which is partially required due to how much time she is willing to spend in Zero-G). As part of exercise and self defense, Rory practices taekwondo. While her form is lacking, her massive leg strength makes it a very dangerous defensive weapon.

Legs: Rory has titanium rods inserted deep within her femurs. The bolts are fused directly with the bone and the bone it’s self is reinforced to cope with the added stresses of large mechanical prosthetics. Nerves are bundled and passed through the center of the bolt and are connected to small CPUs for sending and recieving signals. These units are powered by any attacted artificial limbs, which also do the bulk of the actual processing.

Afer her first set of limbs, Rory has worked on constructing and modifying her own from spare parts. Rory’s primary set are designed for high performance and have strength that far surpasses normal human legs. This comes at the cost of weight, finesse and endurance. Rory’s thigh muscles must contribute to the movement of her heavier than average limbs, which adds to fatigue. Rory’s legs also recieve tactile information through Surface Acoustic Wave technology, giving her feeling throughout the entirety of her limbs. This is usually not favored by other users of high performance prothetics due to their nonstandard shape, which can lead to what many people consider ‘disturbing’ stimuli, such as physical contact deep within their precieved ‘phantom limbs’. Rory, due to her comfort with her artificial limbs, can not only tolerate these sensations, but finds them extremely natural. At this point she sees her artifical legs as more of a part of her then her former legs. Her legs are also all significantly taller then what her natural legs were estimated to be.

The legs batteries can sustain a 24 hour charge with modest use, but the batteries can be ran down in as little as an hour under the most intense abuse. Rory possesses other pairs of legs that, while lacking in the extreme strength of her primary pair, can go as long as a week without recharging. Almost as a point though, Rory avoid’s prosthetics that resemble real limbs, unless the situation calls for discretion

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The Escapist Posted an Article about the line between exploiting and not exploiting during online games. As a ‘Play to Win’ guy, I had some things to say that I posted on their forums. Here on out is all discussion from their forums, my individual posts seperated by a break.

Also let me point out that I don’t think the article is ‘wrong’. It tries to be unbias and is a decently good read. Anyways I’ll just post my initial response and a few rebuttals.

---

Hello, I’m Michael “Kayin” O’Reilly, creator of I Wanna Be the Guy, and I am here to disagree!

Actually to be fair I think the article was actually okay and pretty non-bias. Some of the examples were pretty weak (Sequence breaking in L4D2 and boomers using the kill command are the only things that even really seemed possibly unfair). Still, I got a few things to say.

I was an idler for TF2. Grinding was too much work, and I don’t find fun in receiving ‘alternative options’ the more I play. I want my options right away. I’ll decide when I’m ready for them. Now, if I was playing MW2 or something I’d understand. The game packaged as a multiplayer games where you level up and get new unlocks. TF2 on the other hand started as one thing and became something else. Suddenly there were unlocks, and grinding and all sorts of BS. I liked the new content but could not understand why it was not available to everyone from the get go. So when idling became possible, I idled. Then I ran the idler program to save power and CPU cycles.

When my items were removed, I was pissed. Not so much because I was ‘caught’ for ‘cheating’. They definitely had a case that it was cheating. So when I wrote an angry letter to Robin Walker, I did not complain that I was unfairly treated for cheating, I complained that they, and their amateurish unlock system drove me to cheat. The system was bad and myself, and many others cheated to avoid that undesirable part of the game. This should have been seen as a failure on their parts as game designers (I love Valve, but they seem prone to REALLY REALLY DUMB design decisions sometimes, like this or dynamic weapon pricing.)

What made matters worse is you could still use idle servers. The only difference between ‘cheating’ and ‘not cheating’ was cpu and memory usage.

Now I just grind for achievements though, because now the achievements are designed to be easily doable. They actually devalued achievements (not that I care at all, I think achievements are retarded, but I know some people love them) to support the unlock system. It’s all bad and valve should feel bad. And they did, so they made the most useless crafting system ever which only encouraged people to idle more to make hats. GREAT.

Anyways, the other thing I wanted to say….. Developer Intent is bubkis.

As a developer, when you release a game, THATS IT. Thats what the player has to play. Unless you patch it, its over. Trying to figure out what the developer was intending is stupid for a number of reasons. There are probably a number of obviously fair tactics the developers didn’t intend or think about. Players won’t and shouldn’t play in some sterile ‘what would jesus-imeandeveloper do?’ way. They figure out and exploit the nuances.

