Messages

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Discussion / Re: DLCon 2018: The Big Apple

« on: May 07, 2018, 05:45:21 AM »

Due to suddenly needing to move and possibly change jobs, I will definitely not be able to attend.

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General Chat / Re: What Games are You Playing 2018?

« on: January 08, 2018, 11:17:10 PM »

Aside from some multiplayer games I play to unwind, I've mostly picked up two games recently.

DOOM: Got it as a Christmas gift, and decided to try it out on the "Hard" difficulty, and while I was making progress, every battle was a pyrrhic victory. Restarted at the regular difficulty and it has been very fun shooting demons. Very cathartic.

Nioh: Picked this up, and started with the dual-wield and the wind spirit.

Tutorial area felt really weird and disconnected from the rest of the game, especially since they re-tutorial right after? Uncertain what that was about, but it went from feeling like a Souls game to a better Souls game, so now I'm excited. I haven't really been sticking to any particular weapons or stances, but I'm liking the Sword, Spear, and Axe quite a bit. Spear I was not enamored with until I learned I can trip people with it~ I'm now somewhat walled at the first Real Boss, because I do not know how to fight something that 2-3HKOs me and takes up about 1/4 of the room I'm trapped in, 1/2 when it attacks. Also sometimes I just don't get up when I get knocked down, even when I have Ki? Don't know. Might be easier if I were to find a way to use a controller, as well? Don't know.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: January 02, 2018, 07:20:17 PM »

I'm going to chime in to agree with Grefter here, because there is an important aspect missing from your example, Snowfire.

If someone hears about someone who robbed a bank and got away with it and is now in a position of power then anybody who is considering robbing a bank will be more inclined to do so because "hey, that guy has a sweet gig now! I want to have that too!"

So, yes. If you merely outline the facts, then it does actually make a difference, because simply outlining the facts emphasizes the importance of the outcome. And in this case, the outcome is something that a lot of people find awful and truly terrifying and are actually afraid for their very lives.

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General Chat / Re: What Games are you Playing 2017?

« on: October 19, 2017, 01:37:56 AM »

Agreed re: healing.  The ease of it is an unexpected weakness for a game with such great combat on paper.  It does paper over a weakness in the game that combat, while always excessively pretty, can be hard to see at times.  I think lower enemy damage and less access to healing would have worked better overall.  I still had fun with combat all the way through, though.

The part about being hard to see is absolutely true, especially because you often have a partner dressed very similarly to your PC (and occasionally enemies as well). Though at points this felt very deliberate.

Got to Ending A.
That snuck up on me surprisingly abruptly? The robot church felt like Just Another Dungeon (this is not meant as criticism) and then boom, endgame. Very little closure on a lot of things! Far more than the first Nier, playing for other endings seems -needed- for the game's narrative (rather than just an excellent idea)), and I'm amused that Square Enix agreed enough to basically write me a polite letter saying as much. I don't have too much to say about Ending A itself except that it was nice to see 2B let her guard down.

Anyway, game clock's at a bit past 12 hours. Excited to see where the game goes from here.

Oh yeah Mage's post reminded me that I tried playing the first Divinity: Original Sin this past summer and I don't think I ever posted about it. It wasn't bad but nor was it really engaging me on anything, either writing or gameplay? Gameplay's really as good as I had hoped for given the genre, but the setting that we saw was just so generic so far, zzz, and pretty much every NPC felt like a D&D trope of some sort. Man do I have trouble getting into WRPGs. I may go back to it at some point but since obtaining the PS4 and Switch it's gone waaay down the list.

For what it's worth I agree with you about the first one. It was generally quite bland, and for everything that was interesting or good there was something equally bad. The second game, luckily, does not require having played the first one (all it really does is reference it, but not for plot purposes) and it also polished itself quite nicely. So if you're to play just one, I would suggest skipping the first one.

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General Chat / Re: What Games are you Playing 2017?

« on: October 17, 2017, 04:52:18 AM »

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Fun little tactical RPG with turn-based combat and a heavy emphasis on plot and story. Finally beat it, clocking in somewhere around 100 hours. Lots of stuff to mess around with, and I had a great time with it. Going to give it a small break then jump back into it. One of the best parts is that there is an insane amount of customization, up to and including the main cast who, while having set appearances, if you want to play as one of them as your main character you can still edit their appearance. Also the fact that every playstyle seems incredibly balanced.

