Posts by Taylor

Yeah, generally you can chain P, K, c.S, f.S, HS, 2D in sequence providing you're in range for them to land. It's not a universal rule though! There will be a "Gatling Chart" for everyone somewhere that shows what combos and what is tight on block.

I-no is really good if you can control her dash for her mix-ups. Sol and Ky can also chase their projectiles if you're willing to invest 25% meter to Yellow Roman Cancel them. Ky lost his False Roman Cancel tricks in Xrd but they gave him his 5D and 236D projectile enhancer thing to make up for it.

I've been playing Millia-Rage and May but I don't really like any of their motions on pad (instant air dash cancels and Applause for the Victim setups). For playing people at work it's probably okay, though.

Unless you’re playing Slayer the game isn’t that link heavy as far as normal chains go. Or maybe I’m not understanding you! We’re playing at work as well and everyone seems on-board with it. I was critical above, but that’s only because Guilty Gear XX Accent Core is my favourite game ever.

I’m having to play on pad and I’m not really adjusted, especially trying to do May’s Applause of the Victim correctly, but I think I’m going to get PS+ and start playing online soon.

I’m playing Ys IV: Ark of Napishtim which is pretty cool. Like other Ys games it’s mostly about the big twitchy boss fights and it does them really well, but the other parts of the game aren’t as polished as the games in this group such as Origins and Oath in Felghana. Mostly the balancing feels quite off.

I’m also playing Guilty Gear Xrd which looks amazing. I guess it’s technically 2.5D but it’s trying to make 3D look like 2D and it looks really good. They do loads of cool tricks like only animating key frames, lots of bones per model, lots of sub-models, etc. I think even if you don’t like the animu style you have to admit they really nailed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtY5mqdoN-U

Apologies for terrible commentary but it’s hard to find HD footage that isn’t supers and instant kills.

The game itself is pretty cool but I don’t think it surpasses GGXXAC and they’ve done some weird design decisions. I won’t rant too much, but the game is a few feature flags and new characters away from greatness... but so was BlazBlue and that game just got worse with every release after BBCS. And P4U’s sequel was pretty bad too. Hopefully they’ll fix YRC OS, remove Hellfire, remove Danger Time, remove the parry, remove brain-dead unblockables, remove all unblockables, add negative edge, add throw techs (seriously), fix inputs (why is Applause for the Victim still HCB, etc.), and maybe add force breaks then I will be extremely happy. If they add shadow modes, dark force, fatal counters, or guard breaks I will be sad.

Last time we had this topic I made a playlist with everyone's choices!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=…B-oA3FoR3TFXE2o

But otherwise:

And probably my favourite track about the video games:

It’s also shmup and not schmup!

I think the main difference between Galaga and other Space Invader-style games is the enemies detaching from their formation and diving down the screen...

I’m also so not really sure players want Galaga with a storyline. Modern shmup players generally want 25-30 minutes of high-octane action (games that loop forever died in the golden age of arcades) and a difficulty ceiling that makes beginners and expert players look staggeringly far apart. This is not indicative to an in-depth story...

Anyhoo, I play lots of arcade shmups! I can 1cc a few CAVEgames [1, 2], and I have made shmups before [1, 2, 3]. So, here is what I noticed from the trailer:

• All bullets just fire straight down whereas all bullets in Galaga are aimed at the player. But more importantly ever good modern shmup uses the players position in some way to determine 99% of patterns. This is because it avoids the “wall of undodgeable shit” problem as the player can use advanced techniques like streaming, feathering and bullet herding to control the screen. This also gives you free reign to turn it up to 11 without worry.
• Enemy explosions are a single frame image, player explosions are that image stretched infinitely in X, and cannons don’t explode. Part of the fun of shmups is a visceral, sensory overload and currently you haven’t got this going. Geometry Wars and Galaga Extreme do this with flashing lights and particles, games like DoDonPachi do it with constant explosions and showers of gold.
• Unless you’re Armed Police Batrider most shmup fans groan at the concept of 20+ ships. AFAIK CAVE have never released a game with more than 3 ships in their main game mode. Once you’ve got your fast linear ship and slow wide ship you’ve got room for another with homing/wave nobody uses and then you’re pretty much spent. It’s much better focusing on three big options than all the granularity in-between.
• Your fast mode is too fast and your slow mode is too slow...
• Even non-bullet hell shmups tend to have much smaller hitboxes. It doesn’t really hurt to just to make it smaller, the player feels less like they get robbed on death and it lets them do more interesting stuff.
• If you’re going to have a high rate of fire, and the goal is not to be precise with your shots but point it in the general direction of the enemies, then your bullet speed should be much higher. Otherwise your bullet trail looks really ugly as you move around the screen. (Edit: for player bullets only)
• Your scoring system is 10 points each time you hit something. This is really not a competitive scoring system!

This is a really nice game for someone starting game development and there is lots of potential. But I’m not sure about the price tag or getting people excited for a sequel.

Thanks! Maybe we'll submit it to one of those indie local co-op events the cool kids do these days.

That's right, I moved this to General Discussion. Call the cops.

I've made about 16 games in 2 years now. I'm sure I'll do a load more in 2015, but I am thinking about actually making a bigger project rather than all these game jam plops. They're fun, though. Global Game Jam is coming up in January, is anyone planning on joining in with that?

[Blocked Image: http://www.alexandertaylor.net/images/pre_boxingday_f.jpg]

Few weeks ago I made Boxing Day with some friends for the Great British Winter Game Jam competition in London. The theme was British Winter and it is a local cooperative multiplayer game about kids pushing a box down a muddy hill and pretending it's a snowy mountain.

