Look up mods for old Turn Based RPGs you liked to play. I got turned onto one for FF6 that's supposed to balance everything and fix a lot of the gameplay issues that reduced the overall lack of strategy and lack of difficulty required for that game. But I saw a lot more mods available, so they must exist even more for multiple other retro turn based rpg games.
 
It seems like folks out there agree with you at the very least, and are trying to fill that niche without needing to make the games entirely from scratch.

Quote from: Ragnar on May 07, 2016, 02:43:55 am

was the show Fringe any good? 

yes

 
I don't remember much from watching it, but I do distinctly recall that I enjoyed whatever it was I saw. 

not saying that u would have to have synesthesia or whatever or although it does feel like a weird inside joke to me that you could /get/ or not... but like if the color palette wasn't so super-specific in the first place I don't think it would bother me as much that it falls short for me

 
Yeah, it's weird alright. It's not like they intended to make Steven Universe to generate that sensation for you specifically, but because that's how you perceive the relationship between those kinds of colors, you get the impression that that's what the show needs to do for you, and find disappointment in how it falls short of achieving that effect fully in your own mind.
 
It makes me think of my friend that gripes about how The Force Awakens was treated. Like in his mind, Star Wars as a setting invoked very specific feelings of discovery and nuance the very first time he watched it. Because of that, he was especially offended at how the newest movie never really tried to explore anything, takes risks, or introduce any new concepts. (He was also really into the narrative brought on by the previous novels that were "third trilogy canon" before George Lucas was bought out, but whenever he tries to explain the "plot" of it to me, I just see it as even more contrived and arbitrary than ANYTHING Abrhams could have come up with. Sure it means a lot to HIM, but in my mind I just see it as his own imagination reading far more into the text than was actually there... Despite me never actually READING the text firsthand)
TFA never really bothered me none, mainly because I always saw Star Wars as something not made for any one specific person, but rather deliberately appeals to what the largest number of people can connect and identify with. I don't think that's a bad goal for science fiction to have, but I can't help but be offended personally by how well it was accomplished. I always look to science fiction to be deliberately challenging to my own ideas and perceptions, and Star Wars constantly disappoints me at every level for failing to rise to that challenge. (The only vaguely interesting idea that setting ever offered was the idea of how "spirituality" might evolve parallel to technology if left going for thousands and thousands of years, but even that notion is so distilled and contrived that I find it even more insulting as a premise)
 
It's just funny because we both saw the series fail at one point or another to give us what we both had in common for wanting out of it, but the only difference is how we perceived that initial iteration of it, in terms of what it meant to accomplish for us personally, and how that initial impression colored our own perception of literally everything that came thereafter.

While I don't agree with the conclusions you draw, I certainly respect how you came about those conclusions when it came to Undertale. For instance, you were right in inferring that the story isn't really about anything, I just kinda assumed that must be the  point. Without some overarching need to pursue some grand narrative, you are given more freedom to find relevance in the moment-to-moment interactions (boiling that down to "HEY CHECK OUT THIS OBSCURE REFERENCE! HOW COOL IS THAT?!" is a rather glib interpretation, but I see how in it's presentation how hard it is to not get that distinct impression). I dunno, I just found it a bit disappointing how you gave Fallout 4 much more of a chance before dismissing it simply because it was built in a way to require that much more out of you before you.
 

 I stuck with the thing even though I wasn't having a particularly good time as late at 10 hours into it, but I found the game had some life when you get some of the worthwhile companions to be stumbling around the game with you. It was a surprise, as Bethesda's dialogue and character design are almost invariably awful and without positive merit, but a couple of the companions in F4 are actually pretty interesting people.

 
For instance you could have beaten Undertale twice in the time you spent looking for interesting companions in Fallout 4. But I don't want to harp on it because it'd be hypocritical given that I didn't really give Fallout 4 hardly any chance at all. (It's partly an issue of access, I don't have a system that can play it and I don't want to buy a new system FOR it, but even if I had, I am far too jaded to have the patience required by the kind of games where you have to invest a lot of yourself into it before you even get a LITTLE bit of enjoyment back out of it)
 
 
 

I dunno. The best you can hope for in the game is to have a couple worthwhile moments. For every interesting quest, there are going to be ten that nobody gives a shit about and are thoroughly forgettable. You CAN have some fun with the game, and I think there are enough worthwhile moments to keep me from dismissing the game entirely, but you kinda need to figure out how to approach it right. Still, not a game I would suggest to anybody who isn't really hopelessly interested in the Fallout series and doesn't has a ton of free time to spare. And even then, you need to expect a game where you have to figure out the fun yourself rather than just hope to stumble onto it.

