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Post by asterra on Jul 11, 2016 23:06:29 GMT -6
Couple more visual anomalies.
1. The cannons in the second room initially appear with low-detail textures. On my PC with a SSD, this lasts for three frames. Here is the difference: Rarely, this low-detail look is permanent for that session:
2. The sword is rendered as a foreground object, meaning the rest of Miriam's mesh is rendered as a silhouette when behind it. This happens with walls and other things Miriam can clip into, of course, but it's odd that it would happen with a held weapon.
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Post by asterra on Jul 11, 2016 21:59:38 GMT -6
Impressive demonstration. As far as tweaking the gameplay mechanics from what the demo presents, I am of the firm opinion that the devs need only use Symphony of the Night as their guide. Anything the demo is potentially doing wrong is a case where they need to scrutinize SotN for guidance. A good case in point from your original post: Jump and attack inputs are completely dropped for the whole duration of the [attack -> attack-to-idle] animations. Indeed it is so (for magic and kicks, at least), and this needs to be fixed. (To clarify: The attack-to-idle animation needs to be made interruptible, but the attack animation itself does not.) However, this: I recommend adding an input buffer for attack and jump. obviously doesn't exist in SotN. I also feel, based on the demo you helpfully provided, that it cheapens the mechanics, and even feels like ghost inputs, such as when buffering a jump after an attack. If a feature like this were to be implemented, I would hope for no more than one frame, or two at most, and for it to affect attacks only. My preference would be for it not to be used, for reasons stated. Kicks get animation-canceled during [airborne-to-grounded] animation (press kick when Miriam's falling, around 1 foot off the ground). The leg animation does not fully play out, so the attack's hitbox is effectively zero. It makes it feel as if input is getting dropped. The sword also gets animation-canceled, but it feels less severe. This is identical to SotN. It feels less of an issue because nobody playing SotN is going to be using the slowest weapons available once they have something better, and/or the weapon they're using animates independently of the player character, as many do. Meanwhile, it is a mechanic that simply requires the player to adjust to the speed of the attack, which is of course going to be highly variable across the dozens of available weapons. If you mash the backstep button, she'll keep on moving in the same direction, even if you're pressing the DPad/LStick in a different direction. This is, in my opinion, the primary gameplay mark that the demo misses. In SotN, the backslide can be interrupted by attacks, jumping, or any movement on the controller except specifically in the direction opposite to the backslide, until of course 0.25 seconds later. In Bloodstained, the backslide is a back hop, which makes it a little less practical to simply interrupt with anything, but this still needs to be addressed. By far the most important change that needs to be enabled for the player is the ability to attack in the direction of the control pad during the backhop. Whether or not this would entail actually interrupting the backhop is a separate consideration, but I would hope they invent a way to make it happen. (Edit: I remembered that attacks can interrupt the backhop at any time as long as the backhop was not itself interrupting an attack. This interruption doesn't look as unnatural as I was expecting, so it probably would be practical to allow the backhop to be interrupted by all the same actions which can interrupt a backstep in SotN.)
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Post by asterra on Jul 11, 2016 18:33:31 GMT -6
Undoubtedly. I always go for the level cap in every single IGAvania. Here's to hoping the cap is BEYOND 99. I personally hope that Iga chooses to let the game stack up, sort of like Diablo 3, Sacred 2, Dark Souls, etc. New Game+ will be harder but with correspondingly better drops ("+1" versions of what you found before) and a new level cap. And New Game++ continues the pattern, a half dozen times or so. Maybe with some extra minor bits of unique content to keep it from feeling like just the same experience with slightly different difficulty dynamics. There's plenty of precedent, it's a new IP, and this would really do wonders for the game's longevity.
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Post by asterra on Jul 11, 2016 15:28:30 GMT -6
That is my worry too, but I don't think Iga will leave us hanging like that... especially since he intends to have a alchemy based crafting system Well, again, part of my worry is that the alchemy ingredients will end up taking up item drop spots that would have been much more interesting as a traditional "common piece of crap armor" & "rare as heck sword". Especially in the nightmare scenario where enemies persist in having only one item, if even that. Why worry? Because there have been cases where Igavania enemies were poorly itemized. I hold up Symphony of the Night as the absolute gold standard in this comparison, but I cannot shake the worry that the need to create Bloodstained completely from scratch will cause the devs to look to the comparative lazy precedent set in other Igavania games as an excuse to be lazy themselves.
