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[#HBC | Ryker]

I like Undertale, but I think it simply rode the Internet wave of popularity at the right time. I don't think it's incredibly revolutionary, but it DOES handle multiple endings better than anything I've ever seen and most multiple ending games, especially RPGs, blow ass.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

Note. They handle multiple endings like ass. Chrono Trigger and Cave Story are ****ing legendary.

 

[Overswarm]

Not relevant yet because it is not released, but Spiff Spacely Saves the Universe is a game I am working on with a cool team of people.

It is narrative-heavy, but not in any necessarily linear sense -- your actions essentially reverberate throughout the galaxy, altering your story path as you go through the main game.

The normal way to do it is through "branching". You do X, Y happens. You do A, B happens. You can only choose X or A.

What we are looking at is rather taking groups A, B, and C and having them react to the player doing X.

So Spiff runs into a guy running from a slaver ship and guy says "I need your help!".

Spiff can help, or ignore it, or rob the guy, or wreck his ship and sell him to the slavers, whatever. Options galore.

Normally you'd have to have a unique tree branch for each individual action, and that's WAY too much work. To reduce the amount of work, you typically see people do "loops". Essentially a storyline with two optional arcs woud look like the letter B -- it starts in one point, and you can go direction 1 or 2, but they both "end" at another point that allows you to choose 3 or 4, and both choices there end at another point.

That's what you see in games like Mass Effect or the like. Cop outs.

What Spiff does is have a universal "reputation" meter. Actions you take alter your reputation up or down (or not at all), and different groups react differently based on your reputation.

If you're a goody two-shoes, the authorities may be very supportive of you but Pirates would attack on sight. Every-day joes might be wary of you if they're doing something slightly illegal, so they might not open up for barter. That kind of thing.

If you're an evil guy that destroys all he can, Pirates might be just fine but everyone else is either trying to run from you or kill you.

Inbetween those extremes are more subtle flavors.

On top of this, you have the normal individual "you did X, so Y happens later" type stuff.

My hope is that this allows for an actual unique gameplay experience that isn't a test of "can you follow these directions to make thing Y happen". I also hope that people appreciate the idea that the normal stories they run into can drastically change based on reputation level.

 

[Spak]

Cave Story has ONE ending. The other two endings are very obviously subpar. You basically have a score check to see if your score is high enough to progress.

Blood Stained Sanctuary was based on a series of actions you could choose to take, not score-based.

You completely dodged Mass Effect. That game has the player determine the fate of Shepard and everyone around him based on the decisions the player makes. If you want to see the complexity of your decisions and their outcomes, look at the charts for 2 of the games. I couldn't find the chart for 1, so I'll post:

Spoiler: Mass Effect 2 Decision Chart

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 Decision Chart

Also, decisions from ME1 carried over to ME2 (if you had a save file for 1 on your computer). I don't know how you can say that Undertale was an innovator in this category of its story for modern gaming while Mass Effect has been doing the multi-branching multiple endings since 2007.

 

[Cheerilee]

Just a friendly heads up that caffeine pills are awesome and definitely worth trying if you have a big paper to finish or are doing thorough research that will take hours away from your life. However, if you usually don't take caffeine then I highly advise taking it within a eight hour time frame from when you want to go to bed if you have something major to attend to in the morning. Found that out the hard way by taking my second dose around 10 p.m. and still having some minor jitters when I tried to go to bed around 4 a.m.

 

[Overswarm]

ME decisions didn't *really* carry over.

"Oh, it's the creature we saved"

or

"Oh, it's the creature we killed, but they cloned!"

lawl.

 

[Overswarm]

Just a friendly heads up that caffeine pills are awesome and definitely worth trying if you have a big paper to finish or are doing thorough research that will take hours away from your life. However, if you usually don't take caffeine then I highly advise taking it within a eight hour time frame from when you want to go to bed if you have something major to attend to in the morning. Found that out the hard way by taking my second dose around 10 p.m. and still having some minor jitters when I tried to go to bed around 4 a.m.

Hello, 2009 Overswarm.

 

[Cheerilee]

Spak If you go into the appdata of Mass Effect and delete it doesn't it have the same ending as appdata deleting Undertale.

 

[Spak]

Spak If you go into the appdata of Mass Effect and delete it doesn't it have the same ending as appdata deleting Undertale.

It has the same effect, but I wasn't saying that you can never truly restart Mass Effect.

 

[Cheerilee]

Hello, 2009 Overswarm.

