badmojo wrote on 2021-06-05, 06:27:

As a long time fan of role playing games who's only dabbled with (and not really understood) isometric turn based games, I suspe […]
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As a long time fan of role playing games who's only dabbled with (and not really understood) isometric turn based games, I suspect I'm missing out on some great experiences. I need something modern to get me going so I'm trying my hand at Pillars of Eternity II (PoE 1 sounded great too but I liked the look of PoE2's setting better) (also 1 isn't turn based).

I tried to watch a couple of YouTube clips that explain the combat for me - I'm using the turn based option - but hot damn they were boring, so I just fired up the game and started playing instead. The interface is great and the tutorial is pretty nice so I'm getting there I think - I've just thrown away my original save and started again now that I vaguely know what I'm doing.

Most of the mechanics are familiar but I have no idea about what makes a good party and what turn based battle tactics look like, but I'm playing on an easy difficulty so I'll work it out. Or it'll bore me to tears and I'll give up. Time will tell.

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You know, I tried Pillars of Eternity 1, and the combat fell incredibly flat to me.

I think it's a matter of taste. I vastly prefer the Gold Box/Infinity Engine, AD&D approach to party composition. You have your front line fighters that protect the squishy casters. And the casters, at the appropriate times, buff/debuff/nuke. That's your basic party composition/strategy. You can get creative with multi/dual classing, or ostensibly fighter classes with some minimal casting like Paladin or Ranger. But they d0n't really change the dynamic, so much as give you slightly deeper reserves of staple spells like minor heal or bless. For the most part, all your important decisions involve 2, maybe 3 characters, every few rounds. Maybe more during an especially challenging boss encounter.

A lot of the modern isometric RPGs have gone totally nuts giving every character of every class multiple hotbars of abilities. And they all have cooldowns instead of a set number of uses you need to ration. So if you aren't using all of them all the time as soon as their cooldowns refresh, you are playing wrong. It feels less tactical and more frantic. My decision making goes from centering on 3 characters with punctuated timing, to frantically checking all 6 characters all the time using any and all abilities they have.

I donno, maybe I was playing Pillars of Eternity "wrong". I was finding combat increasingly difficult playing it the old way until I just resorted to endless ability spam, with little regard for what ability it was. Then the game got so easy I just sort of... stopped caring.

Namrok wrote on 2021-06-05, 16:24:

I donno, maybe I was playing Pillars of Eternity "wrong". I was finding combat increasingly difficult playing it the old way until I just resorted to endless ability spam, with little regard for what ability it was. Then the game got so easy I just sort of... stopped caring.

You're not alone. Not a game for me either. I grew bored of it quickly and uninstalled. Different strokes for different blokes. Personally I love Titan Quest and all of its updates, but not everyone likes the pace of that game either.

Personally my problem is that l want to optimize my character(s). This usually involve a lot of research. Some games like never winter nights 2 I never finished because I just could not decide 🤣.

And, I prefer baldurs gate's way of auto leveling up companions or I usually feel totally overwhelmed by all choices.

Usually it doesn't make a huge deal but I guess it's just me being a little on the autistic side. 😁

I played through Far Cry recently. Played it on a modest 2010ish machine with windows 7 and so could turn all features high, a visually impressive game

I finished it this time, had tried it before years ago and simply not kept going on.

As is often the case with FPS games I enjoyed it more early on in the game, where 'you' are unknown and there seems more open spaces and less relentless battling. this seems to be an FPS pattern, I guess inevitably as you have to reach an end point and that seems to require a concentration of foes and location usually.

anyway, good game but not really as open as it first seems. Sure you can climb over the hills in a circuitous route to get from A to B, but there isn't much in it for you as a player really, there isn't much of a sense of 'being' in a world in the way one gets from fully open world games (and nor should you expect it)

Aebtdom wrote on 2021-06-05, 02:46:

Half-Life : Opposing Force […]
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Half-Life : Opposing Force

A few days ago I finished installing the 3 Half-Life games including Blue Shift.
I started with Opposing Force for a change. It really has been over two decades since the last time I took a serious effort to finish these games.
I am surprised how well my SLI setup is performing in these games. Due to the processor I didn't expect it to be bad, but never would have imagined the voodoo 2 cards would run the game at over 100fps on average.
It is really enjoyable.

I really like all 3, even the 'worst' one BlueShift to me is great to play. the black mesa facility is such a great place, especially in it's post 'resonance cascade' state

the alien realm though, never much liked that!

Started playing Freedom Fighters on my WinXP PC. It's definitely in the "good but not great" basket so far.

I just re-started Tyranny for the third time. I start wanting to play evil and end up sympathizing for the rebels, so I start a trojan horse rebel character and end up angry with the rebels and start a totally evil character, then I hate the evil faction even more and I start over once again. This game has all kinds of dislikable factions all around 🤣.

Namrok wrote on 2021-06-05, 16:24:

You know, I tried Pillars of Eternity 1, and the combat fell incredibly flat to me. […]
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You know, I tried Pillars of Eternity 1, and the combat fell incredibly flat to me.