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Post by asterra on Jul 11, 2016 14:39:48 GMT -6
Has there been any mention of MORE gear than previous Igavania games? ( more weapons to collect, more armor, more scarfs) If they're going for a bigger castle, you'd assume there'd be more to find right? If there isn't considerably more - in proportion with the difference in castle size, for example, which would be nearly double - I'll be disappointed. The demo is possibly missing some things that should be in the final game, but what it presents us leaves room for worry: - Two weapons and two armors were available, both coming from chests.
- Enemies didn't drop any weapons or armor.
- Enemies didn't drop alchemy materials.
- The only enemy who was itemized was Dullhammer, and he had 1 item.
My ultimate worry here is that enemies will end up with basically just a shard and a single item. I want all enemies to have a common and rare drop at least, in addition to a shard if they have one. I'd also prefer it if their alchemy drops (regardless of how rare) were kept separate from their item drops, meaning if they have an alchemy drop, it doesn't take the spot of their common/rare drop. Other things that would be nice: - Better rarity than 1 in 100. That seems to be the hard limit on drop rarity (Amy shard). Raise it, so that players find they can't necessarily rely on the effective guarantee of drops.
- A range of effectiveness for weapons and armor, so that the item the player discovers is not necessarily automatically the best iteration. (If clutter is an issue, perhaps make the game only maintain the best version of an item the player finds.)
- On New Game+ and/or nightmare mode, make many items have the "+1" designation a-la Harmony of Despair.
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Post by asterra on Jul 11, 2016 1:31:29 GMT -6
I doubt Bloodstained's credits will be quite so plagued with anonymous backers. MN9's credits are 70% anonymous because of how quickly the game became a disaster that most backers no longer wanted to even be reminded about. (Source: Me, a generous backer.) There is basically no chance that will happen with Bloodstained. It would take a catastrophic mismanagement at this point.
And as for the length, yeah, I suspect you'll be allowed to scroll through it at leisure. I'd even be willing to go so far as to guess that the music will take longer than 7.5 seconds to loop. (You know the composer had basically thrown their arms up in dismay at that point.)
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Post by asterra on Jul 10, 2016 22:45:45 GMT -6
A) The research and development of consoles is too costly for them to make major changes this late in the game if they still intend to launch early next year. Either they already knew about the Neo and Scorpio and have already put changes in place or they are proceeding as planned. If they try to get into an arms race just starting now that is going to affect the dev kits and the development of all games currently underway by them or 3rd parties. The point about dev kits is traditionally true, but not if your hardware modifications are effectively as complicated as upgrading the GPU and possibly CPU in what was probably something as PC-like as the PS4/XB1 in the first place. Devs looking forward to the Neo/Scorpio really only have to think about the higher plateau; the new hardware is really no more complicated than that. But perhaps more to the point, Nintendo had probably not been counting on significant third-party support to begin with. I expect Nintendo to save Zelda for the NX. If they go ahead and release it for Wii-U first, then all I can say is they will have made a gargantuan mistake. (Bigger than screwing over Wii-U owners for all of 2016.) B) I think making appealing software and delivering it at a steady, reasonable clip are more important that pure power (though I understand how that can play into 3rd party support). This is the first generation in which the most powerful hardware is doing the best but XBone made a lot of mistakes out of the gate and I'm not at all convinced VR is going to take off in the near future - its requirements are high and its very costly, its a niche product right now. I am no prognosticator, but at the same time I cannot ignore the facts. Early adopters of VR gaming are ensuring that the technology doesn't stagnate, while the realities of the earliest uses of the technology gradually dawn on Joe Average almost de facto: 3d movies (big library of these on bluray), 3d photos, 3d videos on Youtube that you can pan around. These are the killer apps for the earliest audience, and they don't require new hardware. They do require a medium-sized smartphone, however. Fortunately, a lot of people will continue to own those too. Soon enough, the practical difference between phone and proper goggles will blur, much as it did between PDAs and phones. A half dozen multi-billion-dollar dev operations are going to be 100% right about their expectations whether the consumer is ready or not. C) I'm not sure exactly why you think Zelda would be packed in with the NX or why you think they wouldn't be willing to abandon Wii U tablet. Not necessarily an unavoidable pack-in but certainly a launch exclusive and at least offered as a bundle. Wasn't talking about the Wii-U's tablet. Was talking about the NX's controller. It's speculative of me to suggest that it will double as Nintendo's next portable but I'd be surprised if they weren't planning on pretty much that functionality. Still, it could very well be Nintendo's plan to just sort of maintain a Wii-U-like presence in the market as you say. It's not like Nintendo is going to bankrupt themselves scraping by. ;p
