Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by Drew Sebastino »

@Koitsu I figure worse comes to worst, you can just ignore it. I'll still play F-Zero GX when I want to have my racing game fix, but I can think of a couple areas where they can improve/add things. A track editor would be awesome, and 30 player online would be insane. They can keep the gameplay exactly the same and just add new features.

I wish they did this with Super Smash Bros Melee...
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by tokumaru »

Espozo wrote:@Koitsu I figure worse comes to worst, you can just ignore it.
That's true. I never understood those "you ruined my childhood" or similar comments that show up when bad sequels/remakes/reboots are made... the originals will remain untouched, nobody can rewrite the past and screw those up. Just ignore the new stuff and you'll be fine. After lots of disappointments, I haven't played a 3D Sonic game in years, and the classic series is still my absolute favorite game series of all time.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by Drew Sebastino »

@Tokumaru I completely agree. Also, often times a series gets revived and ends up worse, it's not even by the same people which makes it that much easier to ignore. To me, a Super Monkey Ball game isn't a Super Monkey Ball game unless it's made by the people who made up AV (Which is in my opinion SEGA's best team they've ever had along with the original Sonic Team). I'm not even upset at the other ones, I just don't care. What does drive me crazy is when people linger on something like that to criticize it; it ends up having the opposite of the desired affect, kind of giving it more credibility than it deserves. You don't have to deny something's existence (which is just as dumb) if it never naturally enters the conversation. The day people finally get tired of dissecting the Star Wars prequels will be a good day, although I don't completely mind them and actually like the third one more than VII and Rogue One (fight me :lol:).
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by FrankenGraphics »

I really do want to like it. The general direction is good, i think. But let's see. I have a wii u, with mario kart 8. So i wouldn't get a switch for that. Breath of the wild? I have time for about one major game, but it will release on wii u too, and i only have 720p screen anyway. Splatoon 2? It looks polished. But i feel satisfied with #1. The remaining attraction is that i could maybe use it when traveling or commuting. That doesn't work well with motion control games. Maybe it's not for me.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by tepples »

tokumaru wrote:I never understood those "you ruined my childhood" or similar comments that show up when bad sequels/remakes/reboots are made... the originals will remain untouched
Except for original controllers, optical discs, lithium ion batteries, and (more rarely) cartridge contacts wearing out, and new TV-sized monitors becoming incompatible with the original's video output.
WheelInventor wrote:Splatoon 2? It looks polished. But i feel satisfied with #1
Until Nintendo pulls the plug on Wii U online play, just as Microsoft ended Xbox Live for the original Xbox and GameSpy ended Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection for Nintendo DS and the original Wii.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by Drew Sebastino »

WheelInventor wrote:The general direction is good, i think. But let's see
...how Nintendo can figure out how to make a mistake when all the cards are in their favor. :?
WheelInventor wrote:I have a wii u, with mario kart 8.
I probably won't either. I can't even play Mario Kart 8 after playing F-Zero GX (which I got afterword at a local game store.) It feels like a downgrade from a game made in 2003. (It's a different audience, but it's not my audience.)
WheelInventor wrote:Breath of the wild? I have time for about one major game
I actually figured that I'd have more chance to play it if it's portable. I have about 30 minutes or so between college classes I can play it.
WheelInventor wrote:Splatoon 2? It looks polished. But i feel satisfied with #1.
I've played Splatoon 1 for over 500 hours, (back when I didn't also have college classes...) so any difference to the gameplay is greatly appreciated. Although not much different, (although compared to other shooter sequels, maybe not) what I saw different in the presentation and in the gameplay video was enough to sell me on it. I hope they ditch most of the older specials; they sucked and were imbalanced for any mode that wasn't Turf War (What are you supposed to do when the opposing team has a bubbler in Splat Zones? Give up?). Through a couple of modifications, this game seems more rigged to be competitive. As much as I liked the first, the Ranked Battle seemed like an afterthought despite being by far my favorite part of the game. There are a couple of "mistakes" I saw with the newest one though: the alternate firing modes for the two pistols and the roller use the jump button (I don't know why; there are plenty of buttons on the remote not being used) which is kind of a setback (You can still do everything you want to with the duel wielded pistols if you make sure you don't press the jump and shoot button at the same time, but why should you have to worry?) Also, the sub weapons and specials are still tied to the weapons, which feels like an arbitrary restriction. (Here's to hoping they ditch the stupid map rotation thing...) I'm still so happy for the roll dodge though even if it's only available to the pistols, as my biggest problem with the first game is how slow you moved (I had three speed ups to try and compensate, and even then it was just barely Halo speed).