The downside is that the ending seemed... not great. The epilogue was the exact opposite of what I was aiming for, which might have had something to do with the character I was playing as? Unsure. That's part of why I want to replay it and see how things change.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 29, 2017, 03:32:34 AM »

Okay, V4.0 is up for both Mac and PC in Google Drive. Hopefully everyone enjoys!

As for screenshots, it might be easiest to check the game's store page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/673630/Heaven_And_Earth/

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 29, 2017, 12:45:09 AM »

Okay, so while I was touching up on those things you mentioned, I noticed some more of my previous work that had gotten altered. You can't go into the capital of the Talon Plains, with the current 3.9 build. Even the one I put up yesterday.

I am going to upload 4.0 for MAC and PC, and the updates are as follows: -Able to enter Taloria in the Talon Plains
-Plot leads all the way up to the endgame for the Xing path
-Added prompts at majour points denoting that plot will advance in places where it throws you somewhere else
-Peter retains TP between fights, and all cloaking skills give TP
-Class Promotions are a thing after a point.
-Transition into the desert has been tweaked, should no longer run the risk of being dumped in the middle of the ocean. Should also keep the original tone of the scene.
-Unable to figure out how you were the boat again after leaving town. Like, seriously. No idea how.

I will edit this post once 4.0 is uploaded, but wanted to give a heads up.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 27, 2017, 06:39:16 PM »

Thank you for sharing, working on fixes.

Of note: -I've discovered why you can't enter the tower. Fixed.
-Peter will now hold his TP count between battles, and ALL cloaking skills give him TP now.
-For Point 3, would a warning that you're about to engage a scene that will remove you from the current place be sufficient?
-Working on 2, that one might take a bit to figure out though
-Difficulty will be one of the very last things tweaked, so I'm okay if it's easy for the time being so the story can be experienced
-Uncertain about how you got the Oasis bugs. I actually tested and tweaked that one for a long time to make sure that even doing things like advancing text super fast wouldn't affect anything. That might take me a while to fix. >_>

I'll upload the game with the fixes I've got so you can advance, and then continue working on the others in the meantime.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 21, 2017, 07:51:50 PM »

Anybody have any feedback on V3.9? If so, you can type it here, or PM me on the forums or in IRC. Even initial impressions would be helpful.

Thank you~

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 15, 2017, 08:40:19 AM »

Version 3.9 is now in the Drive for both PC and Mac. It contains all gameplay through the human world for the Xing family, and should have an average level of somewhere between 16-22.

Thank you again, those of you playing. I very much look forward to the feedback!

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 12, 2017, 09:38:26 PM »

Uhh, no. It is not. I'm not sure how that even happened, since I haven't altered the starting party since the end of July. I will look into that immediately.

EDIT: Okay, something caused a glitch of some kind in the base files, and while I can't identify what caused it, I have resolved the issue. Starting fresh and just wiping+re-uploading everything just to be safe, though.

EDIT2: You can continue playing through, nothing else seems to have been altered, and that will hardly break the game. Just means you have bonus peeps a little earlier than intended.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 12, 2017, 09:29:36 PM »

That is 100% the wonkiness with the 3.2 folder. For some reason it puts you straight into a little over halfway into the overall game. Google Drive wouldn't let me replace the files in 3.2, which is why I had to make 3.5. I'm going to try deleting 3.2 again today, see if that finally works or if Google Drive will continue to be wonky. (If it does I'll then be looking into alternative sharing methods)

EDIT: It let me delete 3.2, finally. So yeah. 3.2 was game-breakingly buggy, and I apologize for that. 3.5 has been tested, and it actually starts you at the start of the game.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 11, 2017, 11:24:54 PM »

So Folder 3.2 currently has a bug with it, so I've moved ahead and added the (yet again) most recent version of the game, tested for stability, to Folder 3.5.

