Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#11

Post by thrower123 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #4

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #3

I just played through the Legendary Edition and am going through Andromeda now. While I think ME1 is definitely the best, they all have really interesting mechanics that spice up each subsequent game in the series. I was presently surprised that Andromeda took a lot more risks that, imo, have been paying off so far.

Weapons ammo retcon was done very clumsily and broke the lore established in the first game. If they wanted to change the gameplay and make players break cover more often, they should have just hand vaiwe this issue without explanation.

The ammo retcon was part of such a bigger shift. My main complaint is that adding the heat clips instead of cooldown gimped sniper rifles disproportionately. But shifting from the open outdoor environments with the Mako in ME1 to more contained levels in ME2 also disincentivized snipers.

I had most of my fun playing ME1 trying to take ridiculous long shots on targets outside of the radar range. With some configurations of mods, which ME2 also slashed, this was really effective and kind of hilarious. Some of the physics damage mods on sniper rifles would blow enemies right into the air.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#12

Post by lmm » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

armchairhacker wrote: post #10

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #5

Video games are a weird type of application. They seem to be one of the only applications that isn't in the process of becoming a web application (outside of just rending it on a remote server and even that isn't growing very fast). This is despite the fact that every platform/OS essentially has had it's own graphics library/interface (DirectX, OpenGL, Metal). At least Vulkan seems to be making a lot o progress in ma…

Video games aren’t becoming web applications precisely because there are so many GPU libraries. I think this is also why they have so many immutable dependencies: they rely on low-level optimizations and various hacks which break on newer libraries. Video games need to do expensive computations in real time. Most other apps don’t, which is why they can be ported to the web.

The other side is that video games have a lot less need to be correct than most applications. Even a blatant user-visible bug is probably fine (and might even add to the fun). Crashing is a problem, but running with massive state errors often isn't.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#13

Post by throwaway6734 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #4

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #3

I just played through the Legendary Edition and am going through Andromeda now. While I think ME1 is definitely the best, they all have really interesting mechanics that spice up each subsequent game in the series. I was presently surprised that Andromeda took a lot more risks that, imo, have been paying off so far.

Weapons ammo retcon was done very clumsily and broke the lore established in the first game. If they wanted to change the gameplay and make players break cover more often, they should have just hand vaiwe this issue without explanation.

Agree! I loved the lore and universe built up in the codex

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#14

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #11

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weapons ammo retcon was done very clumsily and broke the lore established in the first game. If they wanted to change the gameplay and make players break cover more often, they should have just hand vaiwe this issue without explanation.

The ammo retcon was part of such a bigger shift. My main complaint is that adding the heat clips instead of cooldown gimped sniper rifles disproportionately. But shifting from the open outdoor environments with the Mako in ME1 to more contained levels in ME2 also disincentivized snipers. I had most of my fun playing ME1 trying to take ridiculous long shots on targets outside of the radar range. With some configuratio…

Indeed. Roaming planets was my favourite part of the game, which gave the game a sense of a huge galaxy and a sense of venturing into the unknown. Also, those open environment were the only setting in all three games where using a sniper rifle was justified. 2&3 just felt so confined to linear corridor levels.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#15

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 4:08 AM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #6

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #3

I just played through the Legendary Edition and am going through Andromeda now. While I think ME1 is definitely the best, they all have really interesting mechanics that spice up each subsequent game in the series. I was presently surprised that Andromeda took a lot more risks that, imo, have been paying off so far.

ME1 has more RPG elements but ME2 is the best of the serie.

me2 had some nice character moments, but its main plot was very stupid with ridiculous reasoning that threw away all appeal of me1. Best elements of me2 (and me3!!) were stories that expanded the stories, already established in the first game (genophage and quarians/geth conflict).

To anyone who thinks ME2 is better, I can only recommend this mighty analysis of the series: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792

Lots of parts, but it highlights all the problems of the second and third games really well.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#16

Post by halfmatthalfcat » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #14

thrower123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ammo retcon was part of such a bigger shift. My main complaint is that adding the heat clips instead of cooldown gimped sniper rifles disproportionately. But shifting from the open outdoor environments with the Mako in ME1 to more contained levels in ME2 also disincentivized snipers. I had most of my fun playing ME1 trying to take ridiculous long shots on targets outside of the radar range. With some configuratio…

Indeed. Roaming planets was my favourite part of the game, which gave the game a sense of a huge galaxy and a sense of venturing into the unknown. Also, those open environment were the only setting in all three games where using a sniper rifle was justified. 2&3 just felt so confined to linear corridor levels.

That's why I'm really enjoying Andromeda. Took a while to get going but the open world-esque exploration is great.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#17

Post by paulmd » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

Easily the worst DLC in the game. I replayed it around 2017, a few years before ME:LE came out and it's basically some horde survival modes and timed killing sprees. ME1 didn't age well in general (it's kinda like Half-Life 1 - it had some good parts, but "was innovative when it came out but just doesn't play well to modern sensibilities") and this DLC was the worst part of it.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#18

Post by rowanG077 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 7:57 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #12

armchairhacker wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games aren’t becoming web applications precisely because there are so many GPU libraries. I think this is also why they have so many immutable dependencies: they rely on low-level optimizations and various hacks which break on newer libraries. Video games need to do expensive computations in real time. Most other apps don’t, which is why they can be ported to the web.

The other side is that video games have a lot less need to be correct than most applications. Even a blatant user-visible bug is probably fine (and might even add to the fun). Crashing is a problem, but running with massive state errors often isn't.

Running with massive state errors is a huge problem. There are untold amounts of video games that can become uncompleteable if you do a certain thing. Also called "hard lock". This is much worse then a crash.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#19

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:58 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #7

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weapons ammo retcon was done very clumsily and broke the lore established in the first game. If they wanted to change the gameplay and make players break cover more often, they should have just hand vaiwe this issue without explanation.

I cannot upvote this enough. The reasoning was solid: for gameplay reasons, ammo worked better. There's no way to really explain that in lore - but also no reason too: just make the change, and pretend it always was. Players are willing to just go with a solid change like that for solid reasons - you ruin it once you try to explain it in-universe.

I despised it so much that I even installed a mod that made weapons behave like in ME1.

Re: Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

#20

Post by lmm » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #18

lmm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side is that video games have a lot less need to be correct than most applications. Even a blatant user-visible bug is probably fine (and might even add to the fun). Crashing is a problem, but running with massive state errors often isn't.

Running with massive state errors is a huge problem. There are untold amounts of video games that can become uncompleteable if you do a certain thing. Also called "hard lock". This is much worse then a crash.

There's a pretty small class of games where that happens in a relevant way. And tbh players and reviewers seem to punish that a lot less than a game that outright crashes.