IDDQDerp

[Kapol]

Heads up to those who are interested in it: Dishonored GOTY edition is currently 40% off on GreenManGaming with a coupon for 20% off available on top of that.

[Lord Hosk]

Alex, you mentioned your position as a teetotaler but didn't mention why, do you have a basis beyond the avoidance of the intoxicant and the resulting altering of thought patterns?

Just curious not trying to pry.

[empath]

WE GOT THERE!



Credit (IIRC?) to the illustrious Hats!


Oh, and "NO CAPES!"

[Can't Wear Hats]

XD

That stream was amazing, I knew Alex's reaction to finally beating Teslagrad would be something special.

Cool story: I tweeted this gif and it got retweeted by the artist for Teslagrad, so that's pretty neat

[empath]

I have to say - it's a GREAT gif: it shows off the AMAZING animation and detail they put into 'the Stormking(?)'; plus it's a cool moment many people might not have the patience to ever reach - a really cool and unique 'death scene' for the game's final boss.

And then there's alex's reaction Amazement > RETRIBUTIVE (and cathartic) RAGE > merriment and delight at completing a challenging (but fruitful) task.

@Teslagrad's Devs - y'all are FANTASTIC; as we discussed during the stream, you clearly identify the dividing line between "challenging" and "punishing" and stay on the challenge side of it. You made a beautiful game full of fun and discovery and excitement (and one of the most difficult (yet still compelling to finish) boss fights I've ever seen in decades)

...now if you'd only put a 'you can scroll down here' indicator on that "display your collected cards" screen, it'd have been PERFECT.

[phlip]

I know I for one have bought Teslagrad after watching Alex play it, and it's been every bit as fun as it looked on-stream...

(I'm also kinda happy I only got to watch a few bits and pieces of the stream, so I still get to solve most of the puzzles myself... the downside of watching streams of puzzle-type games...)

[romangoro]

I'm rewatching the sream, I had missed the begginning. All of the posters are foreshadows of the final fights, love those details.

[Dominic Appleguard]

gif credit CantWearHats iirc

[Trevor]

That's cool. If they're improving the map, they could totally give the ability to place markers as well, so you could keep track of what you have and have not picked up as you play. I loved how the new Zelda did something like that, and it would make a lot of sense with the theme of Teslagrad's map as something being put together by this kid as he goes. I think it even has a pencil in on the side of it already.

[Nima55]

Ladies and Gentlemen and Others, Our new Overlord and Destroyer; Legion Goat, The Great old one.

[Can't Wear Hats]

H̷̠̯̗͍̠̯ę͇̺̦̖̟ͣ̓̾ ̀ͨ̓͂̚̕c͉͈̦̼̟̫̙ͬo̻̗̺͗ͭḿ̷͓̲̰̩̿͊̊͑͑e̛͎͍̜͉̅s̪̭̖͊̀̎ͨ̄ͯ̚͜







b̡̞̫͍̲̣ͮá̮̘͉̞͚̞ͧͫ̈͘á͈̥͂ͨ̈͢ȃ̠͎̜̙̞̅ͪͬ

[Boofinka]

OMAMFG dat Blue Danube Painkiller thing just got me crying from laughter. There were actual tears.

[Koneko]

Jeez, can't wait for this to make it to youtube. I've watched every other IDDQDerp and the watch and play streams live, but had to miss this one because of uni work. I was in extreme pain because I thought it would be awesome. Looks like that was the case....

[BlackDragonMTG]

Alex as bad as toki is for it's limit at the end the random stream this saturday with Nirvana and later surprise james was a true delight. I hope to see more of this in the future

[empath]

...how did I miss this? I SWEAR I checked the stream after the time it says you started!


But, ohhhhh, Toki I think I can sum it up with "Seriously Japan - do we need to nuke you again?"

1) My inner 80's child gave me a headache this morning, from constantly yelling advice and directions at you (futilely since it's a RECORDING ya little brat HE CAN'T HEAR YOU! ),

2) I actually know a tiny bit about this game, since one of my wife's fave streamers has it in his regular rotation as a 'palette cleanser' game


Oh, my - Alex? You are a brave, noble soul to 'sacrifice yourself' for our entertainment like this against a game you don't know intimately; as stated, I've watched experts speedrun through this....but they're not NEARLY as much fun as your experience with it!

(seriously, waking up the landlord upstairs with my cries of triumph when you succeed is totally worth it )




Bonus 'truth They don't want you to know': in some ports of the game, Toki (the tarzan-esque hero that gets transformed into an ape) is called "Juju", the kidnapped princess Miho is called "Wanda" and the villainous sorcerer that instigates all this mess?

..."Dr. Stark"

"Greetings again, sheeple"


...wait...Graham is loosely 'in charge' of LRR, and frequently inflicts bizarre and horrible games on Alex...and they call their office/hq "The Moonbase" - and we know all about moonbases... are we looking at some sort of 'warden/inmate' paradigm here?

[cuddlyblade]

Just watched through the Toki stream. That was hilarious. I'd completely forgotten about Toki until I saw the stream.

I've watched experts speedrun through this....but they're not NEARLY as much fun as your experience with it!

I agree completely. Now all we need to do is get him to play through the mega drive release of it. It has it's own brand of weird bosses and such also XD. Fear the wrath of monkey sub!

[Boofinka]

Just watched through the Toki stream. That was hilarious. I'd completely forgotten about Toki until I saw the stream.

Wait, but not Dre, right? Because god help us if you forgot about Dre.