 
Small Green Cicada posted a reply as I was typing this up, and I certainly do agree with what he says. I don't WANT to be one of those folks that's just jumping in to heartfeltedly defend this game because of some immutable shell, and that's not really what I'm trying to say here. The game is indeed flawed, and the culture that has sprung up around it is most certainly grating. For one thing, how so much love can spring up for such a set of characters (which for all I could tell, were designed with the DELIBERATE INTENTION of being nothing beyond annoyances for the player character and being a complete hassle to deal with), I'll never fully understand. But it was this part of your response to Fallout 4 that made me feel l had to address how effortlessly you dismissed Undertale, simply because this was the exact same conclusion I drew about Undertale after playing it fully. (maybe replace the "Fallout" with "Earthbound" or possibly more aptly *shudders* "Homestuck", but the "need to expect a game where you have to figure out the fun yourself rather than just hope to stumble into it" is certainly spot on)

If you want to know the meta-theme to Undertale right off-the-bat, it's basically a game that shapes itself around how you approach it. That smug impression you got off at the start was all about communicating the intention as clearly as possible that the "rules" of this game are all shaped by how you approach it as a game (and I admit, lowest common denominator style of design is indeed offputting, but I saw how necessary it was in a game like this, because that kind of thing is so easy to miss regardless of how obviously the narrative tries to hammer it in)
 
I'm not saying you NEED to play it multiple times. I'm just saying if you were able to understand that much about how the game operates, you can have a reasonable expectation that the other playthroughs won't offer you the same kind of experience your first playthrough did, as long you are deliberate in your approach. Even if you don't want to go through the trouble of playing this game to give it a second chance, I still think you should at least look up the other playthroughs online, and spoil yourself on the diverging aspects of the alternate stories. Just to immediately know what the "hidden intention" was, and be able to decide for yourself if spoiling it makes you feel like you've missed out by not playing it firsthand. I'm assuming you'll probably just decide you saved yourself time and trouble by doing so, but I still think it is something worth at least knowing about.
 
(For one thing, if you really do hate the game that much, you owe it to yourself to at least do the playthrough where you kill literally as many characters as mechanically possible. Simply because FUCK that game! FUCK everyone in it! Just fuck it all!)

I didn't think of it that deeply, but the easiest way I suppose you could implement a "Karma System" fairly is by simply making it so that the more "wicked"  you are, the more likely you'd be finished off by a "good guy". Like folks that are good wouldn't normally just kill folks, but if the were fighting someone they already knew WOULD kill more folks if they "spared" them, then they'd still kill you out of a simplistic moral obligation. 
 
Then just have it so that killing folks you already know are wicked adds to your "bad karma" by a much smaller amount than it would if you just go around blindly killing innocents (since they'd be likely to kill you regardless of how good or bad you are, and nobody wants THOSE kinds of folks around).

That's pretty cool rougelike idea. If you do want to make it so that you can fail to become strong enough for it to "not be worth" continuing your play-through. A neat way for the game to implement this automatically might be to have it so that any fight you lose leaves you literally at the "mercy" of whoever defeated you.
 
With the fighter's randomly generated, you could make it so that some fighters are the type that would "spare" you in that situation, or if you lose to a particularly bad guy, he just straight-up decides to end your life on the spot once you are incapacitated by them. (probably put a rule in the tournaments that prohibit this, so you can still fight in THOSE safely. But then again, maybe still have a VERY small chance of facing off against that one asshole that simply goes "Screw the rules! I don't CARE if I'm disqualified, I'm ending you!")

so did i just fuck up that message by making it too long?? whadya think. do i need to tldr that one?? does it make sense to u guys.

 
It's posts like exactly like that on that made me think earlier "Hmm, maybe I shouldn't comment at all on this subject, because despite having grown up around the same time as you guys, I know next to nothing about what you folks are talking about when it comes to these qualities"
 
Like I feel like I can get the gist of it, but I wouldn't know if I'm completely off-base unless there was a tl:dr at the end to either confirm or deny it. I'm sure I was at least remotely aware of the things you guys talk so passionately about, but I was never too "engaged" as a kid. I always operated under the assumption that I was more introspective than most folks, but I never really looked back to these memories to ever "pin down" how the collective experiences of my consciousness were molded by the feelings the media of these shifting decades brought out.
 
Regardless, I'd still love to use the medium of game design to evoke and explore these sensations. I just wouldn't tackle it without looking heavily to more "inundated" folks in order to take the helm of creative input on the various audiovisual aesthetics best suited to the task. I could read through every page of this topic 1000x over and still feel like I'm "not really getting it", because (at least to me) not understanding it is a big component of where all the fascination with this kind of stuff lies.