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Post by asterra on Jul 10, 2016 13:15:54 GMT -6
I just read the first post in this thread again. Wow did Nintendo miss out on a great E3 opportunity with the NX. They didn't fuel the hype train at all for it. Nintendo has possibly been forced back to the drawing board thanks to the revelations of the semi-replacements for the PS4 and now XB1. The most reliable rumor before E3 was that their hardware was targeting a level of power just a hair above that of today's PS4, which, if this console generation had been normal, would have technically made Nintendo the powerhouse of this gen (albeit late), and third party devs would have no good excuses for not doing easy ports. Now they're looking at releasing late and being dead last in power for a third straight generation. Worse, their hardware would not be "VR ready" any more than the current PS4 is, and make no mistake: That's a critical consideration. Nintendo does not have good options. Strike out with more underwhelming (non-VR ready) and potentially gimmicky hardware for a third time and hope for the best, or take a loss on the hardware in a calculated bid to stay relevant. My guess is they'll proceed with their PS4-like hardware and hope that the must-buy pack-in Zelda game (along with a belated release for the Wii-U) will ensure a healthy early base. A big reason I expect this is that Nintendo will not want to abandon their Wii-U-like screen controller which will probably double as the 3DS's successor. If/when this ends up not working out, I expect Nintendo to finally start spreading their assets across multiple devs and platforms, and Pokemon Go can be considered a test specimen for this strategy.
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Post by asterra on Jul 10, 2016 13:02:42 GMT -6
This bears repeating. Sticking with 1600 (well, <1800) rooms for the game proper would technically be failing a Kickstarter goal. Meanwhile, most fans will probably be expecting pretty much this kind of inverted-castle non-ending, so if people get to the end of the game and discover that's really that, there will be much disappointment.
I think the best case scenario would be to make the inverted component (or equivalent) only accessible from a hard difficulty and/or New Game+. Second best case would be to have the inverted component be staggered content, though that would compromise any chance that it is integral to the game's plot and hypothetical best ending.
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Post by asterra on Jul 10, 2016 1:19:53 GMT -6
I did a video analysis of the backstep/crouch technique and I have sadly come to the conclusion that it is in fact no faster than simply backstepping, or if it is, it's no more than about 1%, and would take a robot (or a TAS) to accomplish to that level. Certainly it's nothing like 5 to 10% faster (or slower). So, yeah, I take back what I said.
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Post by asterra on Jul 9, 2016 0:46:29 GMT -6
Yup, I pretty much feel the same way right now. I liked every track i've heard from Bloodstained but nothing has wowed me yet like the tracks from SOTN. SOTN, gave me feels and felt so damn fitting musically for a vampire story. The arrangements I feel like have a lot to do with it, I feel every instrument was perfectly picked for every part. Every track almost felt like a standout. That's not to knock what we've heard so far, I really have enjoyed them. [...] I think the problem I'm having so far is the tracks don't invoke any moodiness or sense of dread. It all feels very lighthearted thus far. Listen to the Requiem from SOTN and you're filled with a sense of sadness and just a feeling of awe. It's not just a great composition but it feels very atmospheric in it's production. Here are more of my thoughts on what we've gotten from Yamane so far and what I think we're likely to get in the final version of Bloodstained. As I already mentioned, I don't feel that any of the music in the demo is of the sort that makes me sit up and take notice, the way certain tracks from certain Castlevania games of the past did. Then again, with the amount of music presented in the demo, the odds of a standout track being present were small. But then again, the main tune in the demo is essentially a lesser imitation of SotN's Dracula's Castle.I think there are four possibilities: 1) Yamane is legitimately past her prime. This happens to every composer. John Williams' score for TFA, while not bad, is almost completely forgettable. Not even his work with the prequels had so little going for it. If Yamane ends up not producing a single standout track for Bloodstained, then this is the reason. Again, this happens. 2) Yamane is rusty, after doing almost no real volume of music for many years, and primarily Nintendo DS "soundtracks" (sequenced music, like MIDI) for many more years before then. With the music provided for the demo being the very earliest works she's done for the game, it's to be understood that she needs to get back up to speed. 3) Yamane, like Kojima, assumed from the start that Bloodstained was going to be a small-time gig, and potentially not even that, and so hasn't caught up to the fact that it's turned out to be even more important than Symphony of the Night, and the demo's early music is a reflection of this half-hearted frame of mind. 4) The music we have is, by and large, temporary, because after all one of the Kickstarter goals was "Orchestrated Tracks". If any part of the demo is likely to fall under this special qualifier, it'd be the main level music of the galleon Minerva, and that's really the one I reference as sounding good but not as good as a similar track from Bloodstained's 20-year-old predecessor.
