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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 21, 2019 12:30:21 GMT -5
Yo! Long time, no see. What the heck have you been up to? Slay the Spire's been what I've been up to lately (I mean, if you don't count the actual important life stuff). If you want to throw away your life, that's the weapon and now's the time. I've been listening to an absurd amount of Pokemon music lately (remixes, piano versions, etc.). I love chiptune music no matter what, irrespective of whether it was composed in 2019 or is from a game I've never played, but hearing early gen Pokemon music played with real instruments drives home just how thoughtful the tunes were (see here). Are they Bach? No, but I enjoy listening to them. They could have been a lot worse, given technical limitations on the Gameboy. I don't remember any of the later gens' music, but I think this is probably a function of the sheer amount of times I've played the older games. I remember thinking Sun and Moon's music was quite good when I played, but I can't remember a single song from it. Probably because I only played the game once. I don't even want to think of how many times I've played R/B/Y over the years. Hell, I had a version of Red that went down the washing machine and lost its ability to save; that didn't stop 8-year-old me from playing the sh*t out of it. I always had this deep-down hope that, possibly, I could beat the game before either a) the battery ran out, or b) my mom would yell at me to stop playing and make me shut it off. (It was almost always b. Grr.)
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 21, 2019 13:59:49 GMT -5
Of course, trumpets, flutes, drums, and such will probably make everything sound good. The YouTube algorithm has since moved me to a symphonic version of Kirby Super Star, and I can't say I've ever been a fan of Kirby (music, gameplay, the whole nine yards)*. But it sounds pretty smashing...
*I actually actively don't like playing Kirby? Or at least the games I've played. It was basically impossible to die, and, as someone who is objectively terrible at platformers, I strongly dislike this. Why on earth would I want to play Kirby if it doesn't matter if I suck? That's no fun. You need something on the line...
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 22, 2019 15:43:54 GMT -5
Hmm, I picked up Go again.
Why shouldn't I make a webscraper? Cheating on Neopets, here I come...
It's always interesting beginning to toy around with a different language. For one, it's always an interesting reminder just how hard programming is in the beginning because you don't know how to "think." Whatever language you choose will be harder than the rest, not because of the syntax or anything inherent to the language, but because you, as a person, suck. Once you know how to program, it's pretty trivial to solve most problems. I didn't know the syntax for what I would deem a nested dictionary in Python in Go, but I knew the concept had to exist and it seemed like an ideal solution to my problem, so immediately googled that, cool, makes sense, carry on. Invariably I'm quite pleased with some element of some new language, and disappointed in others. (Go is mostly pleasant--I quite like that it's statically typed, but not insane like Java. On the other hand, I lament the inability to quickly check if an element is in a list, a la Python's "if x in some_list". Trade-offs, I suppose. I wish Python had ternary operators.)
I think every language I toy around with re-emphasizes just how much I don't like Javascript. The base library is horrendous. I remember having to code my own version of a set because, alas, it did not exist in the version of Javascript I was relegated to. (Go does not have sets either, although at least the equivalent with map[string]bool is acceptable. Javascript, up until ES6, didn't have the concept at all.)
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 22, 2019 22:44:40 GMT -5
I'm kinda surprised you don't like Kirby, since it's really more of a sandbox game than it is a traditional platformer. Generally it's more about screwing around with the abilities than a traditional win/lose situation. That said, most games often unlock a second difficulty after the first, which halves your health. Typically these add bite (though I won't begrudge anyone who complains about having to complete the game to unlock hard mode). Java is strange to me, because I don't know a single person who actually likes it. My general impression is that it's kind-of the GameMaker of coding languages: simple, user-friendly, and incredibly limited. I know at least 5 people who all loathe it with a passion. It's funny sometimes how the order of news can deflate things. I read the following about Tales of Arise: "I believe we have more influence from the Western users who are now playing Tales Of series," [the producer] said. "So for example, as you can see the main character's appearance, he is in armour for the first time in the series, and the art style - we are aiming for a kind of unity [between] the world and art direction in the world environments and character and appearances. So we want to have the characters stand really naturally in the world of Tales of Arise [...] so yeah, actually, it really affects us." I might have been inclined to think that maybe they'd also be incorporating a story that is a bit more mature and less reliant on anime tropes. But wait, what was it they said during the character reveal? "Because he can’t feel pain, he is able to wield the blade of flames." NEVER MIND! Other gems include: "He can’t feel pain, so even if he’s injured he can continue to fight without flinching, but on the other hand, he might not notice his injuries and die from them if not careful. Knowing his condition, his allies make him wear heavy armor in order to protect him from danger." and "Alphen is not immortal." Thanks for clearing that last one up.
