{"id":54663,"date":"2022-08-28T19:03:27","date_gmt":"2022-08-28T23:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54663"},"modified":"2022-08-31T13:12:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T17:12:06","slug":"lost-in-translation-console-to-console-porting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54663","title":{"rendered":"Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console Porting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago was my dad\u2019s birthday and I wrote a <\/span>post<\/span><\/a> about a part of the dilemma I\u2019ve been facing with this site. A lot of it is emotional slog, \u2018what if I\u2019m not enough like Dad\u2019 and \u2018what if I\u2019m too much like Dad\u2019. There\u2019s also not wanting to face it yet. Because, while my dad and I did talk sometimes, he was a very online guy. It\u2019s hard to feel properly like he\u2019s gone because I\u2019m not used to <\/span>seeing<\/span><\/i> him.\u00a0 He spent most of his time in front of a computer screen, making content, playing games to make more content, etc.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It feels weird to have no messages on G-Chat from him He refused to move from Google Chats. He wouldn\u2019t text, Facebook Messenger, or even message on Steam. It was a running joke that for such a nerd, he could really be an old fart about tech.<\/span>, no YouTube links, no new posts here. So, because of that, posting here sort of solidifies it. It forces that god-awful acceptance. He\u2019s gone forever and he\u2019s not going to write more…Ouch.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a much lighter note: The other issue I talked about was how we had very few games in common. So I, by extension, have very few games in common with his audience… <\/span><\/p>\n

Shamus Young did not raise a PC game hater, let\u2019s get that hilarious idea out of the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

I, by mostly circumstance, haven\u2019t played anything but Nintendo games for the last six years. I used to, and I had lots of opinions about them. Some I even wrote down and put on the internet to complain My old blog appears to be lost to time. Probably for the best if I want to keep making content here instead of trying to find a rock to hide under in my shame.<\/span>. The issue is, computers are expensive, and I moved out when I turned eighteen. My own PC broke not long after. It was old, a clunker born from hand-me-down after hand-me-down of my dad\u2019s old computers. It was never long for this world to start with.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

People complain a lot about console prices<\/span>.<\/span><\/i> But, at the end of the day, a laughably expensive Nintendo Switch was far cheaper than even the lowest end gaming PC.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, so no PC, but the Switch still had lot of ports! It even had Skyrim, Subnautica, Minecraft, Bioshock, even Doom for some reason\u2026Okay, those aren\u2019t all bad. Skyrim is out of the question, I don\u2019t play without at least a dozen game-changing mods. But how about Subnautica?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When one of my partners got Subnautica in 2020 I was enthralled. It\u2019s a resource collection game that went <\/span>accidentally horror <\/span><\/i>from the setting. You crash land on an almost entirely underwater planet and have to survive in unknown conditions, feed yourself, and try to find other survivors. You don\u2019t know me well enough to know this yet, but this is my catnip. Horror, especially horror that didn\u2019t set out to be horror but landed there accidentally. That’s is my favorite thing. No jump scares, no gore, just good old-fashioned dread and appropriate fear of inhospitable surroundings. Mix that with resource collection and management? Sign me up.<\/span><\/p>\n

I sat and watched them play nearly the entire thing start to finish, repeatedly And to a lesser extent the second game. It just wasn\u2019t as good, maybe I\u2019ll do a playthrough and do a deep dive into that someday. Ha, deep dive. <\/span>. <\/span>I wanted so badly to play it myself! And then it was ported to the Switch! Perfect.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s visually the same to the PC version, the only thing that had to change was the controls. How hard can that be?<\/span><\/p>\n

Fun fact; these separated controllers are a dream for someone with mobility issues, especially shoulder and elbow. No locked joints from sitting like a gargoyle over a single controller. I wish more remotes were built this way.<\/div>
Fun fact; these separated controllers are a dream for someone with mobility issues, especially shoulder and elbow. No locked joints from sitting like a gargoyle over a single controller. I wish more remotes were built this way.<\/div><\/p>\n

