Recent Posts

1

Gaming / Re: Shin Megami Tensei

« Last post by Spectere on August 20, 2018, 02:57:26 AM »

Sublime has a very generous free trial available (I think it's just nagware) if you want to try before you buy.

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend sticking with that work schedule for very long. If it's physical work it will definitely take a toll on your body, and regardless of what it is it'll start to take its toll mentally. If it's something you can do once in a while, sure, but I wouldn't recommend making it a long-term thing. I've worked stupid shifts for several months straight during a couple of my previous jobs and I'm not exaggerating when I say that it made me feel dead inside.

I wouldn't recommend using that as a motivator, either. It can be tough to find a new job when you're only working 40 hour weeks. Adding an extra ten hours to that is only going to make it harder.

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Gaming / Re: Monster Hunter

« Last post by Spectere on August 20, 2018, 02:45:37 AM »

Decided to try out long swords. They're pretty fun!

I did an easy hunt just to see how greedy I could get. Turns out, I could get pretty damn greedy. I could dive in, do a decent amount of damage, and roll away.

I ended up getting further in the story as well, making my way to the Rotten Vale.

I've, uh, also figured out the format that the game's textures are stored in and wrote a quick and dirty converter. Here's some of the Great Jagras's normal map:

Hey look, a normal map! pic.twitter.com/xJrHFh3FdX

— Ian Burgmyer (@Spectere) August 18, 2018

The diffuse textures are compressed with DXT1/BC1 with 1-bit alpha (yuck) and the normal maps are compressed with ATI2/BC5. There's another format in play that I haven't worked out quite yet, nor am I entirely sure of the purpose of those particular textures. All I've sussed out so far is that the compression format in question each 4x4 block in 16-bytes.

And sure, I could have just wrapped the compressed texture data into a DDS wrapper and called it a day, but what's the fun in that?

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Gaming / Re: Shin Megami Tensei

« Last post by vladgd on August 19, 2018, 09:40:34 AM »

May have to do a rain check. Going to wait till my first salary paycheck then I'll snag sublime. Currently adjusting to the new hours, and 50 hours a week, aka standing up for 10 hours a day with no breaks, it's fatiguing. I'll get used to it, but it's going to take a few weeks at least.

It's crazy how working an 8 hour shift feels fine and I feel like I can do whatever after work. But a 10 feels twice as long, and I feel like I barely have any free time before I have to sleep and do the grind again the next day.

Figured I'd kill two birds with one stone, and make more money, while at the same time being a real motivator to get out of this dead end job I've been at for 10 years. Curious how it'll pan out in a few months.

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Gaming / Re: Monster Hunter

« Last post by Spectere on August 12, 2018, 02:43:54 PM »

Yeah, I've been more or less skating through the low rank content. Even monsters that have always given me problems (hi, Barroth) have gone down relatively easily. Not sure if that's just because I have a lot more experience with these sort of games than I did when I played MH3 a whole bunch or if the game's learning curve is just that much more gradual, but it feels much better for me at least.

For now I've settled with the switch axe. I just really like how the weapon feels at this point. I thought I'd enjoy the dual blades since I tend to prefer mobility, but I've found that the only way to do any serious damage with them is to just stand stationary in demon mode, and that's really not feasible unless the monster is already stunned. It felt more like I was chipping them to death than doing any serious damage.

Shame to hear about the hammer getting nerfed. I wonder if the people I know who primarily used it just coped with it or if they switched off for MHW.

Tried to enjoy sword and shield, but hitting weak points with such a stubby weapon is impossible, I don't really get how people use that weapon.

I think that's my favorite part about Monster Hunter: the weapons are so varied that some of them just don't click for people at all, yet they all tend to be very effective.

I used the sword and shield when I was fiddling with the Xbox One version several months ago. For me it offered a good balance of attack, defense, and mobility. The main issue for me is that I'm bored to death of sword and shield in general when it comes to ARPGs. I also have a tendency to prefer dodging over blocking, so the switch axe fit my play style well.

