I've never played a Ninja Gaiden before (its reputation of "HARDEST GAME EVER" killed any desire to try)
The Sigma release on PC (1, 2 has a lot of problems) adjusted the difficulty, making it less ridiculous and a great place to jump into the series. Harder difficulties are still there for people who either enjoy working to master complex mechanics or have reaction times sufficiently far outside of the mean. Very much a personal preference, but few games cater to that niche these days. Personally, the appeal isn't in the difficulty but in the attainable high skill-ceiling and the exhilarating gameplay that comes from it.
first few minutes of that video was iFrames being the cornerstone of everything
you instead treat your character as a "solved" thing
To a degree, and more so in NG2. NG1 is less permissive, and therefore more decisive. That said, essence (the orbs) are automatically absorbed when not blocking or attacking, so the player was blocking a lot. Some of those i-frames are the result of counters - no different to ripostes in FromSoft games albeit more fluid. Others require use of essence and good setup. In that regard I consider NG a better solution than its derivatives (God of War, notably), since that optimal subset is still fairly large and the "cinematic attacks" require quite a bit of thought to use effectively. That was largely my point - it's not just mindless action or rote input.
Soulslikes (Elden Ring in particular) fall apart quite quickly if you're outside of the intended skill bracket. All of the artificial challenge runs speak to this. Given the relatively small number of combat options, without sufficient challenge the game is essentially reduced to alternating 2-3 inputs with exact timing.
As someone working on a challenging combat system, I'd be very interested in hearing if you have any proposed solutions. You're clearly quite analytical when it comes to gameplay.
Its a problem with a lot of games, in which eventually the difficulty turns it from a game you play into a game you memorize.
I'd argue the opposite for NG. It's a stylish action game with an expressive combo system and excellent player mobility. Given that, and the dynamism of combat, no two instances of the same encounter play out the same. That's my point. In addition to having hugely satisfying combat, it plays a little like a spatial puzzle.
Sure, higher difficulties (which are reserved for subsequent playthroughs) require a lot of muscle memory in regards to actual input. Intuition is required for moves that require precise spacing and to exploit attack i-frames and not be murdered during longer recoveries. The closest it comes to prescriptive play is reducing your moveset to an optimal subset, but only when dealing with extreme pressure.
Just watch this, it'll do a better job of explaining than words ever will.
The windows are tight, but if you're good at parrying most of her moveset is punishable and bleed procs wreck her. Waterfowl dance isn't that hard to avoid; Trivial if you have distance enough to run.
I had an easy time. Friends who rolled heavy had a hard time. Haven't played a heavy/shield build since it ruined my first DS1 playthrough, so can't comment beyond that frame of reference.
I just finished a playthrough a week or two back. The only thing that game hurts more than your hands is your confidence with action games and your controllers L-stick. Literal controller drift. Too much gleaming blade.
Agreed on all points.
The comparison was more on a cognitive level though. Even when disregarding the RPG mechanics, most encounters require very little thinking.
Engaging large groups of mob enemies is discouraged by design. No-lock helps, marginally, but at some point damage is guaranteed by way of AI design and attack/recovery times.
Boss movesets aren't especially complex and are well telegraphed. Once learned, most From bosses are just a matter of responding to cues on time - where timing is the primary difficulty factor.
Isshin was a decent counterpoint - including 4 movesets during the course of the fight. Morgott, in Elden Ring, proved more difficult than many of the popular "hard bosses" during a no-damage no-summon boss run due to the depth of his moveset and the relative complexity of the move triggers. Even then, against a single enemy, it can all be predicted/influenced by the player.
In NG, by way of the number of enemies and the intricacy of the combat system, there really is no preparing for a fight and it takes a lot of quick thinking to excel. Enemies punish poor positioning, but also too much or too little movement. Enemies fatally punish excessive blocking, but it is required to delay essence absorption. Attack chains and enemy type influence essence drop. Essence is essential for quickly thinning large groups, as well as restoring ki and health. I could go on, but my point is despite the largely unparalleled speed of the game, harder difficulties are essentially hyper-violent chess.
Or even the later titles. Despite a highly autistic following, the first NG2 no-damage run on Master Ninja was 12 years after launch...