This conveniently lets me shift focus to the orchestrated tracks thing. Frankly, this part of the Bloodstained project worries me. It could be great! (See: Super Mario Galaxy.) But what happens more often is that they hire a cheap orchestra in a bad stadium with drowning reverb and poorly-placed mics, and the resulting absence of intimacy to the sound just doesn't hold a candle to what could have been artificially produced. Yamane has never composed music in this specific capacity before, that I know of, so that is an unavoidable concern as well. It's just hard for me to consider this stretch goal a guaranteed positive. I personally hope that very little of the final soundtrack is a live orchestra.
And that leads me to the final soundtrack. Originally, I had the anticipation that Yamane would end up only providing a token proportion of the complete soundtrack, but then the demo came out and all of the music was hers. And then I remembered that one of the Kickstarter tiers included having her signature on the soundtrack - hers, alone. This basically means I was probably wrong. So where does that leave the others? Yamada, I feel, is there to fill some blanks. As a more specific guess, I bet he'll cover a lot of boss music, since there is going to have to be a lot of that, and it's not easy to maintain variety by oneself. But I'm really interested in Virt's participation. So far, the only thing we know for certain is that he will be providing at least a couple of 8-bit tracks - that much can be gleaned from the Kickstarter. But then, so will the other two composers. Virt was obviously thrown on the pile for the same reason we got David Hayter and Robbie Belgrade: It was a fairly transparent effort to draw some fanboy attention to the Kickstarter, and probably also quite affordable. But speaking as someone who's listened to probably most of Virt's output, I know he has a very wide range of talents, and I would be pretty unsurprised if he managed to kick out a tune or two that not only captured Yamane's style but also were of "standout" quality like we got in SotN. I think he could do it. Whether that's something he signed up to do is the question.
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Post by asterra on Jul 8, 2016 0:04:21 GMT -6
I already touched upon the fun results that can be had by swapping weapons mid-swing, but finally decided a demonstration video would be a better way of drawing dev attention to the phenomenon than a simple aside.
I present: The cuisinart kick.
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Post by asterra on Jul 7, 2016 23:04:44 GMT -6
- Number of times enemy has been killed.
- Number of enemy's shards that have been found (regardless of whether more shards still give upgrades).
- Number of enemy's unique drops that have been found.
All above statistics being additive in the case of New Game+. Would give some legitimacy to hypothetical pacifist / no items runs, assuming those are even within the realm of doability. Also: - A list of the enemy's various attacks, which must be filled out, either by witnessing or by getting hit by said attack (either/or), the same way enemy drops must be filled out. This list would of course animate the enemy using the attacks.
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Post by asterra on Jul 7, 2016 22:21:24 GMT -6
Biggest con so far: I felt the movement was quite unresponsive. The character movements lagged enough behind button presses that I was definitely feeling some frustration by the time I finished the demo. I found myself pressing the buttons *really hard* hoping to get better responses (which of course only helped me to jump higher, but still slowly). I'm not sure if this is due to animation frame rate or a deliberate choice to make her slower at the beginning and then become more responsive as you level up/get better equipment.I'll tackle this one. Miriam has a startup animation to her jumps. I've studied it. Two frames of crouch-into-jump. She only actually gains altitude on the third frame. Jumps in Castlevania titles just gain altitude instantly, Super Mario Bros. style. Including SotN. So if one has recently played one of those, I can see how the subtle delay could be picked up on. Unfortunately, I have serious doubts that there are any plans in place to offer a way of circumventing this animation, item or otherwise. In any event, the game itself is not responsible for adding an excessive amount of latency, if that were ever considered a possibility. I went ahead and checked:
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Post by asterra on Jul 7, 2016 14:08:33 GMT -6
But yeah, I wanna upgrade my $300 tier to a $500 tier when I get the chance. (And monies) Indeed. I am in no position to upgrade my tier past what I started with, but I am really interested in that map. Granted, once you're past $100, you have officially entered "the bonuses are just for show" territory. I mean, what kind of map would really be worth a $200 premium? 20 square foot oak frame? It has to be just an unusually large (or maybe just a typically-sized) poster. But I can't be certain! A Bloodstained continuation feels like a done deal. I couldn't have confidently said that before the demo. The demo proves they're on the right track. Nobody has had anything truly negative to say about it, and the Bloodstained campaign itself did not, say, hire a supremely divisive community manager a week after the Kickstarter ended, who then went on an absolute tirade of power and silencing. It's hard to be cautiously indifferent when the contrast between this game and the other game is so stark.