Oh, I also took this opportunity to finally fiddle around with ShadowPlay. I've certainly has faster Great Jagras kills than this, but I think this is my cleanest one:

I've been recording almost all of my gameplay so far (two video files ended up getting corrupted, and I forgot to record a few minutes of some light multiplayer I did with a friend, but other than that all of the non-town stuff is there). If I end up doing anything nifty I'll at least have proof of it.

It is kind of odd that the video files turned out to be 1080p60, though. I set up ShadowPlay to record at the selected resolution at 60fps, so they should be 1440p. Similarly, a bit of Doom 2016 that I recorded turned out to be 1080p60 instead of 4K60. Gonna have to look at that.

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Gaming / Re: Monster Hunter

« Last post by vladgd on August 10, 2018, 06:02:56 PM »

If you got any questions, I aughta be able to answer most. I think I ended my time with that game with over 200 hours played and over HR rank 105 or something.

And to be totally honest the entirety of low rank is basically a tutorial, when people say "the game doesn't start till high rank" they're kinda right.

I'll have to find my stats, but I played like 95% lance. 5% heavybowgun/sns/gunlance. As much variety as the game has to offer, I can't really have much fun unless I'm lancing. I loved hammer in the psp games, to the point where I played hammer over lance, but hammer feels so nerfed in this game with the multiplayer scaling effecting stun as well as monster health that hammer feels kind of worthless.

Late game I did find myself preferring certain weapons and setups for certain monsters. I'll lance everything, but I kinda like heavy bowgun against kirin, and gunlance on kushala. Tried to enjoy sword and shield, but hitting weak points with such a stubby weapon is impossible, I don't really get how people use that weapon. Maybe if I ever play again (burned out for it taking 1.5 months of my life) I'll give greatsword another go. It's a hard weapon, but it has the biggest numbers in the game.

6

Gaming / Re: Shin Megami Tensei

« Last post by Spectere on August 10, 2018, 04:52:44 PM »

I could get it on ps4, but the advantages of having it on switch sound novel enough to make it worth a wait. Also, it's a long ass game and I'll soon have less free time for those. Good I finished p5 when I did.

The Switch port also contains all of the DLC. I'm not sure if they ever released a complete edition for PS4.

If you don't want to grind, you really don't have to. There's a trick you can do later in the game (without spoiling anything, NOVEMBER, go to mementos on a flu day) which you can get from whatever level you are at to 99 with really no issues. The only real grinding I did was money grinding, which you don't really even need to do unless you want to fuse broke ass personas. I go out of my way to break games, so I put in more time doing that stuff than the average player, but you really don't need to grind much at all.

I also enjoy breaking games, and I appreciate the fact that P5 can be broken.

It sounds like it's going to be right up my alley. Maybe I'll dive into it after my fascination with MHW peters out a bit.

I hope it does well, but VN isn't quite my cup of tea i'm afraid. I'll throw the recommendation to my gf when she's working again(damn irl stuff, but things are good now) since it could be up her alley.

It may be worth noting that there are two heavily implied instances of dragon sex (nothing graphic), just in case that's an issue.

…now that's something I never thought I'd say about a Steam game.

I'm already thinking Bayonetta 2, marios, and shin megami tensei 5 for certain. Less hot on zelda botw, it looks cool, but the weapon thing...ehh. And I havent been into a zelda game since link between worlds, and before that...idk oot?

I wasn't crazy about BotW. I'm definitely in the Jim Sterling 7/10 camp on that one.

Beyond the ridiculous weapon breakage (I have it for Wii U and my enjoyment increased dramatically when I started using a memory editor on my soft modded console to freeze durability values for my gear), the quality content feels fairly sparse. The world is detailed and gorgeous, but the shrines and Divine Beasts are very poor substitutes for traditional dungeons.