Isshin from Sekiro would probably be a better example of a tough, consistent FromSoft boss. Malena is very build specific. Friends who had heavier builds and where used to blocking suffered. I've run dex through the extended franchise, and she melted.
I still find the FromSoft type of difficulty, Sekiro included, more manageable than something like Ninja Gaiden. They're mostly about pattern recognition - learning a moveset and responding accordingly. Not easy by any means, but generally a matter of patience. Ninja Gaiden, especially on Master Ninja, is about split second, highly contextual decision making against a mob of more aggressive enemies.
Yeah, it's not looking hopeful.
While Angela is an important character, Maria is fundamental to the plot. Her appearance and demeanour are both of significance; A lack of contrast between her and Mary thematically lobotomizes the game.
could just be a matter of influencers/sites trying to jump on a headline opportunity
Makes sense. A misleading article to say the least.
"Following the coding standards is mandatory."
In the context it appears, I'd imagine that is for internal use and engine contribution - which is commonplace. Organisational coding standards aren't optional by default. Explicitly stating it is likely just to reduce friction, given the number of pull requests submitted.
From memory the EULA doesn't stipulate any requirements pertaining to the structure of your own code. A cursory search for relevant terms found no mention of the standards, either. I don't see how that would be practically enforceable.
Exactly this. It's been standard "industry policy" since ~2020, when Microsoft, Github etc. all enforced the same. Doesn't mean it has major adoption outside of corporate monoliths. Even at work such policies are ignored - largely because any sane developer is opposed to having identifiers dictated to them.
It's a virtue signal - the engine source largely conforms to it with the exception of master (with slave entirely absent). Does beg the question of why now though?
That makes me all the more curious about their back end workflow
Probably not unlike other studios tbh. Outside of specific requirements, like character creation or certain art styles, game character pipelines usually don't differ a great deal. I also doubt the characters are to blame for the performance problems. Open world in engines not tailored to it isn't an easy optimisation target.
I wonder if there's some real maths that can be done on topology still
No hard maths, unfortunately. There's simply too much variability between renderers, RHI's, target architectures, hardware configurations and scenes themselves.
The only advice I can really give is that game optimisation is a bit like software optimisation. Always profile and avoid premature optimisation (primarily micro-optimisation, like obsessing over topology). Dev time is finite, after all. Structural changes usually yield the greatest returns, but can become impractical in late development.
In practice, any number of things can introduce performance issues. That said, unless you have severely sub-optimal game systems or tricky requirements (eg. obscene NPC counts will require specific approaches to character animation, rendering and AI), environments are the most likely cause of poor performance in simpler projects.
Design your environments with your renderer in mind, starting with known limitations and general assumptions based on the rendering pipeline (forward, forward+, deferred all have "general" performance do's and don'ts). Starting in blocking, identify problematic sight lines and areas with poor occlusion or requiring a large number of dynamic and/or shadow casting lights. If you can't resolve these outright, you'll have to compensate with lesser fidelity in those areas. That should at least prevent you painting yourself into a corner/incurring significant rework.
Beyond that, efficient texture use, reasonable shader complexity, good use of instancing, good use of LODs and mesh aggregation, and a lot of care in regards to lighting and shadowing will be your primary means of producing something reasonably performant.
The co-founders left to form Hundred Star Games late in development. Took most of the talent with them I believe. Whether the final product is as intended or the result of external interference, time will tell.
My pleasure.
Quite understandable, if it weren't for the classics included in our literature curriculum I probably wouldn't have got started myself. They certainly have their own appeal though.
The illustrations add a lot, and have proven pretty influential in terms of subsequent creative works. Interestingly, the Dore illustrated bible was so sought after (and expensive) that it was regarded as a sign of social status. Righteous 19th century drip.
A shameless plug for European heritage, but one of the most influential illustrators of the 19th century, Gustave Doré, produced an illustrated version of The Divine Comedy. If anyone feels inclined to read the poem, or has an interest in illustration, I'd strongly recommend checking it out.
Abandon all hope, ye who let them enter here
Topology doesn't really have a noticeable impact on performance outside of polycount. Everything is triangulated, vertex cache optimisation is applied, etc. Uneven edge lengths and tri sizes can cause issues since they don't play nice with the clustered nature of rasterization (overshading), or more recently, the spatial indices used in raytracing, but outside of that your GPU isn't too concerned with how your topology looks.