Games that are interesting are not interesting because the designers perfectly plotted every little detail of the game. That is umpossiblz. Instead, they make games interesting by creating environments where interesting nuances and details will emerge. Whether or not something is a glitch doesn’t exactly matter. Glitches and exploits have often been legitimized in games by the developers, and obviously intended tactics have been removed because the developer went “My god, what was I thinking!”

Straz:
I feeled compelled to mention the care package glitch in MW2.
People who used it used to tell me that it was in the game, and thus a legitimate stragegy.
It got removed, and if the developers didn’t see it as such, it mustn’t have been as such.
Yet they still beleived in it, until it was removed.

Well yeah, but are you saying that just because the developers removed it, that it wasn’t legit? Legit stuff gets removed all the time from games by developers. Developers are not infallible. They jump at things that are harmless and miss things that are horrible and they do so because they are humans with bias perceptions like the right of us.

So while that glitch was in the game it was fair to people to say it was legit. But once the developer removes it, thats it. It doesn’t matter if it was legit or not, you aren’t able to do it so theres no more discussion. Developers may be fallible, but the game code is the final ruling on everything and if they change that, what can ya do?

Frederf:
95% of the time anything that even raises the question “Is this legitimate?” guarantees the answer “No.” Human beings have a persistent habit of desperately trying to justify their behavior.

Quite the opposite in my experience. Unless it involves an external program, 95% of the time if people ask if it’s legitimate, my answer is pretty much always ‘yes, yes it is.’ This isn’t hard, since people gripe about EVERYTHING, and rarely on anything that is a significant problem. Maybe I’m a little bias here because I tend to play polished games. People who play MW2 online might have a different perspective. But REALLY? 95% no? Are you like…. a gaming Nun?

Anyways (and this is a little bit lateral to the discussion since this is single player) I’d like to say as someone who released a buggy game, as a developer, I LOVED seeing what people did with IWBTG. They’d find super obscure bugs and exploits that would make me just drop my jaw in amazement. Very few of these ‘interesting’ glitches got patched. I tired to remove stuff that made you invulnerable or made you teleport (though if you check youtube, I’ve clearly failed at that :P), but tons of other little exploits that were beneficial to the player were legitimized by me often as features. Things like that are part of the ‘lore’ of a video game. Part of the texture of a game that people can talk about, find, and explore. Certain bugs, glitches and exploits very much add to the character of games, often beneficially.

Anyways, for me (lol sirlin.net again), the line is whats in the game. If the game is so broken with exploits that I can’t have fun while playing my best, I don’t blame the community, I blame the developers. Fuzzy rules just lead to people being mad and each other and fracturing communities.

I do think developers should be more willing to speak out. I would have appreciated it if Valve came by sooner to say “No, idling is dumb, knock it off”, and then set to fix the problem. Communications can act as a stopgap solution before a REAL solution is implemented, but at the same time, depending on the exploit, that doesn’t mean some people can’t continue to safely perform it.

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katsabas:

Yeah, well, not everyone who plays MW wants to reach Championship level of skill. And while we are on it, if pro players are indeed playing as you reply they are, then the ones that promote fair play will just have to get better.

This is true, but those players aren’t going to be playing clan matches. If you’re getting into clan matches, it’s to create a comparison of skill.

Also, I bet a good percentage of MW players would SUCK at games like Braid and Wipeout HD.

This seems like such an unnecessary and silly jab that doesn’t seem to have a purpose in this discussion and probably isn’t even true if you’re talking about competitive players. Damn dirty cheating exploiters are the people most apt to figure out puzzles and the likes. I don’t even know what the hell you’re getting at.

About the line? Yeah, there is one. Proof? MW2 is full of overpowered equipment which I am not gonna get into at this point. I have seen players using glitches, left and right in this game. First it was the pillar in Underpass. Now, it is one of the exits to the underground tunnels in Wasteland. And even if that is fixed, we have the grenade launchers.

Thats not proof at all! In fact, thats like the OPPOSITE of truth. All that shit is going on — where is the line? No one knows! Where do you draw it? Even if you draw it at glitches the game is STILL broken. Is the line before LEGITIMATE AND INTENDED TACTICS? My god, that’d be terrible! There is no line. The only thing to learn here is MW2 is really really stupid.

