OK, so a few days ago I reinstalled Psychonauts, and for the part few 
days I've been playing it.

It turns out that back in 2011, they added some Steam integration to it. 
Doesn't appear to have changed anything else, just that. Then again, 
unlike some *other* games I might mention, Psychonauts has never been a 
game in need of stability improvements or other bug-fixes. (It would be 
nice to be able to *steer* though...)

I looked it up on Wikipedia, and appearently this game is not nearly as 
old as I thought it was. They actually released it in 2005. (Frightening 
thing: 2005 is actually a long time ago now.) The graphics aren't 
exactly top-notch, and the controls are just horrible. The difficulty 
curve gets almost vertical about half-way through, and 100% completion 
is near impossible. And yet, I really love this game. Why is that?

Some games don't have a story. (E.g., Tetris. There is no story. You 
just slot the blocks together.) But many games do have a bit of a story. 
Usually, though, it seems like pretty much an after-thought.

Take, for example, Quake II. The only "story" is that aliens invade 
Earth, so the US Marines go to invade the alien home-world. Somehow you 
are the only guy who made it. Your mission? Kill everything that moves, 
and maybe press a few buttons and find some keys and stuff. That's about 
it, really. Oh, sure, between levels that little green-screen thingy 
comes up to tell you where you just exited and what your next objective 
is... But it's a strictly linear map. You can basically ignore that 
entire video, and it doesn't make much difference.

Let's try another: HalfLife. The "story" is that a terrible accident 
occurs, causing Earth to be invaded by aliens. Your job is simply to get 
out alive somehow. Oh there is a *bit* more of a story this time; the 
military has come to silence anyone who escapes. And then a bunch of 
black-ops guys try to silence the military. And something about a 
satellite and a nuclear warhead... But, again, you don't really have to 
care if you don't want to. The story is optional.

Both of these are of course first-person shooters. But take something 
like the excellent Abe's Oddessy. That's a 2D platformer (with some 
delicious 3Dish visuals). Again, the "story" is that you're a persecuted 
worker trying to escape from an oppressive life of slavery and liberate 
your fellow workers. There is a little bit more to it than that, but 
basically you spend most of the game climbing ladders and pressing 
buttons and stuff. Again, it's nearly linear, so you don't really need 
to care /why/ you're doing all this stuff; that's optional.

Not only is this stuff optional, but it /feels/ optional. It's like the 
level designers decided what levels they were going to design, and then 
tried to come up with a story to justify why you have to do this. And 
the dialogue is delivered in a way that makes it sound like it's only 
there to justify the next challenge.

"Yes, Dr Freeman. Somebody must go into the reactor and restart the 
pumps. Naturally, you've have to battle past that giant creature out 
there which is impervious to everything except the fanblades of the 
reactor core. Of course, there's a dozen of us all standing around here 
not doing anything, but we're *scientists*, we're far too chicken to 
actually lift a finger to do anything about our plight. But you? You 
have the hazard suit... Help us, you're our only hope!"

It's not to say that these are bad games, but rather that story is not 
their primary focus. And to some extent, nobody seriously /expects/ a 
mere computer game to have a real story to it.

Psychonauts is different. It delivers the story as if it means it. But 
it doesn't do that thing some games do where it feels like the game just 
wants to be a movie and you're getting in the way of the 
perfectly-written script. It feels organic and lively. The characters 
have actual personalities beyond "epic hero" and "cartoon villain". It's 
surprisingly deep. And most of all... it makes you realise just how pale 
everything else is by comparison.

Don't get me wrong; there are plenty of actual movies that have far more 
depth to them than this little computer game. But it still does better 
than I thought I'd see in a game.

Also... I love Black Velvetopia. It is a very beautiful place. And it's 
also the level with the best psychology, in my opinion. After you 
complete the level, you feel like you actually got to the bottom of the 
guy's problems, and solved them. By contrast, Boyd still seems as mad as 
ever when you're done. I am in awe of the level designers who managed to 
model those bent and twisted streets though.

Interesting fact: I just completed the game, with 4 instances of POV-Ray 
running in the background, and I didn't notice any performance loss. I 
guess this game is just really light on the CPU!

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> Some games don't have a story. (E.g., Tetris. There is no story. You
> just slot the blocks together.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8


-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On 31/12/2012 2:13 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>> Some games don't have a story. (E.g., Tetris. There is no story. You
>> just slot the blocks together.)
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8
>
>
Excellent! Thank you. :-D

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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oh, you wanna talk about games?  I just had this text ready to go just now...

hey, guys, long time no see.  Been  reading and playing on my android phone, so
let's talk about it? ;)

any old time Myst fans there?   I'm sure at least Warp is in.  played something
rather nice on smartphone these days, I'd actually say the best smartphone game
I've ever played, thanks to the simple interface:  The Lost City, by Fire Maple
Games.

