#i really want a volume slider for characters voices i played a game (which i cant remember) where it had this setting where u could adjust | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whiskeyeyeproject · 2 years

Text

Retrospective/Issues/Plans

Looking back at the work I have accomplished over the last couple of months, I am quite proud of what I have achieved.

My coding was really limited and I have learnt a lot about this process, as well as the process of creating a game, story writing, voice acting and composing an interactive score.

I enjoyed using Twine, even if it does come with some limitations. The fact that it isn’t really meant to be used with audio made it challenging. The lack of an audio mixer made it tough to balance the different audio elements, such as the voice overs and the score. Sometimes the voice over is too quiet, and can get lost. This problem would be fixed with an integrated audio engine. When I get back to expanding this project, I will without a doubt move to a piece of software with that application.

I would also like the games artwork be the centre piece of the games visuals rather than a picture in the background. I want to create character models/ sprites and have animations. This will make it a lot more interactive, playful and immersive.

The main UI could do with some work, I don’t like the fact that a player can go back to a previous slide, taking out the immersion and removing the severity of a players actions, as they can be negated just by returning to the previous slide. Volume sliders would also be beneficial to have on the side for a player to control the volume of the different aspects.

Setting out on this project at the beginning, I really wanted the audio to shape around the players choice. Although nearly, I don’t think I have been as successful in this as I had hoped. The music is shaped by your actions (such as the guitar playing if you set off the alarm). But it would be nice for your choices to have real consequences sonically, and that will be something that I will hone in on next time.

This experience is in my mind a prototype for something bigger. I would like to expand this project using Unreal Engine, making it longer, offer more choice and for them choices to be a lot more devastating than they are in there current state, but I also don’t want to lose the humour.

I look at life quite lightly, and I like that to reflect in my work and writing. I don’t like to take things to seriously, myself least of all. And I think this sensibility comes through in my work. I like the idea that the game knows it is a game, and I can’t help but to poke fun at it. I think that there is a lot more room for this kind of humour pushing the game forward.

The narrator/ your brain being a character in itself was derived from a game called disco Elysium. In that game you play as a detective who got so drunk he lost his memory, and every aspect of his brain is a character that you can spend points on upgrading, for example your vitality or your strength are all characters. I loved taking that idea on. And I look forward to expanding on it when expanding this experience in the future.

There is an optimum way of playing which allows you to experience everything.

Just make sure you chose:

To kiss the figure.

Do not talk to the bandits

Run straight to sanctum

Hide behind the rock.

Shoot them

Press forward

Head for the Tavern

I hope you enjoyed your brief time with Whiskey Eye.

0 notes

azarathedragon · 5 years

Text

Mild spoilers. Nothing is really stated, but its enough to clue in to stuff that happens in the main story.

Nothing has emotionally destroyed me more this year then Red Dead Redemption 2. And for me, thats saying something, because i uh....dont usually cry during a video game. I cant actually bring to mind another game that had me that upset over a character. Books, yea. Tv shows, yea. But a video game. Make me sad, sure, but actually cry, nope.

And i loved the game to bits, enough so that it actually got my ass in gear to play and attempt to finish the first game. My only gripe would have been some of the choices made with horses.

First being that the best horses are locked behind the epilogue, where theres maybe a dozen hours worth of content. Maybe more if you didnt do some stuff as Arthur. It doesnt make sense that the character you spend the most time with, only has access to lower tier horses, barring the black arabian and gold turk (which i find ugly as shit by the why. Sadie's turk was a far prettier color.)

The unique horses like the black shire or Buell. If you sell either, or it gets killed, they are gone for good. There is no getting that specific coat color back. And that is dumb as shit my friends. As a side note, we shoulda been able to get Buell earlier on. You basically get that stubborn bastard when theres only a few hours of gameplay left (story wise anyway. If you spend fifteen hours just dicking around, all the more power to ya. Lord knows i did because the game ending was spoiled for me within the first week of its release. Thanks youtube. Thanks.)

Second. All horses should have been able to be found wild or stable bought. Just decrease spawn chance for the real nice ones like the Arabians and Turks. Horse herds were depressing to look at after a while, when you realize the three fastest wild breeds only have two wild coat colors. Nokota, Thoroughbred, snd the Anerican Standards. Two colors. And you find herds with 4 to 6 of one of the afformentioned breeds in it. Two colors. Its just...sad to look at. And its not like Rockstar was short on coat colors snd patterns. Also. Fuck them for patching the St. Denis spawn glitch. I found an alternative as john and got that pretty rose grey arabian. For free. And i think i found an alternative as arthur. But my lips are sealed, because frankly, its bullshit i cant steal a real nice horse. Were outlaws, lemme steal the nice horses you bastards.

