Portal Review

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What do you think of the Portal games?

They’re puzzle games with all their edges shaved off so they communicate to you indirectly the best way to solve the puzzle.

Every puzzle in portal is playtested and adjusted to the point that playtesters no longer get stuck.

The amount of playtesting and adjustment and willingness to abandon ideas in the name of clarity is admirable, but the end result is a bunch of puzzles that I think weren’t made to be all that hard.

Portal 2 especially gets stuck, and can’t make players get stuck, because it had to introduce so many different new mechanics, like the 3 types of paint, the excursion funnels, aerial faith plates, the new laser redirection cubes. It had to take all of these very slowly and slow down every time a new one was introduced, so it wasn’t able to delivery harder puzzles that players might get stuck on.

Getting stuck for a while isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a puzzle game, as long as the player has something to work off of. I think the Witness (or professor layton or antichamber) is a good parallel here. The Witness presented a ton of hard puzzles that had me thinking for a while and actually deducing things, or leaving and coming back later when I had an idea what to do. The Witness also gave me multiple puzzles to try out that might all lead to progress instead of just one, and made progress to the final area dependent on only solving a certain number of puzzles, only lighting up a certain number of lights instead of all of them. Portal has a linear progression system, so if you get stuck, you can’t do anything but continue to be stuck.

Portal 1 was able to deliver on harder puzzles with its challenge chambers that had a number of different ways to challenge the player, from simple speedrun, to limited portals, to a remixed version of the chamber that made it a bit harder, restricted the basic solution.

Portal 2 didn’t have this for some reason and left it up to their community, either modders or the eventual perpetual testing initiative. Also portal 2 was way more limited in where you could place portals, which simultaneously limited alternate solutions, and made the answers to puzzles more obvious. Also the sections connecting the chambers sucked, they were like pixel hunts frequently.

In this way, similar to shovel knight, portal is very much a scaffolded learning experience that was afraid to really push the boundaries once all of its concepts were established and that kinda sucks. Someone once asked me years ago what game I’d recommend to someone who wanted to get into gaming, and I said portal, because it was a game anyone could beat.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (NES)

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Thoughts on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the NES? Many people see this title as a prime example on how not to design a videogame.

I tried it out. Didn’t really get what was going on at first, some townspeople seemed to damage me, there were explosions. Then I turned into Mr Hyde and punched some people then died. Decided to read the manual, since a lot of games from that time period explained things in the manual.
http://legendsoflocalization.com/media/avgn/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/dr-jekyll-nes-manual.pdf

Became pretty obvious. The idea is that Dr Jekyll is trying to go to the church (by moving right). The different townspeople have different behaviors that can hurt you, like if they rush at you, sling rocks at you, or leave bombs when you walk over them.

When you lose all your stress meter you become Mr Hyde and can only go back to being Dr Jekyll by defeating enemies in a scrolling shooter type of thing. You can move during this scrolling shooter, which accelerates the rate at which you move left in addition to avoiding enemies and obstacles. If you reach the end of the scrolling shooter, you lose the game. You can never completely stop your progress in the shooter and when you die, it’s game over. So you need to play really well to both avoid dying and get back to Dr. Jekyll, which is where you make progress towards winning.

Interestingly, the enemies in the scrolling shooter are set up so they’ll almost always hit you if you stay on the rightmost part of the screen (the part where your movement is slowest), so either you need to take them out before they can hit you there, or move out of the rightmost edge, speeding up the rate at which you approach

My biggest criticism is the framerate is shit. Like, really shit. 15-20FPS shit. And the Jekyll portion is rather uninteresting. There’s no platforming, a lot of enemy types are samey, and the guys that leave bombs behind suck because the hitbox is way bigger than the bomb.

Dogs interestingly will come at you from the front, then after they pass you, double back, and then once they’ve passed you again, double back again. Cats have a more boring behavior, walking from behind you, but not catching up with you, then doubling back until they touch the edge of the screen and just going straight across the screen. Birds shit on you. There’s diggers that pop dirt out of the ground which spreads randomly, so you just pray it doesn’t hit you. Villagers can behave a bit more unpredictably.

What I’d say is, it’s an inspired game with an interesting concept, attempting to make progress versus trying to avoid making progress when progress is inevitable and going slow is risky. The enemy design in the Hyde level is reasonably interesting. Jekyll has his moments. Yeah, the rules aren’t telegraphed amazingly, but it’s also not completely obtuse.