Damn god job on emulating myst play mechanics on touch screen, plenty of (fair)
puzzles, and besides is a very good game on its own.  Got stunningly beautiful
photoshopped natural scenery and while no fmv, it's got rotoscoped animations
here and there.  Music is ambient stuff that don't get in the way.  And no, it's
got nothing to do with Lovecraft, it's on an island like myst.

it's a mere $0.99 on android.  it's way shorter than myst, sure, but a fair
enough price for what it provides.  Been playing it obsessively for 2 days and
am about to finish it I guess, but well worth a trip.

it's an adventure game though and as soon as you hit the end, that's about it.
Action games are another matter though and may provide virtually infinite
gameplay.  Only better when there's a strategy element to it.  Thus, I think
they have a winner with Cartoon Wars, by Gamevil, like the previous game
available on all smartphones I guess.

It's a tower defense game on a side scroll view where your tower produces gold,
mana, powerups and soldiers from diverse categories to defend and attack the
enemy tower on the opposite end.  The more mana you have, more powerful warrior

mayhem involved and I don't recommend on anything but more modern cpus, at least
dual-core:  my 1ghz single-core motorola milestone 2 that was once top of line
can barely handle it all with lots of slowdown and stuttering... still, the game
is too fun and enjoyable to put to rest.

it's free, but requires permanent connection, so if you have limited bandwidth,
it's kinda expensive... :p

this whole text swyped from the phone too.  because it can be done... ;)

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I recently bought The Witcher 2 from Steam because it was on sale and it
has received very positive reviews from both critics and the public.

Now, my current PC might not be the absolute top-of-the-line, but it's
in no way a slouch either. Crysis? Hah, gimme a break. Skyrim? All
graphical settings on full, and smooth like silk, no problems whatsoever.
Crysis 2? Almost all graphical settings on full (just a couple of them
on second-to-max) and it runs smoothly.

The Witcher 2? The auto-detection system suggest the *minimum* possible
graphical settings for *everything*. And for a good reason! I can't make
them much higher before it starts lagging noticeably. (Needless to say,
if I put everything to max, the game is completely unplayable.)

Are you freaking kidding me? Even games like Crysis 2 and Skyrim don't
demand even a small fraction of that in their *top* graphical settings.
This game is as heavy as those on its *minimal* graphical settings!

Granted, the game has some pretty advanced new graphical innovations
that require a lot of resources, but it's not just them. All the other
more "traditional" settings (such as texture sizes, shadow quality,
LOD distance and so on) have to also be either at minimum or almost
minimum, or turned completely off, if I want it to run at a playable
framerate.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> I recently bought The Witcher 2 from Steam because it was on sale and it
> has received very positive reviews from both critics and the public.
>
> Now, my current PC might not be the absolute top-of-the-line, but it's
> in no way a slouch either. Crysis? Hah, gimme a break. Skyrim? All
> graphical settings on full, and smooth like silk, no problems whatsoever.
> Crysis 2? Almost all graphical settings on full (just a couple of them
> on second-to-max) and it runs smoothly.

it's the new crysis :)

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> The Witcher 2? The auto-detection system suggest the *minimum* possible
> graphical settings for *everything*. And for a good reason! I can't make
> them much higher before it starts lagging noticeably. (Needless to say,
> if I put everything to max, the game is completely unplayable.)

> Are you freaking kidding me? Even games like Crysis 2 and Skyrim don't
> demand even a small fraction of that in their *top* graphical settings.
> This game is as heavy as those on its *minimal* graphical settings!

I read on the internets a tip that apparently if you have NVidia's
3D-Vision driver installed, it causes a big slowdown in The Witcher 2
for some reason, and that uninstalling said driver should help.

I tried uninstalling it, and put the game to the test: I turned almost
all settings on (including most of the "useless" settings, such as depth
of field, that I had to had off because I had to cut features to get a
decent framerate) and to maximum ("Ultra") and started the game...
And what do you know... It runs smooth as silk.

And man, does it look gorgeous. For example the volumetric light effects
are simply astounding (for example when you look directly at the sun
through a foggy atmosphere, every geometric detail obstructs the light
rays as they should...)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> And man, does it look gorgeous. For example the volumetric light effects
> are simply astounding (for example when you look directly at the sun
> through a foggy atmosphere, every geometric detail obstructs the light
> rays as they should...)

yeah

then again, those are not perfect math curves

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>> And man, does it look gorgeous. For example the volumetric light effects
>> are simply astounding (for example when you look directly at the sun
>> through a foggy atmosphere, every geometric detail obstructs the light
>> rays as they should...)
>
> yeah
>
> then again, those are not perfect math curves

Nobody has got a monitor capable of displaying perfect math curves yet :-)

Seriously though, if your goal is to create a bitmap representation of 
the math curve, what difference does it make if you check every pixel in 
the image to see if it lies on the curve, or you convert the curve into 
a list of pixel-sized straight lines and then colour those pixels? 
Different maths but same result.

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> >> And man, does it look gorgeous. For example the volumetric light effects
> >> are simply astounding (for example when you look directly at the sun
> >> through a foggy atmosphere, every geometric detail obstructs the light
> >> rays as they should...)
> >
> > yeah
> >
> > then again, those are not perfect math curves
>
> Nobody has got a monitor capable of displaying perfect math curves yet :-)
>
> Seriously though, if your goal is to create a bitmap representation of
> the math curve, what difference does it make if you check every pixel in
> the image to see if it lies on the curve, or you convert the curve into
> a list of pixel-sized straight lines and then colour those pixels?
> Different maths but same result.

sorry, I was impersonating Andrew

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