Everyone contributes to the steering of the box and gets one special responsibility (ex: horn scares deer). Levels are randomly generated from predefined parts, Spelunky style, and speed and frequency increases as you go.

Artist tumblr: http://fargalex.tumblr.com/

I'm not saying her dying would have been better, but it is what she would have chosen.

The way I see it is the way most pockets of civilisation fall apart are “BUT WHO IS THE REAL MONSTER?” situations where survivors fuck each other over, or one infected getting in which then snowballs and kills everyone. A vaccine could feasibly have prevented what happened to the sewer playschool, Tess, Sam and Henry, etc.

The goal of a vaccine wouldn’t be to make the whole world immune, but to protect these strongholds from the latter. It must be worth it for The Greater Good or there wouldn’t be a moral quandary, but Joel feels betrayed by the Fireflies and Marlene because he wasn’t given the choice. And Joel is very much unconcerned with other people, the earlier comments from Ellie about “how many innocents have you killed?” and Tommy having nightmares about how Joel kept them alive doesn’t paint the picture of someone who wants to save the world. Endure and survive, etc.

But if they need to kill Ellie to extract what’s making her immune to create a vaccine, then that kind of implies they can’t actually manufacture a vaccine anyway. And if you’re going to waste that shit on the Fireflies, who are the least at risk of infected, who cares? Also, I know nothing about how vaccines are made.

I also finished this today after starting it on Wednesday. I'm guessing a lot of people got free download codes for PS4.

Storytelling is great and the ending was a bit of a kicker, even though you guessed this would be the ending scenario back when you were walking around with Tess. It does seem that Ellie would have agreed to it if asked. But Joel goes around breaking off pipes in people faces again, anyway.

Ending was anti-climatic gameplay wise. I guess it was better than a Naughty Dog Boss Fight, though.

To be fair they haven't said they're going to pull the servers in 2016. They're going to stop supporting the platform. Which is probably not the same. I am made of lies.

I'm not a huge fan of digital distribution on console.

1. They tend to be just as expensive, if not more, than ordering a physical copy from Amazon.
2. Purchases are temporary. Microsoft have already announced they're turning off the 360 servers in 2016. Steam might not be around forever, but they're not going to pull this shit every generation.
3. I've been burned with things like buying Ninja Gaiden Black on 360 and being told I can't play it because of my consoles region. Here's an idea: put this check in somewhere before I give you money. Generally they do not inspire a lot of confidence in me.

I think the last game that got this level of moral outrage from the gaming press was Rape Lay. And with both games all they've really achieved is to give the game a lot of attention and money.

It's also a lot easier to get lost because of it's two feet draw distance (up from Turok 1, at least). But all I really remember about this game was multiplayer being about firing homing cerebral bores made of lies and the sound of your skull shattering like glass.

If you want dated controls try and play Snake Eater now. It made sense back then (L2/R2 'equip' and X 'uses') but it's really awkward now.

The previous Guilty Gear games are a lot more technical. I imagine this will also be true of Xrd, but they have made a lot of changes to simplify the game. Force Breaks and False Roman Cancels have been removed, for instance.

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Force Breaks were kind of EX moves but they weren't necessarily a powered up version of a move you already had. For instance Potemkin gained an air-to-air command grab only as an EX move.

False Roman Cancels were frames in an animation (usually 2-4) where you could press 3 buttons to spend 25% meter and cancel neutral. For instance FRC Sol's projectile and rush down inside it.

When people say a game has a chaining system they don't mean you can mash light punch into itself. That would be an utterly pointless definition. It was pretty clear from the context, given it was an actual example, I was talking about SFA or DS style chains.

What does "option selects off jabs" mean? Doesn't matter anyway. The maybe-chains aren't chains. it's something to do with the power-up mode everyone has. Extended trailer shows one of the "new" characters. Spoilers: it's Charlie.

Quote from marks

Hang on, what? SF4 has chains bro. Just only for a very small set of moves.

It doesn't, bro. It has target combos. The only attacks you can chain in SF4 are lights into themselves. A chaining system implies a branching combo based on priority (light -> medium -> heavy, standing -> crouching) using your standard normal attacks. SF5 might not have this! It was speculation on my part based on the normals being cancelled into each other not being part of a flowing animation.

SF4 added Omega Mode and continues to amaze. It's like a bad PC hack.

The best modern fighting game is the worst Street Fighter game.

There actually was a lot of good fighting games this generation: Persona, Skullgirls, Under Night In-Birth, and possibly Guilty Gear Xrd (if it's not another BlazBlue). Unfortunately, these all made the critical mistake of not having Ryu in them.

Haha, we all went back to League and mostly play all-mid...

Moba communities are the worst.

Links are also an extremely boring ways of doing combos. For instance Guilty Gear loops are a lot more organic and visually a lot more exciting than two linked cr.MP's. At least to me, and while I appreciate it's very "anime," this does look like an evolution path SF could've taken after SFA.

The really tight links is one of the reasons I say SF4 has a schizophrenic design. The game isn't about combos so we filled it to the brim with tricky one frame links? Why?

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2 frame links on medium/heavy if you use an input bug to plink, and 2 frame links on everything if you use an input bug and modify your stick because select has higher button priority. Best input system ever?

Ultras were added as a newbie-friendly comeback mechanic. And they have the least newbie-friendly input they could possibly have. The game is about fundamentals and reading your opponent. But it's overflowing with ridiculous option selects that you just repeat in training mode and, in a live match, they will pick the best option for you. Or just do a random dragon punch and FADC out of it for no risk or huge reward. Whoops, there I go with the hating SF4 again.