Have a speedrun, dude goes into Hyde mode at about 17:00. It’s honestly really impressive. A ton of people accused him of cheating in the comments, but I can believe it.

Katamari Damacy: The Greatest Collectathon

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Why is Katamari Damacy the best collect-a-thon?

Because it introduces interesting choices into the process of collection, and makes it arcadey and non-persistent. Instead of slowly building up tons of tiny chits you need to manditorily scrounge across the level, you’re given a massive number of objects and allowed to take whichever ones you want, progression will not be barred by not collecting everything. Katamari fundamentally changes the game from visiting every single node to attempting to weigh the value of each node and the nodes around it. Katamari is the traveling salesman problem on steroids.

Collectathons are typically subsidiaries of adventure games. They usually have a large number of collectables that are placed all over levels, that when collected get added to a persistent count of how many collectables you have. These are then later traded for access to areas, different collectables, or character abilities (which may grant access to new areas). These collectibles are positioned to basically lead you by the nose through every part of the level.

Katamari is not really related to collectathons at all, it’s more closely related to those flash games where you eat things smaller than you and avoid things bigger than you. There isn’t a definitive name for this genre, because there aren’t really many games in it. One suggested name is eat and grow. Katamari is fundamentally about evaluating, “am I bigger than this thing?” and, “how many things smaller than me can I currently absorb?”

Usually eat and grow games focus exclusively on the “Am I bigger than this thing?” part. Growth is relative to how big of an object you’re eating, so you want to eat the biggest thing that isn’t so big you die, or eat a ton of smaller things to make up in volume. In Katamari, you don’t die if you hit an object larger than yourself, though you might lose some objects from your ball. Katamari is less life or death than other eat and grow games in this way, but it makes up for it by adding a timer. You’re given a specific size goal to shoot for, and you have a limited time to do it. This means that the whole game is about opportunity cost. You need to constantly be absorbing objects smaller than you, and moving to areas with progressively bigger objects to succeed in Katamari. By adding the timer, they make the objects you absorb count. You can’t take your time absorbing everything, you need to prioritize.

On top of that, katamari has some wacky controls. You use both analog sticks to roll the ball, to rotate it, to dash. You can slowly climb up walls of a certain scale relative to you. They also include live objects that may chase you, move independently, or run away. And building the katamari lopsided will have it roll lopsided. These all add additional considerations on top of the core idea. Plus themed levels.

It will never be as appropriate to link a speedrun ever again. This is how the game was literally meant to be played (except of course for quitting out of the levels when you get a big enough ball).
https://www.twitch.tv/doughyguy92/v/42497199

Why am I an Asshole?

Celia WagarLeave a comment

How come sometimes your interactions display some serious abrasiveness, bordering on straight-up antagonism, but other times you make me want to puke with your humbleness, modesty, and general submissiveness?

Because I’m an asshole that tries to play honest to the best of my ability?

I want to shake things up, I want to be aggressive and push the border a bit, but I also know that these are just arguments on the net. I’m trying to prove a point honestly. I know where I’m fallible. I know where other possibilities might be true. I have a habit of using weasel words, as defined by wikipedia, in real life all the time whenever someone asks me about something when I can imagine one small exception case where my answer might not be true. “You should do this” “Maybe.” I’ve seen other internet assholes who are completely dogmatic, and I want to know the truth. Dogma and absolute conviction prevents one from growing. I know the limits of my knowledge, I want to own up to my mistakes. I try to take in new evidence and change my beliefs based upon them when it is reasonable, but I also try to defend believing in what I believe. These factors are somewhat contradictory, but I don’t think I’d be where I am if I didn’t have both of these things in my personality. I want to crush people, I want to prove I’m the best, but I also want to learn and grow stronger. Both of these drives are connected for me, and it applies to a lot of stuff I do. One takes aggression, the other requires humility. Sometimes I push it too far on the aggressive side, and I gotta work on it.

