Yeah, the iceberg is his Burst. Its geometry is a cone designed to stretch all the way when centered, but if you kink it sideways even a bit, the edge closest to the center doesn't reach all the way across.
The current Indie Gala Every Monday Bundle. It contains eight games, one of which is a shmup, Redux, that's a remake of a game the devs made for Dreamcast, called Dux. Redux also got a limited print run for Dreamcast too. And several other games that I'm not sure what's notable about them, but whatever.
Anyway, I decided to run some numbers on this bundle.
Currently, it's within its first 24-hour period, during which the minimum price is $2.49. So far it has sold 4230 copies and garnered $10801.72, for an average purchase price of $2.55... . Let's say this is $2.50, for simplicity.
A little note at the bottom of the site says that payment processors charge fees, typically 1.9% to 5%, plus a flat rate of $0.05 to $0.30, with Paypal being the cheapest or something. Let's max it out though: 5% + $0.30.
Every $2.50 purchase becomes $2.20 after the flat rate fee, and then $2.09 after the variable fee. Since Indie Gala incurs operating costs, let's split this nine ways -- eight games' devs and Gala. That means every purchase nets each of the nine entities about $0.23. Multiply that by 4230, that means that in this day, each of these entities has garnered $982.3. So, about a thousand dollars, give or take some.
Yunica EX Nightmare Boss Rush down. EX Bolt Crash kills Pictimos hilariously quickly -- I think my final time was just over three minutes, and most of that was repeatedly burning him down before he could attack.
Also Kishgal down on second try, with almost half my health left. I think I've finally got the fight figured out -- move as little as possible and wait for him to come to you before blasting him across the arena. If he boxes you in with ice, don't try to jump out, just wait for him to walk up, then clear an escape and push him back in the same shot. He seems to use less falling icicles this way too. Between that and the iceberg tactic I picked up last time, he's surprisingly reasonable. Usually. Still like 1/3 luck.
Dalles is still an arsewipe, but I did way better when I started using Bolt Crash + axe on the minions at the very end instead of phoenixes unless you're dodging a laser behind him. It gives you slightly more killing power, the axe swings resist vortices a bit, and it's a lot easier to focus on one minion at a time. Phoenix has more upper-end damage, but you have to get a really lucky shot. Other than that, the last phase is just boost spam (NOT Burst spam!) and luck.
I am never playing Yunica and her shitty-ass Burst again. At least not till Toddy updates his LP, and I reserve the right to overlevel for that. So obnoxious.
I am never playing Yunica and her shitty-ass Burst again. At least not till Toddy updates his LP, and I reserve the right to overlevel for that. So obnoxious.
^^ Get a Burst that does at least one of the following, and we'll talk:
- lets you move and/or is aimable (Epona, Kishgal, Dalles) - resists suction (Zava, Dalles) - gives an invincibility frame when it finishes to walk out of terrain hazards planted on top of you while you sat there like a fucking idiot with your axe in the ground and will probably hurt worse than if you just ate the original attack (Kishgal, Dalles) - doesn't completely fail to stop half the super-attacks you want to use it on in the first place (Zava, motherfucking Dalles) - maybe even just hits a slightly bigger area or hits the air better (Zava, fucking hell Dalles)
Hell, forget Burst. I'd be satisfied if her Boost did anything useful. Hugo gets extra Eyes, Hugo and Toal's specials all get supercharged, and Toal and Adol both get huge combo buffs. Yunica gets nothing. They fucking forgot to code in the damage or attack speed buff the tutorial says it gives her. So all it does is halve damage for a few seconds (her boss fights are all too homogeneously erratic to react to anything in particular with it) and let you spam another couple uncharged spells (good against Dalles's red shield and precisely nothing else in the entire game because phoenix is her only attack that doesn't negate overlapping hits).
Watching Tietuesday's stream of Super Mario 3D World today reminded me how fun that game is. It is probably one of my top two or three favorite Mario platformers, mostly because it brought back the multiple different playable characters with different traits thing from Mario 2 USA and implemented it in a well-made 3D Mario. I think the multiplayer is a bunch of fun too, even if some stages can be a bit tricky with more than one player (see any stage with those arrow moving platform things).
They say that Kojima is leaving Konami after Metal Gear Solid 5, though it has neither been confirmed nor denied by either party. Considering that Konami's had him working on the same series for all this time, it isn't really that much of a shock.
The news doesn't bode well for that Silent Hills game they had in the pipe but seeing what he'll be able to do independently may be interesting.
They say that Kojima is leaving Konami after Metal Gear Solid 5, though it has neither been confirmed nor denied by either party. Considering that Konami's had him working on the same series for all this time, it isn't really that much of a shock.
