Enjoy this super-rare Josh-free Diecast. Get well soon, Josh.
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Hosts: Shamus, Chris, Rutskarn.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #98: Bloodborne, Olli Olli 2, Axiom Verge, Fanservice”
In case you missed the first entry: We’re here to talk about how OpenGL has changed and why that’s importantTo me, anyway.. The odd colorful screenshots are from one of my many half-baked OpenGL-based engine prototypes, presented here simply to break up the monotony of the words.
Before we can talk about where OpenGL went, we have to talk about where it started. So let’s talk about how rendering works on a fundamental level.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Strange Evolution of OpenGL Part 2”
Link (YouTube) |
So then the animation glitches out and shoves the guard into 47. Then the AI glitches and goes stupidly hostile. Then the collision glitches out and won’t let the player escape the elevator. Then the game logic glitches and lets the player leave when foes are hostile.
Then the nuns. My goodness are those nuns infantile and infuriating. I know I keep saying this, but I’m not against games having same T&A in them. But this? This “fanservice as written by an adolescent” approach to putting tits in the game in unendurable. This is completely ridiculous, yet done without any humor, lampshading, self-awareness, or sense of fun.
Once you get to the lab, the level designers decide to take away your disguise and the keycards you’ve acquired. Then it shoves us into a simple linear “open this one door” situation. From there you enter an open area with a grand total of two disguises, so no matter what you do you need to be sneaking around like Splinter Cell instead of walking around like Hitman. Then it gives you an assassination target of someone you’ve never heard of, know nothing about, and have no reason to killI’m sure the briefing gives you a half-assed excuse, but it’s not like the story has set this up. It spent the last cutscene on the nuns., and in fact going after him should logically make it harder to achieve your real goal of rescuing the girl.
The environment design reminds me a great deal of Arkham Origins: The level designers just make “videogame levels” with no thought as to how these areas are used, how people would get around, or how they should connect to each other. It’s just random corridors.
This game is to Blood Money as Thi4f is to Thief. I know it’s supposedly the same studio, but it feels like a project given to a new team that had no interest or respect for the original work. This game is baffling.
But then Josh pushed the guy off a ledge so all is forgiven.
Link (YouTube) |
Here it is. The greatest episode of Spoiler Warning we’ve ever done, provided you’re normal like me and are obsessed with throwing people down holes, out windows, and over ledges.
Yes, this game has some problems. The plot is gibberish, story is atrocious, the themes are either dissonant or nonexistent, the levels are tiny, the mechanics are shallow, the environments are boring, the characters are schlock, the dialog is verbose and clunky, the cutscenes are torture, the save system is a crime, the ladies are all pandering fanservice, the fanservice is creepy sophomoric milquetoast, the puzzles are insultingly shallow, the voice acting is wooden, the character designs are ugly and cliche, the missions don’t fit with the franchise, and the gameplay is a mess. On the other hand, if we rate Absolution on the completely objective scale of “number of people you can push to their deaths”, then it ranks as one of the greatest videogames ever made.
Unrelated: There’s a balcony on my apartment that has a two-story drop to a concrete walkway. And nobody ever comes to visit.
Also, Rutskarn requested that I link to The Hole.
Let’s talk about OpenGL. No wait. Don’t hit the back button yet! Let’s talk about OpenGL in a way that non-coders can hopefully follow. I’ll even sprinkle some screenshots of my most recent OpenGL project through the article to break up the scary walls of text. It’ll be easy and maybe even funI’ve found that people’s definitions of “fun” are surprisingly flexible!.
OpenGL stands for Open Graphics Library. It was originally devised in 1991. When it comes to talking to your graphics card, OpenGL is one of only two ways to get the job done. If you want to render some polygons, you have to use either Direct X or OpenGLWell, a third option would be to render WITHOUT using the graphics card. This will – no exaggeration – be thousands of times slower. So it’s been years since the last time I saw a software-rendered game.. Everything else – Unreal Engine, Unity, or any other game Engine – has to go through either DirectX or OpenGL if it wants to make some graphicsAssuming you’re working on a desktop computer. Things are a little different in console world..
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Strange Evolution of OpenGL Part 1”
Link (YouTube) |
Behold! The first-ever episode of Spoiler Warning you can watch in glorious 60fps. To be honest, it looks the same to me. But people with younger eyes and faster brains will probably appreciate it. This is probably the biggest step up in quality since we moved to HD during the Fallout 3 season. Thanks to everyone who is supporting Spoiler Warning on Patreon. That money goes to Josh, and he spent it on the PC upgrades to make this happen. So we all win, really.
Or would be, if we weren’t playing this game.
I know we’ve been faulting this Hitman game for not having enough man-hitting, but the game isn’t very strong even when it finally stops screwing around and allows for the hitting of various mans. It’s been a while since I played the other games (and as I’ve said before, I’ve never finished any of them) but the hits in this game come off as infantile and patronizing. Just wander around and pull all the levers you find, move all the objects, and sabotage all the things. Your targets will kill themselves without you needing to think or plan.
But savor these hits, because it’s going to be a long time before we get any targets again. (And longer still before we get to interact with anyone germane to the plot.)
On the upside, this game is a lot more fun to mock than it is to play.
April Fools day kind of has two faces: There’s the “prank lies” face and there’s the “do something silly” face. The prank lies are the things where a news site will falsely announce that Half-Life 3 is released, Obama is going to be in the next Call of Duty, or that id Software is working on a licensed Dirty Dancing videogame. The “something silly” idea is where people metaphorically put on a silly hat for the day.
I do not like the prank lies. Either the lie is just a little too plausible and thus confusing or annoying, or it’s not plausible enough and it’s just dumb and pointless. All too often the punchline seems to be laughing at all the “dumb” people who fell for it: As if trusting usually reliable sites is some kind of character flaw. If they don’t have April Fools day in your country, or if you lose track of the date, then you become the butt of the joke. This is just no fun.
But I do kind of enjoy the obviously silly stuff. For those of you reading this in the archives or via RSS: As of this writing the site is decorated with a huge “My Little Pony” backdrop. (For posterity, I’ve used a smaller version of the image as the header of this post.)
Although, now that I’ve seen it: I do like the idea of having a large fixed image in the background. I mean, not this one, obviously. But something might be nice. I feel like I’m getting tired of these dice. Or maybe having an image that changes weekly or monthly might be worthwhile.
Anyway, this post is just your friendly reminder to be careful out there today. Beware the fools and mountebanks.
An ongoing series where I work on making a 2D action game from scratch.
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
What makes this borderline indie title so much better than the AAA juggernauts that came before?
The Thieves Guild quest in Skyrim is a vortex of disjointed plot-holes, contrivances, and nonsense.
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
One of the highest-rated games of all time has some of the least interesting gameplay.
T w e n t y S i d e d