I was a serial coffee drinker until it ended up corroding my teeth requiring me to shave off several teeth to the nerve. After a financially painful dentist visit I discovered caffeine pills yesterday, holy guacamole. The kick is insane. Cup of coffee is around 60-80 mg and a pill is around 200 mg. That aside, two cups of coffee doesn't come close to a single caffeine pill. Both the coffee and the pill should go through gastrointestinal, however I think that taking the pill has greater absorption uptake by the blood brain barrier.

 

[Overswarm]

Just be careful, it is way more potent. CUt those things in half.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

I dodged Mass Effect because I don't know it well. However. Your chart for Mass Effect 2 looks like it is calling Fire Emblem a multiple ending game.

I said LIKE a score check for Cave Story. You either have the prerequisite or you don't. The way the multiple endings work simply create an incomplete ending. All the "true ending" games I can think of have the same problem.

 

[Spak]

Your chart for Mass Effect 2 looks like it is calling Fire Emblem a multiple ending game.

You don't get to choose if you live or die at the end, though; it's dependent on how many people out of your squad are still alive at the end of the game. Your choices affect who lives and who doesn't in your crew, so the choices you make for your crewmates throughout the game ultimately determine your fate.

 

[Cheerilee]

Nitpicking between games is unattractive to me. I just can't get into it.

 

[Spak]

Nitpicking between games is unattractive to me. I just can't get into it.

Were you referring to something in specific, or was this just a general statement?

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

You don't get to choose if you live or die at the end, though; it's dependent on how many people out of your squad are still alive at the end of the game. Your choices affect who lives and who doesn't in your crew, so the choices you make for your crewmates throughout the game ultimately determine your fate.

You change one thing, but end of the day "we saved the galaxy!" I get that character deaths have an impact on how you play the game and the story telling, but it seems like it still funnels you toward the same end point. Again, I haven't played it, but it seems like a shinier "you saved the animals" star from Super Metroid.

 

[Spak]

You change one thing, but end of the day "we saved the galaxy!" I get that character deaths have an impact on how you play the game and the story telling, but it seems like it still funnels you toward the same end point. Again, I haven't played it, but it seems like a shinier "you saved the animals" star from Super Metroid.

The reason they saved the galaxy is because they needed to make a sequel. If you look at the best ending vs worst ending in 3, you get:

Spoiler

The main protagonists being destroyed and the main characters living happily ever after vs Earth burning to a crisp, everyone dying, and the main protagonists moving on to do the same thing to the next system.

EDIT: Sorry, had to quickspoiler.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

Sequel hook isn't a great reason. You want to use ME3, then use that instead of listing both.

I haven't played the third one, so I can't comment past what you just put into that spoiler, but regardless, I feel my point stands that games fail to deliver satisfactory experiences on the front of multiple endings. I'm not saying they don't exist, but that they are by far the more common despite the fact that choice in narrative driven games is becoming the standard.

Spoiler

You still haven't commented on what I was saying about the endings all connecting in one larger arc due to how saving and resetting is treated in Undertale. The closest experience I can find to that is in Radiant Historia which is a completely linear experience.

 

[Spak]

Sequel hook isn't a great reason. You want to use ME3, then use that instead of listing both.

Very well then, I'll only refer to 3 for now on.

games fail to deliver satisfactory experiences on the front of multiple endings. I'm not saying they don't exist, but that they are by far the more common despite the fact that choice in narrative driven games is becoming the standard.

I concur that games with good multiple endings are less common than it should be, but Undertale having mechanics seen in other games does not make it "revolutionary by modern gaming standards".

spoiler

Spoiler

A vast majority of the content (aside from some animations and main character dialogue) is repeated. You go to the same places with main characters remembering you, you do the same stuff with main characters remembering you, the same music is playing and it's basically the same exact game except for the dialogue. It's a cheap way to almost triple the play time of the game without having to make very extra content, and because they make people play almost the same game 3 times in a row, it's being interpreted at a "revolutionary mechanic". A comparable game would be anything with New Game Plus, plus a little bit of extra dialogue.

 

[Cheerilee]

I concur that games with good multiple endings are less common than it should be, but Undertale having mechanics seen in other games does not make it "revolutionary by modern gaming standards".

{Spoiler Tag}A vast majority of the content (aside from some animations and main character dialogue) is repeated. You go to the same places with main characters remembering you, you do the same stuff with main characters remembering you, the same music is playing and it's basically the same exact game except for the dialogue. It's a cheap way to almost triple the play time of the game without having to make very extra content, and because they make people play almost the same game 3 times in a row, it's being interpreted at a "revolutionary mechanic". A comparable game would be anything with New Game Plus, plus a little bit of extra dialogue. {End Spoiler Tag}

{Spoiler Tag} Spoiler: you're blatantly wrong.{End Spoiler Tag}

Spoiler

>Same music is playing.
>Same stuff with main characters.
>Same exact game except for the dialogue.