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katsabas:

I am getting to the fact that due to the sheer number of shooters out there today, it is natural for someone to be adept to them. Try beating Zico in Wipeout HD or getting past Zone 75. Or even finish Braid. Those are games that require an amount of clairvoyance, detail and skill. Shooters teach you 3 things: shoot, kill, teabag.

How, exactly, is not proof? Have you seen any youtube videos about what I am actually referring to? There are quite a few of em. There is a difference between someone with a Care Package, Chopper Gunner, Nuke and someone with a UAV, Predator, Harrier Strike. If you cannot see the line, then hey, that’s who you are. No matter.

What a load of nonsense. Competitive FPS gameplay requires a vast amount of skills. Incredible amounts of situational awareness is required, as well. Subtle details compound the advantages and disadvantages of a situation… and lets forget how open ended aiming is as a skill. Comparing this to Braid? What? Reaaally? Braid was easy. It was a smart, clever, good game, but to say it, like it’s some big, serious challenge is hilarious. Even if it was, thats not important, just as I won’t deny the depth of Wipeout. What is more important is you clearly have not managed to grasp the depth that is possible in FPSs. Instead you just boil it down to three silly concepts.

And yes, that is still not proof. It’s proof because some things are better than other things? So what! So you might say “Lets get rid of all this stuff that is too good”, but you know what a lot of people say? The stuff that is too good IS the game. That is the fun bits, especially since these are part of the game.

The only proof I see is that MW2 is a terrible multiplayer game on any sort of serious level. Maybe you should apply some of that clairvoyance to understanding real game design matters, rather than being comfortable in ignorance. YOU see a ‘line’ and stop there. That is your limitation not mine. I see the line, but then I see the truth BEYOND the line in games I play. Watching people hit this wall is almost cute to me at this point.

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Heres a bunch of Game Design related posts I churned out on various forums I visit. Lets start with my ‘level design’ post which was supposed to become a full sized article. I’m lazy though.

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WELCOME TO LEVEL DESIGN WITH DR. KAYIN

What makes good level design? Such is mysterious! Many men could point and say “Behold! This level is the shizzle, for rizzle”, and fewer but still many could psay “I like things!” and point vigorously at things which are made of good and things that are made of bad and EVEN FEWER may actually design a stage, have it be good and likely still does not know what he’s talking about. He also does not get to point.

Even I designed I Wanna Be The Guy with no idea what I was doing. I merely had intuition and experimentation to go by, which led to good and bad decisions as I went along, but over time I came upon the understanding of a process. But before I go into my methods, I will raise the first question. Why is Super Metroid so good and why does its map beat the pants off of everything else in it’s genre?

Super Metroid does a lot of small things very well through attention to detail. It keeps you moving and it keeps you moving in an energetic way. It makes you do platforming that may almost feel like formality when looking at it from a distance and it flows from one area to the next. it is active and varied, pleasing to look at and fluid. So with that in mind I will go on to discuss my building blocks for a level. This can apply to any type of level (not metroidvanias excusively) so I will use broad elements.

Concept

Before you do anything, you generally need at least a vague concept, thinking about what you want to happen on this screen, adjacent screens. You want to know what real challanges you want to have, if any and you want to consider the pacing of the game in it’s entirety when you come ot this point. Sometimes even a passing thought in these areas are all you need.

When you begin placing a level down, be it in game or on paper, there are other things you need to take into consideration.

Movement

Moving is the key thing you do in most games and in platformers or FPSs or anything, I generally think of two general considerations.

Motion

Portable Castlevania’s biggest sin has always been indescript hallways with periodic enemies. No features. No platforms to jump on. No motion but the most basic of motions. Games in the mairo series have traditionally been very good at this. Even tiny touches such as changing the terrain elevation or needless platforms and asymetrical areas makes moving from point A and point B way more enjoyable.

Flow

Flow I think of as distinct from motion. A stage has good flow not when you necessarily do a lot of ‘unnecessary’ ‘motion’, but when the path the player takes flows naturally. In games with winding passageways and complicated maze like structures, flow is important to gently guide the player where he has to go. Super Metroid does this beautifully as their are few times where you have to blindly backtrack. You can proceed through the game almost entirely through a cyclical motion. In linaer games like Half-Life, good flow wll help make the player not feel rail roaded. They are going down this road because they WANT to go down it, not because they have no choice. Playing the original Half Life, I always felt like I had mutliple paths to take that never existed during my first time through the game.