When I first started at street fighter, my training partner remarked that the way I played was super split, I’d switch between offense and defense like crazy, going for insane pressure one moment, then backing off and refusing to do anything but capitalize on each little mistake the next, and I’d switch the instant either one of those failed. Dunno how related that is, but it’s a funny story.

re: attitude. Well, what I was referring to was how you get all belligerent when it comes to arguing about games for which you’ve got very passionate opinions, but then you do things like apologizing to a fucking ANON on your blog, an anon who couldn’t muster more than a generic insult (though maybe that is why that person is an anon, because he isn’t capable of amounting to anything greater than subhuman chatter). In the past you’ve chided your readers about using insults and ad hominems, but the problem is that proving you’ve got a point is futile. No one will listen because no one WANTS to listen. Come on man, everyone knows the ultimate use of the internet is to confirm what you already believe! Really, though, there’s no use trying to convince people because the overwhelming majority don’t want to reason, they just want to confirm. Even in history, all ideologies and paradigm shifts even science) were communicated to the masses by demagogues (see: NdT or Dawkins for modern-day examples). But people don’t just want to confirm, they also want to follow. They want to feel like a part of something. I mean, look at how a worthless chump like clam has garnered a following. I mean, yeah, his following baically amounts to a few dozen losers from 4chan, but still. Look at the more popular game pundits. Why is DocSeuss popular in spite of being so wrong about so much? What about the various journalists or dudes like Blow/Fish or CliffyB? Insults are only ad hominem when that’s ALL you’ve got. Using them to compliment your arguments is fine, maybe even essential if you’re going to convince anyone of anything (or at least persuade them to follow a cause, if not convince them of reason). I mean, people are so quick to call you an autist for whatever, but you absolutely refuse to fire away at the concept of immersion. What does that prove? Nothing and your relative popularity reflects this. People appreciate a person whose willing to not just stand for his cause, but all fight and attack for it. Apologizing to anons is not part of that.

lol, you serious? Why are you asking me this anonymously, dude?

I think you’re just trolling at this point. They’re more popular than me because they’ve actively worked to expand their traffic by being on more popular platforms and linking their work elsewhere. I’m not trying at that and, as is typical of me, I’m not going to until I can put my best foot forward.

Think from the perspective of that anon: If I just attack him or dismiss him, what’ll he think? He’s going to dismiss me and that’s one less reader, one less chance for input, one less person. I want to know what his issue is, and attacking him won’t get to that. I want to play to win, not to validate my point. Winning means genuinely convincing people, which is a lot harder and more roundabout than merely proving my point. Winning means saying you’re sorry sometimes. It doesn’t look like winning, it doesn’t look like dominance, but it accomplishes things. It’s seeking power instead of the appearance of power.

Ok, my asks sounded kind of rant-y and demagogue-y, but you should get the point. Apologizing to idiots and being unwilling to add a bit of flair to your writing won’t help you in asserting your dominance and taking down frauds.

I’ll apologize all I want. If someone has a problem with my writing, if they think I’m coming off as an asshole, that’s at least partially my fault. Maybe they have a point, maybe I am being an asshole, but they can’t always vocalize that. It’s up to me to figure out how to make my writing work for people, and part of that is working with them even if they’re being a dick to me. I have a very small audience of people who actually like my stuff, then a small audience outside that of people who know of my stuff and reject it. And if their reason for rejecting it is my tone, is my presentation format, that can be fixed.

I’m not here to assert dominance, I’m not here to directly take down frauds (though frauds may be taken down indirectly). That’s not playing to win. That’s not how you actually convince people. I’ll take the submissive angle, I’ll learn from my mistakes, because I want to know the truth and I want to convince people. I know there’s a lot of opposition, I know my ideas and my personality aren’t popular.

The problem with demagogues is they lack the ability to convince people who are opposed to them, and to grow stronger from incorporating feedback. It’s shutting out a large portion of your potential audience if you simply reject people who reject you, as well as shutting out what may be legitimate ideas.

Becoming a stronger person in part means owning up to your faults and not being so willing to push forward that you’re blind to your mistakes. It means considering the other side’s opinions and second guessing your own positions.

That’s been a stumbling block for me as a person. It’s still something I’m not always consistent at, but it’s how I got to where I am. I’m not going to back down from that.

So stick with me, because I’m not going to budge on this issue.

Control Scheme Critique

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How do you approach critiquing control schemes? Do you often change control settings? Do you think certain control schemes like motion or touch are inherently bad or is it just that most devs don’t design around them and instead try and retrofit them to established designs? (Or dumb down established designs to fit those control schemes.) What about playing fighting games with keyboards/hitboxes or playing shooters with analog controls?

I change control settings for a lot of first person shooters, like I recently changed the melee attack button in overwatch to F instead of V. I frequently switch crouch to control instead of C. I rebound the jump button in Dark Souls 2 to be the same as the dodge/run button.