I think it's a matter of taste. I vastly prefer the Gold Box/Infinity Engine, AD&D approach to party composition. You have your front line fighters that protect the squishy casters. And the casters, at the appropriate times, buff/debuff/nuke. That's your basic party composition/strategy. You can get creative with multi/dual classing, or ostensibly fighter classes with some minimal casting like Paladin or Ranger. But they d0n't really change the dynamic, so much as give you slightly deeper reserves of staple spells like minor heal or bless. For the most part, all your important decisions involve 2, maybe 3 characters, every few rounds. Maybe more during an especially challenging boss encounter.

A lot of the modern isometric RPGs have gone totally nuts giving every character of every class multiple hotbars of abilities. And they all have cooldowns instead of a set number of uses you need to ration. So if you aren't using all of them all the time as soon as their cooldowns refresh, you are playing wrong. It feels less tactical and more frantic. My decision making goes from centering on 3 characters with punctuated timing, to frantically checking all 6 characters all the time using any and all abilities they have.

I donno, maybe I was playing Pillars of Eternity "wrong". I was finding combat increasingly difficult playing it the old way until I just resorted to endless ability spam, with little regard for what ability it was. Then the game got so easy I just sort of... stopped caring.

This was my experience as well. I think it comes from D&D being based originally on wargaming concepts adapted to dungeoneering, so that party composition makes logical sense in way. It's not hard to grasp the concept of "fighters out front to keep enemies busy, mages in back to cast spells/buff."

Many modern RPGs are based instead on the MMO concept of every party having a tank to aggro enemies and soak up damage, a DPS dealer to do heavy damage, and a buffer/healer, which makes sense in that it gives every single character (played by an individual person in an MMO) something to do during combat... but to me feels both more chaotic and less satisfying when controlling an entire party yourself. More chaotic because eventually every character develops a dozen abilities each on its own cooldown timer, each with its own status effects and damage types (and therefore each enemy with its own status and damage type resistances), but less satisfying (to me) because characters are largely defined by their MMO roles (tank, DPS, etc.) and their abilities increasingly reflect that.

There's no doubt that this type of combat is more complex, as it offers more choices to make round-to-round and requires more though/analysis of things like resistances and damage types, but for me it also feels more artificial.

newtmonkey wrote on 2021-06-08, 23:05:

There's no doubt that this type of combat is more complex, as it offers more choices to make round-to-round and requires more though/analysis of things like resistances and damage types, but for me it also feels more artificial.

This has been my issue so far too - battles feel totally contrived and I sit there hover my mouse over each players abilities to determine what's available and what's still in cool-down, etc. I assumed I was doing it wrong, even minor battles are slow going and somewhat joyless. I have 5 characters in my party now too and that's a lot of skill trees to think about with each level up.

Otherwise the writing is good and the world interesting - maybe I should have gone with RTwP combat instead of turn based but my concern there was that with some much going on I'd be stressed out and pausing all the time anyway.

Sarted playing The Blues Brothers on my 486. It's one of those games that I've loaded up and played many times but have never sat down and focused on trying to progress and finish it. The scrolling is weird though, the screen doesn't seem to consistently center on the character and can make it hard to see what's ahead.

Recently I've acquired some much needed desk space and have been working on setting up my Amiga 500 to my liking so I thought I'd try The Blues Brothers on it and it's much better. Runs a little faster, but the character is always centered as I think it should be.

There looks like 5 levels in all, and I've made it up to 4 tonight but it's starting to get hard and without any way to save progress, each game you have to start from L1 and go through it all again, so the last 2 levels could be a real slog if the difficulty keeps increasing.

Currently playing through the S3D version of Tomb Raider on a VirgeDX. Going for the genuine early '97 experience, heh.

Frame rate varies between 12-16 FPS depending on the area. Not smooth by any means, but it's playable. Looks much better than software rendering though, and runs faster too, at least on this rig.

Wow, the voodoo really was unmatched, then.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-09, 11:58:

Wow, the voodoo really was unmatched, then.

For Tomb Raider, I think Rendition Verite has similar performance to the Voodoo1. Here's a video showing a side by side comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTmClXwJ4TI

That said, when compared strictly to software rendering at 640x480 on a slow system, the Virge does deliver slightly improved performance and much better visuals. And if you drop the resolution down to 512x384 you get closer to 20 FPS, which isn't too bad since the game is capped at 30.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-06-09, 09:55:

Currently playing through the S3D version of Tomb Raider on a VirgeDX. Going for the genuine early '97 experience, heh. […]
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Currently playing through the S3D version of Tomb Raider on a VirgeDX. Going for the genuine early '97 experience, heh.

Frame rate varies between 12-16 FPS depending on the area. Not smooth by any means, but it's playable. Looks much better than software rendering though, and runs faster too, at least on this rig.

Holy moly, that really is a huge difference!