If you don't mind spoilers and have a couple of hours to spare, I highly recommend watching or listening to Joseph Anderson's long form analysis of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T15-xfUr8z4

All that being said, Sidon and Revali are totes my husbandos. The redesigns for the Rito and Zora are fantastic. I hope they stick with them moving forward.

Defs not hyrule warriors for me, I put so much time into dynasty warriors 4 for the ps2 (literally blew an entire spring break in high school playing that game co op non stop all day every day) that even over 14 years later or whenever I played that game, I will forever be burned out on that type of game. Unlocked damn near every single thing in that game, totally broke it. Even killed Lu Bu on a mission where you weren't supposed to kill him, and when you finished the mission it played out as if he never died.

Okaaaaay yeah, as someone who has had a hard time sticking with a single racing game after mainlining Forza 2 for a couple of months, I can sympathize (do you have any idea how many cars are on that game? I had all of them. Finished every single race—including endurance races—with golds. Maxed out manufacturer affinity across the board. I sincerely hope I still have my save file).

But yeah, it's really great if you aren't sick to death of that sort of thing, haha.

Next game might be something on this list I made last November.

If you feel like shooting stuff, give Halo 2 a shot. The ending is ass (unless you've played Halo 3, then you'll know what happens) but after going through all of the Halo games through 4 with my friend recently we kind of came to realize that Halo 2 was far and away the best one.

Just don't play it on legendary. The snipers will make you rage.

My method is to just live my life, until something sounds cool on a whim and I start playing it. Could take days, weeks, or months though. xcom tftd was on a whim, because xcom sounded great at the time, and it was. I need something under 25 hours, and something that's been on my backlog for over 10 years. Which is everything on that list, but I got over 100 more not on said list.

I need to come up with a formal backlog, sorted by estimated completion hours (probably just whatever HowLongToBeat.com says). One of the problems that I have is that when I want to pull a game out of the backlog I never know which one to pick from the ever-growing list.

Not sure if I want to make some sort of simple web app to show people how much shit I need to get sorted out. Then again, that would be a good excuse to learn Django (a stack that lets you write web applications with Python). Hmm…

I'm totes going to digest that post a bit later on, I'll probably quote parts of it and start a programming thread for my python journey sometime this week, whenever I get the attention span to figure out how to start typing letters and numbers into a text editor and get frustrated when I don't know how to make my symbols do as I want them to. The hardest step is the first step, so I'll just make a small goal of selecting a text editor I want to work with, and at least being able to understand enough to begin work on the second chapter of this book. Deadline, August 14. Hard deadlines should motivate me somewhat, no promises though...I have procrastinated some 9-10 months already.

If you're anything like me, down a beer or two before you start. I don't know if I have adult ADD/ADHD or what, but sometimes I need a mild depressant to slow my brain down enough to where I'm not randomly switching tasks and distracting myself.

As far as editors go, I remember mentioning my beloved Sublime to you at some point, though I wouldn't recommend dropping $80 on it until you know you're going to get a lot of use out of it (I use Sublime at least 8 hours a day, both at work and at home, so it's paid for itself dozens of times over). As far as free ones are concerned, Notepad++ is probably the best one I've used.

Aside from that, if you have a tough time understanding any concepts, let me know. Even just having something explained in a different way or from a different angle might help. Best of luck to you!

7

Gaming / Re: Monster Hunter

« Last post by Spectere on August 10, 2018, 02:42:29 PM »

I played for about five hours last night and…yeah, it's a pretty good port!

I was hoping to be able to hit 4K/60 on my rig but I was only able to get around 40fps average. I ultimately pulled the resolution back to 1440p and it runs at a smooth 60fps. One thing that surprised me is how consistent the framerate is. Even when I was fidding around with 4K it never really dropped much below 40. If I were interested in 4K/30 it would have been more than adequate, but I'd rather have the extra FPS.

It features native XInput support (naturally), works with DirectInput, and even plays surprisingly well with keyboard/mouse! I favor an Xbox One controller, though if I ever decided to use the bowguns at some point I'd probably switch.