These controls work great for a third-person game with minor camera movement, the kind of game <\/span>Nintendo actually makes<\/span><\/i>. The \u2018Action Camera\u2019 joystick is in the ideal position for little adjustments. Most of the time your right hand is busy with the X-A-B-Y section of the controller, only moving down to the joystick sometimes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This setup, which is great for Mario and Zelda, <\/span>is unimaginably bad for a first person game in a full 3D, 360 scenario; you know, like <\/span><\/i>swimming?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Subnautica on the Switch requires you to be able to move the action joystick, regular joystick, and hit the A button at <\/span>the same time,<\/span><\/i> constantly. That action isn\u2019t some little side thing or even <\/span>combat<\/span><\/i>, it\u2019s <\/span>collecting food and drink. <\/span><\/i>Picture this; you\u2019re starving to death, you took too long trying to collect creepvine samples, and now you have seconds to find food.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>This should be simple, especially in the beginning area, where you\u2019re surrounded by hospitable, edible fish. The water around you is full of food, all you have to do is reach out and grab it. The only hiccup being your lack of two right thumbs. You must move through the water with your left joystick, aim at the moving fish with your right joystick, and hit confirm, all at once.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beautiful, lovely, stunning game.<strong> <em>A ridiculous place to starve.<\/em> <em>Those fish are all food.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>
Beautiful, lovely, stunning game. A ridiculous place to starve.<\/em> Those fish are all food.<\/em><\/strong><\/div><\/p>\n

At best, with typical remote usage, this is very difficult, at worst; it’s impossible. I am often nervous to call tasks that require hand dexterity \u2018difficult\u2019 in a \u2018everyone experiences this\u2019 way. I have little to no range of motion on my right side, so I\u2019ll admit this could be worse for me than others. But, I feel pretty strongly that I\u2019m not alone in being born with only two thumbs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Using the remote wrong is an option; use your pointer finger to press the \u2018A\u2019 button and your thumb on the joystick. It’s uncomfortableAgain, this could just be me, but the resulting \u2018claw\u2019 hand certainly doesn\u2019t look or feel natural for such a consistent game motion.<\/span>, and more than that it only works half the time. Okay, how about some good old fashioned \u2018aim and fire\u2019? Point yourself at a fish with the right joystick, and then move quickly to the \u2018A\u2019 button and just hope it doesn\u2019t try to get away? Well, it\u2019s a fish, capable of moving in any direction. Personally, I feel like if I was a fish being grabbed, I\u2019d try to move. But even if their motion was randomly generated without the player being taken into account, it still moves continuously. The odds of grabbing the fish easily are slim to none, leading to an increasingly frustrating game of \u2018haha, you missed me\u2019 while you starve to death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Death in games can be irritating, but death that is<\/span> entirely the game\u2019s fault <\/span><\/i>is eye-twitchingly unforgivable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bad ports are common, trust me, I\u2019m fully aware. But, this one was fairly egregious, and easily prevented by turning one of the triggers into a second \u2018confirm\u2019 button.<\/span><\/p>\n