As for it not working, please make sure that you have downloaded the entire folder of PC or Mac before trying to run it. If there are still any issues, please reach out to me ASAP.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 11, 2017, 08:18:57 PM »

Yeah, I noticed that it had a certain file that hadn't actually uploaded properly so I went back and made sure it was 100% uploaded. Both PC and Mac versions should work now.

While I was there I also added the most recent version of the game, so it has more of the Xing storyline, though it will end slightly abruptly as it's not at the end of an arc as of right now.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Heaven And Earth

« on: September 10, 2017, 06:25:45 PM »

New version is up in the folder as V 3.2

-Added powerful artifacts
-Continued Xing storyline
-New enemies
-New skills
-Entirely new area
-New equipment

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Game Design and Modifications / Heaven And Earth

« on: September 02, 2017, 01:42:49 AM »

Hey all,

I've been working on my own RPG game and have already reached out to a few of you independently to help me test this out, but I figured that now that I'm further along in the development process it was time to expand the available testing market.

So what is Heaven And Earth? It's a split-path RPG adventure set in a world where dragons taught humans how to harness magic, and humans use magic the way we use science, formulas and all. Eventually, a massive war was fought between the dragons and the humans, splitting the world harshly in two, and creating vastly separate living spaces for the humans and for the dragons.

Now, centuries after the war and after dragons have mostly faded into myth, an incident occurs that convinces one of the human superpower nations that a repeat of the old war is on the horizon. You can play as the Xing family and try to resolve things with the dragons personally (which is done as a more traditional and linear RPG experience), or you can unite humanity under a single banner as the Terra family (done as a choose-your-own-adventure style of RPG questing).

Each path has unique characters, interactions with the world, storylines, and each character has unique skills that they bring to the table.

Currently there are two available missions for the Terra family after the prologue, and 3 'chapters' of story for the Xing family after the prologue. Both sides are intended to have Prologue->6 'chapters'/missions->Finale, and the Finale will vary drastically based on decisions made throughout the game.

Any and all feedback is appreciated, as I'm also at the point where it's getting incredibly difficult to properly assess how things are/feel based on my own playtesting.

The game can be downloaded from Google Drive here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4KpYRBJ9uUVRHRGVHlqQWwwc0U

Just follow the link, and download the folder for the latest version of the game. The launch executable is in the files as Game.exe

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General Chat / Re: Fire Emblem Heroes Topic: You knew this was coming!

« on: March 31, 2017, 06:03:04 AM »

Got Bunny Camilla for 20 Orbs, which was good because I had taken a break from the game and so only had 28 Orbs to my name.

Going to try and do the quests and get myself enough orbs to try again and get Bunny Xander or Bunny Chrom.

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Discussion / Re: DLC XII - Is it a goer? Whats the plan?

« on: February 27, 2017, 08:27:32 PM »

Work stuff is hard to predict, but I may be able to make a US-based one as long as it's not in August.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: February 24, 2017, 09:29:08 PM »

Snowfire: Even were reason C true, which I'm not saying it is or isn't, but if Reason C were true, then shouldn't the reasonable reaction be to follow through on the fact that discrimination is part of the hiring process? Because I don't think people should discriminate in any direction, personally. Like, if Person A is supposed to hire professors for College A, and they are asking questions that pertain more to political affiliation than to the job they are interviewing for, then that is discrimination and should 100% be followed up on so that Person A no longer has a job in power and authority. However, if Person A is simply asking regular, neutral questions that have nothing to do with anything but the job at hand, and this happens to involve hiring more of a certain political party, then that is still natural.

Also, about people complaining about incentives for creating a diverse workforce, unless the incentive is flawed to begin with, then complaints are going to roll in no matter what you do because it's impossible to please everybody.

Ideally, we should be striving for a world where nobody who discriminates (for any reason) should be in a position to do things like hire for a company or institution. And at the same time, that means we should be free to create incentives, as necessary, to help encourage a more diverse workforce without it leading to further discrimination. To take your 98% male workforce example: If 98% of the workforce is male, and this is a natural situation, then even with a proper incentive to hire more females, the employer will only hire females if they are a good fit for the job, not just because they're female. This would lead to a situation, however, where if the employer has multiple potential hires of roughly equal potential for the company, they will be slightly more weighted toward hiring the female one(s). And this is good, because a workforce dominated by a single gender to that degree is just plain awkward for everybody involved, and eventually this will lead to an equal split, which will result in happier employees because now everybody feels more comfortable and represented. Now, if the workforce is an artificial 98%, then even with a proper incentive, the employer will still only hire males aside from the "token female," because it was artificial for a reason.