I've noticed it too. I think it has something to do with the relationship between creativity and society. If you look at our current societal and political landscape, you'd see that we are prime for a resurgence of dadaism and we are only just now being pushed into the throes of it by and large. 
 
I think some of us were already disillusioned by the reality we had no choice in being a part of for a long time now, (for me it feels like my entire life has been trying and failing to deal with that) but it only took events in the last decade or so for future generations along with the rest of our current generation to finally understand that sensation, and come to terms with embracing it as an all-too-necessary catharsis.
 
I can only hope that by virtue of the invisible hand of capitalism's intrinsic pull towards literally anything popular enough, it ends up causing the whole infrastructure to come crashing down on itself as more and more folks attempt to take these qualities and render them into yet another commodity.

Undertale is good, though I can't bring myself to complete a genocide run.

 
That's not surprising. Not long after the game came out, I ended up getting it for myself for no other reason than to make sure my very first run of the game was a "Only murder Papyrus" run. Was really geared up for it (because if I wasn't going to murder that guy, I don't think ANYONE ever would), but immediately regretted my decision, and playing the rest of the game really took a lot out of me.
 
I'll get back to it at some point so I can go back and do that full "hardcore mode" run, but I just gotta step away for a bit first and really reevaluate some things about my life...

Hundley: That's an amazing level. I wish I could be half as edgy with my designs. I feel like you'd be really good at coming up with really cool level concepts like that one, so if you ever do, let me know and I'll glady take all the credit for them.
 
Yeah, I would have mentioned getting into FTL pretty hard, twice. But It's been a while since I played it, and I fear I wouldn't stop if I got back into it  a third time(I think I still have yet to clear normal mode even).
 
Had been playing quite a few recent 3ds titles lately since I got my gateway card working again. Was finally able to see why so many folks threw hype over A Link Between Worlds, but I have to say frankly, it was rather disappointing actually playing it. Sure, I was able to appreciate how the changes they made were extremely solid game design choices. They were able to address both of the problems with not just classic, but even most modern zelda games. Namely, the problem of making the progress taken away by death feel actually relevant, and making the act of collecting rupees feel worthwhile regardless of how many you already have already collected/spent. Unfortunately both of those changes end up coming entirely at the cost of immersion, which wouldn't be too high a cost to pay if it were literally any other series.
 
The overall experience comes off as over-tailored and inorganic, entirely far-gone from that sense of exploration and discovery that was the driving force for the development of all those early zelda titles. The dungeons no longer offer any mystery or discovery that makes them feel genuinely rewarding to explore, but rather come off as a series of strung-together mechanics you only feel obligated to complete in order to progress that much further towards the next series of chores. It makes me wonder if they had taken the exact same design philosophy and game mechanics, and set them to an entirely new setting that had literally no connection to Link to the Past, if it would have gotten nearly the same level of acclaim in it's reception, or if it would have just turned out to be yet another 'Spirit Tracks' (or was it 'phantom train'? I can't even recall)
 
It's still got some fun stuff going on that makes it worth playing, I'm just saying if I had paid actual money in order to do it, I would have felt genuinely cheated. They did take the one mechanic I hated the absolute most about 3d zelda games (wall sliding) and make it actually fun to do though. It's certainly an impressive feat, but it's not really as super innovative as folks are making it out to be. Also all I can think about while doing that mechanic was how it always made the dungeons you have to use it in feel all the more separate and alien from the actual world they're placed in (I keep on asking things like "Okay, but in the context of the game's setting, who actually BUILT these dungeons? Did they know ahead of time that the person who's supposed to traverse them can transform into a painting? The boss can't turn himself into a painting, how the heck did they get him all the way into that boss room? What if the destined hero DIDN'T happen to be in the exact right place at the exact right time to gain the ability to turn himself into a painting at will? Would he simply be unable to ever actually obtain the Master Sword? Would the wizard that's trying to revive Ganon have actually succeeded if he'd gone with literally ANY OTHER motif than *magic paintings*?" Yes it seems nit-picky, and I'm supposed to simply wave my hand at it after a certain point, but I can't get past this! I always ASSUMED this series was about world building!)
 
I dunno, I genuinely can't tell if I am fielding legitimate complaints, or if I am just venting my jaded frustrations at my own loss of innocence and discovery when it comes to playing video games. (or if I am simply blowing things out of proportion entirely on purpose, and the only REAL issue I have with this adaptation is that the ONLY boss I'd actually WANT to see re-created on a 3d projected console was the ONLY boss from the classic game they removed entirely!) I was really attached to LttP back when I first played it, and it feels like what they have done in order to tap into that core sense of nostalgia is the perfect metaphor for what's happened over the years to my own personal sense of love and appreciation of games and game design I had a child. In that they hollowed it out, stuffed in a bunch of self-congratulatory 'clever designy bits' and put a frame around it so they could hang it on a wall.
 