I dunno, stupid PR comments aside, we'll just have to wait and see. Playing the Mana games has made me eager to play a JRPG that doesn't end in blue balls and failure (Seriously: the mana tree gets destroyed in every f*cking game, and the MC NEVER gets the/a girl. It's damned depressing after a while). After four Tales games of platonic horsesh*t, I'm hoping we can finally have a relationship between the two leads. I don't care if they aren't the best written romances in the world, I'm f*cking tired of everyone being 'friends'.
It's funny, because to bring up something completely out of left field, one of my biggest issues with the Plinkett review of The Force Awakens was his criticism that the move lacked any romance. At the time I thought, 'not EVERYTHING has to have a romance in it'. While this is still true, after watching the movie I totally get what he's saying. The way Finn and Rey act towards each other is so platonic it's like they don't have any sex organs. It's f*cking weird that they could go through that much, get that close, and never once have any kind of sexual or romantic impulses. Newsflash: sex and romance are part of humanity (no offense Joey). Going on an adventure that results in multiple life-or-death situations is going to force people closer together. I'm not saying they have to end up together, but to pretend like the impulse would never cross their mind is like pretending that all Christians are good people.
So going back to Tales, I get that a romance probably wouldn't slot in well with Berseria. I'm totally cool with that one. But the others? FFS, Jude was practically frothing over Milla, and if the original idea was for them to hook up in the cut content (all leading up to the bittersweet parting at the end), then why in the hell did they double down on the flirty BS in Xillia 2? Then there's Zesteria which... I mean, the lack of a relationship is just another notch in that game's belt of f*ck ups.
All in all I'm floating in neutral on Arise: the complete switch-up of staff members and philosophies has me intrigued, but my general apathy towards modern JRPGs is still in effect.
-edit- Also Snufkin for Smash: do it motherf*ckers.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 22, 2019 23:49:28 GMT -5
Java has a lot of detractors for sure, and as many people who love it hate it. (There's a saying that there are two types of programming languages: the languages that everyone complains about, and the languages nobody uses.) I wouldn't call it limited, as much as it has a very... prescriptive, verbose style? Everything in Java is an "object," whereas other languages can have both objects and functions, or only functions, etc. Java can do almost anything another language can, although the fact that you're working with that strict object-oriented paradigm means you jump through some hoops. I bought a book on design patterns once, and then it occurred to me--a lot of these just... aren't needed... in other languages. They were patterns for working around Java specifically. I think the strict object-oriented paradigm actually makes Java more difficult to learn than some other languages. Ruby and Python, by comparison, are quite simple. I read this article a few weeks ago criticizing Java and found it pretty entertaining: steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.htmlOn the flip side, Java's quite fast and can be run anywhere. When speed is paramount, you have basically C, C++ and Java in main use, and all three have their issues. So pick your poison. I'm not expecting the Tales game to be good until it comes out and I'm explicitly told otherwise. (Although, people told me Tales of Berseria was good, and while it was definitely not a bad game, I don't think I got anything out of playing it.) Perhaps tellingly, the Tales games I haven't liked have all centered around me not liking the main character. I didn't like Velvet, didn't like Senel, didn't like Milla or Jude, didn't like Veigue. While it's true I didn't care for much of their parties, either, I generally don't care about half the cast in any given game anyway.* I think it's in large part because they set the tone for the party's interactions so much. Velvet in particular just sucked the air right out of the room. I feel like the game would be much better without her. If a game's inter-party character interactions don't hit the mark, might as well not be playing at all. The games certainly don't win on originality of plot. *I think Eternia was the only one where I actually really liked everybody. I don't include Chat and Max in this equation, since you could ignore them if you wanted, and that's what I did. They were more the game giving you optional people to play as in battles, not actual main characters. Reid, Farah and Keele were great, and Meredy was pretty decent, especially given that her character archetype is predisposed towards being obnoxious.