You know why I didn't waste time addressing you in a paragraph format? It's because you're not even trying to hold a conversation, you're trying to weasel out a videogame debate. When you tried to shotgun down Undertale by bringing up a list of games and then you dropped all those games in lieu of keeping with Mass Effect, I realized that you had zero interest to actually have an open mind set and you just wanted to argue down a point. I mean how ridiculous is stating that the Undertale meta mechanic has no ingenuity because you can just go into app data and delete your game file to get a true reset. It's absurd. It is honest to god absurd. I mean. Really. And then the statements here where you ACTUALLY comment about the game reveals that you know NOTHING about the game play. Like wow. Just wow.

 

[Cheerilee]

Notice how I do NOT comment on Mass Effect because I have never played the game, never touched the game, and only seen brief clips of the game. I do not see the point in shooting down something I have no idea about. And it's beyond my comprehension why people would go out of their way to discredit something they have limited knowledge on.

Call me out for saying Undertale has a "revolutionary mechanic" when you're the clown discrediting it by stating that you can just circumvent the mechanic by deleting the app data file. That's the equivalent of saying external influences outside the framework of the game impact the merits of the unadulterated game. Game genie? Editing host files? I honestly don't know how Ryker does it. I don't get how he does it. The man is a warm loving teddy bear to remain stoic and respectful. I just can't even.

 

[Cheerilee]

It's my fault for having unrealistic expectations of other human beings.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Cheerilee Just as a segue the concept of meta oriented gameplay as a "revolutionary mechanic" is not necessarily revolutionary in the sense that Undertale was not the first to come up with it and incorporate it into a story. Right before falling asleep I thought of a corollary example:

Spoiler

In Metal Gear where Psycho Mantis as a boss character can examine your memory card and requires you to fool around with your controller setup in order to defeat him. In a sense this serves as an analogy similar to Undertale where Sans and Flowey serve as alternative bosses whether you decide to follow any of the three pathways and therefore they serve as a tie-in to the meta-referential game is primarily written off as simply being a quirk than an a greater message in the game.

In a similar sense, Psycho Mantis serves in a bit of a similar role in the sense that he is a psychic and thus it is appropriate within the context of the game itself that he can break the fourth wall and acknowledges the player.

Although it doesn't have the same impact like Undertale does as a "mechanic" it still is analogous to Kary's point that the idea wasn't necessarily unique as it becomes hard to really ascertain any idea as being wholly unique e.g. it could have been an influence to Toby to use it as inspiration to broaden that concept as broader game theme. However, this does not demerit the ingenuity of how the idea was applied.

Also you actually never stated that Undertale used a "revolutionary mechanic." It was actually blatantly rephrased that you said in exact words that Undertale was "revolutionary by modern gaming standards" and misconstruing the two is like comparing apples to oranges. However, you don't really need you to tell you this do you. Unless you're this nihilistic about getting a rational response.

 

[#HBC | Dancer]

No worries, I have financial aid. I thought you were taking CS too dancer?

Ahh okay good good.

I was CS at a time, but you know how it is. Math is hard. So I uh . . . "dropped down" to IT. Basically, you could say that the weed out classes did there job on me.

Well okay, in all fairness to myself there are several more factors to it than that. Even BEFORE CS I was IT; I switched when I discovered that I liked programming. But when I made the switch I had already finished several of the IT classes which only few of which carried over to CS. By switching my major to CS I was adding at least an additional four semesters to my degree just from math and science classes alone, and after dropping Calc 1 (which isn't even the HARD one) once and flunking the second time (rip GPA), I decided to cut my losses and go back to IT.

Oh okay okay, I just thought of some actual advice to give you: DON'T FLUNK A CLASS. That **** sets your gpa back so much it's not even funny. Drop if need be. Idk what school you're going to be but at UCF they have a policy where you can drop one grade. If you're school has anything similar to this and you're going CS try to save this drop for some of the more killer classes you'll have down the road.

Also you still haven't answered my question. Why CS? I'm legit curious to know why you're interested in that.