[cuddlyblade]

Of course not XD

[Jamfalcon]

Really enjoyed the Dark Souls stream this afternoon. I know some of the chat's insistent advice was starting to get to Alex (and hopefully mine didn't get into that category), but I really enjoy watching game being played by people of all sorts of skill levels.

And like I said at point, sure, Alex is not entirely familiar with the systems yet and not doing everything optimally. But he went for the first two hours with only one death, and if that's not proof enough that his methods are sufficient for that point in the game, I don't know what is.

[Kingdragon81]

So Alex I just watched the DS replay and I remember you were saying you didn't know how the burden system works. So I thought I would give you a quick run through of how that works.

The way it works is that the endurance stat gives you both stamina and equip load. Every piece of armor as well as weapons and shields (including the ones in your extra weapon slot) have a weight value which can be found in each items stat screen. The less burdened you are and the more equip load you have the faster and more nimble you'll be. Having lower equip burdens will also increase the number of invincibility frames when rolling. Just remember that there are 4 major break points for this
<25% equip
25-50% equip
50-100% equip
>100% equip

Just a friendly tip from someone who loves DS a bit more than he probably should.

[empath]

Now, see...I wish I'd been able to catch the stream, because there's a rather interesting point I'd like to make regarding Dark Souls's 'impenetrability'.

DOCUMENTATION

Now, let's go OOOOOLD school, with SSI's (that computer software company that made translations of the board wargames your granddad liked) & TSR's (you know, the people that used to run D&D) cRPG:

Pool of Radiance

Now, for someone with no previous background in (what have since become classified as) tabletop RPGs or D&D, I'd argue that the learning curve with this game would rival Dark Souls for complexity of game mechanics and sheer spam of jargon and obtuse statistics and data thrown at the player.

...but 'POOLRAD' shipped with several BOOKS; not just manuals (and especially not what the industry TODAY calls a 'manual', but two thick booklets of 32+ pages of actual explanation of what this item is, or what that spell does (specifically), and so on.

You got a 'Quick Reference Card' for the platform specific controls, a 'Manual' that detailed the surface mechanics (actions your characters could take during their turn in combat - what 'Exit' did as opposed to 'Guard', for instance), a codewheel (DRM 0.2 ), and then an 'Adventurer's Journal' that was mostly a resource for fluff text (due to hardware storage limitations) along with DRM 0.3, but also included a bestiary for general info about various monsters you'd fight, the actual descriptions of what spells effected, and HOW THE UNDERLYING GAME MECHANICS OF THINGS LIKE 'THAC0' AND 'AC' WORKED.

By contrast, what does Namco Bandai give you?

This.

Sure your game is going to be "the most challenging game you'll play this year" when you just plonk a solid block of stone down around the game.

[Alex Steacy]

Really enjoyed the Dark Souls stream this afternoon. I know some of the chat's insistent advice was starting to get to Alex (and hopefully mine didn't get into that category), but I really enjoy watching game being played by people of all sorts of skill levels.

And like I said at point, sure, Alex is not entirely familiar with the systems yet and not doing everything optimally. But he went for the first two hours with only one death, and if that's not proof enough that his methods are sufficient for that point in the game, I don't know what is.

Exactly. I'm aware that pro strats exist, but telling me to use them on my first playthrough is like saying to skip 2+2=4 and go right to calculus because it's the most powerful math. What I wanted to say to certain people in the chat was "may I please learn the fucking basics first?". I will pick up backstabbing and parrying and riposting and optimal builds and all that other shit in time, but for now slow and steady works for me. It's like being good at video games infects some people with selective amnesia so they don't remember what it was like starting out which makes them deride novices.

All that having been said, Dark Souls is fukken fantastic. It's a dark fantasy metroidvania that scratches an itch I wasn't even sure I had.

[Master Gunner]

Dammit, another game to go on the list. You and Cam are going to ruin me, you realize that?

[empath]

...But he went for the first two hours with only one death, and if that's not proof enough that his methods are sufficient for that point in the game, I don't know what is.

Oh, and I totally agree with Master Gunner. *glare*

[empath]

Okay, I swear I'm not gonna totally co-opt this thread, but I gotta mention this:

Someone in the chat advised that 'everything is explained in the Demons Souls manual', and - for the most part - that's correct.

For example, here's the difference between the manual information on Status Effects in Dark Souls (on the left, circled in red), and in Demons Souls (on the right, circled in blue):



But as Alex intimated DEPENDING ON YOUR CUSTOMERS TO GO GET A PREVIOUS GAME - WHICH IS NOT A DIRECT PREDECESSOR - JUST TO HAVE SOME IDEA OF WHAT YOUR GAME MECHANICS ARE IS INCREDIBLY BAD BUSINESS SENSE

It's one thing to have all these complex encumberance, differing move sets for diff weapons, a variety of attributes, parameters and statistics PRESENT in your game...but hidden from obvious view; it's totally another to shove all this esoteric data in your user's face all the time with no reasonably-attainable explanation.


And finally moving on to other problems, the 'invasion' mechanic? Allowing your customer base to be thrust into involuntary PvP in what is, ostensibly, a SINGLE-player game? Classy.


But, for me, the hugest nail into the coffin of my interest in ever playing this game is GFWL; I found this unnecessary layer of complexity and bloat on system resources a tilting frustration to get games saddled with it working WHEN IT WAS ACTIVE AND SUPPORTED.

Now? Nope.gif