WheelInventor wrote:The remaining attraction is that i could maybe use it when traveling or commuting. That doesn't work well with motion control games.
It's fine for if you move the whole tablet like if you're aiming in Splatoon.

Okay, yeah, I'm excited Splatoon 2 in case you didn't notice... :lol:
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by tokumaru »

tepples wrote:Except for original controllers, optical discs, lithium ion batteries, and (more rarely) cartridge contacts wearing out, and new TV-sized monitors becoming incompatible with the original's video output.
What I said holds up better for movies, since the gaming industry is more and more interested in renting stuff than actually selling anything durable. Fortunately, I abandoned video game consoles long enough ago that everything I care about can be emulated and doesn't require online services run by the game companies, so I'll probably be fine for the foreseeable future.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by 93143 »

Espozo wrote:There were the two Gameboy Advance games after F-Zero GX, but I don't count those for a couple reasons.
I haven't played Climax, but it is reportedly much better than GP Legend.
Espozo wrote:30 player online would be insane
Maybe they're waiting on the technology/infrastructure for that. The last thing we need is for F-Zero to become a teleport-fest...

Then again, it's been a while since I paid much attention to the capabilities of online infrastructure. Anyone have any idea whether it's good enough for a 30-man F-Zero GX Grand Prix?
They can keep the gameplay exactly the same
I mean, sure, the gameplay for GX was good. A bit too exploitable for my taste...

I like the idea of a game grounded solidly in Newtonian physics. Thrust, drag, lift, gravity. Moment vs. moment of inertia, centre of mass vs. centre of pressure. Kinetic energy accounting, feeding into stuff like collisions. A simple airbreathing engine model for calculating thrust given machine state, with the resulting jet blast effects complicating the machine's wake and any attempt to draft in it. Conservative/non-energy-adding track interaction -> no snaking. With the performance of these vehicles, a real-physics-based approach in normal gravity basically means flight would be easy to sustain once you got off the track, but it also means that driving along the track would be faster than flying due to the better angle of attack (apparently shock reflection doesn't radically alter the drag on a bullet in ground effect) and result in much tighter turns due to the magnetic grip. A reasonably intelligent rule system for preventing giant shortcuts might be all that's necessary to balance this.

Oh, and it needs a decent approximation of compressible aerodynamics. Use empirical functions or lookup tables for lift and drag and such if you have to, but if the Red Gazelle blows past you at 1800 km/h, you should hear a sonic boom. This should be properly harmonized with the Doppler effect and acoustic propagation delays, which implies an integrated semi-physical model.

I did the math, and with the right kind of high-efficiency airbreathing engine model and maybe a touch of aerodynamic handwaving (perhaps with deflector shields as an excuse), you could take off at 10-20 gees or more and still be unable to pass Mach 1 without boosting; F-Zero machines are pretty stubby as supersonic bodies go. Perhaps the shapes could be given implicit justification in that skinny machines with better supersonic performance have trouble with grip/steering and maybe shields/structural integrity, such that even machines with reasonable stats in those areas have to make disproportionate sacrifices in other areas (which is why you don't see many high aspect ratio AEA designs)...?

New feature: regenerative braking. Take some (not all) of the kinetic energy you shed by braking into a hairpin (which you would have to do in this game, because I feel like the brake button in F-Zero needs more love) and add it to the shield meter. Combine with arbitrary-length boosts, where holding the button down drains your shields into your engines at a given constant rate. This way, you can boost out of the turn and end up losing less speed without having to actually sacrifice any of the shield energy you had before slowing down. Unless it's the first lap, of course... This also means you can regain a bit of shield energy by braking if you need to - of course, the imperfect efficiency combined with the explicitly conservative physics means you can't exploit this by alternating or combining brake and boost; it will always be faster to just drive.

Remove the spin attack and nerf or remove the side attack. Slamming into an opponent, taking a bit of mutual damage in order to break his grip and hopefully send him into a wall or something, is fine, but the ability to insta-kill opponents without taking damage oneself is a tad broken...