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Post by asterra on Jul 7, 2016 0:57:56 GMT -6
This is your latest argument (I paraphrase): You can just write a shader that is essentially the same as the current one, but ignores the watercolor textures, drops the cyan glow, and drops the outline, and the game would look better. The shader in question affects "characters", hence its designation, "character 3". If you drop the cyan glow, the black borders, and the hard shadow delineation, the only thing left to do is tweak color balance and you have "character 1" in the bag (as long as the essentially unimportant normals of a cel shaded model don't actually prove a barrier, assuming they even have any). Perhaps the more convoluted shader considerations are more applicable in the case of "background 1" vs "background 3", but the only thing that seems to be irreversibly baked into the character assets they've produced so far is the unique texture layer on the boss which produces the rolling effect on the cyan glow. Since none of this affects the background and the background does not share any of the qualities which would make it look cartoony, I see no reason to rock that boat. So, as far as the outline goes, I'd say it does become a question of whether or not they want to listen to your suggestion, as opposed to whether or not they can. I actually feel that in this case, even if the black border item ends up being non-negotiable, that won't stop like-minded modders. A simple edit like that would probably be one of the first things out the door.
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Post by asterra on Jul 6, 2016 20:26:25 GMT -6
The list of games I can honestly say I enjoyed more than Harmony of Despair is less than the number of fingers on one hand. Despite the fact that it ultimately boiled down to a mind-numbingly repetitive grind, I would do it all over again if they released it fresh on Steam. So, yeah, if they find a way to emulate what HoD achieved, I would go nuts. Certainly more appealing than if they tried to figure out a way to make the single-player experience support co-op; I personally feel that would simply break single-player.
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Post by asterra on Jul 6, 2016 19:28:58 GMT -6
You'd be forgiven for thinking that these two components are independent, that 3D models and textures can be changed without tweaking the shaders and vice versa.With very simple graphics, this is indeed the case. However, with a relatively complex shader like the one in bloodstained, the 3D data (models and textures) and the shader program need to be intertwined. I know: I've done this. The shader program needs data baked into the models and the models are made under the assumption that you'll be using a specific shader. At the risk of pursuing something that's obviously figured to be a closed case by many, I offer my take. As previously stated, I feel the cartoony look of the shader is accomplished mostly through two of the shader's features: The cyan lightsourcing, and the "cel shading" black borders. (A third factor is the cel-like sharp delineation of shadowed surfaces.) Now, as far as the cyan lightsourcing effect goes, this is indeed baked into the textures in Bloodstained, but only as a separate layer. In fact I suspect it is simply the alpha layer of all the textures for a given mesh, rather than an entirely separate texture. Surfaces exhibit the cyan glow when presented obliquely to the camera, but only then: Tweaking, modifying, reducing or outright disabling this glow is thus a simple matter of changing one variable - the one which dictates the color and transparency (opacity) of this specific effect - and is no more "impossible" than it is for Miriam's boots to have cyan borders on the calves while she runs, yet cyan borders on the sides while she idles. (See above.) What's more, while we normally just refer to a single shader, in reality there may be more than one shader program. There could be one for Miriam and another for the enemies, and another for the bosses, for example (that's not to say that this is the case - I'm just saying it would be an added difficulty if it were the case). There's definitely a different one for the background, for one. I can confidently state that the shader in play is identical across Miriam and all NPCs in the demo, including the boss. As you say, the playfield graphics get a different treatment, and I'd suppose there will be many different ones for different scenarios. What all this means is that from a technical standpoint, it would present a problem: in the best case scenario, the current 3D models and textures, which you can definitely not change, will look ugly under a different shader I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if they choose to tone down the cyan glow on the boss, which often resolves as a ridiculous radioactive paint detail, it can only be an improvement. And the sad fact of the matter is that any other boss that's similarly large is almost certainly going to exhibit the same exact problem unless things are specifically tweaked to avoid it.Analyzing the content from the demo I can tell that some of the effects in these 'shaders' have been baked into the textures for example. The watercolour overlay on the characters for example, it is in the original texture. it is not a shader effect. Thus having an option to switch between styles is not really an option. The cyan effect is part of the texture, as you say, but it is not a "permanently on" part - its appearance depends on the angle of the polygons, and this in turn is dictated internally; the entire effect could be completely disabled if desired, without needing to modify any textures or meshes. To better illustrate what I mean, here is a shot of the boss's tentacle: These two images were taken about half a second apart. The cyan effect here is actually constantly flowing along the tentacles, yet nonetheless the only time you can see it at all is on surfaces which are within a certain range of perpendicular to the camera. Thus you see a lot of the effect with the tentacle pointed roughly at the camera (above), and it almost completely disappears, half a second later, with the tentacle having shifted 90 degrees (below).