I'd say my biggest complaint is still that the tutorials are so overbearing. I'm pretty sure The Handler told me four separate times how to open my map, yet important movement features like swinging from vines was left completely uncovered. Having spoken to someone who picked up MHW as their first game in the series, he also feels that too much emphasis was placed on exceedingly basic controls and not enough time was spent on the nuances of armor/weapon crafting. He felt that I explained the armor upgrade system better in a handful of sentences than the long, drawn out text tutorials in the game.

The game feels best when it takes a step back and lets you figure things out, but I'm still at the point where it vocalizes some blindingly obvious stuff. Like, if I get paralyzed they make a point of saying "YOU'RE PARALYZED! You'll have to wait to recover!" as if the little lightning bolt effects on my character, the fact that he was trembling, and the fact that my controls didn't work weren't obvious. It also commits that egregious sin where you can be dodging attacks perfectly for several minutes, but the second you slip up and get smacked in the back by a little jagras it pops up this giant "A + LS" prompt on the screen and yells at you for not dodging. Yeah, no shit.

While that does make it a bit more accessible than previous titles, I still think they missed the mark. They spend so much time covering the mechanics that have been beaten into people repeatedly over the past decade that they ignore the numerous nuances that make Monster Hunter what it is. It's as if they simultaneously assume that people are beginners to video games in general, yet they know all there is to know about Monster Hunter's various systems. It just seems backwards to me.

But obviously there's far more good than there is bad. MHW resolves pretty much every complaint that I have about the series, such as reducing the menial grinding (having unlimited whetstones, BBQ spit taking significantly less time, etc), improving the fluidity of the controls, making the game world seamless and open, streamlining monster tracking (this point is probably pretty heavily contested, but I enjoy the scoutfly system significantly more than paintballs). Best of all, it manages to do all of this while still retaining its quirky and fun identity.

As soon as the tutorial-related headaches pass, you're left with an incredible game with a ginormous amount of content. There's no way I can't recommend it.

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Gaming / Re: Shin Megami Tensei

« Last post by Bobbias on August 09, 2018, 05:57:26 AM »

Damn man, I was thinking of writing something up but that belew whatever I would have written out of the water. Great post.

9

Gaming / Re: Shin Megami Tensei

« Last post by vladgd on August 08, 2018, 07:25:56 PM »

The Switch couldn't be more perfect for Disgaea 5. I'd say the PSP (or any portable system, really) comes in a somewhat distant second. The combination of the decently sized 7" screen, the ability to dock and undock, and the ability to pop up a kickstand and set the thing anywhere makes a several hundred hour game far more palatable.

I could get it on ps4, but the advantages of having it on switch sound novel enough to make it worth a wait. Also, it's a long ass game and I'll soon have less free time for those. Good I finished p5 when I did.

So I assume it stayed consistently interesting throughout, then? That's one of the barriers that I tend to have with long games: the story kind of dries out and I feel like I'm left with an exhausting grind.

If you don't want to grind, you really don't have to. There's a trick you can do later in the game (without spoiling anything, NOVEMBER, go to mementos on a flu day) which you can get from whatever level you are at to 99 with really no issues. The only real grinding I did was money grinding, which you don't really even need to do unless you want to fuse broke ass personas. I go out of my way to break games, so I put in more time doing that stuff than the average player, but you really don't need to grind much at all.

With time in dungeons taken into consideration, I'd estimate more than 60% of the game is outside of dungeons. I aint kidding when there's a TONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN of story stuff, it's a majority of the game, at least with how I played it. I've had sessions where i'd play for 6-7 hours without getting into a single battle. And when you do, the dungeons aren't total garbage like they were in persona 4 (god bless that game but the dungeons sucked). You do have to be down for the whole anime schoolkid thing, because that's...the entire game really. Not recommended if you can't into that.