My other disappointment here is that I find much of the community just <\/span>accepts<\/span><\/i> bad ports.\u00a0 Often, when complaining about them, the buyer\/complainer gets a reaction like <\/span>they<\/span><\/i> were the idiot for not realizing that it wasn\u2019t compatible with the console they bought it on. As if everyone can simply look at Skyrim in the Playstore\/ Nintendo E-shop\/ Xbox Marketplace\/ strange purchase screen that just opened up on their childhood Tamagotchi, and just <\/span>know <\/span><\/i>that <\/span>maybe Bethesda didn\u2019t give that one their all. <\/span><\/i>Skyrim is a terrible example for this, of course, because we all know it works perfectly all the time no matter where it\u2019s ported.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This can alienate an entire group of single-console gamers. It\u2019s easy to just say \u2018get good\u2019 or \u2018know better next time\u2019.\u00a0 However, it would have been just as easy (comparatively) for Subnautica to have play-tested their game on the switch. It doesn’t take long to realize an alternate \u2018confirm\u2019 key might be necessary. On the player end, it would have lead to a couple extra seconds fumbling around when the game first booted, because a button or two don\u2019t act as expected. Annoying, sure, but when it\u2019s something as fundamental as feeding oneself, it becomes a necessary evil.<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel I should point out that I am aware you can change controls for yourself. Most games these days allow you to go in and mess with the settings to some reasonable degree. However, doing so is a long and tedious process. Something that should be simple, like; \u2018set a trigger to a confirm button\u2019 is made annoying because, oh shit, those triggers have uses, and the buttons you assign things to to fix it <\/span>also<\/span><\/i> have uses. Of course, I\u2019m showing by example how the problem is harder than \u2018um, just fix it\u2019 on the dev end, but them doing the work once prevents time wasted en mass on the consumer side. <\/span>A factory error that is fixed on the factory-side saves a lot of time and money in the long run, even if the issue is small. Not every irritated customer has a hand saw in their home to cut down their free, unwanted extra half an inch of Ikea table. Most would give up on it as impossible and return the product without ever considering the DIY anyway. Doing so would also hilariously void the warranty, but that\u2019s getting out of video-game metaphor territory.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Porting leads to other, much more subtle problems, as well. A port can be a lot like a translation from language to language. Google might be able to churn out that Korean song you heard on the radio but it\u2019s gonna miss a lot of nuance. Gangnam Style when translated directly into English has \u2018The man whose heart bursts when night comes\u2019 as a lyric. I can generally extrapolate the meaning there through context, but much of it gets lost.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An excellent example of this is another Indie-Game port ‘Deaths Door’. I grabbed it over a sale period on the Nintendo store last year and <\/span>loved<\/span><\/i> it. It was interesting, visually appealing, and had a combat style I didn\u2019t hate. The main issue; the game was <\/span>unimaginably difficult. <\/span><\/i>You play as a crow, who works as a grim reaper. You go through some simple puzzles, encountering combat that I liken to Ocarina of time. It\u2019s mostly button mashing provided you know how your enemy moves and attacks. Once you know your enemies pattern, you can, in theory, escape unharmed and move onto the next part of the map. At least, that was clearly the designers intention<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The player character is only given four hitpoints for much of the game. There are healing spots but they feel far apart given that you can die from as little as a single mistake. The maps can be sized from medium to huge and checkpoints before boss battles only exist for the four main fight in the game. I suppose what I\u2019m actually complaining about is the mini bosses, considering that formatting; but many of the mini bosses are harder than the main boss events in this context, so I\u2019m calling them bosses.<\/span>\u00a0 This leaves the player having to fight dozens of pre-battle enemies every time they fight a boss, sometimes without healing stations in between.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This glorious bastard is only the second major battle in the game. There is a four minute walk to the arena, no checkpoint. The lasers being avoided here are one of just four different unique attacks it can use against the player. Gah!<\/div>
This glorious bastard is only the second major battle in the game. There is a four minute walk to the arena, no checkpoint. The lasers being avoided here are one of just four different unique attacks it can use against the player. Gah!<\/div><\/p>\n

Load in, fight your way to the boss battle, go in half dead and try to learn its pattern, die. Load in, fight your way to the boss battle, go in a quarter of the way dead, finally get its pattern down, die. Load in, fight your way to the boss battle, go in with full health, celebrate, then get crushed like a bug when it goes into it’s ‘phase two’ and changes it’s pattern entirely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought for sure someone, anywhere, was going to mention online how impossible this game was. Surely, I wasn\u2019t a lone idiot, the only one struggling with this dark-souls-esque \u00a0hellscape. The walkthroughs called things easy, the forums were no help. I began to feel like an idiot who just didn\u2019t dodge fast enough, perhaps I am a failure to gamers everywhere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nope, this is just a Switch problem. Turns out, a lot of difficulty scaling gets thrown off when you switch to a Nintendo controller. Same game, same conditions, same amount of healing points, and same bosses. It\u2019s just woefully harder to aim with the switch controllers so you waste a few precious milliseconds every time you attack, making you a sitting duck Well, in this case, crow.
\n\"Review:<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My entire tangent about checkpoints and healing spots, all my time spent trying to find tricks, everything I thought they had done wrong, everything I thought I<\/strong> had done wrong, it all boiled down, yet again, to a ‘bad port’. Not that the resulting game was ‘bad’ per say, but considering the effort put into difficulty scaling in the original, it’s definitely a poor translation of the games true potential. Sad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ve inherited my dad\u2019s gaming setup. Soon I\u2019ll be able to talk about games beyond what is available on the Nintendo Switch. But, while I get caught up in the PC gaming world, this is where we\u2019re at. Maybe we\u2019ll get into my Harvest Moon rant next, or the fall of Animal Crossing. Don\u2019t worry, we still complain here, that\u2019s not going anywhere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago was my dad\u2019s birthday and I wrote a post about a part of the dilemma I\u2019ve been facing with this site. A lot of it is emotional slog, \u2018what if I\u2019m not enough like Dad\u2019 and \u2018what if I\u2019m too much like Dad\u2019. There\u2019s also not wanting to face it yet. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618,55,120],"tags":[621,620],"class_list":["post-54663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epilogue","category-game-design","category-videogames","tag-deaths-door","tag-subnautica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54663"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54695,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54663\/revisions\/54695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}