T w e n t y S i d e d
Atlas continues to guide us through the zany madcap world of “BoyoShock”.
Hello, person from the future. This space used to have an embed from the video hosting site Viddler. The video is gone now. If you want to find out why and laugh at Viddler in the process, you can read the entire silly story for yourself. At any rate, the video is gone. Sorry. On the upside, we're gradually re-posting these old videos to YouTube. Check the Spoiler Warning page to see the full index. |
Also, to those of you who made all the bee puns in the last episode: My revenge is coming. Tomorrow.
Good Robot Dev Blog
An ongoing series where I work on making a 2D action game from scratch.
Gamers Aren’t Toxic
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
Secret of Good Secrets
Sometimes in-game secrets are fun and sometimes they're lame. Here's why.
Blistering Stupidity of Fallout 3
Yeah, this game is a classic. But the story is idiotic, incoherent, thematically confused, and patronizing.
Quakecon 2011 Keynote Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Revenge? Hah! Pardon me if I roll a 20-sider to disbelieve….
:)
Bring it.
Surely, you meant DisBEElieve…
Of course I did. I was just bEEing a little more subtle. I mean, it isnt like you have to bEEt the Spoiler Warning crowd over the head or anything for a pun to bEE heard. That would just sting, and stir up a hornet’s nest of retribution, making this place even more of a hive of activity than it already is.
Geneva called, they want to put you on trial for crimes against the internet :)
Stirring up a little pre-game buzz eh?
Man, all of these puns really bug me.
Indeed. Beeholding this is painful. The puns are terrible. Beegone, you fools!
It’s not so bad if you don’t take it in all at once. Insections it’s perfectly tolerable.
Your puns sting.
Ahh! Nothing like the sweet nectar of verba non scriptum.
Not sure which is better — being told by the Archbishop of Puns to buzz off, or the sophomoric sting of silly buntingness that stung me when Mumbles started talking about in-pants photographic development – because at that point my bumbling brain began to ponder appropriate aperture and focal length.
Oh, Bee-have.
Edit – Also, BEE-oshock. Just beecause. In any case, I am sure deep down in the cells of his heart, Shamus is as happy as a bee.
“Also, to those of you who made all the bee puns in the last episode: My revenge is coming. Tomorrow.”
I’ll beelieve it when I see it.
Perhaps a little honey would soothe Shamus’ wrath?
No. Shamus is bee-termined to sting swiftly at all offenders.
hmm curious,maybe some game of sort.
So, how about them Chime Bees?
Maybe he’ll sting all of you bee pun-makers in his Stolen Pixels comic tomorrow!
I look forward to the Stolen Pixels that will bee nothing but bee puns.
Josh you would die less if you remembered to yell, “Stop shooting me.”
Please do it for our livers!
“Stop shooting BEE!”
We’ll BEE here waiting for it.
Oh beehave. I can’t beelieve you people and all your bee puns. It seems like everyone here is a buzz with bee puns. It’s unbeelievable.
“Press ‘C’ to comment”
Commenter1> C
“To comment about Josh’s alcoholism, press the ‘A’ key, for bee related puns, press the ‘B’ key, to mention System shock press ‘S’ (and drink), or to type your own comment or otherwise move outside the narrow narrative, play a different game”
Commenter1> ESC
“You have attempted to quit, is this correct?”
Commenter1> Y
“Are you sure you don’t want to miss out on all the commenting fun? Press ‘C’ to comment”
Commenter1> N
“Invalid argument. Press ‘C’ to comment”
Commenter1> CTRL+ALT+DEL
*applause* :D
Also, I love how everyone making SW is having fun with the B puns too :D
So we might have Spoiler Warning twice in a row? Yay!
But I have to ask, why the hate on the crossbow? It plus natural camouflage and the breakage chance and damage upgrades results in a headshot machine that’ll last longer without re-supplying and do approximately the same damage as a pistol with anti-personnel… Although I suppose that would interfere with all of the drunken wrenching.
And even if you don’t like playing like that as much as I do, the trap bolts are great against Bouncers, you can carry more of them than proxy mines and they don’t explode in your face if a splicer wanders by while you’re trying to prepare your ambush. Though it can get problematic if another Big Daddy wanders into some left-overs after you’ve finished off the first.
Making fun of help hints? is that really where we’re at?
and at least the trap bolts aren’t continuously glowing like they are in bioshock 2
Also – it now just feels you are bashing on it for not being fallout 1 again. That was understandable with fallout3 but here it just seems odd.
Some people really really love Fallout 1.
I’m one of the players who actually play tutorials, always… well, always on new games, I sometimes skip them on replaying a game but I don’t replay stuff often so meh. I understand that tutorials are generally designed so they help even the most inexperienced players but I sometimes wish there was some middle ground, some kind of “this game uses a standard RTS mouse interface with only a few twists. Would you like to 1) have a full tutorial, 2) have a tutorial only on the atypical interface commands, 3) skip tutorial altogether”. A few games do this, sometimes by actually providing a few tutorial missions that you can play or replay by choice.
