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Comments
here's an example of the Vulture graphic mod for Nethack.
note how it, y'know, resembles a game. How there's all these objects and such on screen.
I just don't see why, if it can be done in Nethack it can't be done elsewhere. I mean this looks fine to me, sort of a watered-down Diablo type thing. I don't see why ASCII is preferable to this.
I mean even NES graphics would be better than letters. I think it just adds an extra level of unnecessary complexity.
I don't play Dwarf Fortress and dislike it for other reasons, so I don't care too much about that.
Though I thought somebody did in fact, make one for DF. I might be wrong though.
There is an isometric visualizer for Dwarf Fortress, at least. It's terrible for your fps, though, especially any time you go near water/magma.
Also, Dwarf Fortress can sap enough resources even with ASCII.
Fun fact, the one time I tried to run DF on my laptop, my laptop bluescreened.
^Unsurprising. It's significantly more computationally intensive than military-grade aerodynamics simulators.
These can be good because of the way they penalise failure. It's about playing "long" -- endurance, essentially. When failure can set you back more than a few seconds or minutes, it becomes important to take care of your longevity in whatever scenario. If you look at Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, they save constantly, but send you back to checkpoints at death anyway. This way, they save your resources and the condition of your gear, but ensure that you have to consider survival as part of a longer journey rather than fighting scenario-to-scenario.
As for difficulty, I do feel that some games have suffered from being too easy. This is less a "HARDCOER GAMER GRRR" thing and more a question of balance and depth. Well-balanced difficulty ensures that a player has to use all or a significant portion of their gameplay options in order to complete the game, and perhaps even use some creativity of application in the process. The strength of well-balanced difficult games is in how they teach efficiency. A game that's too easy requires too little effort to play, perhaps to the extent that it becomes boring.
It has to be the right kind of difficulty to empower a game, mind, rather than thrown in as a padding tool. But difficulty delivered with logic, reason and balance can make a huge contribution to a game because of the depth it can generate.
I fully appreciate ASCII graphics for Nethack. Especially when combined with a web-based Nethack server (such as the alt.org server), which you can connect to from any computer, this means that you can play the game from any computer, and you will never have to download anything to play it[/b] (apart from vital game data). No need for graphics importing, no need to wait for anything, no need to get around odd settings (other than to telnet). Just need a command line window.
You don't know how gloriously portable that is. I could start one game on my own computer, continue it on a school computer, then show it to a friend on his computer. And leave no trail that I even played the game, other than the fact that I connected to a certain IP address.
Furthermore, the game takes up practically no space on my computer (heck, even the downloadable version takes up very little space), and is guaranteed to run very smoothly. While I need to think about closing my browser in order to make TF2 run a bit more smoothly, I can stick Nethack in the leftover space even when I have twenty tabs open in Firefox.
Also, if you're using classic keyboard controls in Nethack--that is, HJKLYUBN for left/down/up/right/NW/NE/SW/SE--the directions make far more sense than if you're looking at it from an angled view via Vulture's Eye. That said, the basic Nethack tileset that comes with the downloadable version of Nethack doesn't have Vulture's angle problem.
Finally, there are some jokes from the devs that rely on the ASCII graphics. The cockatiel is a nearly harmless monster but is notable because it shares the same glyph (lowercase c) as the very dangerous cockatrice, chickatrice, and pyrolisk.
Also checkpoints as opposed to save-anywhere is supposed to prevent players getting hopelessly stuck in certain situations.
^ Is that just quicksave-anywhere or is it permasave anywhere?
Of course, that's partly necessary, at least if you're online.
Difficulty settings are great if you can change them during the game (or it's an arcade-style game so you're already expected to play through the game many times). Otherwise lolno, since then you just inevitably end up picking the wrong difficulty at the start (since, you know, you have to choose before you've even played the game) and then you have no fun for the whole game.
Checkpoints are better than save-anywhere since it means gameplay is based on getting through levels rather than individual encounters, and I generally think the former is more fun.
I think ASCII graphics look nice, although admittedly there's no particularly good reason for that.
You and me both on all accounts, Dyre.
Two things.
One, Final Fantasy VII is about to be released on Steam, albeit not as a true remake. With this and a few of the Ys games, Steam seems to be getting a lot of JRPG love.
Two, I sent out a request for a Source Filmmaker beta key. The wait is gonna be agonizing one.
Any word on what it'll cost? I don't have huge hopes for it, but I'd be willing to drop, say, five bucks to see what all the fuss is.
Apparently FFVII won't be on Steam, but a Squeenix store exclusive.
Speaking of that, I just discovered the Capcom web store, which is apparently selling stuff like eXceed, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, and Satazius. I was wondering about Satazius since I'd seen it on Steam, but then I remembered that Capcom was listed as the publisher--so I guess this is their official site, and Nyu-Media's products are distributed by Capcom.
GOG has The Incredible Machine on sale today, which is an awesome blast from the past for me.
^^^Ah. Well...never mind, then.
Isn't that the only kind of save FFVII ever had?
Not when you didn't have Cloud in your party.
Oh yeah, I forgot about those parts. It's been a while, my memory's sorta clouded over.
Yay I finally beat Metroid Prime 2!!! Just like in the first Prime, the second to last boss gave me way more trouble than the actual final boss
^^^^,^^^,^^
That was un-Barret-able.