Also, in all honesty, I am going to say that I am okay with utilizing greed and other such motivators to motivate people who otherwise don't care about things like this to create a more diverse, welcoming society. For some people, that's just what it takes to get them to pitch in, and that's fine. More people creating a better society is better, regardless of the motivations, IMO.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: February 24, 2017, 06:11:00 PM »

I cannot see a feasible defense for this bill. Like, at all. It is one thing to encourage diversity, but this bill would only be encouraging discrimination. A bill that would give a bonus to universities for having a diverse staff? That is encouraging diversity. A bill that literally enforces discrimination on grounds that it is currently illegal to factor into a hiring and/or firing process, letalone even speak of in most circumstances at work is not. At least, I know it's 100% illegal where I live. And it should be. A university professor job is still a job, same as anything else.

So, yes. Diversity = Cool. But not if you're going to gain it by discrimination, because that's where the problems roll in and when the racists do gain power and positions of authority. For example? See the white house.

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Forum Games / Re: The Rising Wyld (Episode 3)

« on: December 21, 2016, 07:20:38 PM »

Rishi nods and briefly waves. "Alright, you have fun then." He then turns his attention to Wu, a smile painted across his face. "Nice to meet you, Lady Wu. I'm glad we all share a language, it'll definitely make things easier, yeah. Hope you don't mind me joining in on the conversation like this."

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Forum Games / Re: The Rising Wyld (Episode 3)

« on: December 21, 2016, 08:47:25 AM »

"Fair enough." Rishi hops to his feet and begins meandering back to Akeha, clearly looking at Khun and Den as he speaks. "I think that's our cue. Shall we join them?"

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Forum Games / Re: The Rising Wyld (Episode 3)

« on: December 19, 2016, 02:44:19 AM »

"Hmm..." Rishi lightly taps his scabbard on his shoulder as he thinks to himself. "Do you think it might be some form of magic, or simply a vast spy network of 'concerned citizens?' Because I'd really like to go do some scouting of the situation, but one of those things will be harder to deal with than the other. Although, it certainly sounds like you know your way around the place. Perhaps you could help me do some recon? Maybe point out a few of the fools who need some offing?" He turns a toothy grin to Den as he continues, "It would certainly be most helpful to know any holes in their security network, as well as those to avoid or kill first. After all, an invasion isn't always necessary to remove an infection. Sometimes, some good, clean cuts can remove what needs removing before the doctor arrives to patch it all back up."

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Forum Games / Re: The Rising Wyld (Episode 3)

« on: December 17, 2016, 07:48:50 AM »

"I heartily disagree, but so it goes," Rishi muses aloud as Akeha walks off. He keeps an eye on the exchange for a moment, and then turns away again upon noticing Lee's confidence, trusting that things are still going to plan.

He leaps back aboard the ship, settling down near Den with his katana resting in its sheath and upon his shoulder. "So, Den, have you been down to or near the capital yet? What's your take on the whole 'Fang Deshi' situation?"

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Forum Games / Re: The Rising Wyld (Episode 3)

« on: December 12, 2016, 09:36:32 PM »

OOC: Attempting to Read Intentions Wu.

<Magey> roll 3#1d10
<Exaltedbot> 1,0Magey rolled :1,0 3#1d10 --> 1,0[ 1d10=4 ]1,0{4}, 1,0[ 1d10=6 ]1,0{6}, 1,0[ 1d10=2 ]1,0{2}

RESULT: Failure, but not a botch

During the exchange between Lee and Wu, Rishi picks himself up, dusts himself off, and meanders over to Akeha.

"So, uhh, I don't know what's being said, but I'm thinking it's probably kind of important," He mentions, making no attempt at being quiet about his words, gesturing at the pair speaking Old Realm. "Is there a reason those two are talking so loudly to each other? And, I mean, seriously. Do we really need those... Fae...? on the boat? I'm still unconvinced of their usefulness..."