Now some games actually feel it necessary to restate the entire tutorial every time they introduce a new element. For example, the game “taught” me how to select my units (“by hovering your cursor over the unit and clicking the left mouse button”), now it wants to teach me about production so it starts “first, select a building. You do it the same way you select your unit, place your cursor over the building and click the left mouse button…”, then it goes on on how I can fortify, or take over a building or some other “advanced” function so it goes “first, select your units. Place your cursor over a squad and click the left mouse button…” and it will keep repeating this every time. I’m waiting for a tutorial that’ll start with something “first place your right, or left if you’re left-handed, hand on the mouse, you have two hands at the end of your arms, they can be recognized by having five fingers one of which is an opposable thumb. Do not mistake them with your feet which also end with five fingers, called toes, but the big one is not opposable”.
On the topic of bioshock, correct me if I’m wrong but won’t these hints keep popping up until the very end of the game? Talk about breaking immersion when all the time I’m assaulted with repeated instructions to remember that I can heal or that I can buy something somewhere.
Re Plasmid cycling:
Deus Ex used the function keys for Augmentations, I think Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines used them for your powers. I’ve used the function keys plenty.
The problem, at least for me, is that the plasmids arent hardcoded into function keys, they are selected in whatever order you put them in at the gene bank. So if you put the shock plasmid first, it gets assigned to F1, but if you put it as your third plasmid it is selected by F3, which is confusing and hard to memorise.
This is a problem? I thought this would be a solution! Now you can assign it to whichever of the function keys feels best for you, just by swapping the plasmids around in the bank.
Except it doesn’t let you swap an active plasmid with another active one and any time you upgrade BS seems to randomly reassign them. I kept having to relearn my plasmid hotkeys every ten minutes. It was very annoying.
And wonderfully once you upgrade them, I couldn’t change the hot key at all. So it changed every hour when I upgraded something.
That said I love the part where you power go whacky sort of. I like that I got to try other powers for free but it came way to late for me to really care.
Shamus stop beeing so serious.
bee puns are the win :P
RyanKeyboard:
F1- Next camera feed
F2- Open/lock door(s) of currently observed locale(c.o.l.)
F3- Switch lights on/off in c.o.l.
F4- Kill trees
F5- Adjust humidity in c.o.l.
F6- Disable Vita-chambers (key broken, replacement delayed due to unforseen apocalypse.)
F7- Regulate temperature in c.o.l.
F8- Activate/disable security alarm in c.o.l.
F9- Summon rabid splicers to c.o.l
F10- Activate/deactivate public broadcast system
F11- Realease poisonous gas in c.o.l
F12- Reboot
I’m certain Ryan fully intended to flood the room with a deadly neurotoxin(sorry) as soon as the protagonist entered, but as you can see the poisonous gas key and the reboot key are rather close to each other, and by the time his terminal had finished rebooting you were long gone from that room.
So there you go. Nothing far-fetched about it, unlike what you seemed to imply.
I know how Shamus will punish us.
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs38/f/2008/336/5/6/OHNOES_ZOMBEES_by_Pspynett.png
I regret nothing.
I for one welcome our new zombee overlords.
I’ve noticed that even Mumbles has become a bit more jaded and spiteful towards BioShock throughout this run of Spoiler Warning. It always brings a tear to my eye to see the warmth of youth and ambition crushed beneath a boulder of cynicism. :3
Hey man, I could do the next couple of episodes with a disposition so sunny it would make Mickey Mouse’s head spin.
Don’t tempt her! She’ll totally do it. She’s not afraid to be happy. She’s crazy!
There’s a reason people are happy and optimistic, it pisses everyone off so much they basically just to it for laughs.
Rapture could probably do with a little sunshine anyway. I’m surprised the splicers don’t all have rickets.
Stay on the sunny side
Always on the sunny side
Stay on the sunny side of life.
You’ll feel no pain
As we drive you insane
If you
Stay on the sunny side of life.
A lot of the complaining seems to be because you don’t understand the mechanics. For example, the crossbow’s reduced breakage chance – when a bolt breaks, it still does full damage and so on. The only difference is whether you can go loot it or not. So that upgrade gives you more ammo for your crossbow. It’s also the sniper rifle of the game, for some reason.
And the door out of Arcadia locked because the place was flooded with poison. That’s a pretty good reason to cut it off, though blocking bathysphere access makes less sense than if it were a direct connection between the two places.
What’s weird is this was explicitly on screen that it ‘makes the bolts have less tendency to break’
I posed this in the in-video comments, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to post it here as well…
For the record, it’s not Steampunk, it’s Dieselpunk. Dieselpunk refers to the 20s-50s “pulp” era, but with some of the dark noir overtones instead of the more heroic and grandiose overtones of pulp. We have airtravel in gasoline fueled airplanes, everyone uses pneumatic tubes to send information around over short distances and radios for long distances, everything runs on vacuum tubes and buildings have an art-deco style. There are still airships, but they’re more zeppelins. Any Sci-Fi/Ultratech elements will usually involve genetics, atomics, rockets, or any combination of the above.