The issue, assuming you wanted it watertight (which you might not), would be the resulting normals/tangents. But let's face it, shading artifacts would be a kindness.
Nah, that's letting them off lightly. It's clearly a bespoke mesh. Someone has to own making that. Someone without creativity, skill or the decency to rethink their career choice before completing it.
I wouldn't be surprised if you're right about the photogrammetry on the head though. I saw this posted over on NeoGAF. Another SBI self-insert?
Right? Overlooking the lack of internal consistency, and that the quality is consistent with photobashing together some gender studies majors DeviantArt account, it somehow manages to be utterly hideous and entirely mundane at the same time. It's... oddly impressive in that regard.
I wonder what the original Rocksteady staff will move onto. They collectively upped and left mid-development.
Mrs Freeze from the upcoming Suicide Squad DLC. I'm starting to think Sweet Baby (Jesus) is the intended response to their creative contributions.
They axed a lot of western employees as part of their restructuring, and a number of those whinging on twitter where managers and game analysts with faggot flags in their bio. Who knows, maybe someone is paying attention?
A significant portion of that is lies and fantasy.
Naturally, contemporary academia is one of the primary inputs.
Thanks for the details, sounds good all round.
apparently the day 1 censor patch improved that
Wonder if that was intentional or the result of demo feedback?
I'm waiting on the PC release. Still not sure whether to actually purchase a copy - probably will, given that it is one of the least pozzed games in recent memory and I believe in voting with my wallet.
Even on Story Mode is not as easy as it seems.
Not unexpected, given the Souslike inspiration. How's the combat though? There was talk of it being a bit sluggish to begin with, and dodges not really being effective. Does that change with character progression?
Gameplay is not for normies though. Is not Bayo or DMC. Can't just smash button.
I get the comparison, since both include legitimately easy "easy modes". It's still weird hearing two games, both with exceptionally high skill ceilings and heavy emphasis on precise input, being used to describe normie friendly though.
Build your own ideas and have your own debates.
Except a lie unchallenged quickly becomes the truth, and a society's perception of truth influences the nature of all future ideas and debates.
The backlash has discredited the notion of a black samurai, one that has been appearing in media with increasing regularity, for many unfamiliar with the surrounding history. For those, it has also drawn attention to the media's gaslighting, and further reinforced a desire to financially punish companies pushing such propaganda.
I don't believe the intention was ever debate; Rather the normalisation of black individuals/characters in the context of Japanese culture. Your proposal, in this context, is exactly how that succeeds.
Not devote your focus on the enemies content and having the debates that your enemies want you to have.
I think you overestimate peoples investment. It has become a subject of passing ridicule. I think you oversimplify the issue to "engagement is bad". Ridicule and disdain can and have been used to immunize collectives against "harmful" ideas.
I appreciate where you are coming from, and there are instances where I'd agree. Where to engage in debate is to cede ground. This just isn't one of them.
That largely depends on your intention. High-score runs incentivise regular use of UTs (cinematic attacks) as time is scored and longer combo strings are rewarded. Outside of those, a number of players try to avoid them though. NG1 is entirely viable without them; NG2 makes this harder given the quantity of projectile-happy enemies. Given that I play for fun, I use them as necessary. Outside of infrequent moments of extreme pressure, the subset of "useful" moves is still respectable.
Thoughts on keeping combat cognitive/engaging (not just repeating the same actions on cue) while not being overly prescriptive (allowing players some freedom in playstyle) - in the context of an action RPG.
Many movesets are largely cosmetic - either because moves are similar in effect or because dominant strategies are present in their design. Varying contextual value of attacks/strings (ie. enemy state, stagger systems, position in relation to targets, exit position) is a good start. Used excessively, it can result in the same small subset problem and be pretty demanding on the player.
I like the idea of different kinds/layers of difficulty and/or player advantage. It grows the possibility space without directly influencing physical requirements (reaction time, precision etc) - fighting smart as a partial substitute for pure combat ability rather than numerical or RNG advantage (as is common in RPGs).