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Jun 23, 2019 14:42:38 GMT -5
From what I learned about Go during my time with the source code, it wasn't too bad. Of course I didn't get to go too deep on how it actually works, since I only had to understand the basics of the syntax, and it was readable enough. The compiler is really easy to use, and I appreciate how easy it is to build a program for different platforms.
I've learned a ton about python at work though, and once I understood that python has no types, only objects, I was able to do a lot of clever things. When an objects quacks like a duck, it can act as a duck in some specific cases, even if it's actually a parrot. You can write a single handler for multiple different objects because they share same attributes, even if most of their attributes are very different. You can write code without knowing how some things work in the deepest level, but being able to replace some methods with stuff that suit my needs better makes a lot of stuff easier for me. Also makes it easier to predict how they will behave.
As for Java, I hate it. Haven't written a single line, and have only helped a friend debug his code one time, but from how people describe working with it I have no intention to try it. I know I can't avoid it forever, and it'd probably be better if I knew at least the basics.
I wouldn't mind the lack of romance, if it really was a lack of romance. But the way Tales avoids the topic with maybe some throwaway jokes or awkward moments, but never gets anywhere with it, is probably the worst way to do it. It's like having a story without a conclusion. You can have relationships that do not involve romance, but Rey and Finn didn't really have anything going on between them. By the end they didn't even seem like friends, just two people who happened to be around the same place for the movie. At least that's how I remember it, but considering I barely remember anything about TFA I don't think my opinion is worth much. Regardless, you got to have *something* happen between the central characters, and you have to resolve it somehow by the end of the story. Otherwise you end up with the snore-fest like the chi-fi novels.
I spent midsummer with my family and a bunch of relatives. Three days spent with 25-ish people and four dogs in a small cabin is exhausting as hell. I like all the people, and it was nice to see them, but I'm glad to be back home.
And yeah, Snufkin for Smash. I didn't know how much I needed it until you mentioned it.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 23, 2019 15:01:21 GMT -5
...Rey and Finn didn't really have anything going on between them. By the end they didn't even seem like friends, just two people who happened to be around the same place for the movie. You know, in the original version of my post I had quotes around the two 'that's (It's f*cking weird that they could go through that much, get that close), because you aren't wrong. But I think it's the effect of bad writing, not an intentional choice. It's hard to have a believable relationship (romantic or otherwise) when half of the equation is a cardboard mary-sue. The idea of any relationship is that both people have something to bring to the table. When one person can do it all themselves, you're basically screwed.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 23, 2019 17:05:35 GMT -5
Dem feels when you think your phone is vibrating, but it's just your cat purring on top of you for no reason.
Python does have types, to an extent. You can't add 1 + "1", for instance (although in Javascript, you can! Javascript technically has types, but it tries to do implicit type conversion and this doesn't always work out so hot...). But yeah, it's all about the duck typing. Ruby's much the same. It leads to some cool metaprogramming. Technically, you could override the dunder methods so you could compare dissimilar types, even...
I couldn't care less for romance in anything. I mean, if it's in there, OK, otherwise I don't care. I am not a fan of romance for the sake of having romance, though, and Hollywood movies do that an awful lot. I'm not antisex or romance, but I also don't really find it that interesting and the circumstances in which it appears in Hollywood scenes often contrived. I actually think it's a bit of a relief when romance doesn't pop up in a movie like Star Wars--you mean you're going to allow the plot to focus on something else rather than a standard trapping? Cool, not a lot of blockbuster movies do that. (Very common, and extremely tiring, are the constantly sniping couple who start out hating each other and fall in love. Eyeroll.)