Pacing
pacing often has to be looked at in a macro and micro sense. In the macro scale, you may ask ‘was the last area hard? Does the player deserve a relaxing area? Do I need ot remind the player that this game is hard?”. You may ask if the game is reaching it’s climax and if it’s time to crank on the pressure. On a micro scale, each level is filled with ups and down.Long corridors in Symphony of the Night can get boring with your emotion impeded by ‘walls’(enemies) you have to hack down Even little screens in IWBTG can represent pacing. repeating rooms constantly filled with spikes are painfully stressful and even a few scant free spaces to move around in without fear can be a massive relief to players. On the same point, there are times when you purposely want to give no quarter.

Aesthetic

Aesthetic! Many hardcore gamers say they don’t care about graphics. Thats mostly BS. Graphics do not need to be fancy though by any means. Still, every screen, every panel, every section represents a composition. These compositions must look balanced. Stage design without balanced composition often feels random and arbitrary. Remove the moody atmosphere from the Colony section at the beginning of Super Metroid. Replace all the platforms with just simple boxes. Now it feels like a cheap flash jumping game! Take out the aesthetic screen balance and now the game looks like Cheetahmen II. Terrible aesthetic can even directly damage your flow.

You don’t have ot be an artist and don’t have ot make your levels a work of art, but at the very least you need things to be unnoticable Glaringly bad balance and composition can hurt to look at.

So… So far I’ve told you a bunch of stuff to look for. If you look you’ll probably find that these things are shown in pretty much all examples of games with good level design. Even Quake 3 maps use these concepts just to make something competitive! But I haven’t told you how to do any of this.

Well as far as I know, the only way to do it is guts and effort. The knowledge of what to look for and what is fun is key to making a good level. You have to test it and feel it. If you know what you’re looking for and keep in mind what makes an area more appealing, you have a better chance to hit the mark.

So what I’m hoping from everyone is that you add our input and insight on good levels. I’ll probably add more based on what I think of and what you say. I want to eventually compile a blog post out of this, so I’ll end here for now. May next time I’ll get into specific cases!

Also recommended reading:
Auntie Pixelante

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Now wasn’t that nice, if not a little rough? Then theres a few posts I made on making games in general. A few people asked me for advice for new game developers.

Alright, lemme get some stuff out before I go to bed then.

First off, it’s better to complete something bad then make nothing at all. Your friends might disagree, but you have built up knowledge. This considered, it’s best not to start doomed projects. You’ll learn a little, but will never get the full picture.

So first thing is to not be over ambitious. If you over exert your self, you will never succeed and your effort will be wasted. There is no reason your ‘big’ game has to be your first game. Releasing a decent game of some kind will teach you an infinite amount of valuable things about managing your work and creating the content, as well as the effort required to get things done.

Second thing is to self edit.

Pro Tip: 95% of your ideas are abhorrent garbage

People often wonder how great designers come up with great ideas! The big truth here is generally that their average idea isn’t much better then yours. Well, maybe a little better due to experience, but they started out with ideas as bad as yours! The difference is, they are self critical. They do not hold their ideas sacred. They think about how workable an idea is and, if it is bad, they discard it. They are a better pruner of ideas then you are and the best way to become more like them is to prune more. Many people have idea that sound good, but fail, even theoretically. They are generally afraid to throw out ideas that seem cool, or try and shoe-horn them in just because. Develop the discipline to just say no to your self.

Secondly, great designers find a great idea and they make it shine. They don’t bog it down with excess. What excess is will vary, but they generally will focus on the juicy core. This isn’t to say you need to be minimalist, but the difference between minimalism and maximalism are smaller then you think. I’ll run this down quick…

Minimalism: Cut as many ideas and concepts away as possible without damaging the core idea (Example: Braid, Ikaruga)

Maximalism: Add as much awesome stuff as possible……. WITHOUT DAMAGING THE CORE IDEA (Example: Bunny Must Die, Radiant Silvergun)

So when adding or subtracting ideas to supplement your core concepts, keep this in mind.