The news doesn't bode well for that Silent Hills game they had in the pipe but seeing what he'll be able to do independently may be interesting.
Well, Konami's denied it.
“As we have already announced, we are shifting our production structure to a headquarters-controlled system, in order to establish a steadfast operating base capable of responding to the rapid market changes that surround our digital entertainment business. Konami Digital Entertainment (including Mr. Kojima), will continue to develop and support Metal Gear products. Please look forward to future announcements.”
Ys Origin, 6/8 Nightmare boss rushes down. Just Toal's left.
Adol is so, so good compared to the story characters. His Felghana version is a melee chainsaw with the best defensive move in the game, and his Napishtim version's spells are fucking ridiculous and give you tons of invincibility time (dat whirlwind OMG). I took down Pictimos in less than a minute and a half because the Felghana fire attack reaches across the whole arena and hits both his damage points several times, and I skipped Zava's desperation attack entirely.
I think the only boss Napishtim Adol isn't good against is Gelaldy, mainly because he has no slowfall and gets clipped by lava a lot.
Interestingly, Darm's suction attacks get toned down because he doesn't have Godspeed. To make up for it, he seems to spawn waaaay more minions than usual. I'd literally go a good minute at a time just cleaning up his minions or hiding in the tentacle pit because he kept spamming the red/yellow phase lance sweep and blue phase laser spray and I never got a chance to actually attack him at all because he was spawning that shit faster than I could kill it. The Napishtim Fire pretty much ensures that you only have to put up with four phases before the finale though, so hey. I also killed the last yellow phase before it could attack more than once, so yeah. OP.
I guess if you could somehow push him to 50%, you could pull it off from there by abusing his iceberg like in the video. It's half damage because he's boosting, but also free and completely safe.
I am playing through Etrian Odyssey Untold with a party of a Ronin and a Hexer because I hate being able to take hits and live. Only 20 more floors to go!
If you're playing a game, say, a platformer sort of game, and your character's got hit points, do you prefer seeing it as a sort of bar or icon (e.g. Mega Man) or as numbers (e.g. Gunstar Heroes or Symphony of the Night)? Or does it depend? Or do you care?
If you're playing a game, say, a platformer sort of game, and your character's got hit points, do you prefer seeing it as a sort of bar or icon (e.g. Mega Man) or as numbers (e.g. Gunstar Heroes or Symphony of the Night)? Or does it depend? Or do you care?
Generally a bar or icon, but either one works fine.
For what it's worth, among developers it's generally agreed that 2-4 digits is comfortable to show as a number, and 5-6 is okay if it's uncommon (bonus scores, etc) but you should really be showing a bar too. Most JRPGs since the PS1 era will overlay the text on top of a bar.
World of Warcraft ran into problems with this. The numeric readout on the bars is entirely optional, but something you generally want on if you do any sort of serious dungeoning because you think in terms of numeric DPS. By Cataclysm people were hitting 100k+ HP and bosses were well into the millions, and these days players are bordering on 1M. Even that works as an abbreviated numeric display.
Once the floating damage numbers get into the millions like they do in Diablo 3, it becomes difficult to visually parse in any useful sense (especially since they pop up so often as to overlap constantly), but abbreviating it much can actually obscure significant differences in your DPS too. You kind of need at least 3 sig figs at all times, but since we can only abbreviate numbers every third digit, that means you're still going to see up to 5-6 digits no matter what. And it's ugly as hell.
For a platformer, you shouldn't have HP higher than 3 digits, and enemies shouldn't have HP higher than 4 for the majority of the game (5 for endgame/bonus bosses). If you're even using numbers bigger than that, something worse has probably gone wrong in construction and you need to simplify things.
Hell, even having more than 2 digits is pretty meaningless for anything that doesn't have significant RPG elements and an explicit leveling system like Ys or something. In most platformers, damage doesn't scale much as you progress.
Probably shouldn't have said platformer, I was thinking more of (as I said above) a Metroidvania sort of thing where you could get life expansions, level-ups, whatever.
If you're playing a game, say, a platformer sort of game, and your character's got hit points, do you prefer seeing it as a sort of bar or icon (e.g. Mega Man) or as numbers (e.g. Gunstar Heroes or Symphony of the Night)? Or does it depend? Or do you care?
No one needs hit points, except bosses. (semi-not-serious answer)
Comments
The current Indie Gala Every Monday Bundle. It contains eight games, one of which is a shmup, Redux, that's a remake of a game the devs made for Dreamcast, called Dux. Redux also got a limited print run for Dreamcast too. And several other games that I'm not sure what's notable about them, but whatever.
Anyway, I decided to run some numbers on this bundle.
Currently, it's within its first 24-hour period, during which the minimum price is $2.49. So far it has sold 4230 copies and garnered $10801.72, for an average purchase price of $2.55... . Let's say this is $2.50, for simplicity.