On the topic of romance in movies, albeit tangentially related, I just want to say Rose from the Titantic is f**king dumb.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 23, 2019 18:59:47 GMT -5
Problem is, it focuses on the most standard of the standard trappings, but no longer has any kind of relationships to motivate the characters. Luke was a kid living a boring life on a boring planet who rescued Leah because he wanted adventure, hated the empire for killing his family, and thought she was attractive (a.k.a. libido). COOL, I GET IT. Now let's look at Finn. The movie kicks off with his desertion of the First Order, though why he does this is kind of a mystery. It's implied that he's weary of the brutality, but we're also told that he's a child soldier and a victim of propaganda brainwashing, so what makes him or this moment so special? Furthermore, if he hates violence so much, why does he kill his former allies with no remorse? It's never implied that he specifically hates the First Order, just that he wants freedom. So if you supposedly hate violence (or at the very least, are tired of warfare) and have no personal grudge against the First Order, what possible reason do you have to pretend to be part of the rebellion? Because like a flesh-and-blood human, he wants to impress a girl (to put it another way, he was thinking with his d*ck). All his bravado and posturing are just attempts to make Senpai notice him. The problem is, outside of asking her if she has a boyfriend, he never once makes a single move to actually initiate a relationship. This man is willing to storm a death fortress for this girl, and I'm supposed to believe he's willing to settle for a HUG? (Nevermind: they nailed the modern-aged incel, soy-boi male to a T -- bravo JJ). I'm not implying she had to reciprocate, but not having Finn pursue some kind of relationship contradicts every action he's taken after the first 10-20 minutes of the movie.
Okay, how about Rey? Like, Luke, she's living a boring life on a boring planet. Like Luke she finds a droid that contains a secret message. However unlike Luke, she doesn't hold a personal vendetta against the First Order. Sure she wants to find her parents, but that could have been more easily accomplished by trading the droid for money and buying a ship -- then she could look without being pursued by the First Order. Instead she just springs into action because she's a Mary Sue and that's what the script demands. And boy is she a Mary Sue: there's nothing she can't do alone! She finds the droid, she beats up bad guys... she can even fly a ship perfectly despite never having flown a ship in her life!
So why the f*ck does she need Finn? Oh right, because he claims to be part of the rebellion, and she's trying to get that droid back to them because she's such a super-duper awesome person. If anything, Finn is just a constant annoyance: incompetent, whiny, and constantly needing to be rescued. So why is it that when he reveals that he's been lying to her the whole time, and that he's leaving them to save his own skin, she acts like she's been betrayed by a close friend? Why isn't she happy to see the back of him, since he can't keep up with her superior technical and moral skills (and other various Mary Sue buffs)? The only possible reason is if she found his efforts to impress her endearing. Like, she thinks it's cute how hard he's trying. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's clearly what the movie is using to justify her feelings. Otherwise why even bother with him? For f*cks sake, she rescues herself from the Death Fortress: is she really going to be missing much without Finn?
Would the two of them hooking up suddenly have made TFA a good movie? Obviously not. But using sexual/romantic attraction as the motivation for your characters and then never resolving or even addressing it comes across as alien and sterile. Let's pretend Finn witnessed a bunch of his childhood friends die at the start of the film; gunned down in as fodder to protect the more important people. This triggers his realisation that for all their years of service, he and his friends were never more than disposable troops. Furious, he privately swears revenge on the First Order, rescues Poe and demands that he allows him to join the rebellion. When Poe vanishes, the droid becomes his only connection to the rebels, hence the act. Later, when Rey is captured, he learns that she might be the key to taking down the First Order. Storming the fort plays out as a callback to the start of the movie: it's another suicide mission, but this time he's acting of his own free will. Then, when he rescues Rey, he's a little put-off by the hug, because for the first time he realises that she's a person, and he had been thinking of her as a tool, just like the First Order did to him. Thus in the final confrontation with Ren, he is attempting to defend her as a person, rather than as his means of getting back at the First Order. Ultimately he doesn't see her as a romantic interest, but as someone who gave him back a part of his humanity that he believed was taken by the First Order.
I have now written, in a few minutes, a more believable (and interesting) plot than the actual movie, completely romance free. However at the end of the day we're talking about Star Wars and Tales. I'm not expecting even this level of nuance. Whatever else might be said about a generic romance, I get that people do stupid sh*t for sex. That makes sense. Way more sense than storming a death fortress for no reason beyond the fact that the writers are following an outline from a movie made in 1977 (a movie apparently so complex that they can't figure out how to re-create it 40 years later) to rescue your platonic hugging companion. I hope it goes without saying that I would want something better than Cheria liking Asbel because... uh... Or Jude spending the whole game lusting after Milla with no resolution. But without it you just get Sorey: a teenaged male who spent his entire life in the mountains as the only human, who apparently has no physiological reaction to seeing an attractive female of his own age. Furthermore he is going to leave his quiet, peaceful life to return a forgotten dagger to some being targeted by an immortal assassin who ate your neighbour. Holy sh*t, this guy is like Mother Teresa and Ghandi times infinity!