Third! Brilliant people steal. A LOT. Originality is the most overrated concept in existence. If you look around hard enough, you should see that there is nothing new under the sun. Nunix said it pretty well earlier in the thread when talking about Idea Theft. REMEMBER THAT. Do not be afraid to steal. That doesn’t mean to just steal and be done with it — then you’re just uninspired and uninteresting to the player. Take the idea, polish it up, show it love and heck, implement it in a new, or heck, just plain well executed way. What games are accused of stealing and being clones the most? Bad games. Don’t be a bad game and you’ll be alright, even if a lot of your ideas are derivative.

The process of idea making, refinement and editing is one of the hardest things to learn. At the same time it is also one of the reasons why releasing garbage is good. It gives you a chance to get real feedback on your work so you can refine your internal processes.

Theres a lot of failure involved in making things, but that shouldn’t scare you. There is a Go adage I like…

Lose Your First 50 Games As Quickly As Possible

There are similar quotes involving painting as well. Failure is a part of learning and the sooner you make mistakes, the sooner you will no longer make the same mistakes again.

I guess thats enough for now, I think I should get to bed! Sorry if this is rambley, writing is not one of my best skills. I could benefit from a little more self editing, in fact. :(

A bit more on originality.

Originality is overrated.

Nothing about originality or innovation intrinsically leads to more fun or anything. I think people confuse themselves. They play a bad game that clearly wanted to cop off of Halo and they’re like “This game sucks! It’s so derivative and does nothing new!”

Well they’re sort of confused. When the game is a tepid mess, blaming the lack of originality is easier then blaming the lack of polish, love and care that didn’t go into the game.

When you play a good game, the slight differences between it and it’s predecessors seems huge, because it’s all dolled up and is well presented in a way that accentuates these differences. It doesn’t make the differences any greater, it just makes you notice them.

And some on game pricing…

I totally agree with Geo. I played VVVVVVV’s demo without looking at the price. Then I was like “Hey this is neat, if it’s priced right, maybe I’ll buy it!”

I saw 15 dollars. I was just like “lol” … I figured 5 might be the higher end, and 10 was possible. But 15? I laughed my ass off. I laughed at the absurdity.

I thought of all the things I could buy. Notably on the indy end of things, Noitu Love 2 is 5 dollars cheaper.

So for 15 dollars you get

for 10 dollars you get

HM. HMMM. HMMMMMMM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

And I haven’t even bothered to buy NL2 yet (one day I will). I just bought Serious Sam HD for 8 bucks. I can get a number of remakes of great games on PSN for less than 15.

VVVVVVV just does not look even close to a 15 dollar game. NL2 looks better than most professional DS games and its’ only 10 dollars. Granted I think it started at 15 or 20 but at least that looks awesome! VVVVVVV also has to compete with a number of FREE games.

15 is just a poorly considered price. He lost my sale and quite a few other sales I’m sure.

The problem I see if an issue of pride. If VVVVVVV was 5$ it almost seems to the average person that it was trying to make less money. Even if a simple game required a ton of effort, charging 15-20$ isn’t going to fly. You’re trying to find the optimal price point, not assess of much your game is abstractly worth on a value of goodness.

Feel that sting? Thats pride, fucking with you. Understanding price as an aspect of marketing and maximizing profits is the important part. This is regardless of quality, effort or production value.

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Okay so now Google Buzz is going on. Okay fine. Buzz seems kinda harmless. I’m okay with poking over occasionally to see, well, the buzz! This is fine.

But now I have other peoples crap appearing on my Google Reader again. And how do I stop this from happening? By unfollowing people, which ALSO UNFOLLOWS THEM ON BUZZ.

Google. Google, seriously lets get real here. I NEVER, EVER, EVER WANT TO SEE OTHER PEOPLES CRAP ON MY GOOGLE READER. MY RSS FEEDS ARE CAREFULLY CHOSEN BY ME. I DON’T WANT TO SEE CAMERA REVIEWS, OR FUNNY FACE BOOK POSTS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. IF I CARE ABOUT WHAT MY FRIENDS ARE POSTING ABOUT I WILL LOOK AT GOOGLE BUZZ. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK STOP CRAMMING SHIT I DON’T CARE ABOUT ONTO GOOGLE READER. FOREVER.

Thanks.

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edit: I meant to post this awhile ago. Might as well do so now.

Well, the contest was to be one of the first 500 people to beat the game on hard and report to Penny Arcade about it. I figured 500 people would blow through the game on the first day. Funny enough, by the time I finished hard casually, the contest was still on…. and was still on for a few weeks after!

I don’t just make hard games, I play them!

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