I frequently use xpadder to bind screenshot keys to my controller in various games, or so I can play non-FPS games on PC that lack proper controller support, or don’t let me double bind buttons.

Critiquing control schemes is generally about figuring out the best way to map buttons so that none of the buttons interfere with the use of any of the other buttons or inputs on the controller, and maintains a suitable controller metaphor.

For example, Dark Souls maps its attack buttons to the shoulders, which is rather unconventional, because it wants you to move the camera as you move around and attack, and because it maintains the left hand/right hand metaphor set up in the equipment menu.

Conventional action games map their attack buttons to the face because it’s more readily accessible, and because their levels generally have wide open arenas for fighting instead of more careful level design that the camera can get caught on (except MGR, and the camera suffered there), so they don’t need to worry as much about the player having active control over the camera.

Nioh is inspired by dark souls and has very similar gameplay, but does not maintain this same control scheme, in part because it has no 2 hand metaphor for its weapons, and because it has a new stance system metaphor. Stances are changed using the R1 button as a modifier, then pressing a face button. R1 is a shoulder, making it perfect as a modifier button, because it does not conflict with the face buttons, where the reverse would not be true. It’s hard to use face buttons as modifiers for other face buttons, except pressing two buttons at a time. You could use a single button for this like DMC does, but the R1 here has a function for regaining Ki too, so you don’t always want to switch stances.

I don’t think Motion and Touch are inherently bad, I just think they’re good at different things than conventional interfaces, and most games made with those control schemes don’t leverage what they’re capable of. Wii Sports is the best selling Wii game because it literally could not exist in any form but motion controls. You can’t really do games like Bowling and Golf nearly the same way. 99% of the other games on the system didn’t deliver in anything close to the same way.

As for touch, it’s a similar deal. Touch doesn’t do a lot that can’t be done by other means. Most games on the DS didn’t really take advantage of touch, and that’s fine because the DS had capable regular controls and capable regular games.

So what does touch do better than conventional controls? What’s a game you couldn’t control as well if you reverted it to standard controls? The World Ends With You is my first answer. In that game, you need to move the character in battle by picking them up and dragging them. You control and differentiate different commands in battle through how they’re activated, and a lot of those are gestures that not only specify what action you’re using, but where you’re using it and how.
http://twewy.wikia.com/wiki/Psych

You can tap to fire off bullets to specific areas, you can slash to launch enemies or create pillars at points, scratch to produce an effect on the scratched area, drag to pull objects, circle enemies, and more.

And the combat system ended up being pretty cool/dynamic in the end.

In a traditional control system, you can’t control things so far away from the character that precisely, or move the character as quickly and slowly. With a mouse, it’s harder to draw gestures precisely, or trace/draw paths that aren’t straight.

Touch interfaces also have the benefit of multitouch, but I can’t think of a good example that uses that.

As for the difference in input methods for fighters versus shooters, I think there’s a very different and weird thing going on between these. In fighting games, almost any input method is basically as good as any other input method. There isn’t a lot of difference for arcade fighting games. People have seen success using anything with enough separate digital inputs for the directions and all the buttons basically. Evo has been won on pad, and recently at that with Luffy. In traditional fighting games, controllers are mostly seen as a preferential thing with very minor advantages across controller types.

In shooters, there’s a very clear best way to play, and it’s keyboard and mouse. Mostly the mouse. The reason this differs from fighting games is, shooters take analog input, not digital input, and there are very clearly different things possible across different types of analog input. Some games aren’t possible unless you have enough buttons, the difference here is that some games aren’t possible no matter how many buttons you add. It’s not something that can be linearly scaled up.

Nothing but mouse allows as fast speed or fine modulation of aiming on an infinite canvas.

Similarly, you can’t play Smash as well unless you have an analog stick, because it has actual analog inputs you can’t replicate otherwise (like DI, dashing vs walking, etc)

Digital input methods seem to scale well, analog tends to be more specialized.

SUPERHOT

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What do you think of Superhot?

Basically the same thing as super bunnyhop. It’s an interesting experiment without enough content. There could stand to be more weapons, more enemy variety, more levels.

Also less bullshit between levels.

Cool experience otherwise.

I’ve read your reasoning for disliking Super Meat Boy dozens of times, could you tell me why it doesn’t apply to SUPERHOT?

More options in every given encounter. You can move in a lot more directions, you have tools that can be used a bunch of different ways. All your weapons can be thrown, enemy weapons can be picked up, bullets can be dodged, there’s cover in the environment, katanas can slash through bullets.