Coats and their patterns. The only ALL black horse is a American Standardbred. They are an average horse. Ok speed, and ok health and stamina. And i will say it again. Rockstar was not short on coat colors and patterns. There are so many colors for the Kentucky Saddlers, Tennessee Walkers, and Morgans. So fuckin many. A lot of these could have been copied or split into other breeds. Or pull the Nintendo BotW method where there is a dozen base colors, that then have additional patterns thrown over top. Because i really want an all black horse that has good stats. (And unless im crazy, im pretty sure the initial launch of the game there were no all black horses? The standardbred used to have like...a snip on its face. Mandela effect probably. There are a handful of black horses they all start to blur together after a while)

The horse types like War and Work should have meant more than more health over stamina or vice versa. War horses shouldnt balk at gunfire, its what it was bred and raised for. Work horses shouldnt have felt the stamina drain from carrying pelts, it was born and raised to do intensive work. Wild horses should have handled threatening wildlife (snakes, cougars, bears, alligators) better than stable horses. Stable horses spook easier at said creatures, but handle towns and nearby trains better. Yes, you read that right, trains. Horses dont like loud things, and trains to them, are downright terrifying. It takes years of consistent exposure for a horse to calm down around such things. (My family had horses, and we lived near John Trovolta. The dude has a private jet. Taking off in practically our back yard. The horses freaked about it at first, but after a while began to realize the giant screaming metal demon bird isn't here to harm them. They still dont like it, but they dont freak out as easily to it either.)

Im still not sure as to what Handling meant. Does it turn faster? Different animations? Game devs love putting shit in, and then not tell us what it means. Like that "wild horses will keep some wild tendencies." That means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. Tendencies could be anything, literally anything. Maybe this horse really, really likes chewing on its butt. Maybe it has a biting problem. The word means nothing if we arent given context on what it means.

Volume slider for the horses please. My god. Both of my parents are hard of hearing, and while my dad has no interest in the game other than "oh what gun is that? A wincester?". My mom did on the other hand. So she turns the volume up a little to hear characters better, but then we have to turn it back down, because the horses are overly loud at times. (And yes captions are on, but we still like hearing the voice behind those words. Pretty sure the tv speakers are going anyway, but there are other audio issues with the game at times that are unrelated to a shit tv). Audio option are important. And we are stuck with only three sliders. Master, score, and dialogue. You dont want to listen to a horse grunting, overpowering whatver it was that character said? Too bad. You dont get to decide that. Really hope the pc release adds a few more sliders to make it bearable.

#spoilers #red dead redemption 2 #i really liked it #im playing a second time kinda like #and also cause i really fucked johns honor up #i was robbing trains to try and get a jewelry piece for a trinket #and ho boy #johns naughty #very naughty #granted its a different naughty to sitting around as arthur #murdering about 100 lawnmen in blackwater #just to see what horses they had #cough cough #hoseas silver turk #and cause its fun to see how long you can survive #in a dead or alive zone #its like five stars in gta #fun

1 note · View note

tezsaltblogsrhpc · 6 years

Text

I’m going to pick up the cartridge after work, so before I start, I want to get my current opinions stated and out of the way:

It’s not actually a remake. It’s a port, and a port to a platform that could already play the original at that. The background textures do seem like they might be higher quality, but according to every video I’ve seen, they’ve actually lost visual quality in other areas, because all the animations of stairs shifting in the background in Historia are gone, as is every animation of Stocke climbing the stairs.

My only opinion on the opening animation is “It’s there.” It has a song, I guess? It’s kind of the most generic OP you could make for this game.

Things I know they added which I’m pretty solidly behind:

Difficulty levels! Because not everyone plays the game the same way. Looking askance at inability to turn off Friendly Mode, though.

Separate music/SFX/Voice volume sliders! Basic functionality the original was lacking.

Quest markers! I personally am okay with wandering around talking to every NPC to find all the quests (and also have memorized when and where they all are anyway), but most people are less dedicated “TALK TO EVERYONE” explorers than me and making the game more transparent for them is a good thing. Might not help with AJE, though. We’ll see.