Steampunk is meant to have a more Victorian/Edwardian era tone (though not always British – Bioshock Infinite would actually probably legitimately be Steampunk). Technology runs on steam engines and literal clockwork. More or less the only air travel is by airship, though you may have primitive airplanes (cloth wings) with “high tech” twists. It also tend a bit more towards the heroic and grandiose in tone.
So, Bioshock 1 & 2 = Dieselpunk.
Bioshock Infinite = Steampunk.
I think I only used the crossbow once, trying to set up a trap, but I only succeeded in shooting myself with the other end of the trap bolt. It was not a good time.
Perhaps the camera is some sort of magial steampunk polaroid-type device? Developing photos in one’s pants is twice as funny if you’re like me and pants =/= trousers.
Trap bolts confused the hell out of me for a while too. Only when I realized that it sends the other end of the wire exactly where you stood when you fired it was I able to set up effective ambushes with them. So long as you move a bit, you’re golden.
Is Bioshock really steampunk? Ignoring Pipe Dream, nothing really seems to run on steam (as the name implies) and actually seems fairly sophisticated at times. The Victorian aesthetic is slightly there, but I wouldn’t overall call it “steampunk.”
You guys need to bee more flexible with your genre tropes.
*gets shot*
Oh, and if you don’t find and silently listen to the entirety of The Wild Bunny, I will rip your ears off.
Let´s give it its own genre: pipepunk! It doesn´t sound so good, but “something is something” (said a bald man when finding a comb).
Ah, but getting such a radical setting out there is practically a pipe dream.
*gets shot again*
No, not a ‘pipe dream’ at all. In fact, a working concept of the definition is in the pipeline.
Oh, pipe down already.
So, if the plumber fixing your sink takes an apple tart to the face, does that make him the Pied Piper?
Have to do it again…
STOP SHOOTING ME!!
:)
Have to do it…
STOP SHOOTING ME!!
About the plasmid hotkeys:
It’s been a while since I played BioShock; but doesn’t it have a weapon selection screen of sorts bound to shift that pauses the game?
Yeah, there is. I’m kinda mystified by his lack of using it, but that’s probably just because I hit it so much that Bioshock became practically turn based.
Spoiler Warning 4: Alone in the Dark, one episode only. It lets you skip chapters even if you’ve never played them.
“Oh, um… I can’t see. Press a button to blink? Skip. Awful driving sequence. Skip. Miserable lighting system to keep murderous ooze at bay. Skip. Satan something. Skip. And now I have to make some choice… The end.”
So…you can´t skip the choice? Lame!
Shamus – Was going to wait, but I felt I had to chime in, even if it means switching geres for a moment.
Saw what you did…you know, over THERE.
Solid, mate! You deserve a medal. :)
Awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome…etc.
Wow! The flamethrower IS useful in this game. Enemies actually respond to being set on fire!
After Fallout 3, where enemies would just keep shooting you, but just on fire, this is refreshing.
I remember that the game with the worst flamethrower was the original PC Alien Vs Predator. Aliens completely ignored the flames, the fire damaged then very slowly, keeping fire on them didn’t do much, and they could get you on fire.
So, basically, the flamethrower only use was turning regular Aliens into flaming aliens. Aren’t weapons supposed to help YOU? You know, and NOT the enemy?
I hate how flamethrowers are incredibly underpowered in most games. I can think of very few games where the flamethrower is anything other than a novelty weapon, something that gets picked up and then used for a bit but is ultimately and absolutely useless weapon.
They also tend to have very short range. Flamethrowers have notoriously short range, true. But this is not to say it has a range of 2 dinky meters! Their range is short compared to a rifle’s 100+ meters of effective range.
I remember how awesome it was when they used a flamethrower in the movie The Thing but couldn’t figure why. Later I discovered the movie used a REAL flamethrower instead of that pathetic gas thingies usually used in movies to pass for flamethrowers.
Strangely enough, Team Fortress 2’s Pyro has an awesome flamethrower even though still dinky. Fallout also was underwhelming but highly effective against lightly armored targets. Wolfenstein Battlefront (is that the right name?) was almost there.
That’s actually a good question: Is there a game that depicts a truly awesome flamethrower?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VideogameFlamethrowersSuck
Metal Gear Solid 3’s online had a crazy overpowered flamethrower. Or at least, it did while it was still live.
I might get chastised for bringing it up but halo 3 had a seriously powerful flamethrower. It’s range was short and you moved really slowly with it but it ate enemies up.
Mumbles is truly the most awesome person on this show, sorry guys.
Wait a minute by what rationale is the crossbow the most useless thing in the game? After upgrading it I could use it to kill big daddies almost instantly. No I don’t mean trap bolt hacks I mean I was killing them in two to three shots. The camera is the third most valuable weapon for making that easy. First wrench, second crossbow, third camera, fourth grenade launcher, fifth all other weapons that will never be used once I have the crossbow.
Would like to point out that the context-based Google ad that Viddler put on top of the video at the beginning was TOTALLY for bee-removal, AKA pest control. Google ads are scary sometimes.
Hmmm very late on this… but the photo development thing makes the entire game make more sense… or at least the player character. The real identity of the PC is…
KRYTEN!