That reminds me - once your shields are gone (or is it some kind of structural integrity field?), you should still be able to take some structural damage - the equivalent of power-down in the original, where your systems start not working properly as they get increasingly banged up. Perhaps this sort of damage could be slower to recover in a pit strip? In this situation you can of course still die instantly by running over a mine or slamming headlong into a wall at full speed - impact damage is related to impact energy, and kinetic energy is quadratic with velocity...

Change up or remove vehicle tuning. Trading off speed vs. acceleration on an already-built machine before every race doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but perhaps there's something else a tad more plausible that can be thought of. Maybe something subtle like trading grip for energy retention when using the shoulder buttons? Of course if a solid excuse for the speed vs. acceleration adjustment can be formulated, it can stay, but I'd like the whole range to see more use - in X there were almost no courses where tuning for acceleration was useful (or am I playing it wrong?), and in GX there were two settings: snaking and not snaking...

It would take a lot of work to balance all this, but I think it could be a very good technical racer with no ridiculous physics exploits while still being blindingly fast and requiring quick reflexes, and retaining a healthy admixture of vehicular combat. Rather than trying to directly compete with the over-the-top cheese-fest that was GX, it could be sold as more of a sequel to the original.


...

The above may or may not be evidence that aerospace engineers shouldn't be allowed to design video games. Regardless, if I ever actually end up making that SA-1 F-Zero, it will probably be something along those lines.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by Drew Sebastino »

93143 wrote:Maybe they're waiting on the technology/infrastructure for that. The last thing we need is for F-Zero to become a teleport-fest...
Thinking of Splatoon, you're probably right... :?
93143 wrote:New feature: regenerative braking.
Uh, I guess? The thing that makes F-Zero GX so great is the fact you don't need to break, like ever. So many of these "fast" racing games are "fast" because you can't turn worth a damn and need to slow down or you'll crash, not like F-Zero GX where a turn is coming up on you so fast that you don't have time to think to react and crash.
93143 wrote:Remove the spin attack and nerf or remove the side attack. Slamming into an opponent, taking a bit of mutual damage in order to break his grip and hopefully send him into a wall or something, is fine, but the ability to insta-kill opponents without taking damage oneself is a tad broken...
I actually agree. However, I never thought the spin attack was that good because it slows you down a little and makes it harder to control the vehicle.
93143 wrote:That reminds me - once your shields are gone (or is it some kind of structural integrity field?), you should still be able to take some structural damage - the equivalent of power-down in the original, where your systems start not working properly as they get increasingly banged up. Perhaps this sort of damage could be slower to recover in a pit strip? You can of course still die instantly by slamming headlong into a wall at full speed - impact damage is related to impact energy, and kinetic energy is quadratic with velocity...
With how fast you're going in F-Zero X or GX (at least reportedly) just so much as brushing against the wall should tear the thing to shreds.
93143 wrote:Change up or remove vehicle tuning. Trading off speed vs. acceleration on an already-built machine before every race doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but perhaps there's something else a tad more plausible that can be thought of. Maybe something subtle like trading grip for energy retention when using the shoulder buttons? Of course if a solid excuse for the speed vs. acceleration adjustment can be formulated, it can stay, but I'd like the whole range to see more use - in X there were almost no courses where tuning for acceleration was useful (or am I playing it wrong?), and in GX there were two settings: snaking and not snaking...
Agreed again.
93143 wrote:It would take a lot of work to balance all this, but I think it could be a very good technical racer with no ridiculous physics exploits while still being blindingly fast and requiring quick reflexes, and retaining a healthy admixture of vehicular combat. Rather than trying to directly compete with the over-the-top cheese-fest that was GX, it could be sold as more of a sequel to the original.
I think a lot of what makes F-Zero GX so great though is all the BS maneuvers to get going as fast as you can while still racing, obviously. It's what makes the skill (or at least the practice for three months on a course) ceiling on that game higher than any other I can think of. I like the atmosphere of X more, but you got to love those cutscenes. :wink:

Yeah though, 93143, nobody plays F-Zero for realism, although I appreciate your commitment. :lol:

Oh, lastly, one thing that gives F-Zero GX to me major points over the others is that it was made by the people who made Super Monkey Ball. It blew my mind when I saw "AV" on the opening sequence. I'd love to see someone try to put the monkey race courses into F-Zero GX, considering the game engine is (somehow) just an updated Super Monkey Ball game engine. This is really obvious once you look at the debug menu.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by JRoatch »

93143 wrote:
Espozo wrote:30 player online would be insane
Maybe they're waiting on the technology/infrastructure for that. The last thing we need is for F-Zero to become a teleport-fest...

