Thirith on 2/9/2019 at 13:46
Thanks for the info. I'll probably do my sixth and final race of the championship tonight and then I'll see if I want to go Alpine or Abarth. Also, it seems that there's a VR comfort option that's activated by default that I wasn't even aware of; I think I may try switching that one off.
Edit: Just drove my first track with the Alpine, and... sheesh. It's a whole new world, consisting mainly of crashes, splintered glass and bent metal. Any tips are much welcome.
demagogue on 3/9/2019 at 15:32
Well I took a spin today, and the Alpine handled well for me. I guess when you start your first championship, you're matched with other random people out there starting off, or at least their early stats from whenever ago, or anyway with a very forgiving RNG, because I got 5th overall, which was pretty generous. But that said, I only got the shattered glass and body damage in one race. The others went pretty swimmingly. Maybe I've picked up some habits from Dakar 18 for staying on the road through right turn hairpin over loose gravel.
The other game I've been playing recently is Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, simultaneous-turn based space tactical combat. So far I really like it. Aside from all of the nods to the show and looking great, the gameplay has almost a naval feel to it. You have these massive capital ships slowly approaching and circling each other in these wide arcs trying to a good angle while unleashing waves of fighters and torpedoes.
The simultaneous turn keeps it interesting because of course you don't know how your opponent is going to move until after you've committed your move. (It also reminds me of an old WWII fighter card game I used to love where you moved fighter planes on these movement cards little arcs at a time, and could fire when you had the right angle.)
Usually I'm not too into RTSs because I'm not into tactical clickfests under time pressure, but this has a great balance between quick play (because the turns are relatively short and fast), enough going on for each turn to be pretty intense throughout, and all without the time pressure. So I'm into this.
Tomi on 3/9/2019 at 18:06
Quote Posted by demagogue
Well I took a spin today, and the Alpine handled well for me. I guess when you start your first championship, you're matched with other random people out there starting off, or at least their early stats from whenever ago, or anyway with a very forgiving RNG, because I got 5th overall, which was pretty generous.
Hmm. What game mode are you talking about? Because in the Championship mode you're racing against CPU drivers, not other human players. If you already finished 5th in some online event, you're quite a racing legend. :p (The best drivers in this game are insanely good!) Of course there are some online leagues and other custom events, but I haven't tried any of those.
Anyway, congrats on being able to handle the Alpine! It might be the easiest car to win things with, because it's so overpowered compared to the other cars in its class, so you'll still do well if you stay on the road and don't crash too much. It's not the easiest car to drive however - in fact it's quite the opposite!
Thirith, jumping into the Alpine right after getting half-decent with the Mini was indeed like a whole new world to me as well. You will have to adapt to a completely new driving style when you drive a RWD, but it's a whole lot of fun when you eventually learn it. :) My driving style in the beginning was definitely way too aggressive - the Mini is so much more forgiving with everything, but with the Alpine you'll have to be more careful with the throttle and steering. Take it easy at first, really, you can still win rallies on lower difficulties even if you don't drive like a madman all the time. Being too rough on the steering wheel with the Alpine is almost always a bad idea (oversteering), but instead you could try to gently hit the throttle to help you get through a curve. It's gonna take a while to get used to that, but don't worry, you'll get there sooner or later.
Renault Alpine can be a very frustrating car; when you're driving it, you have to be on the edge pretty much all the time, because one little mistake is often enough to send you flying off a cliff or crashing into a tree. The longer stages can be quite exhausting. If things get too frustrating, there are plenty of easier but just as fun cars to drive.
demagogue on 4/9/2019 at 03:07
As I was writing it I was realizing my idea was probably more complicated than it's worth explaining, and it wasn't fully formed at the time, but I was thinking the opponents are just a random number generator that is fit to the rough averages of human players -- times & chance of accidents, etc -- at the same level the player is at (or more specifically on some normal curve with the right distribution, which they no doubt have enough data to make accurately), and that's how they could naturally align the difficulty to the player's level as they progress in the game.