I mean, I like Hotline Miami for much the same reason, and have stated such before.

Super Hot isn’t repeating the same few actions until you get it, there’s enough variation that you can perform levels significantly differently in many cases, unlike super meat boy.

Here’s the elevator level done really efficiently:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20elevator.webm

Here’s a guy beating the elevator level without firing a single bullet:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/Super%20Hot%20pacifist%20elevator.webm

Elevator with a katana.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20elevator%20katana.webm

Here’s a guy beating the ballroom with only a katana:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20ballroom%20katana.webm

and another efficient path through a level
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/Super%20Hot%20Superplay.webm

My big complaint with the game was, there wasn’t enough content, and they didn’t go as crazy in the level design as they could have gone. The hotswap ability was great, but they only barely introduced it before the game was over. Hotline Miami was able to go a lot crazier with its level design before they wrapped up, like the hot and heavy level was awesome.

I’d give superhot like a 7/10 for that reason.

Getting Unstuck in Fighting Games

Celia WagarLeave a comment

When you get ‘stuck’ in a fighting game, like, say, when you play against a character you don’t know how to fight and you just don’t understand how to deal with them because all of the moves of that character seem to have priority or the char. just has better ledge game (in SSB) or this one move you just don’t know how to counter, what is your process for figuring out how to deal with or counter this character (or a certain tactic)?

I almost never get stuck, because I generally have a good understanding of how the systems work. Mewtwo teleports at me, I know I need to have a hitbox on the spot he’s about to appear before he’s there. I’ve worked out plenty of anti-jank tactics versus snake’s grenades and mines. I’ve spiked lucas players trying to tether to ledge for free. I’ve uppercut dhalsim’s limbs. I’ve faultless defense’d Faust’s blockstring pressure into his unblockable (so he can’t run up into it as fast because FD pushes him away further, and since it’s an unblockable, I can’t jump out like with a throw). I pointed out to my friend in KoF98 that Athena’s hard autocorrect divekick was probably really unsafe on block, because it wouldn’t make sense to be safe on block (turns out, yeah it’s really unsafe).

Everything always has a counter. Either you hit them before they do it, you punish them after they try to do it, or hit them in the middle of it. Good understanding of the system as a whole, good expectation of the trends in the system (like knowing which moves are probably unsafe), being able to recognize what happens with the move in different situations, and thereby being able to diagnose the move’s weakness. Like Dudley’s cross counter in third strike doesn’t counter low attacks. I never read a guide mentioning this, I just played a lot and noticed it as I played.

If I’m having trouble with a character, I usually look up guides for the character I’m having trouble against. Learning how they see things from their perspective is helpful because it also includes their weaknesses and what they need to watch out for. Investigation into framedata can be helpful too, as it was with Necalli in SFV, learning that his blockstrings into the stomp special are tighter with the light stomp, but more disadvantageous on block, and have a gap with the heavy stomp, but more neutral on block.

There’s a large number of resources you can potentially look into in order to learn how to beat characters for any popular fighting game.

I recently played PM after a long time and for the first time against a player and how the FUCK are you supposed to fight Marth? ALL his moves have priority over everything I did (not to mention longer range). I could only beat the player using Charizard and his giant-ass hitboxes with flame-tip and claw sweetspots.

Hahaha, that’s funny. Marth has an advantageous matchup against charizard, because charizard’s tail isn’t disjointed and marth can just whiff punish slash it, also because marth gets good combos on floaties and can space against Charizard in shield really well (and charizard already suffers against shield pressure).

I play with the second best Charizard player in the world actually, and as you may know, I main Marth.

Some key things to remember are, priority doesn’t apply to air attacks. Air attacks cannot clank, so forward air from Marth will cut through your hitboxes.

Marth’s big weakness is that he doesn’t have any attacks that come out particularly fast, and his attacks don’t have great recovery. His fastest ground attacks are jab, down smash, and Up B, all coming out on the 4th or 5th frame.

If your friend is spamming SH double fair, you can either move out of the way, then hit him right when he lands (charizard has an amazing dash dance) either with a grab or forward tilt (charizard’s forward tilt is amazing), or move in closer to him and shield on the spot where he’s going to land, so he’s forced to land in your shieldgrab range. These apply to any character.

Marth’s dash attack sucks, can be beaten by shieldgrabbing or just letting it whiff and punishing it.