Some little tweaks to the combat system I noticed in various demo videos- clearer indication of crits, faster attack animations, the icons on the turn order showing which enemy is which and where they are on the grid, that kind of thing.

There’s some other stuff I’m potentially hopeful/curious about, but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen it in action

I really dislike the new portraits.

I really dislike the moe sameface on the girls.

I really dislike that the male and female characters look like they were drawn by completely different artists.

I think the new portraits do a much worse job of conveying the characters’ personalities than the original ones, especially the girls hit with the Moe Virus and the older male characters.

I really dislike the choice to shade with white at the back where the original portraits were shaded with black.

The blindingly shiny character portraits look out of place against... the entire rest of the game.

It draws the eye to the wrong part of the image; portraits shaded to black around the sides on the outside of the screen draw the eye to the highlights, i.e. their faces in the middle, while white around the edges distracts you by giving you the back of their heads as a highlight at the sides of the screen.

It makes Protea’s design in particular look way more busy and distracting, because now all her jewelry is drawing your eye instead of fading into the shadows.

It’s going to lose the fact that Apocrypha is drawn in the same style as the portraits.

I think the fact that a bunch of characters’ hair appears to be caught in an updraft at the back looks extremely silly.

I really dislike Eruca’s redesign, and find it glaringly obvious looking at her new field sprite that the long hair was a late addition on top of a finished sprite.

I’m okay with Heiss’s redesign. You could make a point that his cartoonishly evil original look made him seem like smaller potatoes and less like Big Bad material, but I think it’s outweighed by having him... not look so cartoonishly evil. (The aforementioned hair updraft isn’t doing him any favors, though.)

I VIOLENTLY dislike the massive uptick in male-gaze fanservice at the expense of characterization, storytelling, and basic logic.

I think even a lot of the non-fanservice CGs look terrible.

I’m not fond of the menu and interface redesign from what I’ve seen, and I don’t expect it will grow on me.

RH has, on the whole, a very muted color palette. The vast majority of areas are in browns, grays, and faded greens, without a lot of sharp blacks or whites. The original interface is all warm brown, tan, and yellow, which is both the actual color of the cover of the White Chronicle and fits in with the general aesthetic. The new one, though, is all in black and white, and consequently doesn’t match the otherwise unchanged area graphics and sprites.

It also puts a lot of unnecessary detail and texture into weird places, which, again, doesn’t really fit the look of the original game assets it’s being put alongside.

I’m genuinely astonished they managed to make the font worse.

I have read enough of the script dump to know I want to personally fight whoever is responsible for the “new translation” (a term I use loosely, as about 90% of it is copy-pasted from the original, typos and all). More on that to come.

My expectations for writing and story quality on basically all the new/Nemesia-related content are extremely low.

#not gameblogging #i might be too zonked this evening to actually post anything #especially since i'm sure i'm going to have a LOT to say about the opening #we'll see

7 notes · View notes

video-drone-blog · 7 years

Text

The Agony and Ecstacy of Settings Menus in Nier: Automata

((As always -- patreon.com/hegelbon and paypal.me/hegelbon for donations! We’re ramping up to a full domain switch-over and your contributions help with that, the podcast, and the blog more than you could imagine. Thanks!

PS: The podcast is now available on iTunes under No Cartridge Audio and RSS feeds are up at no-cartridge.net))

It looks like a Settings screen, 9B.

The release of Nier: Automata on the heels of the new Zelda, Breath of the Wild, has action RPG fans in some sort of near-shock coma. While the latter capitalizes on the promise of the N64 classic Ocarina of Time, producing what people are calling a game-changer in the open-world genre, the former is a bit more difficult to pin down. And with good reason -- Nier: Automata is the sequel to the not-especially-popular PS3 game Nier, which itself is a spinoff of the Popular-in-Japan-But-Not-So-Much-in-the-States Drakengard series. As a result, the genre-bending, meta-fictional action RPGs that lend their logic to the foundation of Nier: Automata aren’t really in the common imagination in the same way that the Zelda series is, and Nier (I’ll be referring to the new game under this title from here on out) is a bit of an odd duck as a result.