Edit: Well my first idea was even simpler than that. It would just take a random sampling of the numbers of actual human players from past games playing at the player's current level directly (that's how the "real humans" got into my post, through the back door), so you don't even have to mess with the math. And it addresses the issue of wanting the same "person" to have believably comparable times across each race. (I was also thinking about the game Steep, which makes you believe you're racing other people online, but I suspect some of them might be lifted from past games, because how likely is it 10 people will be exactly lined up at that spot at that second.) But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it's just easier and more scaleable, robust and failsafe to just have a simple RNG and a progressive set of normal curves, and the curves can also cover the stats of the same "player" over multiple races.
There, now I've explained it. :angel:
catbarf on 4/9/2019 at 13:52
I'm playing Archimedean Dynasty, from the GOG release. It's an odd game, playing mostly like a mid-90s space shooter (eg Wing Commander), but the controls and mechanics are just subtly different enough to give it a unique feel. It has a low draw distance and heavy reliance on sonar to detect enemies, which goes hand in hand with a noise mechanic. You can do things like enter a strong current, shut off sonar and engines, and then drift past enemies undetected.
The script was apparently written by a German novelist, and it's pretty good. There are a lot of branching dialogue choices with various characters, and some of them are actually pretty clever- it's not always obvious what the consequence of each dialogue choice will be, and my usual RPG strategy of ingratiating myself to everyone went out the window when I realized that in this game, befriending some characters will alienate others. One thing I really like is that the player character's personality (a sleazy, cocksure, cutthroat mercenary) really comes through in the dialogue, but you are rarely railroaded into approaching a conversation a particular way. There's also heavy use of CGI cutscenes and pre-rendered backgrounds with some animation. It positively oozes atmosphere.
The game is linear, but has a lot of sidequests at each story area, which typically reward money that can then be used to buy better equipment in the usual RPG fashion. One thing I noticed is that both torpedoes and hull repair are fairly expensive compared to quest rewards, so you do sometimes have to weigh whether it's better to go in with the guns and risk more damage, or stay back and use an expensive torpedo.
It seems the vanilla game had balance issues and a lot of broken mission scripts, the latter of which was due to the translation from the original German to English, but using the Augmented Mod I haven't had problems.
I'm surprised I don't read about it more on here because it seems like the kind of game TTLGers would appreciate.
Thirith on 6/9/2019 at 09:18
Quickly wanted to report back on my first Dirt Rally championship race in the Alpine. I ended up in 4th position, which is better than I thought I would do. The Alpine is considerably more temperamental than the Mini, but I definitely get the impression that when/if I learn to drive better, in particular in corners, it'll lend itself to a more fluid driving style.
Jason Moyer on 7/9/2019 at 10:53
I dunno what difficulty you're playing on, but if you're not aware of it, something to keep in mind is how the difficulty works in DR. The fastest times are the same no matter what difficulty you're on, but lowering the difficulty increases the spread between drivers (and afaik the number of incidents/mistakes/etc they make). It's actually sort of rewarding to start out on an easy difficulty at first because winning is just as difficult.
Thirith on 7/9/2019 at 16:16
That seems to be a smart way of handling it in a racing game where you don't compete at the same time.
henke on 7/9/2019 at 17:59
Played through Blair Witch over the last couple evenings. It is quite short, and not too scary. Both of which are things I'm fine with. I liked just walking in the woods at night with my dog, solving the occasional spooky puzzle. The final chapter did get quite anxiety-inducing, but also kinda felt like it dragged on too long. Pretty sure I got the bad ending too.
Thirith on 7/9/2019 at 18:12
I've switched to non-VR in Subnautica for the moment, because I've now got the Prawn suit and a Cyclops submarine, which means that I need lots of resources to upgrade them. Playing the game in VR is intensely atmospheric, but I think I'll be faster gathering the necessary materials playing outside VR. Once I'm all kitted out, I'll be sure to go back to VR, explore the remaining biomes and get eaten by gargantuan submarine life.