Let's be real: if that had been generic male NPC #372, do you think Sorry would have left the mountain for him? I've said before that Sorey discovering his budding sexuality could have really been an intriguing layer to his character: another aspect of exploring his 'humanity'. But I don't expect that kind of nuance from Tales. So this is ultimately what I'm getting at: either come up with a unique, genuine motivation for your characters (fat chance), or just acknowledge the half-assed sexual tension that you're using to justify their dumb decisions.
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Post by Phone Master Ion on Jun 25, 2019 1:26:30 GMT -5
The thing I was commenting on originally had to do with long games (especially long long rpgs) and how I've started thinking about what kind of impact the length of a game has on how narrative is presented. I've recently played a number of shorter narrative driven indie games that have led me down this train of thought. I still think there's specific applications for longer linear narratives propelled by 50+ hour long campaigns but I'm rethinking a lot.
Where have I been these past few years? I got incredibly absorbed in a number of projects that ultimately took over my life for better or worse. I'm slowly waking up after the burnout period and I've been putting a lot of thought into what kinds of things I want to work towards next.
My thoughts on Tales franchise: I still have a soft spot for it and am still looking forward to new entries, though I definitely have less time and energy to devote (and am definitely not as fanatical as I once was).
Haha I decided to focus on javascript and that's more or less what I got my degree in. While I agree that it's definitely nightmarish in aspects of development, the accessibility aspect for the end user is what attracted me to it.
Forced obligatory romance in film kills me. A number of recentish movies have done it and it really detracts from my enjoyment.
It's good to be back I suppose, I missed this place
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 25, 2019 4:35:51 GMT -5
It's good to be back I suppose I'm getting mixed messages...
I believe length in most mediums should be reflective of the thematic approach. With video games it gets a bit messier, so for now let's stick to narrative-driven games.
Games like Persona 4 and 5 justify (most) of their length, because while they both have an over-arching theme (pursuing truth and societal corruption), they constantly approach that theme from new angles with each character's personal struggles (as well as several social links). Basically with each arc/dungeon you're getting the same theme explored through a different lens. In contrast, most indie games opt to explore a singular theme from a singular angle. However what they lose in breadth they can make up for in other ways. It's easier to direct a player's emotions when you're working towards a singular goal, especially when you can craft the art, story, and especially gameplay, around that. Seriously, the latter is huge. A pacifist run in Undertale is no biggy because the game is only 4 hours long. A pacifist run in something that went on for 40 hours would be infuriating.
The bigger problem is that there isn't a single JRPG today that isn't padding out its playtime either with superfluous dialogue or excessively repeating the same information (including Persona). Most aren't telling the story of a 50 hour game, they are telling the story of a 25 hour game stretched to near-transparency. They aren't taking advantage of the length, and so rather than an advantage, it becomes a detriment. By contrast, I think a lot of indie developers have gotten more inventive with the way they use a limited budget to tell a story. They both have their place, as both ultimately fulfill different roles, but right now the indie scene has been experiencing a period of innovation while the AAA RPG scene is stagnating pretty badly.
On a different note, I feel budget plays a pretty large role in the current state of JRPGs. A smart indie dev can make money appealing to a niche audience. A larger studio is going to sink a LOT of money into a "AAA" JRPG, which is a genre with limited market appeal. But drop the budget, and you see a lot more variety. Seriously, compare the variety of JRPGs available on the DS/3DS to those on the PS3/4: there's clearly a lot of interesting ideas, but it's a safer bet to throw them on a system where one failure won't tank the company.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 26, 2019 16:15:57 GMT -5
Occasionally I find something that makes me question pretentiousness from a personal vs external level. There's obviously a combination of the two things going on: a personal preference for obtuseness vs what is deemed obtuse. I watched "Under the Silver Lake" yesterday -- a movie which is divisive among critics and users alike -- and am really struggling to decide if I'm just pretentious or if people are just stunningly idiotic. User reviews are pretty easy to dismiss: if a movie requires you to use your head, you can typically expect a ~3 star average. Yet even with films like Enemy or The Lobster, which both sport mixed user ratings, critic ratings tend to be more forgiving, sporting a 71 and 87 RT score respectively.