Half-Dark-Souls-esque-fighter, half classic RPG, and a smidge of 2D platformer and bullet-hell SHMUP, the genre conventions of Nier could be fodder for two or three blog posts -- I’ll be discussing them soon in the podcast. What I want to touch on in a brief reaction piece to the first four hours of Nier is the fascinating way the game does an end-around on Settings menus and typical RPG logic. To paraphrase the game in its opening, when it says that “Saving isn’t available right now, keep playing to determine save function,” it isn’t just being coy. There is a plot decision behind every function in the game, which both locks the player into Nier’s logic while pushing back against the seamless totality of that logic in a self-reflexive move that hints at the game’s idiosyncratic qualities.

Nier focuses on your characters’ foray into a post-apocalyptic earth, in which your avatar needs to kill machines that effectively enforce (what you are told is) an alien invasion that has pushed all human life to the Moon. Your characters -- androids -- work for the human race and are programmed to perform self-sacrificing labor and combat, constantly being killed and reborn into new shells of yourself with your memories more or less intact. I’m not too far in yet, so I don’t know the full twist yet, but given that the machines seem to have empathy and are producing weird hairless and genitally smooth humanoid bio-machines, I’m assuming that we’re not getting the full story.

Subtext. Subtext. Subtext.

This Twilight Zone esque plottedness follows the entirety of the game thus far, with small hints in the corners of our metaphorical eyes hinting at deeper plot revelations to come. There’s a lot in common plot-wise in Nier with the Metal Gear Solid series, particularly as concerns betrayal and incompetence in the higher levels of command.....or so I’d guess. In any case, the game certainly is quick to emphasize your characters’ roles as cogs in the machine of the Yorha forces, fighting the machines on Earth. Certainly, 2B and 9S -- the female protagonist and her male foil -- are completely likable cogs, don’t get me wrong! But four hours into the game, cogs they are, ready to follow rules and not stray from the rectitude of their orders.

Fascist robots in love (Stolen from my twitch chat, natch).

The mediation of such a gameplay choice -- that the player is aware of the moral peregrinations and complexities of the plot before the characters that they control -- is dealt with admirably by Nier, which insists upon the machine-quality of the androids. Despite their very humanoid appearance, 2B and 9S are absolutely robotic in purpose and function. After a very humanized early mission, in which both 2B and 9S must commit suicide in order to defeat several large machines, 2B is brought back to “life” in the intergalactic “Bunker” by 9S. The screen cuts into black, as 9S attempts to fix the video input signal. When you, 2B, regain your vision, you’re brought back to the settings menu, where 9S walks you through the “calibration” of your visual and mechanical experience.

In this moment, Nier does two things. One, and this is one I can’t properly describe quite yet because I’m not far enough, it gives you the option to turn on or off your “self-destruct” mode. The existential choice of suicide for a greater cause being broken down into a toggle switch is jarring, even with the somewhat on-the-nose OSHA warning of 9S who reminds you that “you should do this yourself. Regulations and all.”

But the second thing that the game does, and this is the interesting thing for me, is that it sets into motion the total integration of the game mechanics with in-game explanations. Your brightness is adjusted so that 2B can see, not so that your monitor can display the game correctly. The voice volume has to be adjusted so that 2B can hear 9S, not so that the player can. There’s even a control option in the menu to allow for autopilot playing, in which a player can let the game play itself through some of its more difficult moments. Everything in this sequence takes the player out of the central subjective position and reorients it back around 2B as an autonomous protagonist. It locks the player out as an interlocutor.

And this mechanical tick continues apace. Your saving is not actually arbitrary -- it’s an upload of memories to a database. Loading is booting up an old body. Finding your body in the wild and collecting its information and items is as simple as replacing the parts of a new car with an old one. 2B is at once humanized in form and content as a thinking, personalized character, but is continually made to represent a figure in the gameworld that is figured by the structures of the menu screen. Toggles, choices made in slider graphs, nothing more irrational or complex than a scroll-down menu -- these are the explicit brains of the protagonists of the game. They are at once so simple as to be doll-like, and also so autonomous as to reject player input. The world of Nier moves like a wind-up toy, uncaring of its reception or its player, and the game is notable in this modernist ambition. On its face, Nier is a JRPG about attractive androids; under the skin, however, it is a mediation on free will, and one that from the get-go rejects your participation in that debate.

In other words -- it’s attempting a true artistic self-reflexivity. I’ll let you know how it does.

#nier: automata #videogames #no cartridge

11 notes · View notes