 

[#HBC | Dancer]

*sees Undertale discussion*

**** man Undertale was just a ****ing good game. **** literally made me giddy.

Umm . . . I don't know if "revolutionary" is the right word I'll use to describe Undertale's multiple endings. The thing is is that when I hear someone describe something as "revolutionary" I imagine that thing setting a new precedent for other works in the medium. Zelda OoT and SM64 were revolutionary because they brought the franchises into the third dimension, leading the way for future games to follow suit. It's hard to imagine that future games are going to start doing multiple endings like this because of Undertale.

That said, I'm referring to mainstream games. Maybe in the indie game market (which without doing any research on I'm getting the sense is actually kind of transforming into the new mainstream?) things will be shaken up because of Undertale.

Also also, this is not to say that I didn't find Undertale to be novel. The game really exceeded my expectations for just how unique it was. Obviously if you break ANYTHING down into the individual components that make it up, you'll find that the components themselves are not unique, but what's actually relevant is how those components are put together.

 

[Spak]

I do not see the point in shooting down something I have no idea about.

I own Undertale, and played it for a few hours. My sister said it was one of the best games she ever played and I had super high expectations. I really wanted to like it, but I got so bored of the game that I had to quit halfway through. I can see why people like it; it's a well-done RPG with action elements mixed in, and has very clever writing. I just don't personally love the game. Your accusations of me not having ever touched the game are completely off-base seeing as I actually own and have played through part of the game (reading about the rest of it online) and trying to insult me by calling me a clown is you trying to put my character into question rather than my argument. Your complete defensiveness of this game shows that you're irrationally obsessed with it to the point that you call anyone refusing to agree with you a closed-minded clown.

If you have a problem with the appdata argument, that's fine; the save imports from Mass Effect have the same influence between games, then. Your original statement was that all games mentioned thus far (bar Undertale) are "a game where you can just restart and pretend you didn't make a mistake." I provided a way to restart the game, and it's not like using a game genie or modding game files; it's simply deleting a save file manually. Radiant Historia had the same type of time travelling mechanic (as mentioned by Ryker earlier), Chrono Trigger had the same type of time travelling mechanic (but with no multiple endings), and games like Heavy Rain and MK3 had many of possible endings based on your decisions.

Also, there's a game called Nier that has 4 endings; the first shows the first time you beat the game, the second shows the second time, and the third or fourth can show the third time. The third time:

Spoiler

You have the option to either save Kaine (your companion throughout the game) and be erased from existence and everyone's memory, or let Kaine die and you will survive. If you choose to be forgotten, it shows the ending and then erases all save files from that game on your system. In addition, you can't ever use the name you set for the forgotten character again.

Neir did save manipulation and multiple endings for different plays through the game a few years before Undertale did (even though Neir was based on the game number rather than determining next game from pacifist vs neutral vs genocide), but wan't popular enough to get noticed by the general gaming population. Undertale adapted mechanics from many different games and put them together in an interesting manner, but is far from a revolutionary game.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

I am done.

 

[Cheerilee]

#HBC | Dancer I used to work for my University's IT Department after putting in time starting off as a lab consultant. The reason why I stated that I felt that several students within the CS programming major were very gifted or very experienced was because many of my coworkers were third or fourth year CS students who would share that they were non-traditional students going through school a second time after having a job experience that exposed them to a programming intensive work environment and/or had a passion for programming that led them to pursue CS in high school and were exposed to a lot of material before hand.

All of my coworkers were very unique people who stood out to me as being larger than life. The initial interest I had in computer science developed as an extension of me pursuing biotechnology. Biotechnology is an off shoot study of Biochemistry that is highly focused around DNA analysis and subsequently manipulation of DNA on not only a trascriptional, but also a translational level in observing how it affects factors such as proteins and enzymes that are an integral component of all living organisms. The interesting thing about DNA is that as complex as it is, the core units are simplified into just being four canonical nucleobases each for DNA or RNA.

The fact that matching sequences can be easily organized and stored into Genbank allows for people to use tools like BLAST that can rely on a variety of languages e.g. Perl, Python, C+, C++, C#, ect. in order to draw nucleotide similarities between a gastrointestinal protein produced by a human and a rat. This information is useful for instance if a pharmaceutical company is running animal trials and notice that their new drug has a negative side effective and want to test for potential risk in humans by assessing for homology across the different species. Largely this field is known as bioinformatics.

To put this as blunt as possible my CS 101 course was the most intensive course I took in college. In my "Introduction to Java" course I received a crash course in logic and tree mapping within the first week and then was expected to write elementary programs by the second week that were expected to be immaculate. I would say that by drop period that half the class dropped and among the ones who stuck it out, we were told that half the class was averaging a failing grade up until the final.