Then again, it's been a while since I paid much attention to the capabilities of online infrastructure. Anyone have any idea whether it's good enough for a 30-man F-Zero GX Grand Prix?
At best I would expected it to probably do as well as the netcode for http://www.armagetronad.org/ but long global distances will forever be a obstacle, and bufferbloat issues being triggered by massive hidden updates is not helping matters much.
Espozo wrote:I'd love to see someone try to put the monkey race courses into F-Zero GX, considering the game engine is (somehow) just an updated Super Monkey Ball game engine. This is really obvious once you look at the debug menu.
I would argue that the physics and collision (while on the track) descended from the same code base as F-Zero X after watching videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9CgmFMICpI, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USM2m0lNUL8, and comparing them to videos of the F-Zero X Disk Drive custom track maker.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by Drew Sebastino »

JRoatch wrote:I would argue that the physics and collision (while on the track) descended from the same code base as F-Zero X after watching videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9CgmFMICpI, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USM2m0lNUL8, and comparing them to videos of the F-Zero X Disk Drive custom track maker.
It seems the game is a lot more hardcoded than I though. Yeah, Super Monkey Ball couldn't get away with that; The rendering engine being the same for both games still makes sense though, more than it being the same as F-Zero X anyway. (The track itself never degrades in quality like how the course doesn't in Super Monkey Ball, there's random floating stuff around the course that can though, like in Super Monkey Ball, but the far background doesn't, again like in Super Monkey Ball.)
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by Rahsennor »

Espozo wrote:The thing that makes F-Zero GX so great is the fact you don't need to break, like ever. So many of these "fast" racing games are "fast" because you can't turn worth a damn and need to slow down or you'll crash, not like F-Zero GX where a turn is coming up on you so fast that you don't have time to think to react and crash.
I've never actually played F-Zero, so I'm curious: how does it compare to Mario Kart? I've played the SNES, GC, Wii and Wii U games to death, and I don't even remember which button the brake is on. :lol: 200cc is the first time I've ever had to slow down, and it's not because of turn rate - there's only two or three corners in the game I can't round at top speed, assuming I can react fast enough.
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by 93143 »

Just to clarify: I'm not trying to insult GX by calling it an over-the-top cheese fest. I'm just suggesting that it was such a triumphant over-the-top cheese fest that I'm not sure it's possible to top it, and a different approach may be warranted.

Then again, I may just be uncreative...

It's been suggested that Story Mode could expand beyond racing into a kind of bounty hunter action game embedded in the main game. I wonder if that would dilute the brand too much, or if it's a logical development. It would have to be really really good...

Regarding braking while turning, I'm not suggesting the sort of floaty, drifty physics you see in Wipeout or Redout or Fast Racing, or modern Mario Kart for that matter. (Oh hey - Redout is also coming to Switch...) I just think some of the techniques you can use to get around tight turns are a bit cheap, and encouraging a little braking now and then by making it fill the boost meter might be preferable to using fake physics or repurposed attacks to avoid the necessity of ever touching that poor button. Even in the original, the way speed works usually means it's better to smash head-on into the wall than to deliberately slow down...
fz15.jpg
There is certainly something to be said for the exhilaration of being able to just blast through a course without braking at all. But I don't see that F-Zero needs to remain exclusively that. Not counting X Cup, I can remember needing to brake exactly once in all of the F-Zero games I've played, and it was in X - if you don't slow down somehow before cresting that hill in Sector β, you will come off the track, and rescuing yourself is possible but difficult. I don't think the game suffers from including this one instance of necessary caution. (Both X and GX have similar spots where boosting will kill you, but I don't recall any others where normal speed can be too high.)

You'd still have speed demon courses, as well as more complicated ones that a skilled player could learn to navigate at full throttle. But in addition to that, you could have courses that nobody could navigate at full throttle, justifying not only braking but the heretofore-unpopular prioritization of acceleration over top speed (the main reason anyone does it, as far as I can tell, is to exploit the physics engines in X and GX). The point of my regenerative braking idea was to prevent this sort of course design from slowing down the gameplay too much.

...

I may be entirely wrong about what kind of game I'd enjoy, never mind what others would enjoy. Just venting a bit of hot air, is all...
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Re: Nintendo Switch Livestreem...

Post by tepples »

By braking fills the boost meter, did you mean "Kirby Air Ride"?
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