Thoughts on Pinball

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you think of Pin ball?

Pinball is really interesting from a historical perspective. The original pinball machines were more like pachinko, no flippers, no spring, just put the balls in and let them roll downwards. They were more like gambling than the game we know today, and on the original machines, the only way to influence the ball’s movement was to tilt and bump the machine.

http://www.bmigaming.com/pinballhistory.htm

Later machines included tilt and bump sensors to detect if people were physically tilting them to cheat, usually tuned so there was a little tolerance, so players could still bump it, but not too much or the sensor would give you a warning, or eventually disable your flippers if you ran out of warnings. If you’ve ever seen old cartoons with the pinball gag, then this is where it comes from.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PinballGag Continue reading →

Conflicting Goals to Encourage Depth

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>Conflicting goals are frequently helpful for encouraging depth, by giving players the challenge of prioritizing goals situationally.
Now this is interesting. Examples of this?

Okay, my favorite example of this is Touhou. Touhou has a few different systems that create conflicting goals. First is pickups. Pickups require you to move over to them to pick them up, instead of sitting where it’s safe and shooting. Next, you can pick up all the pickups onscreen at once if you move to the top of the screen, which is where enemies come from, which is really dangerous. Next, there’s the graze system, which gives you a score multiplier for grazing projectiles, which means getting close to them, or getting close to the place where they spawn, so you can graze a lot all at once. These give you conflicting goals between gaining score/getting more powerful, and staying alive. So they might make it easier to win, but the process of trying to attain them also makes it easier to lose. Continue reading →

Contact Damage Enemies are Amazing

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How come direct contact enemies are so good? Alpha Metroids in AM2R are so great, Konami slapped a sine wave motion to some faces and they are talked about to this day etc, they seem to create much better depth with character movement and abilities than a dedicated “press for iframes” dodge button

Contact damage is nice because it allows the enemy to block your way with their body. In non-contact damage games, you can hug up against enemies to run past them without much issue. It also knocks you back in the process of touching them (having no-damage knockback, accompanied by a shoving animation, might be a smart idea to make enemies better at blocking your way without contact damage) Continue reading →

Negative Feedback Makes Me Rage

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What do you think of the rage mechanic in smash 4?

It’s irritating. If there weren’t multiple stocks, then I’d outright hate it unconditionally.

Rage is a knockback multiplier, similar to weight. As you gain percentage, you deal more knockback, which also means you deal more hitstun. Damage in Smash Bros increases knockback, so by dealing damage to your opponent, you’re giving them rage, which increases their knockback, much as if you had taken damage. Effectively, by hurting your opponent, you’re hurting yourself, thanks to rage. (Actually, I think rage multiplies knockback more than percentage does, so you’re hurting yourself more than you’re hurting them) Continue reading →

AM2R and Scumbag Nintendo

Celia Wagar3 Comments

What do you think of nintendo making their own Metroid 2 remake?

Kinda scummy. Doesn’t look as good as AM2R. The Parry is unexpected, I guess it follows from Other M. It looks really lame versus the boss enemies, but versus common enemies the parry can hit enemies to varying places depending on the angle of impact, which is very slightly dynamic. Also you can shoot at any angle, which makes sense, more-so than using a trigger button to hold the weapon at an angle.

Also they added an attack to the metroids that lets you farm drops, so you can’t completely run out of missiles to kill them with. I’m mixed on this. It alleviates the frustration of running out of ammo and being stuck with no option, but it also removes the challenge of needing to be ammo efficient. Continue reading →

Throws in Smash Bros

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What do you think of the way throws work in the Smash Bros series?

There’s nothing else like it in any game I’ve seen, except Skullgirls with Beowolf, and I guess King in Tekken.

Lemme just describe how it works, basically, once you get a grab, the other player is held in front of you in a grapple, instead of instantly thrown like in most other fighting games. In this state, there is a timer that counts down until the other guy is released, the timer is longer relative to how high percentage is. (and if the guy is holding up or presses jump, then they’ll jump upwards when released) The player who is grabbed can reduce the duration of this timer by mashing buttons (I hear the best method is to spin the control stick, varies by game since Brawl and Smash 4 handle inputs differently). Once the timer runs out, you’re released as soon as it’s possible. So past a certain point, mashing out of icies wobble is pointless, you’ll escape automatically if they mess up. Continue reading →

What Makes a Character Annoying?

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What makes a character in a fighting game/ enemy in any video game annoying to fight against as opposed to being fun? What’s the best way to avoid making something in a videogame annoying to deal with?

I don’t tend to get annoyed by characters very much. I used to get annoyed by sheik, I got annoyed by how one specific guy played Chun Li against me in 3rd strike (would rely almost entirely on lows and jump-ins + chun’s 3HK, was good AA practice, but it bothered me that he wasn’t understanding the game).

I’m currently a little annoyed by Millia, in that she can do a corner carry combo into tandem top, mix up on okizeme and repeat the process if she guesses right. I’d rather deal with Urien, and he has unblockables.

I’m a bit annoyed at how my friend plays Terumi in BB, just using 6C and throws. 6C is unsafe as hell, but it’s high priority and damaging as fuck, and ends in knockdown, so I get caught by it all the time, and he mixes up between it and throw and for some reason I just can’t force him to play honest. Continue reading →

Tekken 7 Overview

Celia Wagar1 Comment

Have you played Tekken 7? If so, what do you think of it?

I’m playing it now, I’m still learning how Tekken works, not really having any 3d fighting game experience and I think I’m starting to get it after a lot of studying, guide reading, and a little play with friends and ranked netplay.

Like, the framedata is REALLY different from the fighting games I’m used to. Nothing faster than 10f startup? Different inputs? Everything except jabs is minus on block? -13 is mostly safe? Block in the standing position by default with lows and throws being the reaction tester guard break options? Pressure with jabs is real and loops into itself, but it can be ducked and whiff punished? Continue reading →

Is Innovation Necessary?

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Is innovation neccessary in game design? does a game or sequal need to do something new in order to be good? or making a game that is well thought out and well designed is imprtant?

I stand by the statement, “A clone of a good game is still a good game.” Innovation is nice, it’s good for games categorically, but I don’t think any individual game needs to innovate in order to be good, and I don’t think innovation makes a game good by default.

Innovation helps games improve on their forebears and create new possibility spaces, but by default it does not make those possibility spaces deep.

I said this with regards to all the first person melee combat games recently, they’re not great yet, but they show that something is possible with first person melee combat that hasn’t been developed yet. This future development of really good FPS melee might just be a matter of putting together existing pieces correctly, or some future work of innovation, but what exists right now is pretty neat, but not amazing. Continue reading →

How to Read a Book: Reads in Competitive Games

Celia Wagar3 Comments

Care to do a breakdown on reads in fighting games?

There’s a bunch of different types of reads and types of information you can base reads on. First however, I’m gonna cover reactions, because that’s related.

Human reaction time is about 15 frames for something you’re expecting that you have a specific response planned for. So if you’re blocking low and know your opponent is going to overhead at some point and there’s no other variables, you can see him do that when he finally does it and block high. You can try this with the Millia Blocker game here:
http://www.teyah.net/milliablocker.html Continue reading →