A little note at the bottom of the site says that payment processors charge fees, typically 1.9% to 5%, plus a flat rate of $0.05 to $0.30, with Paypal being the cheapest or something. Let's max it out though: 5% + $0.30.
Every $2.50 purchase becomes $2.20 after the flat rate fee, and then $2.09 after the variable fee. Since Indie Gala incurs operating costs, let's split this nine ways -- eight games' devs and Gala. That means every purchase nets each of the nine entities about $0.23. Multiply that by 4230, that means that in this day, each of these entities has garnered $982.3. So, about a thousand dollars, give or take some.
https://www.indiegala.com/friday
https://www.indiegala.com/dragon
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Also Kishgal down on second try, with almost half my health left. I think I've finally got the fight figured out -- move as little as possible and wait for him to come to you before blasting him across the arena. If he boxes you in with ice, don't try to jump out, just wait for him to walk up, then clear an escape and push him back in the same shot. He seems to use less falling icicles this way too. Between that and the iceberg tactic I picked up last time, he's surprisingly reasonable. Usually. Still like 1/3 luck.
Dalles is still an arsewipe, but I did way better when I started using Bolt Crash + axe on the minions at the very end instead of phoenixes unless you're dodging a laser behind him. It gives you slightly more killing power, the axe swings resist vortices a bit, and it's a lot easier to focus on one minion at a time. Phoenix has more upper-end damage, but you have to get a really lucky shot. Other than that, the last phase is just boost spam (NOT Burst spam!) and luck.
I am never playing Yunica and her shitty-ass Burst again. At least not till Toddy updates his LP, and I reserve the right to overlevel for that. So obnoxious.
- lets you move and/or is aimable (Epona, Kishgal, Dalles)
- resists suction (Zava, Dalles)
- gives an invincibility frame when it finishes to walk out of terrain hazards planted on top of you while you sat there like a fucking idiot with your axe in the ground and will probably hurt worse than if you just ate the original attack (Kishgal, Dalles)
- doesn't completely fail to stop half the super-attacks you want to use it on in the first place (Zava, motherfucking Dalles)
- maybe even just hits a slightly bigger area or hits the air better (Zava, fucking hell Dalles)
Hell, forget Burst. I'd be satisfied if her Boost did anything useful. Hugo gets extra Eyes, Hugo and Toal's specials all get supercharged, and Toal and Adol both get huge combo buffs. Yunica gets nothing. They fucking forgot to code in the damage or attack speed buff the tutorial says it gives her. So all it does is halve damage for a few seconds (her boss fights are all too homogeneously erratic to react to anything in particular with it) and let you spam another couple uncharged spells (good against Dalles's red shield and precisely nothing else in the entire game because phoenix is her only attack that doesn't negate overlapping hits).
The news doesn't bode well for that Silent Hills game they had in the pipe but seeing what he'll be able to do independently may be interesting.
to a headquarters-controlled system, in order to establish a steadfast
operating base capable of responding to the rapid market changes that
surround our digital entertainment business. Konami Digital
Entertainment (including Mr. Kojima), will continue to develop and
support Metal Gear products. Please look forward to future
announcements.”
Weird.
At this point, I'd like to see him actually leave before I believe it.
I am playing through Etrian Odyssey Untold with a party of a Ronin and a Hexer because I hate being able to take hits and live. Only 20 more floors to go!
If you're playing a game, say, a platformer sort of game, and your character's got hit points, do you prefer seeing it as a sort of bar or icon (e.g. Mega Man) or as numbers (e.g. Gunstar Heroes or Symphony of the Night)? Or does it depend? Or do you care?
World of Warcraft ran into problems with this. The numeric readout on the bars is entirely optional, but something you generally want on if you do any sort of serious dungeoning because you think in terms of numeric DPS. By Cataclysm people were hitting 100k+ HP and bosses were well into the millions, and these days players are bordering on 1M. Even that works as an abbreviated numeric display.
Once the floating damage numbers get into the millions like they do in Diablo 3, it becomes difficult to visually parse in any useful sense (especially since they pop up so often as to overlap constantly), but abbreviating it much can actually obscure significant differences in your DPS too. You kind of need at least 3 sig figs at all times, but since we can only abbreviate numbers every third digit, that means you're still going to see up to 5-6 digits no matter what. And it's ugly as hell.
Well, I'm thinking in terms of relatively low numbers (below 1,000). I can see how having a bar + numbers could be ideal.
Hell, even having more than 2 digits is pretty meaningless for anything that doesn't have significant RPG elements and an explicit leveling system like Ys or something. In most platformers, damage doesn't scale much as you progress.
Life is pain.