But after I started getting stuck into the game (it's a bit of a slow burn, as these games tend to be) and you get to the first target and the first dungeon, I couldn't put it down until I seen the credits. PSN went down for a few hours one day and ps4 wouldn't let me play my goddamn offline game offline when I own the disc and it's in the ps4..."ohh but you have dlc so fuck you no playing for u", I was legit upset until psn was back up and I could play again, I'd think about it when I was away from it, I think I was obsessed tbh.

If you like VNs, I really really enjoyed Angels with Scaly Wings, but that might be because I'm a shameless scalie. It's $10 and makes for a fun weekend's worth of entertainment.

I hope it does well, but VN isn't quite my cup of tea i'm afraid. I'll throw the recommendation to my gf when she's working again(damn irl stuff, but things are good now) since it could be up her alley.

When you snag a switch, Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition. Definitely the best Zelda game on the Switch.

I'm already thinking Bayonetta 2, marios, and shin megami tensei 5 for certain. Less hot on zelda botw, it looks cool, but the weapon thing...ehh. And I havent been into a zelda game since link between worlds, and before that...idk oot?

Defs not hyrule warriors for me, I put so much time into dynasty warriors 4 for the ps2 (literally blew an entire spring break in high school playing that game co op non stop all day every day) that even over 14 years later or whenever I played that game, I will forever be burned out on that type of game. Unlocked damn near every single thing in that game, totally broke it. Even killed Lu Bu on a mission where you weren't supposed to kill him, and when you finished the mission it played out as if he never died.

Next game might be something on this list I made last November.



And I might just cross out ffx-2 because, my time is worth too much to me now a days to play...that...game.

My method is to just live my life, until something sounds cool on a whim and I start playing it. Could take days, weeks, or months though. xcom tftd was on a whim, because xcom sounded great at the time, and it was. I need something under 25 hours, and something that's been on my backlog for over 10 years. Which is everything on that list, but I got over 100 more not on said list.

I'm totes going to digest that post a bit later on, I'll probably quote parts of it and start a programming thread for my python journey sometime this week, whenever I get the attention span to figure out how to start typing letters and numbers into a text editor and get frustrated when I don't know how to make my symbols do as I want them to. The hardest step is the first step, so I'll just make a small goal of selecting a text editor I want to work with, and at least being able to understand enough to begin work on the second chapter of this book. Deadline, August 14. Hard deadlines should motivate me somewhat, no promises though...I have procrastinated some 9-10 months already.

10

Gaming / Re: Shin Megami Tensei

« Last post by Spectere on August 07, 2018, 03:56:33 PM »

(Warning: Programming junk in the last post on the previous page. It's…a bit of a read.)

Been meaning to play through a disgaea. Maybe whenever I snag a switch.

The Switch couldn't be more perfect for Disgaea 5. I'd say the PSP (or any portable system, really) comes in a somewhat distant second. The combination of the decently sized 7" screen, the ability to dock and undock, and the ability to pop up a kickstand and set the thing anywhere makes a several hundred hour game far more palatable.

Game finished last week. 130 hours played, took me a bit longer than persona 4. Probably can say it has the best story out of any videogame I played. I was really invested in everything going on.

So I assume it stayed consistently interesting throughout, then? That's one of the barriers that I tend to have with long games: the story kind of dries out and I feel like I'm left with an exhausting grind.

8-

Not sure what I'm playing next. I did pick up smt 4 apocalypse because of a sale, but I'm not so sure I want to dig into another long challenging jrpg right now.

If you like VNs, I really really enjoyed Angels with Scaly Wings, but that might be because I'm a shameless scalie. It's $10 and makes for a fun weekend's worth of entertainment.

When you snag a switch, Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition. Definitely the best Zelda game on the Switch.

OneShot is bloody fantastic if you don't mind some light meta puzzles. There's also a really gorgeous t-shirt available for it (that I, of course, own). Word of warning if you decide to play this: play it windowed (lower your resolution if you have to). You'll thank me later.