I barely passed that class. It was intense. I didn't transition into bioinformatics because I was genuinely afraid of failing Data Structures since I would have had to take that course along with Organic Chemistry. I instead opted into a research option simply because I knew that I couldn't hack it as a programmer even if you gave me an entire life time to dedicate myself to programming. The CS major in a lot of schools is really analogous to the academic rigor of a post-gradate program. I respect anyone that comes out as a CS major. I could never do it.

 

[Overswarm]

You can do it, just not on that timescale.

 

[Maven89]

Spent about two weeks worrying about this philosophy paper that was worth 1/3rd of my grade, got it back, made an A. Oh yeah

 

[Thingyman]

Invitation to The Mafia Championship Season 3

Hello everyone, it’s that time of the year again

I am making this post with the hopes that your community would be interested in participating in Season 3 of the Mafia Championship. It will be bigger and more epic than ever before.

This year we’re expanding once again; 136 communities will be invited to participate, making this not only the biggest Mafia event ever, but also the largest cross-forum event in the history of the Internet. We’ve also moved the venue to Mafia Universe, a new site created largely because of this series.

Are you interested?

As always, how you decide your representative is completely up to you. To guarantee your community a spot in Season 3 of the Mafia Championship, I will need to know of your community's interest within the next week (until April 4th). Following this, you will have an additional two weeks to decide your nominee (until April 18th). Additionally, it would be a very good idea to also name an alternate.

Remember that your representative needs to be prepared to deal with a lot of activity. Expect at least upwards of 500 posts per 24 hours during the early stages of the game. The representative needs to not only be able to read all this, but should also at least be able to manage making 10+ posts per day phase.

Season 3 Specifics

• 136 different communities are invited to participate. If some decline the invitation, I may opt to allow larger communities an additional nominee.
• 8 Qualifying Games will be played with 17 players each.
• 2 players advance to the Finale Game from each game based on post-game votes.
• 1 Wildcard Game will be played (Wildcards are decided by a jury consisting of former finalists), determining the 17th and final spot in the Finale. Runner-ups in this game will be first in line to replace any finalists who may have to drop out.

Season 3 Timeline & Important Dates

The first Qualifying Game is set to start April 25th. Additional games will take place in the 1-3 months following. I will create a Doodle and find out the best times to start the various games so that preferably everyone gets to play during a time that suits them well.

In addition to this, it is also a priority to ensure as much as possible that all the players in any given game has no prior history of playing with each other to ensure a level playing field (but I cannot 100% guarantee that this won’t happen).

Season 3 Game Design & Setup

For each season, we’ve changed it up. This time, we’re doing something new again!

The setup is called Matrix12 and is inspired by mafiascum’s popular Matrix6 setup, if any of you are familiar with that. In short, the concept is that there are 12 different possible setups and the host randomizes which one is used. The players know what setups are available, but not which one will be used!

More on the setup here: http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums...iscussion-Matrix12-(Proposed-Season-3-Format)

Regarding lynch mechanics: There will be a deadline each day phase, and the person with the most votes at the end of the day is lynched, unless a majority has already been reached before then, in which case the day ends prematurely.

Days will last 36 hours and nights 12 hours, meaning 48 hours (2 days) per game day. With one exception: The weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) will be one game day (so day will be 60 hours and night 12 hours on weekends).

 

[Spak]

This sounds interesting... Ryker and J have already gone, so who wants to do it this time? I would nominate Gheb, but he's going to be hosting a game soon. OS probably has the highest IQ, but hasn't played Mafia in a while (and therefore wouldn't be representative of the SWF Mafia-playing community). The Xastrn brothers would be another good pick, but Dastrn sounds like he's a little burned out on Mafia right now and Xatres is both hosting and participating. So I guess I'll do this:

Vote: Anyone who wants to play, and has been in over 5 games of DGames Mafia

 

[Orboknown]

Gheb would probably be my vote put of people who havent gone yet

 

[Spak]

~ Gheb ~ You've been nominated by a couple of people

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I'm not very interested in playing mafia right now.

 

[Spak]

OK, that's fine. Who else would like a shot?

FoN (Finger of Nomination): Orbo

 

[Orboknown]

Ohhhh dearrrrr
You want to put me in a game with 136 people when i have all of the military stiff this month.

 

[Spak]

Oh, good point. 2-day phases might be problematic if you have a bunch of military stuff to do. Do you have any other ideas?

 

[#HBC | Nabe]

Washed Laundry?

 

[Orboknown]

Id be okay with laundry if his schedule is clear. Id honestly be okay woth gorf if he felt like playing but i doubt he would. Uhhhhhh. Maven?