I'm still one or one and a half dungeons from completing it, and I can only think of ONE thing that would turn this entire experience around for me: (and that's ONLY if it turns out that little douchebag that sells you all your shit is actually the *twist ending* REAL big bad guy. They seem to be hinting at leading up to some kind of twist around the obligatory Ganon confrontation, but I seriously doubt it's going to be all that clever*) Maybe I'll try getting back to Shovel Knight after I finally put this game behind me, I've only just recently unlocked the NewGame+ mode.

Usually play my PC more than anything, but lately I'm on the Wii U almost exclusively (which is odd because when I got that console I assumed I'd only be playing it for smash) Been playing a little smash, a lot of splatoon, and have gone a bit crazy over super mario maker.
 
That is pretty much the reason I'm bumping this topic. I am pretty much flabbergasted about not hearing anyone else mention it here before myself. I thought at least a couple of folks still here would be crazy over mario maker, and I'm NEVER the guy who mentions something first! Also wondering if I started a topic for posting level codes, if more than one other person would actually be interested in checking that out.
 
C'mon guys, I'm pretty desperate for star coins at this point. I know I got the level design chops, but none of the folks actually playing this game are sophisticated enough to appreciate my genius! 

I always wondered why they called that console a playstation when it ended up looking like anything but a console you'd call a "playstation".
 
This... explains... EVERYTHING!

I really do want to make this into its own topic, but I'm still collecting my thoughts and trying to get over some depression, so... uh... spritesheet!
 

I already love it. You can just make up the rules arbitrarily while just coming up with random things to add to the board. (For instance the coke can could change any suit of card to either a diamond or a heart by rolling over it)
Also put in a magnet. You could drag cards into the floppy disks, then run the magnet over the floppy disk, and all the cards come flying back out glitched. (You'd have to make it also affect the screen on the game-boy to make it completely authentic though)
 
Really the only hard thing to design would be any sort of actual objective. I doubt this kind of game would be any worse off for not having it though.

It sounds good to me too.
 
If it turns out it is possible to do, I'm already thinking of posting stuff there that I wouldn't already post in the game design/demo forum. (Simply because it isn't far enough along yet, but I still want feedback on)
 
EDIT: If it turns out the forum software doesn't support doing it that way, maybe you could try making it a protected subforum and you just put the password for it into the forum description so everyone already knows what it is? Or are bots smart enough to still figure their way into it?

Yes, the movie is about a queen. The movie's protagonist is her younger sister, which still makes it a princess movie.
 
You wouldn't be arguing this about Beauty and the Beast not being a princess movie because the Beast isn't a princess. Hell, Belle wasn't even technically a princess until like, the very last five minutes. Don't go talkin' smack to folks about things you are so clearly ignorant about. (furthermore, don't try and know more about princess movies and throw around the "bitch" slur in the same sentence, bitch)

Yeah, I meant for my participation to be a mystery right until the time I submit, but whatever I'm just saying it now since I still have yet to finish up the very last few tweaks to nail down that elusive "functioning core gameplay" aspect.
 
I'm fine for submitting whenever, I should have it playable tonight since I couldn't work on it today, but if everyone is submitting late regardless I'll just submit whenever and use the extra time to actually put forth some sort of tangible level design. (which I was planning on doing post-jam anyhow)
 
EDIT: Ok, submitting now. Sure do hope I'm not the only one. Don't give up hope folks! There is no such thing as late!
http://casualcatharsis.itch.io/ninja-ninja
(Plus mine is pvp, so I'll be lucky if I find any two people with enough patience to test this game at the same time! Maybe if I keep updating it, I can entice some folks into thinking this game is something actually worth playing with a friend)

because I did 0 to advertize this jam beyond just posting a thread and posting in a thread a week prior, I like to think that this is a secret jam.  I wonder if anyone besides myself will do a thing...

 
Yes, wonder indeed. That is the very beauty of the mystery of game jam. Can you infer from this I'm implying voluntary participation? There is no way to actually find out. It is an enigmatic sort of anticipation laden with inherit uncertainty, and that's exactly how I like it.

They lied to you.
 
They know that games with higher filesizes indicate to gamers that the game has "more quality present", so they sold you an 8gb game and just TOLD you that it was 56gb. The installer just throws randomized bits into your HD so that when you have finished installing it still takes up 56gb.
 
And folks are just eating it up, those fools.