With the cyan glow factor out of the way, it's time to talk more about the black borders. All this self-assured talk about baked textures doesn't really touch upon the border problem. I don't think I need to explain how the textures or the meshes, or indeed any other items that takes a major proportion of development time, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not a given model is being rendered with arbitrary black edges on sharp and/or oblique angles. That can be disabled on a whim. Now, I point to the following image as evidence that at least reducing the effect can net a desirable result: On the left, the original image provided as a "character 3" specimen. On the right, what we got in the demo. (Crop, no scaling.) The borders on the left image are either absent or significantly reduced compared to the right image, and it makes for much cleaner and more appealing graphics, at least in my opinion. But the focus of the discussion is technically the boss, so let's study what makes the black borders uniquely problematic there. Really, nothing less than the fact that the black borders are at least twice as thick as even the already thick borders on Miriam. Depending on the situation, it can get far, far worse: Is this supposed to be the successor to Castlevania, or to Ōkami? Shrug. This needs to be toned down. A lot. (Side note: I'm pretty well convinced at this point that the low detail of the boss's mesh has been dictated by the foreknowledge of certain mandated ports.)
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Post by asterra on Jul 6, 2016 2:20:22 GMT -6
Now that I've had a chance to review the shaders everyone was voting on while I slept, my mild disdain for the look of the demo's boss has come into focus. The thick black outlines are a problem. Also a problem is the light cyan glow emanating from the lower-left background, casting a light cyan glow on oblique surfaces. This gives Miriam, enemies, etc. a Super Mario Galaxy-like glow on their outer edges, in light cyan. Same goes for the boss, who becomes positively saturated with the color at times. Unavoidably and probably intentionally, this makes things look very cartoony. When I compare this to the no-nonsense, unsaturated, breathtaking look of the alternative, I can't help but feel like a prize was snatched away. It's like the non-cartoony shaders presented early on represent this game's visual potential, and the cartoony shader came along and stole that potential away. I would take solace in the fact that the cartoony shader was the winner by a wide margin, were it not for the strong likelihood that its late arrival as an option gave it unfair momentum. Miriam as seen in the demo also has much thicker black borders than in the ostensible gameplay image people were given which featured the cartoony shader. The essentially-absent black border look in said image is far more appealing than what we got in the demo. Solution is very simple: Leave all of the proposed shader templates in. Make the cartoony look the default, per the wishes of the community, but let players have access to the others. Maybe even make them something you can earn during the course of the game, the way some games tuck music tracks away as minor rewards for diligence.
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Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
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Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
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Post by asterra on Jul 5, 2016 21:58:24 GMT -6
This may not be much use, but during my attempts to find bugs in the game, I did note that backstepping alone is not the fastest mode of travel in the demo. A carefully-timed mix of backstep and crouch is some 5 to 10% faster. In practice, I want to say it's too challenging to pull off efficiently, but certainly when the day comes for TAS runs, I expect to see a lot of it. Noticed this too that you can cancel the backdash with a crouch. Thing is, I think it may be faster frame wise. Well, as I said, it is faster, just not easy to pull off efficiently. Mess up even once out of ten interrupts and you've lost speed compared to simply backstepping. The reason it's faster is fairly straightforward: The beginning of the backstep has the most momentum, and it lessens up to the point when Miriam lands. Interrupting gives access to more time of maximum momentum, and it's enough to more than counterbalance the momentum lost from crouching / stopping the backstep.
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