Actually, weird coincidence, I had a similar experience with the game I just finished when I stumbled upon a toggle in the settings of my Gameboy Advance emulator. So, the thing about the GBA is its launch model didn't have a backlight installed in its screen. So most GBA games had the brightness and saturation of their color palettes cranked way up to compensate and the results tend to look really awful, either extremely washed-out or eye-searingly garish, when you emulate them on a modern monitor.
Anyway, I found this "Gameboy Colors" setting which adds a shader intended to mimic how the graphics would have looked on the unlit screen they were designed for, and when I tested this by playing through an old favorite (Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow) again, I was really blown away by how much of a difference it makes. (Screenshot compilation below)

The atmosphere as a whole is so much more thick: the entire castle looks properly gloomy and frightening, the save rooms feel warm and cozy, and even the areas where they used shading to simulate lighting effects look a lot more natural.
The colors in a lot of places are really striking. The wine cellar appears properly grimy as opposed to the walls being this weird almost purplish color, and the background fog is more understated and nicer. The blood on the floor of the throne room is less cartoonishly over-the top, and the purple wall of the teleport rooms becomes muted and almost elegant. The blue wallpaper in the inner quarters reads as more old and dirty and less like a child's bedroom. The reservoir, caverns, and catacombs are actually dark! The cogs inside the clock tower look like real brass! The outer face of the clock tower doesn't look like complete garbage! Even Soma's jeans look like real denim instead of over-saturated blue! It's incredible.
There are even a bunch of little things, like the paintings in the dance hall, that have a lot more subtle detail when they aren't destroyed by the cranked-up brightness. Even the character portraits have so much more depth and visible detail to them, and they really pop. Some things that look really awkward and unnatural at full brightness, like the shading on the bottom of the shrubs in the gardens, look better when darkened. The places where they tried to do a sort of fading effect in the background where stuff gradually disappears into the darkness (seen mainly in the arena, but also to a small extent with some of the stars in the chaotic realm) are especially notable because that whole effect is just entirely lost with the full brightness. It even hides some subtle flaws in the spritework in a few spots around the game. There are definitely spots where the difference isn't quite as stark, but it's still noticeable when you compare them and it really is such an improvement on the whole.

Sorry for rambling on so long but I really am just floored. Gameboy Advance games have this reputation for being ugly because of the bright color palettes, but when you run it through this shader, this one at least looks really good, almost beautiful at times. I'm a sucker for good pixel art and I'm genuinely in awe here.
Between this and that one Twitter account that highlights old 16- and 32-bit sprites displayed on CRTs, I'm left wondering how many other "ugly" old games--beyond just our own nostalgia and fuzzy, idealized memories of them--really did just look better back then on the display hardware they were designed for.

NovaCN wrote on 2021-06-09, 15:20:

Actually, weird coincidence, I had a similar experience with the game I just finished when I stumbled upon a toggle in the settings of my Gameboy Advance emulator. So, the thing about the GBA is its launch model didn't have a backlight installed in its screen. So most GBA games had the brightness and saturation of their color palettes cranked way up to compensate and the results tend to look really awful, either extremely washed-out or eye-searingly garish, when you emulate them on a modern monitor.

Nice! It looks a lot more natural with the proper colors.

It's interesting how small changes like this can make a big difference in how one experiences a game.

Last night I was in my basement and found my copies of Sim Theme Park and Sim coaster. I just finished installing them on my son's computer. I can't wait to play them with him tonight.

gerry wrote on 2021-06-08, 08:51:

I really like all 3, even the 'worst' one BlueShift to me is great to play. the black mesa facility is such a great place, especially in it's post 'resonance cascade' state

the alien realm though, never much liked that!

Indeed, the black mesa facility is the best part of the game troughout the entire three games!

Over my recent vacation, I finally beat RoadBlasters on the NES - I pulled into the final checkerboard with a sliver of fuel left in the reserve tank. I got a nice CONGRATULATIONS with some fireworks 😁 I don't think I've ever beaten the game before, I always ran out of fuel on the last stage.

I started playing RC PRO AM now, I'm getting much better at it but the game is challenging. In the PC world, still on HOMM II - custom maps from celestial heavens are keeping me busy.

15 hours or so into Tyranny and I am in love with it. If Pillars of Eternity was a flawed homage to Baldur's Gate (and its expansion to Icewind Dale) this is definitely a homage to Torment. It is basically the Midnight D&D setting in video game format, ie. think of Middle Earth where the good guys lost, and you are a Nazgul in service of Sauron. The story, factions and characters are all interesting with lots of twists, and I'm having a lot of fun secretly collaborating with the resistance to overthrow the archvillain (albeit to rule with an iron fist myself, unbeknownst to them yet). Nearing the middle of Act II, it doesn't seem to be as long as Pillars (which took around 200 hours to 100%) so I think this will take between 50-100 hours..

Me and my son played Sim Coaster and he had a blast building the park and designing the rollercoasters with me. Either this weekend or sometime next week we're going to start Sim Theme Park. I love playing these older games with him. He has a blast playing them.