Yet, Under the Silver Lake was panned by both critics and users alike, with the most common complaint being that it never amounted to any kind of point or message. Now, in a lot of ways the movie reminded me of a Murakami novel in the sense that it's magical realism with multiple fantastical metaphors whose individual interpretations might not be clear-cut. Yet much like a Murakami novel, there are also main themes that are pretty on-the-nose. If you came away from Under the Silver Lake thinking the movie had no meaning, then I'm going to assume that you didn't watch it, because at one point an old man literally looks at the camera and explains that all culture over the past several decades is a creation of corporate interest.
HE SAYS IT WHILE LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA. How stupid do you have to be to miss that? I get that most of this 140 minute film is "weird", but is your brain so ADD that it can't pick out an obvious theme when it's shoved down your throat? I expect this kind of stupidity from the general audience, but I'm somewhat stunned to find it in critics. The irony is that this director's previous movie, "It Follows", became a sleeper hit among both audiences and critics alike. Yet it was a horror film whose rules ended up contradicting any kind of meaning, so that rather than a clever metaphor or psychological exploration (the mark of excellent horror films), you ended up with something lacking meaning!
Which brings me back to: am I just super pretentious and enjoy this because I like magical realism, or are people just so conditioned to being spoon-fed ideas that they can't find a tree in a forest without help? Obviously the answer is a bit of both, but how much of each? I feel like I'm back to Endgame, where it's not about the fact that people liked or disliked it. In this case, it's that the biggest complaint is flat-out objectively wrong.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 26, 2019 20:35:39 GMT -5
The thing I was commenting on originally had to do with long games (especially long long rpgs) and how I've started thinking about what kind of impact the length of a game has on how narrative is presented. I've recently played a number of shorter narrative driven indie games that have led me down this train of thought. I still think there's specific applications for longer linear narratives propelled by 50+ hour long campaigns but I'm rethinking a lot. it's kinda like short stories vs. novels, I think. You can be impactful with just a short story, although the way you present things is massively different. Meh, I think it's always going to have a soft spot. Don't things you're passionately into always do to some extent, irrespective of whether you've mostly moved on? Hell, I still have a soft spot for Gundam, despite having no real interest in the genre. I just loved Gundam Wing a lot as a kid. Yeah, I can get that. None of the stuff I work on really impacts the user very much (they got their data! things were fast!), and so it's not very gratifying from that perspective. There's something nice about being able to build something people can use. And you can do a lot of cool stuff. Curious, do you do UX/UI design at all? Or are you front-end mostly from a coding perspective? Got a new work computer today. Is nice. Doesn't crash. I think I've now left the Windows ecosystem altogether? Beyond my desktop, I mean, which I rarely use unless I'm playing computer games. Don't do that often, unless it's all I'm doing...
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Post by Phone Master Ion on Jun 27, 2019 18:43:22 GMT -5
I suppose what my thoughts on game length reflect how my preferences have changed over time. (Also probably has something to do with how much time I have nowadays...)
The front end I do is mostly designers giving me wireframes and mockups and I implement what is possible within parameters.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 28, 2019 18:14:58 GMT -5
Ended up picking up Judgment on an impulse. Everyone has been recommending the Yakuza games to me for ages. Much as I dislike open-world games, everyone says they aren't the GTA style of open world, and that they feature engaging stories that are actually decently paced. Furthermore I understand them to be masterpieces of balancing tone, where a story scene can be entirely serious, while side missions can be goofy in a way that only Japan could conceive. Plus, the combat is apparently not bad at all.
Thing is, I've honestly never really been interested in crime from the position of the criminal. All the entertainment based around organised crime has never appealed to me. Even when I think it's well made (Boardwalk Empire) I can't get truly invested. Sorry Sopranos. Sorry Scarface. Sorry Godfather. Sorry Breaking Bad. But mostly I'm sorry Yakuza series, which all sounds very appealing, but never enough to bite the bullet and give it a go. Whuzzat? Judgement is a Yakuza game but instead you play a disgraced lawyer turned private detective? That alone would've been enough, but now we've got a Japanese PI story with no anime or supernatural bullsh*t? I am intrigued. The open-world still has me hesitant, but who knows: maybe this is a dream game where I least expected to find one. Plus, much as I've had an overall good time with the Mana collection, I'm ready to move on. I'll do a write-up on the whole thing once I finally close out SoM, which should be soon since I'm already at the final dungeon.
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