Marth’s down tilt is his best neutral move because it has amazing IASA frames, so it effectively has a short recovery. Also has a reasonably fast startup of 6 frames. He can usually dash out of it before getting shieldgrabbed, but it’s still susceptible to whiff punishing.

You want to DI marth’s fair chains out, to avoid getting spiked. His up tilt and dash attack have a trajectory that sends you in at Marth, so you’ll want to DI down and in at Marth. Those three moves are how he sets up most of his combos. His grab is normally useful in combos, but charizard is so heavy it rarely comes into play. Just be sure to DI down and away from him when he forward throws you. On lighter characters, he can also down throw as a DI trap into fsmash, so you’ll have to guess which way to DI to avoid getting fsmashed.

His fsmash by the way, has almost no shield pushback, so you can shieldgrab it no problem. If he’s out of range, then let him whiff the fsmash and you are totally free to run in and do whatever you want to him. I do this to a lot of marth players I know are worse than I am when I feel they’re about to fsmash. Just wait at the very edge of their fsmash range, let them miss the attack, dash in an grab.

As charizard, watch out with your dash dance, your tail lags behind you, and can be slashed if you’re not careful.

Any tips for Ganondorf in PM? I wsa using him and couldn’t do jack to Marth until I picked up Charizard. I’m surprised Charizard has a bad matchup against Marth, though that’s probably because the other guy just wasn’t that good. Also the setup was laggy so that might have given fatso charizard the advantage.

Ganondorf, he’s also on the lower tier side like charizard, hard to say how his matchup against marth goes. I think marth still has the advantage. Luckily I alt Ganon. Ganondorf is all about single hits and spacing, Marth is also about spacing and has disjoint. Ganondorf kills in a few hits, Marth has nice combos, though none of his grab setups work on Ganondorf because he’s too heavy.

Basically, you want to hit him when he misses you. Ganondorf gets great followups off his down throw versus marth. At lower percentages, he can regrab (marth can DI forward or behind ganondorf, so turn appropriately to catch him). At higher percentages down throw gets guaranteed followups into fair or bair depending on DI. Ganondorf can’t move that well to whiff punish grab marth, but he can move in on marth forcing him to land in bad positions and be open for a shieldgrab.

Ganondorf has a nice jab, much faster than any of marth’s moves (one of marth’s central weaknesses is that he has no good fast moves), so that can be useful in a pinch.

Ganondorf’s down B can outprioritize all of marth’s grounded moves, but it loses hard to aerials or shield. Side B is good for shenanigans, when you scare him into shielding you, or if he tries to shield while on a platform and thinks he’s safe (since normally you can’t grab people unless you’re on the same ground they are). Air version gets better followups, ground version has better range and can avoid attacks like Dudley’s short swing blow. Ground version can be teched before ganon can do anything about it, air version does a small juggle which ganon can usually at least jab off of before they get a chance to tech. Up B is also a grab and can shenanigan people in much the same way, grabbing them when they think you don’t have the grab option.

Most of the matchup is going to be moving carefully, and poking at marth before he swings or waiting for him to miss a swing and poking him. You’re just gonna have to get used to reading a lot harder and winning neutral more with worse tools. Ganon has nice range on a lot of his attacks, technically better than marth’s on fair, you need to get better at figuring out when he’s going to attack, avoiding it, and hitting him back. You don’t need to win neutral as many times as marth does, because you get bigger rewards for winning neutral.

I beat a guy playing falcon yesterday every single time while I played Bowser. In Melee. If you have good enough instincts, anything’s doable.

Precision in VR/AR

Celia WagarLeave a comment

How important do you think precision is in fpses? To increase precision, we have to reduce speed (see Doom to Quake to modern shooters), so where do you stand? How do you feel about a fully-realized AR shooter, like virtual paintball, but with different weapon-types? That would have very slow movement speed, but it would create new types of tactical depth that I think aren’t possible with traditional games.

Blah, there’s that word precision again. And used in such a way that it’s not clear what you mean. I think a better phrasing here might be, “to make aiming easier, we have to reduce speed […]” But it’s still not clear what the overall question is supposed to mean.

Speed was reduced in the move to modern shooters because of console controllers, which cannot aim with 1:1 precision like the mouse can. The mouse does not need slower character movement speeds as a concession to make aiming easier. Controllers have difficulty moving fine distances due to the necessity of dead zones at the center of them, and the difficulty of pushing it a slight amount then releasing the stick before the camera moves too far. Continue reading →